1 Corinthians 2:6-3:4 (The Characteristics of Wisdom)

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Well, good morning again, everyone. Thank you, Mike. As we begin our time looking at and considering the text that we'll study this morning,

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I want to kind of just jump right in to it. And this morning we're in 1 Corinthians chapter 2, and we're going to read as we get started from verse 6 of chapter 2 through chapter 3 verse 4.

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And so join me, if you will, open your Bibles if you have one. If you don't have one, you'd like to use one of the Bibles underneath the seats in front of you.

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The page for this should be page 1027, 1 Corinthians chapter 2.

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Again, we'll start in verse 6. Hear the word of the Lord this morning. Paul writes, 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, but we speak

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God's wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages to our glory, the wisdom which none of the rulers of this age has understood, for if they had understood it, they would not have crucified the

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Lord of glory. 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.

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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

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Spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the

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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

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Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. But a natural man does not accept the things of the

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Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually appraised.

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But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one.

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For who has known the mind of the Lord that he will instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.

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And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual men, but as to men of flesh, as to infants in Christ.

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I gave you milk to drink, not solid food, for you were not yet able to receive it.

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Indeed, even now you are not yet able, for you are still fleshly. For since there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not fleshly, and are you not walking like mere men?

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For when one says, I am of Paul, and another, I am of Apollos, are you not mere men?

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Let's pray one more time. Father, we thank you for your word, and thank you for this text this morning.

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God, as we study this passage here today, Lord, may you help us in hearing,

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Lord, to receive what it is you have for us, Lord, and also help us in the preaching of your word. God, may the words that are received by your people here today, may they be the things, the truth that you would have for us.

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Lord, we know that you promise us in your word that your word does not return to you void, that it accomplishes the things that you want it to accomplish.

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God, we thank you for that promise here in this time. We thank you that we all can rest in that, including myself, that you will accomplish what it is you hope to accomplish here today.

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Lord, we pray that as we consider your word, as we study your word today, that you would again be glorified, that each of us would have our eyes pointed towards you, or not to ourselves, not to any human wisdom or human ideas, but to you and to you alone.

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Lord, we pray that by the power of your spirit in us, in Christ's name. And so for those who have been able to hear or listen to some of the messages in the letter,

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Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, hopefully the journey that has gotten us here, some of it can be recalled, but I will do a little bit, spend a little bit of time in recapping kind of how we got here, because we do visit this letter somewhat sparingly.

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But throughout the opening of this letter, the idolatry of the Corinthian church and Corinthian culture has been in full view of the

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Apostle Paul as he writes this letter in about the mid -50s A .D., so just a few years after he first came to Corinth and helped to establish and worked to establish the local church there.

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And it's typical of Paul in New Testament letters to begin with important theological points that will kind of undergird or support the practical implications that he's going to pull out and reveal later on.

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This is true of the book of Ephesians, if you're familiar with that letter. Chapters 1 through 3 have a very heavy focus on doctrine, while chapters 4 through 6 take aim at how this doctrine that Paul has exposited in the first three chapters should be impacting their life as a church.

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And that's also true here in 1 Corinthians. Really, in the first four chapters, Paul is making critical doctrinal points that inform what will be practical implications that he'll be teaching throughout the remainder of the book.

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And the central issue that he's been dealing with in the first two chapters with this letter is really centered upon the humility of the

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Corinthians, or really their lack of humility, particularly as it relates to their idolatry, their love of wisdom and being thought of as wise.

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Paul argues with them in these first two chapters that if Christ is Lord, then what are you boasting of in yourselves?

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If Christ is Lord, what benefit to you as a human leader? If Christ is Lord, then why are you so consumed with human wisdom and being thought of as wise in the world's eyes?

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The Corinthians, culturally, they highly valued the recognition that would come with being seen as the holders of knowledge, as bastions of wisdom, particularly in the

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Greek culture of the first century. In many today, we're very similar to this, that we hold a very high distinction, we have a high value for the idea of being thought of as wise, not just within the church, but outside of the church as well.

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It's a very common cultural desire for people. And in truth, this is actually part of the reason why their desire for wisdom, their desire to be thought of as wise, is part of the reason why it seems the gospel took such hold in Corinth when

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Paul first went there. He came preaching truth. He was coming in claiming an absolute truth in a way of knowledge and understanding that it caught the attention of a

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Corinthian culture that longed to compare to Athens. This is kind of the kid's sister, if you will, of Boston compared to New York, the one that wants to compete and stand on the same level as Athens, the academic center of the ancient world.

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But they had forgotten just in these few years that they received the truth and they received it well, but they had already forgotten just in a few years their first love.

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Just a few years after Paul comes in and leaves, they're already forsaking the truth that they were taught.

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What Paul calls in the text that we're considering today, he calls it the hidden wisdom of God. They had forsaken that for a lie.

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And so this morning, I want us to spend some time understanding wisdom. As we just read in the passage that we're considering today, wisdom is an essential point.

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So I want to spend some time understanding that as Paul was describing it here in 1 Corinthians. And so first we're going to consider some counterfeit examples of wisdom that plagued the

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Corinthian church and that I think have continued to plague the church even to the present day, that many

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Christians today are deceived by a similar spirit and ideology. And then we're going to combat those counterfeits by learning from Paul, as he wrote under the inspiration of the

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Spirit, here particularly in 1 Corinthians 2, we want to understand some characteristics of true wisdom.

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And so that's going to get us through the first four verses of what we read here at the start, which is a total of 15 verses.

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But that is going to be all we're going to get to today. But I wanted to read that whole passage, all 15 of those verses as we started today, because really we can't understand correctly these first four that we're going to consider, chapter 2, verse 6 through 9, and then even the next 11, verse 10 of chapter 2 through verse 4 of chapter 3.

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They're really meant to be understood together. They're making one really overarching point. And so I wanted to read all of it together.

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I can see Jeff's already wondering, why did we read the whole thing? Why didn't we read just four verses? But that's why. That's why we did it.

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And so it may be that some of us here and potentially some listening, right, that we see the study of biblical cultures as kind of an extraneous exercise, right?

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It's even unnecessary, some would potentially argue, to really being able to understand the Bible for today, because we don't live in the same context, we don't live in the same cultures as the original audiences of these letters.

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And it is true that we can, we do have a tendency to over -contextualize the biblical text.

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And what I mean by that is we get to know the context of the biblical text so well, so that we can really just have the text apply to that culture.

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We separate ourselves from it just enough that it applies to them then, but it no longer applies to us today.

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So there is over -contextualization, there is danger in doing that, I think. But it's important for us to remember that what was meant for the original audience is also what's meant for us today.

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It doesn't mean that everything applies in the same way. Look at the ceremonial law of the Old Testament, it doesn't mean these things apply in the same way, but they mean the same thing today, that they meant then for the original audience.

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Because this is God's word. His word is eternal, it is always true. But it happens throughout history, in the history of the church even, that we forget the eternal nature of God's truth.

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We lose sight of the reality that, that really we remain just as susceptible to the errors of the early church as they were.

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Even though God has given great correction and warning to us here in 2021, in the form of New Testament epistles, we are just as in danger of falling into error, in the very same errors even, if not for the grace of God.

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And one such error, again this was true in Corinth, is that we will do what we can to make things enough about us that we feel some level of control or security in ourselves.

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We're able to find some level of security in what we do or what we accomplish or what we know.

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And we see a great example of this in chapter 3 of John's Gospel account, where he recounts Nicodemus' interaction with Jesus.

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Nicodemus was a ruler of the Jews, he was a Pharisee, and he comes to Jesus by night in order to hide the fact that he's looking for information from this polarizing rabbi,

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Jesus of Nazareth. And why did he come, what did he want to know? He wanted to understand this kingdom of God that Jesus was teaching about throughout

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Judea. He wanted to understand how he also could attain to, could reach this kingdom.

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And so if you look at verses 1 through 4 of John 3, it says, Now there was a man of the Pharisees named

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Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to him,

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Rabbi, we know that you have come from God as a teacher, for no one can do these things that you do unless God is with him.

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Jesus answered and said to him, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

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And Nicodemus said to him, How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born, can he?

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And so the idea that entry to God's kingdom could only be secured through being born again had Nicodemus utterly befuddled.

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How can a man be born when he is old? How? He cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born, can he?

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Said another way, Nicodemus is asking, I must be born again, but how do I do it? How do I accomplish that?

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What do I have to do to be born again? Nicodemus wanted control over his destiny, if you will, right?

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To him, the kingdom of God was a thing for him to accomplish, a work to be completed, a knowledge to be reached.

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And this idea was normal for the Jews, even the mainstream, for the Jews of Jesus' time, of course, particularly the

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Pharisees, because if it were true, then those Pharisees certainly would be first in line.

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They were the ones who could do best. They would be the elite class within the kingdom of God.

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And historically speaking, this very same spirit that I think we see in Nicodemus has been pervasive in and around the

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Christian church. There's an ideology that some of you may be familiar with that's known as Gnosticism, that operates under very similar presuppositions, in my opinion.

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This heretical ideology is rooted in the idea that salvation is found, salvation is accomplished through the realization of a special knowledge.

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And this is where the movement gets its name, because the Greek word gnosis means knowledge.

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So it's a religion, a mystical religion of knowledge, in a sense. And to some, Gnosticism, and even its definition, can seem like a very subtle divergence from the true gospel, because Christianity, after all, is a religion grounded in true knowledge.

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We're Christians because we know something to be true. And we say it here often even, that our worship of God must be rooted in our mind, in our knowledge of him.

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You cannot worship that which you do not know. So there is a, by association, there's something of Christianity that is a religion of knowledge.

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And so we have to be clear on what, obviously what the distinction is here, what that knowledge is, and what it is not.

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To the Christian, it's our knowledge and our understanding of the gospel that brings new life in Christ.

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But to the Gnostic, it's the knowledge of self. That is the knowledge of God.

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To them, saving knowledge involved the revelation of the true nature of the human self.

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The true nature that lived within them. You often hear this in expressions like,

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I have to go and find myself. This is Gnostic ideology, whether we realize it or not.

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That we are looking for some sort of salvation, some sort of knowledge within ourselves.

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So that's the distinction, it's an important one. Historian Henry Chadwick, he describes

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Gnostic belief this way, that the content of the Gnostic gospel was an attempt to rouse the soul from its sleepwalking condition, and to make it aware of the high destiny to which it is called.

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You could probably say today, it's being woke. So this is a

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Gnostic ideology at its root. So in a sense, the Gnostics believed, especially those who would claim themselves to be

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Christians in Corinth, which there's great evidence for, we'll get to that in a minute. The Gnostics believed that Jesus was an example rather than a savior.

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So he's someone that they could join in the knowledge. He didn't save them, he just showed them the way to enlightenment.

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And the dangers of this type of thought are obviously legion within the Christian church. Certainly sin was pervasive in the

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Gnostic world. Their confidence that they had seen through, that they were now awake, the normal ways of the world, coupled with other common beliefs within Gnosticism, that basically physical matter, like the body is evil, and it will never be redeemed, it can't be redeemed, led many of them to live in extreme self -indulgence, because that idea that matter was evil, basically had them get to a point of, if the physical body will never be redeemed, we can do whatever we want with it, in the here and now.

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And so there was extreme self -indulgence within Gnostic circles, particularly when it came to food and sex.

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The lusts of the heart were clear in those communities. And further, we see this in Corinth explicitly, again, their

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Gnostic beliefs and tendencies, that their spiritual knowledge is sufficient for salvation.

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So this belief that they had within Corinth, that their spiritual knowledge is sufficient for salvation, led them to dismiss the necessity, even of the resurrection, which is why

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Paul, at the end of the letter, spends time pointing out to them that if the resurrection is not true, we are all fools.

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Because they stopped believing this, at least groups within the Corinthian church. And it was the spiritually elite in Corinth, really, who had believed that they had attained this true wisdom, this higher wisdom, that led them to render meaningless this perfect work of Christ, which culminated in his physical, bodily resurrection.

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We know that although we are sinful and evil, that matter in and of itself is not evil, it's the human heart.

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And so Paul, again, makes clear, and we'll discuss this, maybe many years from now, when we get to 1

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Corinthians 15 and 16, the importance of the resurrection. Although hopefully we'd talk about that every week, because otherwise we're all fools.

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But anyways, I digress. Although they were small in number, the

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Gnostics within Corinth, and just even within the Christian community of the time, they were small in number, but their teachings really wreaked havoc in the mainstream

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Christian community. Their use of the scripture and Christian language allowed them, it gave them license to kind of become one, become a part of Christian communities.

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They could kind of sneak in very subtly, unnoticed. They had sayings like, and this is found in some of the books that have been uncovered over the last 100 years or so, and these are like the books that are made popular by things like the

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Da Vinci Code, right? This is kind of Gnosticism reborn, in a sense. But they had sayings like,

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Jesus appeared, put on that book, was nailed to a tree, and published the

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Father's Edict on the cross. Oh, what a great teaching. And to some, this might seem like a poetic version of Christian teachings on the crucifixion, right?

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That Jesus died on a cross, on a Roman tree, or a Roman cross, died on a tree, and he published, in a sense, made known the wisdom of God that redemption is found only in him.

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But the subtlety of expressions like this is that their salvation is not in Christ, but it's in the knowledge that Jesus appeared, he put on the book, right?

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He put on the knowledge and showed us the way, in a sense, he published the Father's Edict.

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He showed us the way to salvation in this higher knowledge that God has revealed through Christ, but not in Christ's sacrifice in and of itself.

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And further, their idea of an elite informed clique was naturally very appealing to many, right, in the early church.

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So obviously the deceptions and the deceptiveness of some of the things that they were teaching were very dangerous. But also, the idea of being able to rise up as an elite class of Christian was very appealing to people in the early church, just as is appealing to many in the church today.

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Particularly in Corinth, we see this again, as we've discussed in previous messages in this book. The Corinthian culture was an incredibly prideful culture.

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But the Gnostic was associated at this time with being urbane, being sophisticated and intelligent.

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It was a very powerful draw to the fleshly nature of a Corinthian of the first century.

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And Gnosticism, you know, I would say it's simply the natural outflow of the spirit that already existed, right, this human reliance, idolatry of self, right, that produces a lust for notoriety.

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So it's very satisfying when what's under, when what is driving a person already is themselves.

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Gnosticism can be a very satisfying end to meet that fleshly idolatry.

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And when we idolize ourselves, we lust for notoriety, just like Nicodemus in John chapter three, then we will create ways, we will search for ideologies that allow us to claim authority or status over others.

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And as we've discussed in our visits to this book in the past, this is again a natural draw to the people of the

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Corinthian church to whom Paul is writing. And while Gnosticism may seem to be an error of just the less enlightened past, again, today the

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Gnostic thought is quite pervasive, I would say, not only in the Christian church, but even external to the

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Christian church. Very popular today are New Age religions and spirituality and mysticism, where people are convinced that the universe or Mother Earth or their third eye is

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God, right, they won't even take, they won't brush their teeth with toothpaste that has fluoride in it because somehow it blinds the third eye.

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There she goes. Somehow it blinds her third eye. So it's a, you know, these things are pervasive, right, these ideas that somehow, somewhere within us and just as in mystical ideologies, right,

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Gnosticism really, is, it's still alive and well today. And many

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Christians, even, and these are external threats, right, Mother Earth and the universe and third eyes, like most

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Christians don't think that way, hopefully. Well, no Christian thinks that way. Some Christians think that way, though.

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Air quotes, you know. But there are external attacks against God's people in the form of, you know, self -help and self -realization.

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And deceivers, really, they co -opt biblical language and principles like contentment and thankfulness and prayer, you know, and they kind of bring them into these worldly ideologies, you know, as steps towards self -actualization or the realization of one's hopes and dreams by the law of attraction, right.

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So these biblical and Christian principles are brought into these other external threats and they deceive

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Christians who don't know better. Imagine, even, how easily deceived an immature or young Christian, let's say, could be when a popular book, and this came out,

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I think, like 10 or 15 years ago, called The Secret, you may be familiar with. And it teaches readers to believe that if they ask for something and they believe it's theirs, then they will receive precisely what they desire.

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Right, this is just the law of attraction. But imagine a Christian being handed this by somebody, right, and they hear about this and they say, oh, that sounds awfully familiar to what

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Jesus says in Matthew chapter 7, verse 7, he says, ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you.

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For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. But not all, not everyone is able to handle the deception that is happening here, because external threats are co -opting biblical truth in order to deceive

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God's people. But it's not only obvious mystics, obvious Gnostics, who will attempt to deceive the church with Gnostic thought.

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Many Christians today, unknowingly, I would say, give in to temptations that come from within.

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Even the Christian church that tend towards Gnosticism.

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And I often refer to these things today as emotional Gnosticism that I see in the modern church, and I have a couple of examples, there are certainly more, but these are just a couple that come to mind.

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Manifestations of what, again, I would call emotional Gnosticism within the Christian church. One such thing is receiving inclinations from God, and not that I think that these necessarily don't happen.

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Certainly I think that we, as we walk in the Spirit, we are led by God to do certain things, to make certain decisions.

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I don't disagree with that by any means. But what I mean by receiving inclinations from God is

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I mean that there are sometimes either external factors or even internal things that we attribute to God that aren't necessarily from Him, that we don't have license to say are from Him.

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Some will point to dreams or visions and say absolutely that this is God giving them an inclination to do something or not to do something.

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Others will point to goose bumps or pits in their stomach as they drive through a certain place, that this is where I need to move.

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Again, not that this couldn't be God, but this is a Gnosticism, this is a type of Gnostic thought that says that there is something within me that I am going to attribute to God and say that it is

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His word, it is a special knowledge that God has given to me for this instance. And what we do when we're doing that is we're dismissing the possibility that it's really just our deceitful and desperately wicked hearts that are using our emotions to trick us into doing what we in our flesh want to do, not necessarily what

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God would have us to do. And some will even bring this to their Bible and to their understanding of the Bible, that God will help them to know what something in the

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Scripture means, you know, I don't need a teacher, I don't need an understanding of history or language or context or culture or anything like that,

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God will make it clear to me. Through some means of some sort of communication, I don't know what it is, but He will make it clear to me what this means.

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And now it's true, of course, right, that the Holy Spirit, we read this in the passage that we're considering today, that the Holy Spirit is the one who gives understanding, but an important distinction is that Biblical Christianity doesn't dismiss the need for the

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Church, doesn't dismiss the need for the teachers that God has given to the Church for us to understand. That's why God didn't just send the

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Spirit, He sent the Spirit in the form of, He sent the Spirit into the

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Apostles and then sent the Apostles out to lay the foundation for the Christian Church, right?

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So there is a, it's an important distinction to make that while God gives understanding through the Spirit, He does use teachers and He uses the

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Church in order to help build that up, faithful churches, right, that preach a faithful gospel. Another example of emotional

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Gnosticism in the Church today is speaking in tongues. This is very, very popular and can be a little polarizing even, which many professing

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Christians will say is a prerequisite to salvation. So I'm not making a statement on speaking in tongues, whether or not that's a thing or not, although I have opinions on that, of course.

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But many Christians, many denominations even, will say that if you do not speak in tongues, that you are not a

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Christian. That you must receive this gift as an evidence of being baptized in the

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Holy Spirit. And this is a form of Gnosticism. What else could it be, right? Because it elevates a further revelation.

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It elevates a further gifting over and above that of the crucified

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Christ as the only means of salvation. Right, so the idea that speaking in tongues is a requirement for salvation is entirely unbiblical, and it's grounded in Gnostic thought.

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You might as well have at Ben Nicodemus asking, how do I get, how do I become born again?

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Speaking in a tongue you don't understand. There you go. And another example, this is the last example

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I'll give, but is praying in tongues. So similar, right, but not speaking in tongues, but praying in tongues.

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It's a little more subtle than the first, I think, as far as how it's dangerous, because some would say if someone just prays in a tongue, it's not that dangerous to anybody.

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Necessarily, because no one hears it, but my point in using this as an example is not to say that, again, that this is something that people shouldn't do necessarily.

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Again, I have an opinion on that. But that many professing and genuine believers, I would say, hold to this idea of a heavenly prayer language that they themselves don't even understand.

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Right, so God has given them this gift as a form of more intimate communication with him than is available to people who don't have the gift.

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And again, while many in this camp won't consider this gift to be a prerequisite to salvation like the previous example

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I gave, the danger comes in what I would say are classes of Christianity that are likely, even prone to develop with ideas like this being pervasive.

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Interestingly, too, on this particular topic, there's strong evidence to suggest that this is exactly what was happening in Corinth, which we learn about in chapters 13 and 14 of the letter where the

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Of Christ group, who we learn about in chapter 1, the Of Christ group within the Corinthian church were angling for power, they were lusting for power and notoriety within the church on the basis that they spoke in the tongues of angels.

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And Paul rebukes this in 1 Corinthians 13. They were the possessors of a greater knowledge.

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Right? And thus they're worthy of a greater distinction within the church. And Paul's saying to them that whether you speak in the tongues of angels if you don't have love, what do you have?

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Right? And so, but this is, this same thing happens in the church today when this heavenly prayer language is a very common thing because what is created is a special class, a stratified church where some don't speak in the heavenly tongue and therefore their relationship with God is thus.

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Some speak and pray in the heavenly tongue and therefore they have a more intimate relationship with God.

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It stratifies the church on terms that are not biblical. Does this make sense?

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The separation that happens within the church between people, right, kind of a class separation of people within the church is incredibly dangerous because it establishes something that's not established in Christ.

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Christ cannot be separated. Right? Christ is one and we in Christ are one with Him.

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We have everything that we need to stand before the throne of God above. Everything that we need for the personal intimate relationship with God through Christ is accomplished.

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There is not more to be given in order to learn that. That is what is important really for us here.

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I think that it's the same thing that's important for the Corinthians that Paul is teaching them in his letter.

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Our relationship with Christ is bound to and secured by Christ. Not in the gifts that we've been given by Him whether, you know, whatever they may or may not be.

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It's not in what we've been gifted in. It's what God has accomplished for us in Christ. That secures the same level of intimacy of relationship that we have in Christ.

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Whether we're inclined to put spiritual weight in goose bumps or funny feelings or to believe in heavenly languages that authenticate faith or give increased access to God, it's important that we remember that these forms of wisdom or knowledge or spirituality that we tend to cling to and that we desire, that these are counterfeits.

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These are counterfeit forms of wisdom and spirituality in the economy of God. Because there is no wisdom, there is no knowledge, there's no spirituality in the economy of God besides Christ.

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He is the wisdom of God. So with that in mind, let's read again Paul's instruction in chapter 2 verses 6 -9 as we consider the characteristics now of true wisdom to combat the false wisdom.

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Verse 6, he says, 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.

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But we speak God's wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages to our glory, the wisdom which none of the rulers of this age has understood, for if they had understood it, they would not have crucified the

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Lord of glory. 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.

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And so we have a natural tendency to look for ways and cling to ideologies where we can find tangible forms of legitimacy, right?

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Things that we can point to as we look to assure ourselves that we've attained to the levels that we hope to reach.

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And what I mean is, if we think back to Nicodemus again, that we naturally yearn to know what we can do to be born again.

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And the Corinthian Christians did the same thing as they clung to the notoriety that being wise in the world's eyes would give them.

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They wanted to be able to draw upon, as they saw fit, this innate, higher capacity of the human soul, the potential for wisdom that was within themselves to find their confidence in.

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They co -opted human philosophies and wisdom and they slapped some Christian labels on it, all in a ploy to establish themselves and to take control of the local church, to steer it apart from Christ.

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But Paul here meets their idolatry and their counterfeit wisdom that was dividing them with the stinging rebuke of truth.

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And these verses, he effectively teaches that these Corinthians, he effectively teaches these Corinthians that the wisdom that they are so desperate to have, so desperate to attain, is not the true wisdom that they need.

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No matter how much Christianese they put on their beliefs, using terms like wisdom or knowledge or spiritual or mature, it won't make them any more of those things.

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It doesn't make them more mature just by putting Christian labels on this Gnostic thought.

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And so Paul, again, as he begins his rebuke, he takes all of these terms in these verses back onto his side, the side of truth.

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He wants to poke fun at them in a sense, which Paul does really, does often in his letters, but particularly in 1

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Corinthians he does quite a bit, make fun of their sayings and their slogans to prove them wrong.

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But he does it even more so to show them that as much as they want to sound Christian, their definitions reveal where their faith and their trust are resting.

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Their faith and trust is resting in their own knowledge, in their own wisdom, in their own authority, not the authority or knowledge or wisdom of Christ.

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What is this true wisdom, as Paul defines it? Some Corinthians Christians believed in a higher knowledge that they could attain, and thus it would make null and unnecessary the work of Christ, particularly his death and bodily resurrection.

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But Paul shows us that the true wisdom of God is actually all about Christ. It's not something that is available to us or to be found within ourselves, but this is the truth that is entirely outside of us.

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It's not within us, it's an external truth, and we see this wisdom explained really in four characteristics

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I think in our text. The first one, first characteristic of true wisdom, the true wisdom of God, is that it is eternal.

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The wisdom of God is an eternal wisdom. Paul says, we do speak wisdom among those who are mature.

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And he says that it is a wisdom not of this age, nor of the rulers of this age who are, who are what? Passing away.

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He says this is the hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages to our glory.

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God is the everlasting God. It may as well be that Paul would just reference directly to the

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Corinthians the words of Isaiah 40, 28. Do you not know? Have you not heard?

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The everlasting God, the Lord, the creator of the ends of the earth, does not become weary or tired.

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His understanding is inscrutable. How do you not know that God alone is the everlasting

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God? His understanding, His wisdom, is unsearchable. And in fairness to them, it is difficult for us to conceive of or express

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God's eternity because we're finite beings, right? We've not always existed.

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We were created by a God who has always been and always will be. But we have not always been.

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Although we always, going forward, we will never perish. But our minds are puzzled by such a concept of eternality.

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No beginning, no end. You look at the words of Elihu in Job 36, 26.

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He says, Behold, God is exalted and we do not know Him. The number of His years is unsearchable.

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It's impossible for us to fully comprehend the eternality of the wise God. And this is true for all of us and all of time because we're just not like Him in this way, and we never will be.

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And so I don't think it would be a fair conclusion to say that because they couldn't comprehend God's eternal nature, that that was their sin.

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I don't think that that is their sin. No one can do that. But their sin is their response to God's eternality.

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It's not that we can't comprehend an eternal God. It's that we ignore His eternal nature in our attempts to make sense of the world.

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That's where we are. That's our sin. That was the sin of Corinth. They idolized wisdom in such a way that instead of humbling themselves before the eternal

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God in His wisdom, they sought a wisdom that would allow them to elevate themselves around other creatures.

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A great quote by Stephen Charnock, who's a Puritan from the 17th century, says, if man compares himself with other creatures, he may be too sensible of his greatness.

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And this is what the Corinthians did. This is what we're all prone to do in our efforts to understand the world around us.

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We compare ourselves to other finite beings. And when we do that, we look pretty good, for the most part.

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Things make more sense. The world makes more sense when we just look at what we can see. But Charnock continues, but if he compares himself, if man compares himself with God, he cannot but be sensible of his baseness.

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To combat our tendency to dismiss God and His wisdom, we can't look to the world around us to make sense of it, to understand it.

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We have to instead look to the everlasting, eternal God. Even when we lack understanding of this

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God, and we will, and we do, we take heart in knowing that we're encouraged by the fact that we're nothing before Him.

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We're encouraged that before God, we are nothing. We are base. That is a good thing, because has not

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God made foolish the wisdom of the world? Paul asks in chapter 1. We take heart because the foolishness of God is wiser than men.

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And so as a church, as a people, we can't look to the wisdom of the age, or those who are passing away, as Paul says, hoping to be well received on the right side of history.

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We have to look to the eternal God whose wisdom remains as sure and as true as it has always been, even from before the ages.

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And so the eternality of God's wisdom is critical in Paul's case here, through our understanding and our combating of counterfeit wisdom in the church.

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The second characteristic of wisdom that we see in our text today is it's supernatural.

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True wisdom is supernatural. It's not of this world. It's of God. Paul writes in verse 6, yet we do speak wisdom among those who are mature.

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A wisdom, however, not of this age, nor of the rulers of this age who are passing away, but we speak God's wisdom,

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God's wisdom, in a mystery. The hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages to our glory, the wisdom which none of the rulers of this age has understood.

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For if they had understood it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. God, and thereby

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God's wisdom, are utterly unique from the world. Looking at Isaiah 40 again, this time in verses 22 -25, it says,

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He is totally and utterly and uniquely divine and set apart, transcending every bit of our comprehension of Him and His wisdom.

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We could spend weeks on this topic, and when I say weeks, I don't just mean Sunday mornings for a couple hours. I mean literally every minute of every day for weeks and weeks and weeks.

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And we would probably only scratch the surface of understanding the set -apartness of God, how uniquely different He is from us.

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And this is important to the topic of wisdom. I think this is why Paul makes the point to say it's God's wisdom. It doesn't belong to the rulers of this age.

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Because if God is the only one who is like Himself, then God's wisdom is entirely unique and different than anything this world could ever produce precisely because of that uniqueness.

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It's because He is unique that His wisdom is so entirely different.

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Because of that set -apartness, because of that holiness, if no one is like Him and He is infinite and eternal, then no wisdom could ever compare to His.

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And this is what Paul is calling the church in Corinth back into. Again, they had forsaken their first love.

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But he's calling them back in to right fellowship with God and His wisdom. Could they ever comprehend the fullness of the wisdom?

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Of course not. But the natural counterfeit wisdom that they had accepted as sufficient, as an okay and good enough substitute was actually totally insufficient for them because of its worldly nature.

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Because it originated with man. It did not originate supernaturally in the bowels of eternity in God Himself.

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But they needed divine, supernatural wisdom. They didn't need the philosophies of the age or the rulers of the age.

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And too often Christians, then and now, we latch on to the latest and greatest wisdom of men and women.

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We look to the academics. We look to the seminaries who feign to know something that will change the world and revolutionize the church and how we relate to the world and certain groups of people.

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But they all have one thing in common. Every one of these groups and these academics and the wisdom of the world, it's of the world.

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Just like the rest of us are. And to our shame and to their shame, because we don't honor

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God or give thanks, we become futile in our speculations and our foolish hearts become dark.

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And that's Romans 1, 21 that when we look to the world, when we look to the world and to the wisdom of the world, we become darkened to the truth of God.

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And so true wisdom belongs to God and God alone and thus it inherits certain attributes of God.

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It's eternal. It's from everlasting to everlasting. It's always been, always will be, and it's supernatural.

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It's not of this world. And a third characteristic of true wisdom that we see in our text today is that the true, eternal wisdom of God is mysterious.

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It's a hidden wisdom. Paul says it this way in verses 7 through 9. But we speak

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God's wisdom in a mystery. The hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages to our glory, the wisdom which none of the rulers of this age has understood.

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So it's not able to be understood by the rulers of this age. For if they had understood it, they would not have crucified the

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Lord of glory, but just as it is written, things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, in which have not entered the heart of man all that God has prepared for those who love him.

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So the wisdom of God, given its eternal and supernatural nature, it's a mysterious wisdom to the human mind.

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I don't want to get too far ahead of myself to discuss this point, because next time that we're in this letter, again, especially as we look at that full 15 verses that we read at the beginning, we're going to discuss the source of this wisdom, which is the

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Holy Spirit, and how this mystery is understood. How it's possible that we understand this mystery.

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So today, I only hope to prove the point that the wisdom is hidden. That it is not understood by the rulers of this age.

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It's a mystery to each of us until it's granted to us to understand it. In Matthew 13,

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Jesus tells a parable to the crowds who are following him. This begins in verse 3 of Matthew 13.

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It says, And he spoke many things to them in parables, saying, Behold, the sower went out to sow, and as he sowed, some seeds fell beside the road.

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And the birds came and ate them up. Others fell on the rocky places where they did not have much soil, and immediately they sprang up, because they had no depth of soil.

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But when the sun had risen, they were scorched, and because they had no root, they withered away. Others fell among the thorns, and the thorns came up and choked them out.

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And others fell on the good soil, and yielded a crop, some a hundred fold, some sixty, and some thirty. He who has ears, let him hear.

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And the disciples came and said to him, Why do you speak to them in parables? Jesus said to them,

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To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been granted.

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For whoever has, to him more shall be given, and he will have an abundance, but whoever does not have, even what he has shall be taken away from him.

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Therefore I speak to them in parables, because while seeing they do not see, and while hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.

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In their case, the prophecy of Isaiah is being fulfilled, which says you will keep on hearing, but will not understand.

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You will keep on seeing, but will not perceive. And so what I find so interesting here in this parable, and explanation, is that Jesus is teaching his disciples that their ministry efforts will be met with confusion.

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They'll go as sowers in the field, throwing the seed of the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven to all those who would hear it.

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And yet it's not been granted to all to understand. Now how does this make sense? Why would

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God make the truth of his eternal supernatural wisdom so mysterious? Even impossible to understand.

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Why would God make it so that the ministry efforts of his servants, his disciples, are entirely dependent not on their ability to convince the world of the truth, to be persuasive and winsome, but it's on his willingness to grant entry to those who would hear?

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And those are two very profound questions, I think, that have very similar answers, but the number of answers would require much, much time to discuss, and again, a number of answers that are worth bringing to light.

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But in the interest of time, I only want to posit one answer to you today that I think applies well to our study.

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And again, the question is, why is God's wisdom a mystery? Impossible for us to understand, and why would

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God give the church the mission of preaching the gospel of the kingdom if we are unable to convince the world?

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But rather, the world is utterly dependent on God granting them the ability to know the mysteries.

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I think one answer, again, we see in the Corinthian church. They're such a prideful people, just as we tend to be.

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They have this tendency to look to the world, desiring to be relevant to the people around them, just as we do as well.

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Now, what have they done? Why is Paul writing this letter? They've forsaken the true wisdom.

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Just three or four years after Paul started the church, they have forsaken the true wisdom of God for the wisdom of the age.

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They've exchanged the truth about God for a lie, in order that they'd appeal to the prevailing wisdom of the day, that they have a great human potential to be tapped into.

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And they've adulterated Christianity in Christian terms to Christianize, in a sense, pagan ideologies.

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What we don't always know about ourselves, God does know these things. He knows the heart of man is deceitful and desperately wicked.

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The heart is more deceitful than all else, and is desperately sick. Who can understand it? It says in Jeremiah 17 verse 9 and verse 10, it says,

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I, the Lord, search the heart. He knows the heart of man. And so God, in his wisdom,

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I would say, has hidden that wisdom from those who would abuse it, and would hoard out to the world.

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Because he doesn't want to confuse and conflate the counterfeit wisdoms of men with the eternal wisdom of God.

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And so God's wisdom is eternal. It's not of this age. It's predestined before the ages. It's supernatural.

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Right? It's God's wisdom. None of the rulers of this age has understood it. And it's mysterious. It's a mystery.

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It's the hidden wisdom of God. And the wisdom of God, as we've looked at in the past, in previous studies in 1

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Corinthians, it consists of Christ himself. The substance of God's wisdom is

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Christ. And his redemptive work on the cross. Paul preached this message to the

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Corinthians, and he made this point to them in chapter 1, verse 30. We looked at this earlier. But we can look at it again in chapter 1, verse 30 of 1

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Corinthians. But by his doing, you are in Christ Jesus who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.

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Paul's point here is that the wisdom of God isn't an idea. It's a person. The wisdom of God is

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Jesus Christ. He is the eternal wisdom of God from before the ages.

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He is the supernaturally divine wisdom of God. He is not of this world.

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He is the hidden and mysterious wisdom of God who, when the fullness of the time came, was sent forth by the

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Father, and at the right time died for the ungodly. And further, Paul is showing that this wisdom is a redemptive wisdom.

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That God's wisdom is not just some general amorphous wisdom or knowledge. It's a real and specific wisdom that's manifested in Christ, and it's evidenced to us by the redemption that we find in Him.

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Because in God's wisdom, His Son became to us righteousness. Looking at verse 30 again,

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He became to us righteousness. He is our righteousness before the Father. He became to us sanctification.

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He is the holiness without which we will not see the Lord. And He became to us redemption, the one who purchased our salvation with His own precious blood as He died on the cross as our substitute.

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You see, Paul's point to the Corinthians is that their embrace of a counterfeit worldly wisdom is not just immaturity.

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Right? It's not just a lack of knowledge or understanding of Christianity. It's an abandonment of Jesus Christ, the

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Son of God. The once hidden yet eternally divine wisdom of God. The one who bought them.

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They abandoned the very gospel that saved them. Because they were trusting in themselves.

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And so this leads us to the fourth and final characteristic. That's critical, by the way. That is the substance, again, of the wisdom of God.

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It is Christ. But it leads us to the fourth and the final characteristic that we see in these verses of God's wisdom.

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And that is that it is a glorious wisdom. Because Jesus is the substance of the wisdom of God.

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For us to aspire to and know and believe and trust in that wisdom is the greatest wisdom we could attain.

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No human philosophy, no human wisdom could ever compare to the realities of God's redemptive work revealed in Christ.

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Paul says in verse 7 that God predestined his hidden wisdom, which is, again,

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Christ's redemption, before the ages to our glory. This was once hidden, but God has granted us to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven.

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That Christ's work for us, the gospel, is that mystery.

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And Paul references Isaiah 64 and 65 in verse 9 when he describes the glories to come. He says,

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God has prepared glory for those who love him. Those who love his wisdom.

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But we can't lose sight of, again, what the Corinthian church did lose sight of, is that the glory of God or, excuse me, that the glory that God has prepared is not based on our ability.

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It's not based on our goodness. It's not based on our wisdom. It's not based on our gifts. It is, the glory

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God has prepared for us is that we are the glorious bridegroom. We are looking forward to the glorious bridegroom

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Christ, to whom we have been predestined before the ages. The glory that we look forward to, that God has prepared for us, is him.

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All that was hidden, all that was unknown to us before, is realized in the person of Jesus Christ.

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If the church is to be preserved as a bride for her groom, then she will fix her eyes on to him, because if we've seen him, then we have seen the

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Father. There's not this knowledge inside of us, Christ exists, and there's a knowledge inside of us that's a deeper knowledge.

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No, if we've seen Christ, we have seen the Father God. We have seen the greatest wisdom that could ever be known, to which nothing on this earth could ever compare.

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In fact, and again, this is Paul's reference to Isaiah, human hearts couldn't even comprehend the beauty that we have waiting for us in Christ.

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Our eyes can't imagine the sight, our ears can't imagine the sound of what awaits us in Christ.

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John Owen wrote that, it's in Christ alone that we can discern anything of the wisdom of God, for him has the

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Father chosen and sealed to represent it to us. All the treasures of this wisdom are hid, laid up, and laid out in him.

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The wisdom of God revealed to us in Christ is the very gospel promise that is our salvation and our reward.

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I want to close with Colossians 1, 13 -20. It says,

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For he rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved

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Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible

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God, the firstborn of all creation, for by him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things have been created through him and for him.

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He is before all things and in him all things hold together. He is also head of the body, the church, and he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he himself will come to have first place in everything.

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For it was the Father's good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in him, the fullness of his wisdom, his eternal wisdom, his divine wisdom, his hidden wisdom, his glorious wisdom dwells in Christ.

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And through him to reconcile all things to himself, having made peace through the blood of his cross, through him

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I say whether things on earth or things in heaven, in Christ alone does the fullness of God dwell.

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It's not within ourselves to find, as the Gnostics or the New Agers assume. It is the glorious redemption, the redemptive work of Christ that is the hidden wisdom of God that was realized totally outside of us.

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It is external to us. It was all in him and through him and for him.

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And so may we as God's people, individually and corporally, may we come to know that wisdom as God grants us understanding.

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May we fix our eyes on him and his redemption as we learn it. May the

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Lord protect us from being tempted by our lusts for notoriety or for the wisdom of the world.

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And may we, or may he hold us fast in his wisdom. Help to hold us fast centered upon the gospel of redemption.

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And may we find our full hope and glory, may we find our glory in the cross of Christ, the wisdom of God, so that in our boasting,

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Paul says in verse 31 of chapter 1, we boast in him, we boast in the work of the Lord. Let's pray.

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Father, we thank you for your word. Lord, we praise you that there is nothing, nothing of a life in walking with you that is contingent upon us being perfect or being smarter or anything like that.

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But every gift that we would need from you to know you, to walk with you, we have already received in Christ and your promised

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Holy Spirit. Where we don't need the wisdom of the world, we don't need new and better gifts.

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Lord, we have everything that we need in you and in you alone. May you help us as individuals, as families, as a church,

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God, to cling to you. That we wouldn't look to, again, external sources besides you,

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Lord. We wouldn't look within ourselves even, Lord, for the understanding that we are so desperate for.

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But we would cling to and trust in you, knowing that our waywardness in this area,

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Lord, our tendency to look to human beings for wisdom and to look to the world for wisdom is what corrupts churches.

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Lord, may we as a church, may we be committed to you and to your word. Not to, again, not to the new thought of the age of the day,

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Lord, but we would be committed to your word and your word alone. And we pray these things in the precious name of your