How to Get the Wisdom of God | Sermon 10/20/2024

The Search for Human Wisdom and the Need for Divine Wisdom

For a few weeks, now we talk about the wisdom of God. You know, there are people who travel all over to go to conferences to hear so-called wise men of the age. Many people will make pilgrimage to hear some sort of guru or wise person on their teachings.

He knows, I've got to go find him. Others have sought out the greatest philosophers of the age, the greatest atheistic minds, and they want to be their pupil, right? They want to learn from them. Let me glean from you, let me learn from you.

And all across our country, I'm not saying this is a bad thing necessarily, there's nuance to this, but all across our country, young people are paying thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars to listen to professors in universities, right?

So all over this globe, people are seeking intelligence, they're seeking knowledge, they're seeking wisdom. It's constantly being sought. But what about the wisdom of God? What lengths is someone willing to go to to receive divine wisdom?

And how can temporal, finite, carnal humanity understand or ascertain wisdom from heaven? Would we recognize wisdom from heaven if it just came upon us? And now as believers, my question for you is, where are you getting your wisdom?

Where are you being informed, okay? Let's consider these things today. Go to verse six, go to verse six. We're just gonna go verse by verse. So keep that scripture print out handy or open your Bible. It says in verse six, yet we do speak wisdom among those who are mature, a wisdom, however, not of this age, nor of the rulers of this age who are passing away.

The Wisdom Revealed to the Mature in Christ

Okay, he says we speak wisdom among the mature. And so he's not saying that he withholds some wisdom from infant Christians, and he only gives it to mature Christians. And he's not insulting them either.

He's not making a backhanded remark, oh, I'm gonna give you the wisdom because you're mature. In fact, what we're gonna find is he's gonna rebuke the Corinthians because they've not been mature. And he's not saying that when an unbelieving person reaches some level of maturity, they'll finally get the wisdom of God, that they've had to get there.

If you just elevate, if you just, boy, if you just as an unbeliever get enlightened, then one day God will see you're worthy enough to give you his wisdom. That's not the case either. It's that it doesn't matter who you are.

There is no inner circle who gets more. There is no sophisticated truth for only the gifted few, right? This word mature is the word in the Greek for those who are perfect, those who are complete. That is to say, when he writes, I give wisdom to those who are mature, he says, I give wisdom to everyone, every Christian.

Every Christian is complete. Maybe not in sanctification yet, but we all have that same access now by the spirit of God to the wisdom of God, okay? We who are united to God, like Adam was before the fall, we have that communion again, that connection again.

That's believers. Paul doesn't discriminate with his preaching. He'll give the wisdom of God to all. It goes to everyone. And Greek culture had higher clubs, okay? Greek culture said that only certain people could hear the hidden depths of wisdom.

But God's wisdom, all that he intends to give will go to all of God's people, all of it. And so brothers and sisters, if you're a believer today, you have equal access to God's wisdom. I don't have more access to the wisdom of God as a pastor.

Those who have been believers for 10, 20, 30 years, they don't have more access to the wisdom of God. We have equal access to the wisdom of God. Not one of us can obtain more from God that isn't already there for everyone else.

In this way, Paul continues to attempt to squash their faction-making and their elevating of certain persons. You remember that? They were elevating certain men and women over others, thinking, wow, this guy's great.

Boy, I just, this is the best speaker. This is the best apologist. And Paul's saying here, we all are mature, so to speak. We all have access to the wisdom of God. Not just some people, but faction-making, division, that's not of the wisdom of God.

That's from man's wisdom. Likewise, this wisdom from God is not of the rulers of this age. It's not even of this age who are passing away. God's wisdom, the mystery revealed in Christ, wasn't an invention of the modern age.

It's as eternal as the one who gave it. His wisdom is eternal. And it is certainly not of earthly leaders or the princes of the world or the sovereigns or the monarchs. They couldn't have produced this.

You know, people say, oh, you're, I heard it so much recently. Oh, your book was written by men. This is a man's book. Yeah, I guess it appears to you that way. Since we read it, the natural man doesn't have the capability to understand the wisdom of God.

And I admit it. Before I was saved, I would read this stuff and it was, I couldn't understand it. I couldn't believe it. Something happens to you and you know it. You know, you knew it. Something happened and you read this book and it was different from everything else, right?

You know it. This is something that's foreign to nature. It's foreign to man. It comes from the one who never passes away. It comes from the ancient of days. You see, Rome had no idea. Pilate couldn't fathom what he saw in Jesus.

He couldn't, he didn't get it. You're a king? The chief priests of Judea saw a threat to their own power and their own influence. This is wisdom the wise of the world thought was foolishness. The king of God, the son of God on a cross dying, they thought this was the height of foolishness.

The Hidden Wisdom Predestined Before the Ages

Verse seven, Paul says, but we speak God's wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages to our glory. He said, but we speak God's wisdom. We speak God's wisdom. There's the wisdom of this age.

There's the wisdom of these rulers who are passing away. He says, we speak God's wisdom. This came from the divine. This is from the halls of heaven. It's wisdom from God, he says, in a mystery, which means to say it was previously hidden from man.

That doesn't mean that we can't understand it now, okay? And we'll see that in a few verses. That doesn't mean also, by the way, that only esoteric or obscure followers of Jesus get it, this mystery. It's that no one could have searched for it and found it.

Do you get that? The wisdom of God, no man could have searched for it and made its discovery. It's from another realm. You have a greater chance at finding the Ark of the Covenant than finding the wisdom of God naturally.

No one could have made an expedition and declared, aha, look, oh, here it is. Here's the wisdom of God. It had to be given. It had to be given. It said, this is truth from God that is graspable and understandable only to those whom God has revealed it.

That's it. That's why you think about men like Bart Ehrman. He calls himself a biblical scholar. He knows not the scriptures nor the power therein. You read a man like that, we had to study him when I was at the state college, Bart Ehrman's theology, it's bankrupt.

He reads this book as just any other book. He doesn't see that it's living because he's not living, right? It's different. No human ever in the history of mankind sought out the Son of God to die for them.

There's no one for thousands of years, even Abraham, even Jacob, they didn't go, I'm looking for the Son of God to come to earth and die. That was never declared. No one ever was searching that out until he came, until he came.

That idea was not even conceptual to people. People couldn't conceptualize that. And then it happened. Jesus came 2000 years ago. He was revealed. He lived, he died, he rose again, and he lives forevermore.

And even today, no man wants that except the man or woman whom the Spirit is given to. That's what he says. And so that makes this an open secret, an open secret or an explained mystery. Seems like opposites, right?

An open secret, a revealed or explained mystery. And so Paul uses the perfect participle on the word hidden to say, even though it's been revealed to us, it is in still, it is still some way obscured.

It is still hidden in some capacity, meaning it is concealed from those who are perishing in their unbelief. And now here's the contrast. There's the wisdom of this age, and there is the wisdom of God.

And he says right here, it was predestined before the ages. The wisdom of God was predestined before the ages. It's before time. I told you it's as eternal as he is, the wisdom of God. God didn't cook up the cross of Christ as a plan B.

God didn't make all of creation. And then Adam and Eve fell. And then he goes, gosh, what am I going to do to resolve this issue? And then all of a sudden in his throne room in heaven, he looks over at his son and his son's like, I'll do it.

You think what I could do could work? No, it says that this wisdom, and again, the wisdom is the mystery. And then he called the mystery, Jesus Christ and him crucified. Jesus Christ, this plan, he says, this wisdom was predestined before the ages.

It's not a plan B. Jesus is the singular plan of God for the redemption of mankind. Christ alone is Jacob's ladder to heaven. There wasn't a way to heaven. And then all of a sudden it failed. Jesus was always going to be the only way to heaven.

He says, I am the door. He says, I am the gate. He called himself. He said, he is what? The way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father but by me. And when he says that, he's not like, well, now it's like no one comes to the father but by me moving forward.

It's like, it's always been that way. We can talk about the Old Testament saints and those who have had a future minded faith just for someone to save them. That's another conversation. But anyone who's in heaven comes by way of Jesus, comes by way of his grace and God's mercy.

And so Christ crucified is the hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages. And the Greek says right here, I know in my translation, it says to our glory. It actually says in the Greek for our glory, for our glory.

And this is not like we get to share in the God only glory that Christ gets. The Christian's glory according to scripture is our resurrection. It's the end of our maturation. And we will have new bodies in the presence of God in the fully realized new heavens and new earth.

So summing this verse up, we see then that God's wisdom is eternal. Man's wisdom, natural, temporal. We see here the rulers of this age, they're passing away. But we, we who receive the wisdom of God, we're going to glory.

So it says for our glory. Verse eight tells us, it's the wisdom which none of the rulers of this age has understood. For if they had understood this wisdom, they would have never crucified the Lord of glory.

The Crucifixion of the Lord of Glory and the Failure of Earthly Powers

If they knew, he says, they wouldn't have crucified the Lord of glory. Let me give you an illustration of this. There have been many archeologists, there have been even regular people who have made discoveries, but they didn't understand the item's value, okay?

In 1946, you know what happened? These Bedouin teenagers were going along and they were shepherds. They were young shepherd boys and they were shepherding their flocks. And they were near the ancient settlement of Qumran, near the Dead Sea.

And they were shepherding their flocks and they were kind of messing around. And one of the boys picks up a small stone and just above the bank, there's like these small caves or open areas in the rock.

And the boy throwing this stone, young shepherd man throws the rock and hears a shattering sound, okay? He hears this shattering, like, how did that happen? What did I just break? We're in the middle of nowhere, right?

We're in the wilderness. And so these teenage shepherd boys climb up that steep grade there and they go into that cave and they find all these ancient clay pots. And in seven of them, I believe, I think it's seven, they find ancient papyrus and words written even on leather, okay?

These are the Dead Sea Scrolls. In that moment, they looked at these items. They didn't know what they were. They had no idea. They thought they had little value. They didn't know how old they were. And so get this, shortly after this discovery with these teenage shepherd boys, four of the original Dead Sea Scrolls were sold for something like 50 bucks or something like that, $50, 50 to 100 or something like that.

And one of the men who bought some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, by the way, the Dead Sea Scrolls, they're incredible. They are the oldest manuscripts of the Bible we have on record. They are several hundred years BC, a couple hundred years BC before Christ came.

Before the discovery in 1946, I think some of the oldest ancient manuscripts we had were a couple hundred years into the 80s. So these were a huge discovery. What they found was, it was unbelievable. All of these papyrus with these texts matched our translations already.

It was amazing. The attestation, the detail, that perfect synergy between them, it was amazing. That's the discovery. And so one of the men who bought some of these Dead Sea Scrolls, he went, he traveled, and he came to the United States and he went to these universities with the Dead Sea Scrolls.

And he goes, you wanna buy these? You wanna investigate these and examine these and study these? And this big university said, no, we don't want them. This big university said, no, no. He went to Yale.

Yale's like, no, we don't want these. And pretty soon this man is like, this is crazy. I need to make space in my house. I'm gonna put the Dead Sea Scrolls up in the Wall Street Journal ad, miscellaneous items for sale, okay?

And so they were purchased and not for much. It's amazing. Do you know now, the Genesis fragment of the Dead Sea Scrolls, this small scroll, is estimated to be worth somewhere around 35 million plus. And they were sold for like 50 bucks.

Let's talk about finding something of value and not knowing what they're worth. You see, the wisdom of this world is in opposition to Christ. If the world understood who Christ was, if they understood how valuable and how glorious Jesus would, just like the scrolls, if they understood who Jesus was, Paul says they wouldn't have crucified the Lord of glory.

They wouldn't have done it. One commentator states, the rulers and authorities of Rome and Israel, which you have the best government at that time, the highest religion the world had at that time, had ever known, those two high powers of the world conspired to kill the Son of God on a cross.

They didn't know. They didn't know who he was. They didn't care to know who he was. We see that. We saw that going in our John series. And the fact that powerful men throughout history have decided to not care or not seek to understand the mysteries of God is nothing new.

Think of Daniel chapter two. Listen to this. In Daniel chapter two, verse 27, it says, Daniel answered before the king and said, as for the mystery about which the king has inquired, the mystery, so that King Nebuchadnezzar's asking about a mystery, Daniel says, neither wise men, conjurers, magicians, nor diviners are able to declare it to the king.

However, there is a God. There is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries. He reveals wisdom. He reveals mysteries. He tells us when things are going to happen that we didn't know were going to happen. He tells us that the things that happened and why they did and what purpose they were for.

He's the only one. He's the only one. But men, men, they look at these things and they can't understand the mystery and wisdom of God. And what is so marvelous about the mystery of God is that earthly leaders played right into the sovereign plan of God.

If they would have known, they would have never crucified the Lord, but they didn't know. They didn't. And in that, their ruthless malice, their evil towards the son of God resulted in salvation to humanity.

That's what it is. Evil, evil always fails in the end. You know that. Wickedness never succeeds. It always fumbles the ball. Evil always runs towards the finish line and then falls flat before it gets there.

It never actually does what it hopes to do. Evil never wins. And the cross exposes the futility of evil. Everything, everything, even what we perceive to be as bad will always work toward God's will. Even the worst thing that's ever happened in creation, the worst thing that's ever happened, the most atrocious sin that's ever happened is the murder of the son of God, but it resulted in the most amazing, incredible things that the world has ever seen.

It's inescapable. The Lord of glory wins. Verse nine, "'But just as it is written, "'things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard "'and which have not entered the heart of man, "'all that God has prepared "'for those who love him, "'just as God foretold in the scriptures "'by the prophet Isaiah,' he says.".

The Spirit Reveals the Deep Things of God

Previously, we saw the wisdom of God was predestined before time and creation, so it was also predestined that God would reveal his wisdom in a way that our senses could have never expected, okay? You see, no one could have ever invented a suffering and sacrificing savior.

You think about the context in Isaiah 64. The prophet speaks to God right here. The prophet speaks to God and says, "'From the moment of creation until now, "'no one by their senses, "'no one by their sight, "'no one by their hearing, "'no one by their perception "'has perceived a God like the Lord,' he says.

"'Nor could they perceive all the things "'that he intended to reveal "'to those who love and wait for them.'". We could have never expected what God would do. We could have never known. It's more marvelous than we could have ever thought.

That is to say, this wisdom of God came not by nature but by another means. Man doesn't come to God's wisdom. God's wisdom comes to us. The question is how? How does God's wisdom come to us? And so for the next four verses, the apostle changes focus to that means.

How did the wisdom of God come to man? How did it touch down? Look at this, look at verses 10 through 13. "'For to us, God revealed them through the Spirit. "'For the Spirit searches all things, "'even the depths of God.

"'For who among men knows the thoughts of a man "'except the Spirit of a man which is in him? "'Even so, the thoughts of God, "'no one knows except the Spirit of God. "'Now we have received not the Spirit of the world, "'but the Spirit who is from God, "'so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, "'which things we also speak, "'not in words taught by human wisdom, "'but in those taught by the Spirit, "'combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words.'".

So you see what Paul did there? Even the list of men that the Corinthians possibly made factions over are a part of this. He says, "'For to us, and even to Paul, "'even to Apollos, even to Cephas, even to all of you, "'God revealed his wisdom through the Spirit.'".

No one got the wisdom of God any other way. You see that? Paul didn't go to some rare place in the desert in Arabia and, oh, okay, there's the wisdom of God, and now I'm the arbiter of the wisdom of God.

No, Paul says any man, any woman who has the wisdom of God, the only way they got it was from the Spirit. It's the only way, it's the only way. Think about it. Who can traverse worlds? Who is the one who can traverse the divide between God and man?

Who can plumb the depths of God's eternal mind and share it with us in a way that won't destroy us? Only one, the Spirit of God. He says the Spirit, he can. The Spirit can take the deep things of the mind of God and somehow give them to you in a way that won't destroy you, it'll make you alive.

It's incredible, it's incredible. He says the Spirit searches or examines or investigates, it says all things, and the Spirit searches even the deep things of God because he is God. So the point Paul has been making is that no creature can examine the mind of God in this way, no creature, not one, no one lesser than God can search out the deep things of God.

Who can approach God in this fashion except God himself? So besides being the one in whom regeneration takes place, how we're converted, the Holy Spirit is also the one who gives creatures insight into the deep things of God.

That's what he says. He's the reason that we can know any of the wisdom of God, this mystery which he calls Jesus Christ and him crucified. Otherwise, how would any of us by our own strength ascend to the heavenly realm and how can we come to God and go God, now that I've ascended in my own power to the heavenly realm, God open your mind to me that I may examine the deep things of your mind and take them back to earth with me, no one, no one.

It can't be done, no one can approach God this way. So it had to be this way, it had to be the Holy Spirit. What are these things though, the deep things of God? Well, in the context, the deep things of God encompass the Father's redemptive plan in Christ and the reward God has in store for believers.

These things that transcend human comprehension. The fallen human mind is incapable of grasping the things of God without the Spirit's assistance. He is our link to God. Paul demonstrates man can't cross over into knowing the thoughts of God without the Spirit of God informing us.

Men can't even read and know the thoughts of other men and women around them, you know that? You know, I know sometimes our kids try that or sometimes our spouse is really good at that. You know, we're thinking and our spouse is like, this is what you're thinking, aren't you?

You know, our kids try to do that for us. I know what you're thinking, mom, you wanna spank me, but in your heart, you really don't. I know, I know, it's a conflict for you, right? Our kids try to act like they know our mind.

He says, only you know your thoughts, do you know that? There's no one in this room who can know your thoughts or your inner monologue. You and God, that's it, that's what he says. No one knows the thoughts of another human, but only the spirit of that human.

Likewise, only God knows his own mind, that's what he says. And the apostle is not saying that God has a spirit separate from the Holy Spirit, like something in him that is different from the third person of the Trinity, because God is otherly, he is otherly.

He's in a class of his own, no one else, no creature is in that class. Therefore, no one can know the thoughts of God without God telling them, that's it. So in this case, the reason you know anything, the reason you know anything of the wisdom of God, from God, is because God the Spirit revealed it to you.

I've said it a hundred times, I'll keep saying it. In fact, the apostle says later in chapter 12, verse three, when you consider the risk of death, when you consider persecution, the loss of everything, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12, three, he says, by the way, no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit.

No one can say Jesus is Lord and mean it without the Holy Spirit, that's what he says. 1 Corinthians 12, three, you need the Spirit, you need the Spirit to open your eyes. He says in John three, to make us born again by water and Spirit, and we need the Spirit to give us the wisdom of God.

And therefore, if that's the Corinthians, if that's you, if that's me, we have not received the Spirit of the world. We haven't, but we have received the Spirit of God. Verse 12, that we may know freely the things given to us by God, and this is important, we have not received the Spirit of the world.

If the ruler of this world is Satan, according to Jesus in John 12, he says, that's the ruler of this world, then the Spirit of this world is also demonic, okay? The Spirit of this world, the demonic Spirit, promises divine wisdom and hidden mysteries.

It promises similar things. It'll reveal all of that to you, but all of it is actually cloaked bondage, okay? I remember in my corporate job, before the Lord called me to the pastorate, I, before I was working largely remote, even before COVID, which was nice, I was in a sea of cubicles with other people, and I'll never forget this young lady, many years younger than me, she got a job, I think she was about 22 or something, she got a job at my corporate business career, and she was in a couple cubicles down from me, and she was very open about cubicle, okay?

She had crystals, she had symbols, she had sage and things burning and stuff like that, and she always wore weird garments, and I remember one day she came in and she was telling all the people around her who had listened, she said, I finally did it.

I finally got my own spirit guide, okay? And I'll never forget that. She was saying, I finally have my own spirit guide, something or someone who's telling me things that no one else knows, hidden mysteries, hidden knowledge.

I'm finding out things about other people, I'm finding things that I've never known before from this spirit guide, okay? And there were times, I'm not kidding, there were times I'd be working at my desk and I'd look over, she'd catch my eye, this young lady, after that, after she said she had a spirit guide, there were times for five to 10 minutes straight she would have an expressionless, faceless, vacant face.

It's like she became a shell of who she was. Honestly, she didn't look filled with glee. You know what it looked like? It looked like her eyes were windows with bars and she was trapped, she looked trapped.

I'm telling you, it was freaky, but that's what it is. That's what the wisdom of this world, the spirit of this world, that's what it offers. Without a doubt, without a doubt, she had encountered a very willing demon, very willing demon.

Yeah, I'll be your spirit guide. Yeah, I'll tell you things you've never heard before. It's bondage, it's slavery. We have received, though the Holy Spirit, holy is the key word, and he makes us to know the things freely given to us by God.

What things are we to know from God? What should we know? We ought to know why we need salvation, how we are to receive salvation, what salvation results in for us. But even more than that, in the wisdom of God, he makes us to know his nature, the nature of God.

He reveals to us he is a trinity. How come that every other religion or false religion or cult who says they believe in Jesus, they always deny the trinity, you ever notice that? But we, the millions of Christians across the world, we're the only ones who have been revealed to us the trinity, the true nature of God.

God is one, three persons. There's not three gods, there's one. It's his nature. He reveals these things to us, he causes us to believe them. Jesus, totally God, totally man. In other words, what does God reveal to us in his wisdom?

All the things that the apostolic writers put in scripture as well. Anyone can read them, I told you that, but to know the truth that is in them, to know them as truth, it's only possible by the Spirit.

The Natural Man, the Spiritual Man, and the Mind of Christ

Paul says in verse 13, he says, he speaks not in words taught by human wisdom, but those taught by the Spirit. Not taught like men from men, not the wisdom of men. Jesus promised this, that this would come in the new covenant.

Jesus said, all whom the Father draws to me will come to me, and he says in John chapter six, and they will be taught of God. They will be taught by God. When you think about Jeremiah, prophet Jeremiah, he says when the new covenant comes, no one will need to use their own wisdom to make another man know God.

He says, when God wants someone to know him, they will know him. You won't have to turn to your neighbor. That doesn't get rid of evangelism or anything like that. It's that you and I can't be the catalyst for this Spirit-given wisdom.

You can give the gospel, yeah, and you can give the gospel, but then it's the Spirit who comes upon a man or a woman and goes, they hear the gospel, and the Spirit enters them and causes them to believe, it says, and then they're given the wisdom from God.

It's from God. They will know him. The apostle puts an interesting phrase here. Verse 13, it literally says, combining spiritual with spiritual, spiritual words with spiritual thoughts, and this word combined can sometimes even mean interpret.

So some have thought he's saying, interpreting spiritual things to those who are spiritual, or God has combined spiritual things to spiritual persons, but this is what I think he's saying. Since he's written quite a bit about his preaching and the words he's used and how his words are wisdom from God that he gave to the Corinthians, it's more likely Paul's saying what we speak, the things taught to us by the Spirit, are combining spiritual truths to spiritual expression.

The wisdom comes in and wisdom comes out by way of expression of the gospel. Combining spiritual with spiritual. That is to say, when Paul speaks these things from God to the Corinthians, they're not simply his wisdom.

They don't come from his natural being. The Spirit didn't give the apostolic writers spiritual wisdom from God, and it stops there. Do you get that? Oh, the apostles got the wisdom of God. Too bad it doesn't come to all of us.

We just get it in that book. The wisdom of God stopped with them, stopped with 12 men. We never got it. No, it's given to them and it's come to the rest of us. You think about it this way. The Proverbs says that wisdom is better than gold.

You think about it, if I take a nugget of gold and I hand it to you, and then you hand it to someone else, and you hand it to someone else, and then maybe you hand the gold to someone who's really dirty, and you hand it to this person and that person, and someone's like, this is fool's gold, whatever, and they hand it to someone else, does that gold ever lose value going from hand to hand to hand?

No, no. Gold is gold regardless of whose hand it passes through. It's the same thing with this. God's wisdom doesn't degrade because he uses Paul to deliver it, to preach it, to proclaim it. But there are some people, there are some people who have been exposed in some way to the gold of Scripture their whole lives, and they've always thought that it was fool's gold.

You ever go to, you know, I remember going to Knoxberry Farm, or Disneyland or something like that, back when it was, I remember we got tickets when I was like six, and it was 1999 or something for Disneyland.

I think I looked a year or so ago, and I think you need to take out a second mortgage for Disneyland. But anyways, at these places, you know, or these old towns, they have these rock shops, and what, they sell the pyrite, the fool's gold, right?

And a little kid picks up the gold, and they're like, oh, I'm rich. And it's like, you know, they're not, but they'll take it home and they'll love it. But there's people in this world who've been exposed to the gold of God, and they've thought it's fool's gold their whole life.

That's it. That's it. Look at it. Look at verses 14 and 15. This tells us that. But the natural man, a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God. Does not accept it, for they are foolishness to him, fool's gold, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.

But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one. This is why divine wisdom cannot be understood even if someone happened upon it. When God's mystery, the wisdom of God in Christ came, it showed how helplessly blind we all were before God intervened.

The cross does that. The cross is like a light, and it shows how trapped we were. You see, no one knows they were in the matrix, right? While they were in it. No one can conceptualize that they're in something like that and that there's something else out there, a truth, a genuine reality, when they're in it.

It's only, what, in the movies, when Neo gets pulled out of the matrix that he finally sees that there's another reality. The natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God. He doesn't welcome them, nor does he receive them, according to the Greek.

And when faced with them, he sees them as foolishness. This phrase, natural man, in the original language means someone with just a soul. The average man or woman with a soul, someone with natural life.

They can't receive these things, just being natural. John Calvin changes the word here, and he interpreted it as the animal man. The animal man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God. And when you think about that, that's a really crude way to think about it, but when you do think about it, you might train a dog, you might train a cat, or whatever animal, and they still, at that point after you train them, will never know the basic wisdom of mankind, will they?

You can teach them to do things, but they will never know the basic wisdom of mankind. They are primal. Animals know lust, they know repetition, they know reward, they know impulse. They're driven by an internal motivator, irrespectable of anyone or anything else.

You say, Pastor Wade, that's insulting. I think it is, I think it kind of is. I do. And I'm not trying to insult anyone. Unbelieving people are not animals. The Bible says they have worth, they have dignity.

They're made in the image and likeness of our Creator. They're worth saving. They're worth sharing the gospel to. I was one of them. I was the animal man, okay? What John and Paul and I are trying to convey is that it is clear the unspiritual cannot transcend human understanding and touch the wisdom of God without his intervention.

And you think about it, you look in Acts chapter 17, you have Paul delivering one of the most amazing sermons on Mars Hill in Acts 17, and they all came together and the Athenians determined this man's a babbler.

He's a babbler. What are these words? Galileo considered the gospel of Christ. He says, those are just words and names and things that are related to your own law, Paul. And they didn't matter to him.

They were like silly talk. Festus said, you're insane. Do you remember that? In Acts, Festus goes, Paul, it's as if you are mad. You are mad. Even Jesus' own relatives, you remember that? Mark chapter three, verse 21.

It literally says that his relatives said, he, Jesus, has lost his senses. Mark 3, 21. Jesus has lost his senses, they said. The scribes and the Pharisees, those who were supposed to be the teachers of the wisdom of God thought Jesus, God in the flesh, was possessed by Beelzebul, the ruler of the demons.

And so for this world, good is bad and bad is good. They call God, the true God, the devil, and the devil is their God. And that's what Jesus said. He said, your father is the devil in John eight. Harsh words, but it's the reality.

But this is who we were before the spirit came to us. We were made to know the things freely given to us by God through the spirit, but the natural man cannot know, nor can he understand these things.