Becoming Truly Wise

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.

The Contrast Between Human Wisdom and True Wisdom

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

And today what we're going to do is we're going to pick up right where we left off from last week. 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 Apostle Paul was essentially delivering a death blow to this idea of human wisdom.

And if you were here and you remember it, you'll remember that Paul did this in three particular ways. He took aim at three particular things. He undressed, first of all, this idea of human wisdom. He dismantled it and showed the Corinthians and us what human wisdom really is.

It is weakness and it's foolishness. You'll remember that the second point that Paul had was that he reminded the Corinthians of their own weakness. That they really weren't what they thought they were or really weren't what they wanted to be.

And then lastly, Paul joined them in their weakness. He didn't leave them to suffer alone, but he joined them. He shared in that shame, in that weakness, by demonstrating that even his own ministry was folly.

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 and enslaving preoccupation with human wisdom. To do away with our own interest in being wise by the world standards and by being seen as wise.

So hopefully I relayed that last week. But what I might have done and what 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. Some people might have left thinking, well what do I do with that if God is not for wisdom? 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?

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

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 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.

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

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.

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

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

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. 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 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.

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. But really, what this is all about is how, as you, how, as an individual, as a person, as a 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. And so, tonight, today, this afternoon, we're going to get wisdom.

We're going to get insight. That's my plan. So, we're going to do that together, and we're going to begin by looking right at our text. So, 1 Corinthians 2, verse 6, I'm going to piecemeal it. It's, again, broken up really nicely into three different sections.

The Secret and Hidden Wisdom of God in Christ

And so, verses 6 to 9, we'll start there. So, Paul writes this,. 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 God decreed before the ages for our glory.

None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But as it is written, what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him.

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. 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.

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.

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. So, Paul says, yet, among the mature.

What do you think, who are the mature in this passage? 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. 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.

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.

And so, we're going to identify, first of all, before we do anything else, who are the mature in this text. So, the mature here comes from the Greek word teleos, like telescope, teleos. And what teleos means, from the Greek, is that which is perfect, what is complete, what is genuine.

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. 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.

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

But that's the exact opposite of what Paul's trying to get at. He argued against this whole idea. 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, I'm of Apollos, to saying, I'm of the mature.

I am of this. I am of that. 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.

The mature are believers. And Paul uses this word teleos. He actually borrows it from the Greek philosophers of that day. And so, almost, certainly with a little bit of irony, Paul takes the vernacular that the Corinthians would have been familiar with, and in this whole idea of teleos, they would use this of the Greek philosophers who were of the upper echelon, whose rhetoric was almost perfect.

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 Christian, but to the Christian period. He's going to say that it's not the 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, Shane, how is it that you know for sure that the mature are Christians, and they aren't this spiritual elite group? If we look in verse 13, just notice the comparisons.

Maybe I'll direct your attention, actually, to verse 6.

He says,.

And then in verse 13, he says,. And so, the mature are the people who are spiritual. Now, you said, well, spiritual could be, again, advanced. When we talk about someone, they say, oh, they're spiritual.

That could mean that they're deep, right? They have a good understanding. What Paul is saying here is that the spiritual, there are two groups in this passage. There are the spiritual, and there are the natural.

There are only two groups. The spiritual, the mature, are the believers. If we look in verse 14, the natural person, in contrast to the spiritual, does not accept the things of God. And so, Paul says here, among the mature, he's saying,.

And he says it's a secret and a hidden wisdom. In verse 7, sorry, verse 8,. The rulers of this age understood this. They didn't understand this wisdom. Because if they had, it says,. And so, Paul has imparted a wisdom that has gone unrecognized, that has lived in secret up until this point.

And he now begs the question, does anyone wonder, what is this wisdom that Paul is imparting? I know for years, when I thought the mature were this spiritual elite, I thought, how do I become one of the mature?

And what is this wisdom that Paul is sharing? 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. So in 7A, he says that it's a secret and a hidden wisdom.

That word hidden comes from the Greek word mysterion, where we get our word mystery. So it's a mysterious wisdom. In 7B, he says that it is a wisdom decreed before the ages that results in our glory. And so it is a wisdom that existed from eternity past, before the ages began, to our glory, to all of eternity future.

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

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 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 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.

No eye had seen it, no ear had heard it, no heart had imagined what God had prepared in this secret and hidden wisdom. So, 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? This secret, hidden wisdom that God, that Paul has imparted through the Holy Spirit? We'll start with what it isn't. How does that sound? So, some people have used this verse.

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

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

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.

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, 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 Wonder Bread truck with polka dots on the side of the truck, and they ran to him.

And I feel bad for the 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? 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 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. An example, has anyone heard of the book Jesus Calling?

Jesus Calling? If you go to a Christian bookstore, it's probably on display in the best-selling section. It's one of the best-selling Christian books in the last 100 years. It's sold over 30 million copies.

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. Packer, something like that. And this book, Jesus Calling by Sarah Young, what she has said in the introduction of her book, she says, 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, I, me, my, and mine, always refer to Christ. And so when she says in her book, 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, I knew that God communicated with me through the Bible, but I yearned for more. The Bible is not enough. I yearned for more.

And she said, increasingly, I wanted to hear what God had to say to me personally on a given day. 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.

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

That's not what Paul meant here. So what does this wisdom mean that Paul has imparted to the believers? People have gotten this wrong for centuries, and I hope by God's grace today, we're going to get it right.

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

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, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews, and folly to the Gentiles.

But, there's that yet, that however, that how be it, but to those who are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of God. 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.

Now some people might slump back and go, that's it? That's it, the gospel? 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. 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 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 Jesus Christ. And the world, I will tell you, finds this disappointing. 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.

And so there were 58 more important things to Christ than the gospel in Sarah Young's book. But, beloved, this is the secret and the hidden wisdom of God. It's God's cosmic plan. 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.

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

And even when we were dead in our trespasses and sins, God sent his son, even while we were sinners, to die for the ungodly. That is what 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. Christ is the great treasure. Christ is the pearl of great price. 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 I am, I'm struggling, that you would understand it too. Paul says, For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea. I think 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? That their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love.

How?

To what? To reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. This is one of Paul's struggles, and maybe that's why I struggled so much this week as I tried to prepare, is 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 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. It's Christ himself. Proverbs 9, 10 tells us, Sorry, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and if the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, then 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. 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 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.

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 Lord of glory. And what's interesting about that verse, the Lord of glory in the 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 Lord of glory.

Who was on that cross? It was 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. Paul writes to Timothy in 1 Timothy 3, 16. He says, Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness.

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

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 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.

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? 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 and the gospel of Christ.

If you reject the gospel of Christ, you will never be wise.

Never.

The Holy Spirit as the Giver of Wisdom

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. He says, these things God has revealed to us through the spirit, for the spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.

You might remember a couple of years ago when there was those two boys, two young men that killed people in BC and then ended up in Manitoba, just off, I think, Hudson's Bay or something like that in the forest.

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

Only they truly know their motives, and maybe even only partially. 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?

So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the spirit of God. 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.

And we impart this in words, not taught by human wisdom, not taught, sorry, but taught by the spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. 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.

The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. 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 spirit does the work of toiling the temple, they will forever remain blind to the glories of Christ.

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 I've ever seen in my life.

Just all the colors of the rainbow in this sunset. 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.

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

I don't stand here in judgment. I stand here only as one who, by God's grace, the 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 Trinity, God the spirit, that opened our eyes to the gospel.

In fact, not only did he open our eyes, but the 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. And theologians call this miracle, and it really is a miracle, when the Holy Spirit opens a blind person's eyes, when they raise a spiritually dead, when he raises a spiritually dead person to life, they call this miracle regeneration.

Regeneration. It sounds almost like a biology term. But where they get this term is from passages like Titus 3 and verse 5. Titus 3 verse 5 says this,. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, you see the motive for this.

It's not judgment. It's not vindictiveness. It is the goodness and the loving kindness of God that has moved him to this. 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 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 Holy Spirit. And so in the Holy Spirit, by the Holy Spirit, we are washed.

Every Christian in this room, if you're a Christian, you have been washed. You have been renewed. You have been saved through this ministry of the Holy Spirit. Jesus himself spoke about this miracle of regeneration in John chapter three.

So many people know John chapter three. John 3, 16, or earlier in John, you must be born again. And early in John, he says this, Christ says to Nicodemus, he says, you must be born again. The wind blows where it wishes and you hear it sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.

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

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

And so Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2, 2 .14, some of you are familiar with this verse, no doubt. He says, the natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God. In contrast to the spiritual person, the believer, the natural person, they don't accept the 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.

The things of the Spirit are spiritually discerned. I remember I went to church years ago, Nicole and I went to church. A lovely church, very religious, but I fear not a lot of Christians there. 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.

I trust from knowing her parents that her parents were saved, but she lived under the preaching of the gospel for, I don't know, 35, 45 years that she could understand what was being said from the pulpit.

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

And I said,.

Well, why don't you read your 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. And that's what Paul is getting at when he says this, that the natural person does not accept the things of God.

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

So no amount of education, no amount of church attendance, no amount of religion is going to make you wise for salvation unless the Holy Spirit opens your heart and opens your mind to understand the gospel and to understand the word of God.

John Stott, he wrote a really good book, a number of good books, but one of his classic books is a book called Between Two Worlds. And he tells a story that I find humorous, but also so powerful. He tells a story about a man named Reverend William Haslam who was ordained in the 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.

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 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. While he was preaching, in Matthew 22, verse 42, in his Bible, he spoke these words.