Sunday School: Wisdom from God (1 Corinthians 2:1-16)

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You are listening to the teaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on this podcast, we feature 20 minutes of Bible study through a

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New Testament book. On Thursday is a study in the Old Testament and then we answer questions from the listeners on Friday.

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Each Sunday we are pleased to share our sermon series. Here's Pastor Gabe. I'm not going to read the whole section again, since we looked at 1 through 16 last week, but I'm going to pick up in verse 6, just to remind us of what we have been reading about the wisdom of God in 1

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Corinthians 2. So I'm going to start reading here in verse 6 and go through verse 16. This is the word of the

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Lord. Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or the rulers of this age who are doomed to pass away.

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But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory.

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None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

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But as it is written, what no eye has seen nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagine what

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God has prepared for those who love him. These things God has revealed to us through the

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Spirit, for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person which is in him?

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

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

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

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Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.

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

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

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For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.

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Let's pray once again here briefly. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. Teach us these things, that we may know the wisdom of God, something that we could not come into by our own human perceptions, but it is by the

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Spirit of God that is given to us, that we may know the things freely given us by God.

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The Scriptures tell us in Ephesians 5 to know the Lord's will. That is the command.

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But praise the Lord, you have given us even the ability to obey that command by pouring your

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Spirit into our hearts, that we may seek the Lord's will and know it according to your word.

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Guide us in your truth this morning that we pray, in Jesus' name, amen. So just to kind of recap a little bit here, at the end of chapter 1,

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Paul gave us an outline for the entire letter that Paul is writing here to the

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Corinthians. If you look again at chapter 1, verse 30, Paul says, because of him you are in Christ Jesus who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption.

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And so there's our outline. First of all to say that we have come to Christ because of God's doing, not by our doing, not by any human will or exertion, but according to God who wills it.

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That was Paul's argument that he laid down in chapter 1, as well as confronting the

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Corinthians on some of the fleshly, superficial divisions that were going on among them.

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Some of them affixing themselves to certain teachers and believing that they had greater knowledge than even their own brothers and sisters in the

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Lord because they learned from a different teacher than they did, or were like followers of a different teacher as it would be.

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Paul said to them, was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized in the name of Paul?

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And may that be reminders to us as well that we've not been baptized in the name of First Baptist Church of Lindale, Texas.

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We've not been baptized in the name of Pastor Tom or Pastor Gabe or Pastor Andrew or Dave.

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We are baptized in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. So that we see ministers of the word of God as desiring to attain the same goal and that is the sanctification of God's people through the preaching of the word.

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And so we encourage and build one another up in this, even as we've heard about in our sermon series in Ephesians, we've heard from Ephesians chapter four that God gave the evangelists, the apostles, the shepherds and the teachers for building up the saints for the work of ministry.

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Right? So every single one of us are called to ministry and may we all do this using our respective gifts in service to the church to build up one another in this most holy faith.

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This is to the glory of Christ and not to the glory of ourselves. So first of all,

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Paul lays that down. It's because of God that you are in Christ Jesus. So stop boasting in yourselves or affixing yourselves to, uh, to people on earth rather than setting your mind on things that are above Christ became to us wisdom from God.

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And that's where we are here reading in chapter two about the wisdom of God, which will also continue through chapters three and four.

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Paul goes on next to say he became to us righteousness and we're going to read about the call to live righteously and in holiness in our bodies in chapters five and six as a church and even as individuals.

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Christ became to us sanctification. Then we read about being sanctified, grown in holiness all the more in chapters seven through 14 and then finally redemption.

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Christ became to us redemption and we read about the redemption of our bodies in the wonderful apologetic for the resurrection of Christ and the resurrection of the dead that we will read about in chapter 15 so that Paul says as it is written, let the one who boasts boast in the

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Lord. We come into chapter two and we've been reading about a wisdom that comes not from man but from God.

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Paul even says in verse two, I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

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I was with you in weakness and much trembling, not to make much of myself, but to make much of Christ.

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Verse four, my speech and my message were not implausible words of wisdom, but in the demonstration of the spirit and of power so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.

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And if you have come to faith today, which I am hoping is the case for every single one of us in the

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Sunday school class, we are in the faith in Christ Jesus because God used a person, an individual, someone, maybe your church, maybe your pastor could have been a family member, could have been a stranger, an evangelist you heard to preach the gospel to you.

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And then also by the spirit of God, your heart was changed where previously you were a person who was in rebellion against God.

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By the regenerative work of the Holy Spirit in your heart, you heard that message. You were convicted by it.

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You recognized your sin, that you had sinned against God, knowing through the law

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God's righteous standard that none of us meet. And then when that was proclaimed to us, our conviction of heart was that we needed a

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Savior. I know I've sinned against God, what I deserve is judgment, but God has sent a

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Savior and Jesus Christ is that Savior. So that we would turn from our sin and the ways of this world to the

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Lord Jesus Christ and be saved. All of this being the work of God. I remember the story of A .W.

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Tozer who was just walking down the street and heard an evangelist doing sidewalk prophecy, as it would be.

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And he's proclaiming the gospel and Tozer listened to him a little bit. And as he continued on and walked away, he meditated on the words of that evangelist and was convicted over what he heard the evangelist say.

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And when he got home, he went upstairs to his attic and he knelt down on his floor and he folded his hands and he asked

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God to forgive him his sins and he committed his life to Jesus Christ.

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All it took was a man speaking on a sidewalk and God used that, used the words of a person to convict the heart and introduce them to the gospel which comes from God himself.

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So, God will use individuals, he will use persons to achieve his ends.

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But ultimately we have come to faith not because of that person, but because of God who worked through that person and worked in our hearts to hear the message and believe it.

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And so Paul convicts the Corinthians with this here because how are they living at this present time?

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How are they living when Paul writes this letter? They're still living according to their flesh, right?

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As we're going to hear, we'll get to this next week, chapter 3 verse 1, I, brothers, could not address you as a spiritual people but as people of the flesh as infants in Christ.

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But what he lays out for them here in chapter 2 is an understanding that the wisdom of God has been given to you so that you can know this.

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You can know what your problem is and you can even know how to fix it because of the

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Holy Spirit that has been given to you. And even this is the work of God. As we had considered these things last week just reading through those first five verses

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I concluded by telling you that man's wisdom will never be the solution to our problems.

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There may be some things that learned men have come upon through the general revelation that God provides in the creation that is all around us.

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Certain even worldly men can even find God's truth in the midst of nature. You can understand that the grass grows and the grass dies, right?

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That's just a general truth that has been revealed. But at the same time, we also considered last week that man's thinking, though he has the capability of recognizing certain truth that's just generally revealed, man's thinking is corrupted by his own sin nature.

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And we read about in Romans chapter 1 that they suppress the truth with their unrighteousness and God will give them over to their own depraved desires.

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And so we see in the world today, though you might read in the news, you might see in the news some celebrity who has cheated on their spouse.

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And what's the general perception of the public when something like that happens? Oh, what a jerk, right?

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It's like the general perception of the public is still you have to be faithful to your spouse.

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As warped as the culture's thinking is on marriage these days, yet they seem to understand faithfulness to your spouse is pretty important.

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And if you cheat on that person, well, they have a right to be mad at you, divorce you, and get all your stuff.

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That still seems to be the general perception of the public. But it's that same culture that will also say a man can become a woman, a man can marry multiple wives, or a man can marry a man if he wants.

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So you'll see hints of the culture being able to grasp God's truth through general revelation.

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But because their mind is darkened by their fleshly desires, they're corrupt in what knowledge they have.

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We can never fully find or grasp the answers to any of life's ills or our problems through the wisdom of man.

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The solution to all of our problems is in the wisdom of God, Jesus Christ, who 40 years ago was being sung about in that song by Andre Crouch.

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Jesus is the answer for the world today. Remember that? I'm astonished at the number of evangelical leaders that I encounter today who will say,

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I don't know the answer for the world today. But we can turn to psychology, we can turn to sociology, we can turn to statistics and science, and maybe through these things we can find the answer together.

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My friends, no we can't. The answer is right here in God's Word. And the person who understands it is the spiritually minded man who has the mind and heart that God has transformed from that disordered person that was after the passions of their flesh to now a person who fears

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God and desires to obey Him. Now Paul is going to contrast that when we get to verse 14 especially, the natural person does not accept the things of the

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Spirit of God for they're folly to him, he's not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

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But the spiritual person, what? What did we read there in verse 15?

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

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We're going to see a lot of contrast here especially as we get into this next section in verses 6 through 16.

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The spiritual person does this but the natural person is this way. The person of the world is this way but we who are in Christ are to be this way.

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Now as I mentioned to you last week, there's not a clear imperative here. There's nothing where Paul explicitly says to the

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Corinthians, at least in chapter 2 we don't have it, where he explicitly says to them to do something.

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There's no outright exhortation. But consider once again verse 5 where you see a so, usually there's an implied imperative there.

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Paul says, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

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So what are we to learn? What are we to take away from this today? That our trust would not be in man's wisdom.

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Our trust would be in God's wisdom. We come back over and over and over again to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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How easy is it for us to forget that? I'm going to come back to that here and make a point about that at the very end.

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But always be reminded of the gospel. I believe it was John Piper who said, preach the gospel to yourself every day.

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And he goes through a list of reasons why. Number one was because we forget. That's why.

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That's the number one reason. Why do I need to hear the gospel again today? Because we forget. We're still people in our flesh.

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Though we have the spirit of God, we still dwell in these bodies that are prone to forgetfulness. So we need to remind ourselves daily of the good news of Christ who died for us, who rose again from the dead so that all who believe in him are forgiven their sins and have everlasting life.

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Now I have a brief outline I want to give you of the rest of the section today. Before getting to that though, any other questions or comments?

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Because I know last week I just, boom, ended it and we just had to get out of there. Yes, sir.

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Yes, sir. Okay. You know, when Paul says,

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I am of all, I am of all us. And then somebody says, well,

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I am of Christ. Right. And I'm wondering why they put I am of Christ in that same little sequence of boasting.

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Yeah. Yeah. So, so why? Why? Because it does seem like he's criticizing them for the fact,

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I'm of Paul, I'm of Apollos, I'm of Cephas, I'm of Christ. Why wouldn't he praise the ones who say that I'm of Christ?

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Well, because the reason why they were saying that was to be competitive with one another. It wasn't, they weren't actually giving glory to Christ.

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They were boasting in themselves. Whereas Paul brings their attention back to recognizing, let the one who boasts, boast in the

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Lord. So if you're going to say I'm of Christ, but you're not boasting in Christ, you're boasting in yourself. You're doing what with the

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Lord's name? Yeah. Taking his name in vain. We're blaspheming God when we do that.

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So, so yeah, that wasn't congratulatory. Hey, be like this group over here that says, I am of Christ.

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It's, we need to say that I am of Christ, but really mean it to the glory of his name and not of ours.

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So my outline today is going to, is going to look a little bit like this. When we were in chapter two, verses one through 10, we were reading about, or one through five, rather.

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We're reading about how the church must receive God's wisdom in Christ. Not a human wisdom, but by God's power.

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And Paul's message, he clarified there in verses one and two. I came to preach Christ and him crucified for our sins.

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And then Paul's goal in verses three through five, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.

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In the section we're looking at today, in verses six through 10, we're going to read about a wisdom that's not the popular wisdom.

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It's actually a hidden wisdom, but it is revealed to us in Christ. In verses six and seven, we're going to, we're going to hear about transience versus permanence.

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If you don't know what those words mean, I'll explain them here in a moment. And then verses eight through 10, observation through, observation versus revelation.

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Like I said, there's going to be a lot of contrast that we're seeing in this section today. So we have transience versus permanence and then observation versus revelation.

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That goes verses eight through 10. In the next part, which goes through the rest of the chapter, verses 10 through 16, there is this call to recognize

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God's spirit as the source of spiritual understanding. So once again, not boasting in men, but boasting in the spirit of God.

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In verses 10 through 13, this is not a natural wisdom, but spiritual understanding.

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And then verses 14 to 16, we are to be not natural people, but spiritual people.

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So I'll call those things to your mind again, as we continue on here. Let's go back to the start of verse six.

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As we pursue this wisdom that is not of the world, it's not a popular wisdom, but it is the hidden wisdom of God.

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Look at verse six. Paul says, yet among the mature do we impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age who are doomed to pass away.

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Now, when Paul uses this word mature, it can be synonymous with complete.

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So the Corinthians are complete in the sense that they have already heard the gospel.

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There's nothing more that needs to be added to that. If you have the gospel, then you have

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Christ. So they have a completeness in that sense. And Paul imparts to them spiritual truths, which they've already heard.

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Paul was with them for a year and a half, if you'll remember, when he was teaching the Corinthians. So he's taught them these things.

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They have heard that, but they've forgotten it. Once again, the need to be reminded of the gospel over and over again is because we're prone to forgetfulness.

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So the Corinthians have forgot. Paul is having to lay it down for them again, preaching

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Christ and Him crucified. We hear about the cross in chapters one at the start of chapter two. We're going to hear about the resurrection when we get to chapter 15.

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And then Paul has instructions for the church in between. But it's in the fact that they have the

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Spirit of God that he imparts spiritual truths to them. Now, he doesn't mean to congratulate them for that.

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Because it's almost like some of the things that we've read here in chapter two would make it easy for the Corinthians to go, Hey, yeah, you hear that?

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We've got the Spirit. We're smarter than all those other Greeks who are chasing after their other philosophies because we have the

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Spirit of God. Listen to how Paul is congratulating us about that. But then you get to chapter three. But I couldn't address you that way.

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I'm having to address you as though we're starting back at square one again. We've got to build this up from the ground up, guys.

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You should be beyond this by now. And then we're even going to have illustrations about growing or sowing in a field as the church is

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God's field. And then also building up a building. And you are God's building, Paul says to them. So we're going to get examples like that, illustrations like that when we get into chapter three next week.

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But it's only to those who are spiritual that can understand spiritual things. And Paul says we impart this wisdom.

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It is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age who are doomed to pass away.

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Now, the interesting thing about that word rulers, it can be used a couple of different ways. In Colossians and in Ephesians, we see

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Paul use the word rulers to refer to the spiritual powers in the heavenly places.

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Right. As we're going through Ephesians, before the end of the year, we're going to come into chapter six.

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And what is Ephesians six known for? What do we read about there in chapter six? Our struggle is not against what?

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Flesh and blood, but against the spiritual powers, the rulers in the heavenly places.

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And then Paul goes on to tell us that we need to be equipped with the armor of God.

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Right. That's the other thing Ephesians six is famous for the illustration of the armor of God. So there he refers to the rulers as being principalities or spiritual figures in a spiritual realm.

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That's not the way he's using rulers here. And I think the tell is more so in verse eight.

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Consider in verse eight, it says, none of the rulers of this age understood this. For if they had, they would not have crucified the

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Lord of glory. So we're talking there about rulers in like the synagogue. But I think even more than that, because, of course, we had rulers in the synagogue.

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Sometimes you'll see that word rulers that will talk about the priests and the Pharisees and the Sadducees. But we're also talking about rulers among the

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Romans because it wasn't just the Jews that crucified Jesus. Right.

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It was Jew and Gentile together. As the disciples prayed in Acts chapter four, where they said,

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Sovereign Lord, in this place, you had brought the

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Jews and the Gentiles together, along with Herod and Pontius Pilate, to do what your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.

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And that was the crucifixion of Jesus. If they had known he was

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Jesus, I mean, they knew him by that name. But if they had known that he was the Christ, the

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Messiah, the Son of God, God incarnate himself. If they had known that,

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Paul says, they wouldn't have crucified him. They wouldn't have put to death the Lord of glory because they would have known our creator is here in the flesh.

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We can't put this man to death. But they didn't know that because there was a wisdom that was hidden from them.

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That God may achieve his purpose that he means to achieve. It was by God's sovereign hand that the

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Son of God would be put to death for our salvation.

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If Christ had not died, we would not be saved. So Paul says in verse seven, we impart a secret wisdom, a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which

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God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the

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Lord of glory. We've read about this even in Ephesians. When we were in Ephesians chapter three, we read about a hidden wisdom, a secret and hidden knowledge that has only since been revealed through Christ.

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And Paul even explicitly says, what is that mystery that has since been revealed to us? It is how

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God was going to reconcile Jew and Gentile to himself through the person and work of Jesus Christ.

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We know that now. It was a mystery even to those prophets exactly how

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God was going to do this. They didn't know. They didn't understand. They didn't know that the

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Messiah was going to come as a baby born in Bethlehem. Where were they looking for him to be born?

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In the palace, right? Where did the Magi go when they came into Jerusalem seeking him who was born king of the

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Jews? They went to the palace. They went to see Herod. Hey, if there's a king, because a scepter is going to rise up, that was the prophecy that was given in Numbers.

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That's the prophecy that the Magi were following. A star would rise and a scepter. So, hey, we're going to go to the palace and we're going to find this king who has been born a

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Savior and we're going to pay homage to him. And that's where they went. But there was no king there. And in fact,

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Herod didn't know what they were talking about. And neither did the rest of Jerusalem. Because it says when they came to Jerusalem asking this question, all of Jerusalem was troubled along with Herod.

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What are they asking about? This caravan of Persians that have come from a distant land, they're asking for the one who has been born king of the

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Jews? And it was some of the scribes that stepped forward. Some of Herod's own wise men who said,

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Oh, yes, there is a prophecy about this. Well, thanks, guys. Would have been nice for you as the shepherds and keepers of Israel to have let us know, to have informed us of that.

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And he will be born in Bethlehem, they said. The most unlikely of places in the sense that it was a shepherd's town, but most likely in the sense that the

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Savior who was going to come was going to come of the line of David. That was where David was born. So, of course, that's where the

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Messiah would be born. But God is clouding the minds of people that they would not see this and would not understand.

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So it would not be by human wisdom that they came into this knowledge, but only by the power of God.

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Paul says we impart a secret and hidden wisdom which God decreed before the ages for our glory.

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Only those who have the Spirit are able to understand it, which is why Paul said in chapter 1, verse 18, the message of the cross is what to those who are perishing?

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It's foolish. It's folly. But to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.

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How ridiculous is it to think that we can be saved through an instrument of death, or a man who was a carpenter, who said a bunch of wise things, it said he did a bunch of miracles, he didn't do anything wrong, and yet they killed him for it.

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How in the world could we possibly think that that act, what happened there, could be the salvation of all mankind?

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By our own human wisdom, that seems completely nuts. But it's by the wisdom that has been given to us through the

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Spirit of God that we look at the cross and we see forgiveness for our sins.

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We see everlasting life. We see reconciliation with God.

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We don't have to wonder if we're alone in the universe. There is a God who created it all, who's even greater than the furthest reaches of this 13 billion light years across the universe.

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He's bigger than that. And we have access to the Creator Himself through Jesus Christ our

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Lord. Insane to the naturally -minded man that you would even suggest such a thing.

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But to us, the cross is the power of God. And Paul says we impart this wisdom, that God decreed before the ages for our glory.

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None of the rulers understood it, or else they wouldn't have crucified Him. Verse 9, but as it is written, what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what

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God has prepared for those who love Him. How do you often hear that verse used?

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What no eye has seen, nor ear heard? Yeah, that's right. We often hear it's describing heaven.

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This is a reference from Isaiah, but that's not what Paul means by using this passage.

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What's the context? Say again? Wisdom. Yeah, wisdom.

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To see what? To know what? To know God. Yeah.

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To know Jesus. To know Christ. That He is

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God in human flesh who came and dwelt among us. No eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what

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God has prepared, the plan that God had in place for those who love

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Him. We love God because He first loved us, as it says in 1

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John. And God has this plan prepared for us. The death of Christ actually accomplished something when

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He died. It was not just an atonement that had the possibility of saving somebody.

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It actually accomplished something. And God purchased the salvation for us, for those whom

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He predestined and had foreknown for His glory. These things God has revealed to us through the

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Spirit, Paul says. And then we'll stop right there. So let me look back over this section of verses real quick, and then we'll move on.

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So verses 6 and 7, I mentioned to you that this was gonna be transience versus permanence. What's transience?

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Yeah, transience is this stuff, right? This stuff that's passing away. We know this stuff is passing away.

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The sanctuary was falling apart. We got out of it for a couple of years so we could do some renovations, and now we're back in it again.

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And even though we've done these renovations, it's still falling apart, and we're gonna have to do this again in a few more years, right?

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So this is the transience. All of this stuff is passing away. But the permanence, these are those things that are permanent.

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So look at verse 6. So the wisdom of man will pass away with this world when it's judged.

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The wisdom of God endures forever for as Jesus said in Mark 13, 13. 1331.

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Heaven and earth will pass away. My word will never pass away. So this is for our glory eternally the wisdom of God that has been decreed to us.

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The next part I mentioned to you, verses 8 through 10, were observation versus revelation. None of the rulers of this age understood this.

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By their own human perceptions and observations, they could not understand the things of God. But we have it revealed to us through His Spirit.

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What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love

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Him. Now that passage isn't explicitly about heaven, but you could certainly fit it in there, right?

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What has God prepared for us? Eternal glory with the Son. These things

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God has revealed to us through the Spirit. There's revelation. Now, we have a period right there, so that's really the end of that section.

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You might call it 6 through 10a. And now we pick up in 10b through the rest of the chapter, where Paul is going to lay out why the church must recognize

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God's Spirit as the source for our spiritual understanding. In this first section, the

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Spirit knows and the Spirit teaches. Look at the rest of 10.

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For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person which is in him?

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So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the

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Spirit of God. We kind of live in a world and a culture right now where people want to judge you, and they think they know your motives, right?

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They know your motivations. You're a wicked and evil person because of this. I know your heart.

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You just want power. You just want to assert yourself over others.

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You want white supremacy. Like we're seeing right now through the woke movement, through intersectionality, critical race theory.

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Because of the color of your skin, people automatically know what's in your heart and in your mind. There was a video that was done by a well -known evangelical teacher in which he talked about something called unconscious bias, which is a false science.

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Don't worry about it. But anyway, he said an unconscious bias in white people is actually, they tend to be more segregated than black people tend to be.

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That's what he's talking about in this video. And it's because of their unconscious biases. So you're prejudiced and don't even know it.

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Hence why it's called unconscious. If you have white skin, you're prejudiced.

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There's nothing you can do about it. But if you have black skin, hey, good news. You're not as prejudiced as white people are.

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But even that is judging a person by what's on the outside. How do you know that person isn't prejudiced by the color of their skin?

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How do you know that person is prejudiced by the color of their skin? This is the way the world judges. This is the naturally -minded man.

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They claim to know your thoughts because they can judge you from the outside. But Paul lays out plainly here, who knows the thoughts of a person?

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Does somebody else know your thoughts? You know your thoughts. He's using a general revelation principle here.

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Everybody understands this. No one can know your thoughts except you. No one knows the thoughts of a person except the spirit of that person which is in him.

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So he uses that illustration to point out that no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the spirit of God.

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And so if we have come to know the things of God, did we come to know them by man's wisdom?

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Did we come to know them because we're smarter than somebody else? We've come to know the things of God because God has given his spirit to us.

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And now with the Holy Spirit dwelling within us, now we can understand the things of God.

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You don't need a pastor to help you understand the

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Bible. You can understand it by going home and reading it. Now, again, as I read or mentioned earlier from Ephesians 4,

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God has given the shepherds, the pastors, and the teachers to prepare the saints for the work of ministry.

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So certainly there is a maturity and a knowledge that one who has invested in themselves and understanding the word of God has that he may impart to the people of God.

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But you can read it and understand it also because of the spirit of God that dwells within you.

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These things God has revealed through his spirit. No one comprehends the thoughts of God except the spirit of God.

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So we have there that the spirit knows and the spirit teaches.

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Look at verses 12 through 13. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit who is from God that we might understand the things freely given us by God.

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

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Now again, even though the Corinthians are immature here and they've been thinking with their flesh rather than with the mind of God, nonetheless,

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Paul is treating them as spiritual people. They have the gospel.

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Otherwise he would not be able to talk with them about this in this way. He would need to go right back to,

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I can't even tell any of this about the spirit of God to you because you need the gospel first. You don't even have that yet.

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But they have heard the gospel. They do believe. And so he is imparting something spiritual to them, spiritual truth to those who are spiritual and they can learn it and understand it.

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Why? Because they have the spirit of God, right? So then this last section that we're looking at here, verses 14 to 16, we have this contrast between the natural person and the spiritual person.

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The natural person rejects, but the spiritual person discerns.

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Look at verse 14. The natural person does not accept the things of the spirit of God, for they are folly to him.

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We saw that word earlier in 1 Corinthians. Where else did we see that word folly? It's in chapter one, verse 18, right?

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The word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.

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Paul is coming back to that concept again. It's folly to him because he's a naturally minded man.

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He's still thinking with the mind of a man and not with the mind of God. The natural person does not accept the things of the spirit of God, for they're folly to him and he's not able to understand them.

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He can't even understand them if he wanted to because they are spiritually discerned.

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It would be like trying to teach math to a dog. Dogs can't understand math.

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The naturally minded person cannot understand the things of the spirit of God.

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They are spiritually discerned. Go on to verse 15. Now we have the contrast between the naturally minded man and the spiritual person.

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

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He discerns all things. He is able to critique all things.

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A spiritually minded person is able to find meaning and purpose in all things.

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The naturally minded man cannot. I talked about this briefly last week, that we who are spiritual are able to look at the trials that we go through and we're able to see that God has done this for a specific purpose, right?

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Every single one of us will suffer in our bodies to a certain degree. To the naturally minded person, suffering has no point to it.

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And the goal in life for the naturally minded person is really to just, how can

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I have a life that has the least amount of suffering to it? That I can get the most pleasure and happiness out of life and not feel like that I'm suffering or agonizing all the time.

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A person who gives themselves over to substances, whether it's alcohol or drugs or prescription meds even, that would dull your mind and your senses they do so because I just don't want to feel any pain.

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So this is the solution to that, to dull my wits and lose myself in my own human mind because I can't make sense of any of the stuff that is going on around me.

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But the person who is spiritual understands that God is actually working all things together for good for those who love

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God and are called according to His purpose. What is that? Romans 8 .28,

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right. And we can even rejoice in the midst of suffering and loss knowing that God is actually doing something through this.

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He's drawing us all the more to Him. Even the things that we suffer through are meant for us to look at God, not relying on ourselves, not looking for hope in this world which is passing away and coming to destruction, but we would hope in Christ who has conquered death and reigns forevermore.

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The hurricane that just recently devastated Florida. You know that Psalm 107 talks about that?

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Psalm 107 says that God sends these kinds of storms and says the reason why so that men would tremble in fear and turn to God and He will deliver them from the storm.

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It's exactly what it says. A spiritual person is able to see even something in the world like this and see that God is working it out for something good, that the gospel would be shared with people, that they would hear and believe it and turn from sin and the passions of the flesh and the things of this world that are passing away to Jesus Christ and be saved.

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We who are spiritual understand these things. A naturally -minded man doesn't. You tell a naturally -minded man that God caused this storm actually for your good, what is he going to say?

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What an evil God. Isn't that what you hear? I hear it all the time.

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But once again, the message of the cross, the most evil that was ever perpetrated by mankind, the crucifixion of the

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Son of God, the message of the cross is folly to those who put

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Him there, to us who are being saved. We recognize our sin and the message of the cross becomes the power of God.

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Who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct Him? Good news, my friends, we have the mind of Christ.

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As I said to you moments ago, as we kind of come up on the close here, we read in verse 5,

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Your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. And I said to you that there are many evangelical teachers out there, even pastors that are forgetting the primacy of the gospel.

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And we need to be reminded of the gospel constantly because it's only the gospel that saves. It's the gospel that sanctifies.

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It's the gospel that ultimately is our deliverance into eternity. Amen? And yet so many preachers out there have even forgotten something as basic as the gospel, which they have been entrusted to share.

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Let me read something to you here. The very popular pastor said this. Historically, Christians have most influenced society, not as culture warriors, but as a praying, worshiping, giving, neighbor -loving minority.

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If given the opportunity, would we return to that? Or are partisanism and power now preferred as Lord and Savior?

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What's missing in that statement? Jesus. Can we change the culture by prayer, worship, giving, and loving our neighbor?

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Historically, is that the way that the church has changed the culture? No. Pagans pray.

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Pagans worship. Pagans can actually be charitable. Pagans can actually love their neighbor, although they might do so in a way that the world defines love as, not the way that God defines love.

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What is it that historically the church has used to transform the culture? The gospel, yes.

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Preaching the gospel. You want to change the world? Preach the gospel. But understand this, my friends.

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It is by the will of God whether one believes or rejects it.

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So to Him be the glory forever and ever. And all God's people said, Amen.

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Let me pray briefly for us here. Heavenly Father, thank You for this Word, and I thank You that You've given us a knowledge that comes not from man, but comes from God.

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And may we turn from the ways of the world, the ways that might even seem right to us in our flesh.

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We come back to the Word of God over and over again. What does God say? What did He teach us through His prophets and apostles?

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What did Jesus say? That we might have the mind of Christ, and give us the spirit of wisdom, that we may know those things that You mean to impart to spiritual people.

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To those who do not know, who are naturally minded, may we not look down upon them and boast in ourselves because we think we have something better.

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We do, but it came not by our power, but by the power of God. And so we have mercy on those who doubt, as it says in Jude, and share the gospel of Christ with the world, which has the power to change a man from a sinner to a saint.

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It is in the wisdom of Jesus Christ our Savior that we pray, and all God's people said, Amen. Thank you.

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Go with the Lord. Amen.