Becoming Truly Wise

Grace Fellowship Church

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This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.

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If you haven't already, please turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 2. And as we know from Will's reading today, we're going to be looking at the last 11 verses of this second chapter of 1

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Corinthians. So that's verses 6 to verses 16, so 11 verses in total.

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And today what we're going to do is we're going to pick up right where we left off from last week.

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But if you weren't here or if you need a quick reminder, you'll remember that last week in our text from chapter 1 verse 18 to chapter 2 verse 5, the

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Apostle Paul was essentially delivering a death blow to this idea of human wisdom.

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And if you were here and you remember it, you'll remember that Paul did this in three particular ways.

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He took aim at three particular things. He undressed, first of all, this idea of human wisdom.

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He dismantled it and showed the Corinthians and us what human wisdom really is.

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It is weakness and it's foolishness. You'll remember that the second point that Paul had was that he reminded the

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Corinthians of their own weakness, that they really weren't what they thought they were or really weren't what they wanted to be.

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And then lastly, Paul joined them in their weakness. He didn't leave them to suffer alone, but he joined them.

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He shared in that shame, in that weakness, by demonstrating that even his own ministry was folly.

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And so what Paul was trying to do in all of this, his objective in that whole passage, was to free those believers and to free us from a foolish, an enslaving preoccupation with human wisdom, to do away with our own interest in being wise by the world's standards and by being seen as wise.

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So hopefully I relayed that last week. But what I might have done and what

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Paul maybe is at risk of doing is Paul has done such a good job of deconstructing this idea of human wisdom that we might begin to think that Paul's intent was somehow to give us the impression that God hates wisdom, that God is not for knowledge, that God is the enemy of understanding.

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Some people might have left thinking, well, what do I do with that if God is not for wisdom?

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Where does that leave me? Does God just want me to be an empty, mindless, a bumbling buffoon, an idiot, a member of a band of unlearned ignoramuses?

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Where do we end up if God does not like wisdom, or at least not human wisdom? And if you were to believe that that was

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Paul's intent, that Paul wanted us to do away with all wisdom, good wisdom or bad, you'd be mistaken.

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Not only do we find Paul repeatedly, if we look through the New Testament, if we look through the epistles, not only do we find

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Paul repeatedly talking about wisdom, about good wisdom, true wisdom in a positive light, but we find throughout all the scriptures this exhortation to be wise, to seek wisdom, to treasure wisdom.

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So if we look at passages like Proverbs chapter 4 and verse 5, the author there, and if you're familiar with the

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Proverbs at all, you'll know that this is one amongst many of these types of verses. The author of Proverbs 4, 5 to 9, he says,

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Get wisdom, get insight, do not forget, do not turn away from the words of my mouth, do not forsake her, and she will keep you, love her, and she will guard you.

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He says this, the beginning of wisdom is this, get wisdom, get wisdom, and whatever you do, get insight, prize her highly, she will exalt you, she will honor you if you embrace her, she will place on your head a graceful garland, she will bestow on you a beautiful crown.

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And so last week, Paul wasn't trying to give us the impression that wisdom is bad, but that the wrong wisdom is bad.

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God desires that we would be wise, Paul desires that we'd be wise. If we look at passages like Colossians 1, we see that Paul prayed for the church in Colossae, that they would have knowledge and wisdom.

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But last week, what Paul did, like a surgeon must often do, they must first wound a patient before they can heal them.

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Like someone that's going to build a new house, an infill lot in downtown Edmonton, you must first break down, take down the old, that you might replace it with the new.

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And so, as we turn to chapter 2 and verse 6, our passage for today, what we're going to find is this, that Paul is going to offer now the alternative for empty human philosophy.

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This empty human philosophy that the whole Corinthian church has been caught up in. And so, the big idea of this message, the big idea of this text, you could say, is that Paul is going to teach the

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Corinthians. He's going to teach them, and he's going to teach all of us, every person in this room, if you're paying attention, how it is that we can become truly wise.

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How do I become wise? Nicole knows I was really struggling with this message because there's so many good things in here, and I had a hard time getting it on paper in a cogent way.

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But really, what this is all about is how, as you, as an individual, as a person, as a

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Christian, how can you be wise? What does wisdom look like? And Paul's going to show us how to get there while avoiding all the landmines and the snares of human wisdom.

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And so, tonight, today, this afternoon, we're going to get wisdom. We're going to get insight. That's my plan.

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So, we're going to do that together, and we're going to begin by looking right at our text.

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So, 1 Corinthians 2, verse 6, I'm going to piecemeal it. It's, again, broken up really nicely into three different sections.

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And so, verses 6 to 9, we'll start there. So, Paul writes this,

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Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is wisdom not 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

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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

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Lord of glory. But as it is written, what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what

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God has prepared for those who love Him. So, now that Paul's bulldozed this idea of human philosophy, what he's going to do is he's going to begin with this word.

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If you have the ESV, it's yet. If you have the NIV, it's however. If you have the King James, it's how be it.

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And so, however you say it, what Paul is doing, he's saying, in spite of all of the disparaging things that I've said about human wisdom, in spite of all of my deconstruction, all of the wounding, all of the things that I've done over here, there is a however, there is a but, there is a contrasting wisdom, a competing wisdom, a body of knowledge that in contrast to the world's understanding is true, it is from God, and it's to be embraced by God's people.

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So, praise God, wisdom does exist. If you left last week thinking, woe is wisdom, wisdom does exist, but what we're talking about now is the right kind of wisdom.

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So, Paul says, yet, among the mature. What do you think, who are the mature in this passage?

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Who are the mature? We need to understand, first of all, if we're going to get this whole text right, we need to understand who the mature are.

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I confess that for probably over a decade, I misunderstood the entire meaning of this text, simply because I did not know who the mature were.

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And it turns out, if you're with me, if you don't know who the mature are, at least we're in good company, because it seems to be that over the last several centuries, through much of church history, people have struggled with this text because of this definition of the mature.

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And so, we're going to identify, first of all, before we do anything else, who are the mature in this text.

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So, the mature here comes from the Greek word teleos, like telescope, teleos.

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And what teleos means, from the Greek, is that which is perfect, what is complete, what is genuine.

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And so, many have looked at this passage and thought, well, among the mature, and what they go ahead and do is they rebuild everything that Paul has just torn down.

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And so, to the mature, they think, well, the mature must be, those must be the elite, those must be the advanced, and they create new divisions.

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Again, where Paul has just taken away all of the divisions, they create new categories of common and elite, of basic and advanced.

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And for years, I read it this way, that Paul was saying that there is a different class of Christian that we do impart wisdom to, that is a different group of people.

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But that's the exact opposite of what Paul's trying to get at. He argued against this whole idea.

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And what he would do if he meant that there was a mature people as compared to a basic people or a spiritual peasant type of people is people would just go from saying,

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I'm of Apollos, to saying, I'm of the mature, I'm of this, I'm of that.

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And so, what Paul is saying when he says, among the mature, it's not very exciting, but what he's saying is that the teleos, the mature, are simply the believers in Christ.

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The mature are believers. And Paul uses this word teleos. He actually borrows it from the

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Greek philosophers of that day. And so, almost, certainly with a little bit of irony,

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Paul takes the vernacular that the Corinthians would have been familiar with. And this whole idea of teleos, they would use this of the

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Greek philosophers who were of the upper echelon, whose rhetoric was almost perfect.

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And he's going to take this word that the Corinthians are familiar with and he's going to apply it not to the spiritually mature, not to the advanced

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Christian, but to the Christian period. He's going to say that it's not the

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Greeks who are perfected in wisdom, but it's the Christians who have been perfected in Christ. And if you had any doubt about that, if you're questioning me, like saying,

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Shane, how is it that you know for sure that the mature are Christians and they aren't this spiritual elite group?

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If we look in verse 13, just notice the comparisons. Maybe I'll direct your attention actually to verse 6.

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He says, Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom. And then in verse 13 he says, And we impart this, this wisdom, in words not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the

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Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. And so, the mature are the people who are spiritual.

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Now you said, well, spiritual could be, again, advanced. When we talk about someone and they say, oh, they're spiritual, that could mean that they're deep, right?

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They have a good understanding. What Paul is saying here is that the spiritual, there are two groups in this passage.

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There are the spiritual and there are the natural. There are only two groups. The spiritual, the mature, are the believers.

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If we look in verse 14, the natural person, in contrast to the spiritual, does not accept the things of God.

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And so, Paul says here, among the mature, he's saying, among the believers.

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So among every saint in the church, everyone that has placed their faith in Christ, everyone who has the indwelling of the

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Holy Spirit, among the believers we do impart wisdom.

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And he says it's a secret and a hidden wisdom. In verse 7, sorry, verse 8, none of this rulers of this age understood this.

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They didn't understand this wisdom. Because if they had, it says, they would not have crucified the

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Lord of glory. And so, Paul has imparted a wisdom that has gone unrecognized, that has lived in secret up until this point.

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And he now begs the question, does anyone wonder, what is this wisdom that Paul is imparting?

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I know for years, when I thought the mature were this spiritual elite, I thought, how do

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I become one of the mature? And what is this wisdom that Paul is sharing?

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Listen to how Paul describes it in chapter 2, verse 7. And I'll say 7A, 7B, just the beginning and the end of each verse.

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So in 7A, he says that it's a secret and a hidden wisdom. That word hidden comes from the

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Greek word mysterion, where we get our word mystery. So it's a mysterious wisdom.

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In 7B, he says that it is a wisdom decreed before the ages, that results in our glory.

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And so, it is a wisdom that existed from eternity past, before the ages began, to our glory, to all of eternity future.

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And so you see the timelines here. He says it's a wisdom not understood by the rulers of this age, a wisdom that led to the crucifixion of the

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Lord Jesus Christ. Verse 9, a wisdom that is so profound that it could never be imagined.

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You know, oftentimes, you guys are familiar with this verse, what no eye has seen, nor ear has heard, nor the heart of man imagined what

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God has prepared for those who love him. Oftentimes, we think about this verse as an eschatological passage, that it's about the future, that we don't even have a clue of what

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God has prepared for us in the future. I think there is an eschatological element to this, that Paul is quoting from Isaiah 64, 4, but more specifically, he is simply talking about the present, that no one could have imagined this wisdom that God had planned for his church.

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No eye had seen it, no ear had heard it, no heart had imagined what God had prepared in this secret and hidden wisdom.

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I'm going to put this out here. Maybe don't answer it, but just raise your hand. Does anyone know what that wisdom is?

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This secret, hidden wisdom that God, that Paul has imparted through the

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Holy Spirit? We'll start with what it isn't. How does that sound? So, some people have used this verse.

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You see this, does anyone know what a charismatic church is? A charismatic church is a church that believes in the gifts of the

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Holy Spirit, that all of them still apply today, and oftentimes, too, they're not in all, but in some, there's a little bit of excess there.

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But in some charismatic churches, they believe that there is a deeper wisdom that isn't revealed in the

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Bible, that can only be revealed by the Holy Spirit through a vision, or through a dream, or through a direct personal revelation from God.

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I remember one time being on a prayer team for a local conference, and some of the people on that prayer team told me a story about the direct revelation that they would receive, and I thought it odd, but at the same time, they were nice people, and I listened and nodded my head, but they would meet together.

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I can't remember the term that they had for it, but they would meet together, and they would pray. And then someone would say,

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God gave me polka dots. And they would all say, polka dots! And they would run out the door, and they told me this one time how they ran out the door, and they went out the door, and wouldn't you know it, there was a guy driving a

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Wonder Bread truck with polka dots on the side of the truck, and they ran to him, and I feel bad for the

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Wonder Bread truck driver. They practically accosted him, and tried to lay hands on him, and pray for him, and whatever they could do, right?

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But some people think that this wisdom that Paul is talking about is a wisdom that's outside of the Bible. It's a wisdom that is revealed directly from the

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Holy Spirit. That's not what Paul is talking about. Some people think that this is a wisdom that God imparts to special people outside of Scripture.

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An example, has anyone heard of the book, Jesus Calling? Jesus Calling? If you go to a

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Christian bookstore, it's probably on display in the best -selling section.

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It's one of the best -selling Christian books in the last 100 years. It's sold over 30 million copies.

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That's a lot of copies to put into perspective. I think it's somewhere around 30 times more than Knowing God by J .I.

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Packer, something like that. This book, Jesus Calling by Sarah Young, what she has said in the introduction of her book, she says,

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I've written this book from the perspective of Jesus. And so she says, to help readers feel more personally connected with him, so the first person singular,

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I, me, my, and mine, always refer to Christ. And so when she says in her book,

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I love you, she's not speaking for Sarah Young. She's speaking for Christ. And what she has said is that she did not feel, she said,

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I knew that God communicated with me through the Bible, but I yearned for more. The Bible is not enough.

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I yearned for more, and she said, increasingly, I wanted to hear what God had to say to me personally on a given day.

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And so she would go and pray to God, and she believed that Jesus would give her messages, and she wrote these messages in Jesus Calling.

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And so this is a daily devotional, apparently written by Jesus through Sarah Young. As well -intentioned as she might be, that's not the way that revelation works.

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That's not the way that illumination works. That's not what Paul is talking about here. Some people believe that we would have to be in Corinth to know what this wisdom was, that it was something that Paul had taught to the

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Corinthians then and there, and that in order for us to get this wisdom, we would have to live during that time.

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That's not what Paul meant here. So what does this wisdom mean that Paul has imparted to the believers?

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People have gotten this wrong for centuries, and I hope by God's grace today, we're going to get it right.

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And so maybe we'll share it with our kids and with their kids, and we'll turn the table. Paul has actually already told us the answer.

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This might be disappointing to you, but Paul has already told us the answer of what this wisdom is in chapter 1 and verse 22.

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Remember, we looked at this last week. I'm not going to dwell on it. I'm not going to preach it again. But he says, For Jews demand signs, and Greeks seek wisdom.

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But we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews, and folly to the

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Gentiles. But, there's that yet, that however, that how be it, but to those who are called, both

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Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of God.

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And so what is Paul saying in this verse? He's saying, amongst the believers, we imparted a wisdom that is not of this age, and this wisdom that is not of this age is the person and the work of Jesus Christ.

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Now, some people might slump back and go, that's it? That's it, the gospel?

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That is wisdom? Well, I want us to look at this, okay? So, the sum and substance, if you see in your handout, the sum, the substance of true wisdom is this, it is the person of Jesus.

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It is what Jesus did on the cross, it's his life, it's his death. True wisdom is not a revelation that we read in Jesus' calling, it's not something that we get at a tent revival, it's not like I've read in some supposed

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Christian books where men go on vision quests, and God speaks to them through the sound of a waterfall or a full moon, but the wisdom of God, the righteousness of God, the power of God, the sum and substance of all of this is

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Jesus Christ. And the world, I will tell you, finds this disappointing.

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In Sarah Young's book, she writes on behalf of Jesus for 365 days in her devotional, the account of Jesus' life and death does not appear until day 59 in the journey.

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And so there were 58 more important things to Christ than the gospel in Sarah Young's book.

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But, beloved, this is the secret and the hidden wisdom of God, it's God's cosmic plan.

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I know this can kind of just go over our heads or under our feet because we're used to hearing, but just listen to it.

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It is God's cosmic plan for his people in the person of Jesus Christ.

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The greatest wisdom, think about this, this ought to bring you joy, the greatest wisdom, the greatest secret, the greatest mystery in all the world is that God loved us, has loved us, does love us, with an everlasting love.

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And even when we were dead in our trespasses and sins, God sent his

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Son, even while we were sinners, to die for the ungodly. That is what

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God has done for man. And like we looked at last week, it is a scandal, it is a scandalous idea that Christ died for us.

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Christ is the great treasure, Christ is the great pearl, sorry, the pearl of great price.

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Colossians 2, if you're familiar with this passage, Paul writes this in verse 1, he says, for I want you to know, so Paul, and here

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I am, I'm struggling, that you would understand it too. Paul says, for I want you to know how great a struggle

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I have for you and for those at Laodicea. I think

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Paul knew that it's hard for us to get this into our minds. He says, I want you to know this great struggle that I've had and for all who have seen me face to face, for what purpose?

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That their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, how?

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To what? To reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is

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Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

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This is one of Paul's struggles and maybe that's why I struggled so much this week as I tried to prepare, is

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I'm struggling, I want you to know that the most important thing in all the world, the most important thing to study, the most important thing to meditate on, the most important thing that you can dwell on in your life, it's not some esoteric wisdom found outside of the

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Bible. It's not some sports program, it's not a movie, it's not a philosophy, it's not music, it's not whatever possible idols there are out there, but it's the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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It's Christ himself. Proverbs 9, 10 tells us the beginning of wisdom, sorry, the fear of the

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Lord is the beginning of wisdom and if the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, then

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Jesus Christ and his atoning work on the cross is the perfection of wisdom. It starts with the fear of God, it ends with the love of God, the reconciliation of God, the redemption of God, it is the pinnacle.

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Peter writes this in his epistle, 1 Peter 1, verse 20, he says, For he was foreknown before the foundation of the world, this is

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Peter, looking at eternity past, but was made manifest in the last time for the sake of you who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory so that your faith and hope are in God.

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I want us to look in our text where it says in verse 8, it says this, If they had, they would not have crucified the

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Lord of glory. You know what's interesting about that verse? The Lord of glory in the

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Old Testament, the King of glory, we see for instance in Psalm 24, the God of glory, that is a term reserved for Yahweh, for God, the

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Lord of glory. Who was on that cross? It was

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God, it was the Lord of glory. You see why this is a mystery, you see why this is the greatest wisdom in all the world.

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Paul writes to Timothy in 1 Timothy 3, verse 16, he says, Great indeed, we confess, this is the mystery of godliness.

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Great is the mystery of godliness. What is this mystery? He was manifested in the flesh, that's

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Jesus, came in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.

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From eternity past to eternity future is the gospel, and this is the wisdom that Paul was trying to impart, that he was struggling to impart to the

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Colossians and to the Corinthians and now me to you, is that if there's one thing we need to focus on, it is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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If we want to be truly wise, I'm sure if we were honest with ourselves, if I asked you, do you want to be wise?

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Do you want to be perfect? Do you want to be mature? Do you want to be complete? If you want to be these things, then you need to embrace the wisdom of God in the gospel of Christ.

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If you reject the gospel of Christ, you will never be wise. Never. The next thing that Paul does in our next passage here, in verse 10, is he's going to show us the true, the giver of true wisdom, and so we'll read this together.

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He says, These things God has revealed to us through the

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Spirit, for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.

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You might remember a couple of years ago when there was those two boys, two young men that killed people in B .C.

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and then ended up in Manitoba, just off, I think, Hudson's Bay or something like that in the forest.

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I don't know about you, but I thought to myself, you know, what is going through these kids' heads that they would do something so atrocious and then just at the end, just die for it?

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What would bring a person to do that? Only they truly know their motives, and maybe even only partially.

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But here what God says, For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who can know a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person which is in them?

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So also, no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.

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Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.

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And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom, not taught, sorry, but taught by the

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Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.

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The natural person does not accept things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

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The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one.

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What Paul is saying here in a nutshell is that unless the Spirit of God breaks open the iron -clad hearts of sinful men and women, unless the

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Spirit does the work of toiling, they will forever remain blind to the glories of Christ.

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A few years ago we went to Hawaii, and we had the benefit of being on this beautiful beach where you could go out in the evening and watch probably the most gorgeous sunsets

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I've ever seen in my life. Just all the colors of the rainbow in this sunset.

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And I remember Elise and I took some pictures at that beach, and it would be easier for a blind man, if I were to walk them out to the beach, it would be easier for a blind man to stand there and to see all of the colors and all of the beauty of that sunset.

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It would be easier for a blind man to appreciate that sunset than it is for a lost man or woman to appreciate the beauty of Christ apart from the

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Spirit, apart from God's Spirit. And such were all of us at one time.

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I don't stand here in judgment, I stand here only as one who by God's grace, the

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Spirit, opened my eyes. So while we were still blind and deaf and dumb and dead in our sin, it was the third person of the

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Trinity, God the Spirit, that opened our eyes to the Gospel. In fact, not only did he open our eyes, but the

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Old Testament tells us that he gave us a new heart, that he gave us a new spirit, that he essentially gave us new eyes.

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And theologians call this miracle, and it really is a miracle, when the Holy Spirit opens a blind person's eyes, when he raises a spiritually dead person to life, they call this miracle regeneration.

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Regeneration. It sounds almost like a biology term, but where they get this term is from passages like Titus 3 and verse 5.

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Titus 3 verse 5 says this, But when the goodness and lovingkindness of God, our

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Savior, appeared, you see the motive for this. It's not judgment, it's not vindictiveness, it is the goodness and the lovingkindness of God that has moved him to this.

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He saved us, not because of works that we had done, or works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, according to, sorry, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the

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Holy Spirit. That's where we get that word regeneration. I fumbled it, so I'll just say it again. But according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the

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Holy Spirit. And so, in the Holy Spirit, by the Holy Spirit, we are washed. Every Christian in this room, if you're a

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Christian, you have been washed, you have been renewed, you have been saved through this ministry of the

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Holy Spirit. Jesus himself spoke about this miracle of regeneration in John chapter 3.

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So many people know John chapter 3, John 3, 16, or earlier in John, you must be born again.

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And early in John, he says this, Christ says, Nicodemus, he says, you must be born again.

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The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear it sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.

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So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. And so, to be wise, not only do we need to believe in Christ, that we need to have

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Christ as our Lord and as our Savior, that we need to believe the Gospel, but we need to be born again.

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We need to be regenerated. We need to be made new by the Holy Spirit.

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And just as we can't control the wind, we can't control the Spirit of God. It's the Spirit of God alone that does this by his own sovereignty.

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And so Paul says, in 1 Corinthians 2, 14, some of you are familiar with this verse, no doubt, he says, the natural person does not accept the things of the

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Spirit of God. In contrast to the spiritual person, the believer, the natural person, they don't accept the things of the

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Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

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The things of the Spirit are spiritually discerned. I remember I went to church years ago,

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Nicole and I went to church, a lovely church, very religious, but I fear not a lot of Christians there.

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And at this particular church, I remember there was this precious woman, about 25 years older than us maybe, late 40s, early 50s, and she grew up her whole life in this church.

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I trust from knowing her parents that her parents were saved, but she lived under the preaching of the gospel for,

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I don't know, 35, 45 years that she could understand what was being said from the pulpit.

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And one day we were talking about reading our Bibles, and she said, well, I don't really read my Bible. And I said, well, why don't you read your

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Bible? And she said, well, I don't really understand it. I mean, I read it, but it might as well be a different language.

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And that's what Paul is getting at when he says this, that the natural person does not accept the things of God.

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He says he is not able to understand them because they're spiritually discerned.

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So what the Holy Spirit does is the Holy Spirit comes almost with an illuminating light, a spotlight to show us, to illuminate what the scripture means, what the gospel means.

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So no amount of education, no amount of church attendance, no amount of religion is going to make you wise for salvation unless the

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Holy Spirit opens your heart and opens your mind to understand the gospel and to understand the word of God.

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John Stott, he wrote a really good book, a number of good books, but one of his classic books is a book called

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Between Two Worlds. And he tells a story that I find humorous but also so powerful.

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He tells a story about a man named Reverend William Haslam who was ordained in the

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Church of England in 1842. And Stott tells us that Haslam diligently served his parish, that he carried out his duties conscientiously and the people knew, the people in this particular town or city, wherever he was, knew that he was very religious.

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They knew that he was a very conscientious minister. But it was also apparent to a large number of the people in the church that Reverend Haslam was not saved, that he had not been born again, that he did not know

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Jesus Christ, that he had not repented and believed the gospel. And so in 1851, nine years after Reverend Haslam had been ordained as a minister, nine years after he had started pastoring this church, this is an amazing story.

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While he was preaching, in Matthew 22, verse 42, in his

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Bible he spoke these words. He said, What ye think of Christ? That's his

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King James Version, Matthew 22, verse 42. What think ye of Christ?

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And in that moment, as he was standing there before an auditorium of 300 or 400 parishioners,

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Stott writes this, the Holy Spirit, in answer no doubt to many prayers, opened his eyes to see the

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Christ of whom he was speaking and his heart to believe in him. And the change that came over Reverend Haslam was so outwardly apparent, so obvious to the people in the congregation that one of the people stood up and they shouted this.

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They said, The parson is converted. Hallelujah. And 300 and 400 people, the whole auditorium, rose to their feet in praise that God had finally saved

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Reverend Haslam. And Reverend Haslam, it says, we're told he joined in the outburst of praise and then to make things more orderly, he gave out the doxology.

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He gave out a hymn and it says the people sang it with heart and voice over and over again.

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So you see the difference between the natural Reverend Haslam at the beginning of that sermon and the spiritual

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Reverend Haslam at the end of that sermon. And it says here, Stott wrote this, he said, his conversion was the beginning of a great revival which lasted for nearly three years with a vivid sense of God's presence and conversions were almost daily while in years later

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God called him into the most unusual ministry, listen to this, of leading his fellow clergy to a personal knowledge of Jesus Christ.

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This is what happens when the Holy Spirit regenerates a man. Now I want to ask you, has the

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Holy Spirit of God regenerated you? Has he taken you from a place of casual observance to the gospel to a place of loving

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Christ with all of your heart, of being truly converted, of having your interests changed, of pursuing the things of the world to pursuing the things of God?

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If this is your story then praise God, the Holy Spirit has done this. You need to give him the glory, give the

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Holy Spirit, give Christ, give the triune God the glory for your salvation. But if the gospel has not come to you in wisdom and power, if Jesus' death on the cross has only been of little to no consequence from you, then

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I can only say that you are natural, you are a natural man, you are a natural woman, the

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Holy Spirit is not in you, you have not experienced regeneration. And what

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I would say to you is this, even if you don't want to be saved, even if you don't want to be regenerated,

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I plead with you, I urge with you, every one of you, I'll look you in the eyes,

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I don't know, I don't know what the condition of your heart is, but the Lord does and you, I think, do.

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I trust, even if you don't have the desire to be regenerated, I plead with you, ask

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God that he would, by his Holy Spirit, convict you of your sin, that he would convict you, that he would show you the wretchedness of your own state before him, even if you don't feel that right now, that you would look to Christ, that he would show you, like we prayed at the beginning of this sermon, that he would show you

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Jesus Christ in all of his beauty, on that cross, in your place, not in his place, in your place, shedding his blood so that you don't have to be separated from God.

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My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? He said that on the cross. He was forsaken that you might be reconciled to him.

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I plead with you. Even if you don't have the desire, say, Lord, give me the desire.

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Give me your Holy Spirit. And then lastly, we see the outcome of this true wisdom.

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And this one's a short section. The outcome of true wisdom is the mind of Christ.

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When we have understood the wisdom of God, which is the gospel, which is the person and work of Jesus Christ, and when we have been given the

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Holy Spirit, when we've been made new, when the Holy Spirit comes to live in us, this is amazing.

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In verse 16, Paul writes this, For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?

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He's quoting there from Isaiah 40, verse 13. It's a rhetorical question. The answer, of course, is no one.

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God is incomprehensible. We cannot fully know God. We can know him by what he's revealed, but we have not understood the mind of the

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Lord so as to instruct him. But just as our passage started with the word but, or yet, or however, it ends with a but.

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For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him? The answer is no one. But we have the mind of Christ.

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We have the mind of Christ. I like what one commentator wrote.

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They wrote it probably better than I could put it together in my frazzled thoughts this week. This commentator said,

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The presence of the Spirit grants believers the ability to discern

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God's will, and the Holy Spirit's presence in us makes us more like Christ.

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That's what it means to have the mind of Christ. Paul unpacks it in verse 12, the last text that we're gonna look at for today, and he says this.

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He says in verse 12, Now we have received not the spirit of the world, that's that old form of wisdom, that old form of philosophy, but we have the spirit who is from God.

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Why? He says in the second part of that verse, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.

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Christ has given himself on the cross, he's given us his spirit, and now he's given us his mind that we might understand the things that have been freely given to us.

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All the benefits of Christ, all the benefits of the gospel, all of the words.

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Think about that young lady, middle aged lady that I mentioned. She wanted to read the

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Bible and she didn't understand, and yet if you have the spirit of God, it's as if God has given you what

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I call a divine flashlight that you might see the words written and understand what's there.

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If you have the mind of Christ, I'm gonna ask you, this is my one point of application, what are you doing with it?

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What are you doing with this mind that Christ has given you? God has given us his mind to chart the course that by his

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Holy Spirit he's opened up our minds and our hearts to understand all that he has revealed to us. And are you squandering the mind of Christ?

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If you honestly examine yourself, are you squandering the mind of Christ on Netflix or YouTube or Candy Crush or whatever it is?

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Are you using the illumination that God has given you to meditate on the gospel, to be a student of God's word, to get to know

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God better in his word, to love the Lord your God with all of your heart.

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How does it go? With all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all of your mind, and with all of your strength.

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I think often this life, Christ said, is like a vapor. We are here now and tomorrow we won't be.

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It'll be like a flash in the pan and this life will be over. And I want to know as much of God, and I want you to know as much of God and as much of his word as you possibly can in this short life that God has given you.

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I want to be like John Bunyan. I want you to be like John Bunyan. Charles Spurgeon said about John Bunyan, he said, why this man is a living

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Bible. Prick him anywhere, his blood is bibline. He bleeds the

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Bible. The very essence of the Bible flows from him. He cannot speak without quoting a text for his very soul is full of the word of God.

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I want that for you, brothers and sisters. I want for you what John Wesley said. He said,

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I want to know one thing, the way to heaven, how to land safe on that happy shore.

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God himself has condescended to teach the way for this end he came from heaven, and this is where it is, he hath written it down in a book.

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In a book, what book is that? In this book, and John Wesley says, give me that book at any price.

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Give me the book of God. So how can we become truly wise today?

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We must have the Holy Spirit. We must have the mind of Christ, and brothers and sisters,

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I'll just say, let's use it. Let's use it. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we thank you for your word.

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Lord, we thank you for this word today. Lord, I ask that you would impress it on our hearts, that we would, every person in this room, that they would not be content to be foolish, to be natural, to be outside of Christ, to be amongst those who perish, but Lord, that every person in this room would have

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Christ, the wisdom and the power of God, that every person in this room, Lord, would have the

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Holy Spirit within them, and that they would not grieve the Holy Spirit, but that they would obey him in their lives, and Lord, that they would not throw away the mind of Christ, squandering it and chasing foolish and useless things,

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Lord, but Lord, rather to have the mind of Christ, that we might glorify you and obey you and bless your name forever until we come to be with you in glory.