1 Corinthians 2:6-16

Let's read six through sixteen from First Corinthians chapter two.

And it'll be up here on the screen as well.

Here's what Paul writes.

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

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

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

But, as it is written, what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him.

These things God has revealed to us through his 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?

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

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

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

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.

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

For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?

But we have the mind of Christ.

And Lord, we ask that you would give us the mind of Christ this morning, that you would teach us by your spirit spiritual things, that this that this text would play out this morning over the next few minutes as we read through each of these verses.

Lord, give us the ability to understand, impart to us that spiritual wisdom we ask.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

You may be seated.

If you're just joining us for the first time, or if you haven't been with us for a little while, we are studying through a book of the New Testament.

The New Testament's in the Bible.

It's a book called 1 Corinthians.

And 1 Corinthians is actually, it's it's we call it a book, but it's really a letter that Paul the Apostle wrote to a church called Corinth.

That's why it's called the Corinthian letter.

And we call it 1 Corinthians because there's another letter that follows this called 2 Corinthians.

If you actually want to be technical, this is really, 1 Corinthians is really 2 Corinthians, and 2 Corinthians is really 3 Corinthians, because there's another letter that Paul wrote that we don't have.

God ordained that we would have this letter here, and um, and this title was kind of given to it throughout church history.

This was written about 20 years after the ascension of Jesus, 20, 25 years after Jesus left the earth and went back up to the Father in heaven.

And so Jesus is in heaven and the church is growing.

It started in Jerusalem, it expanded to Judea and Samaria, and then missionaries like Paul are taking the gospel message, the message about Jesus, all around the southern European region and across this kind of Eastern Asia or Western Asia region.

And so Paul planted the church in Corinth, and now he's writing back to this church that's deeply troubled.

This church has been basically they've been tattled on by the household of Chloe.

And Paul's in Ephesus and he gets this report, a negative report about the church.

He also gets a letter with questions from the church, and so Paul is writing this letter as a response to the issues that had arisen.

And so the section that we're in is a section that started in chapter 1, verse 17, and it deals with factions in the church.

This church had been broken up into four primary groups, all based off of who their favorite preacher was.

Now there was a lot of issues in this church.

This is just the first issue that is addressed.

So this section, we're going to break into three parts.

The first is verses six through eight, where Paul talks about a secret wisdom.

The second section is verses nine through thirteen, where Paul talks about that wisdom being revealed by God's Spirit.

And then third, we have a section in verses fourteen through sixteen where Paul talks about it's a spiritual person that receives that revelation.

So let's look at this first section, verses six through eight.

Six through eight.

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

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

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

Paul has just, in the preceding verses, he has just characterized his communication with the Corinthian church in verse 4 by saying this.

Let's see if I have it.

I don't have it on here.

But it's in verse 4, it's it's not plausible.

He's communicating not in plausible words of wisdom, but in the demonstration of the spirit and of power.

So Paul is, remember, this church is picking out favorite preachers, and one group had favored Paul.

And so Paul has stepped back and he is explaining his own approach to preaching.

And one of the things that he says is that my approach to preaching is not using human wisdom.

I'm not trying, he's like, I'm not trying to be a competing for a uh, you know, you know, the the the New York Times bestseller list.

I'm not trying to be the next great philosopher that comes through Corinth or Athens.

No, my preaching is this, it's not a demonstration.

It's not um this plausible wisdom or this eloquency.

Instead, it's it's the demonstration of God's spirit and power.

In other words, it's a spirit-empowered preaching that Paul's engaged in.

So now in verse 6, Paul says that his objective, or, or rather, kind of summarizing verse 4, it's Paul's objective to get the Corinthians to place their faith or have their faith resting in the power of God.

Right?

When when imagine as you are engaged with the people around you, and we believe as a church that God strategically, not by accident, God puts us around other people that don't know him.

So imagine just for a second your neighbors or your coworkers or your family members that are still far away from God.

You look at them and you're like, they're a sinner, right?

They're far from God, just as we were at some point.

And yet God has put you around them.

Now, as you are sharing your faith with them and you're talking about what Jesus has done in your own life, and you're talking about how you have this relationship with God through Jesus Christ and how beautiful that is, you don't want those people to just become a Christian because of how well you communicated the message.

No, you want to be this instrument that God uses so that they're directly connected with God.

And that's what Paul wants with this church.

Paul is not looking for their faith to rest in his eloquency.

Paul's hoping that they will trust in God because they experience God in a powerful way.

Right?

We could, there's nothing more than it.

And some of you have been sharing with your friends for a long time about the gospel, and you've realized, man, there is nothing that I could say.

I could not package Jesus well enough in my own words to get this person to get saved.

Right?

God just has to break through, right?

I've got family members like that who they know it.

Like they know the ins and outs of the gospel.

And what they need is they need to experience the power of God.

Like God has to powerfully work, they have to have an encounter with God where it's just like, boom, like 2 Corinthians 4, the scales come off their eyes and they understand Jesus is the Messiah.

He wants to forgive me of my sins.

I can have life abundant through him.

So Paul's saying all those things, and now starting in verse 6, Paul is going to paint a picture of spiritual maturity that the listener is going to be drawn towards.

Do you ever, are you ever on like Facebook or Instagram or kind of going through your feed, your social feed, and you see like a video come up where it's a sped up artist uh picture of somebody's artwork.

Maybe it's it's like a picture of a canvas and somebody is quickly drawing a picture or doing a painting.

Or, or my favorite are like the wood turning ones.

Those are mesmerized.

It starts with a chunk of wood, and the guy's like turning the wood, and all of a sudden you've got this beautiful like bowl that that comes out of this chunk of wood turning.

It's kind of mem mesmerizing to watch that video play out.

And what Paul here is doing is he's kind of trying to draw in your attention in the same way and to kind of trick almost these Corinthians into um wanting to truly be spiritually mature.

I think Paul's a bit playing a game here because these Corinthians really thought highly of themselves because they had these spiritual gifts, right?

Some people in the church could speak in tongues, others could prophesy, maybe there was the gift of healing.

So these Christians really thought that they had the market cornered on spirituality, and yet in their day-to-day interactions, they're like fighting with one another, right?

So you may have kids or you may interact with kids who are just think like they are so great, but yet in the way that they may interact with one another or the way that they may behave, it's just like, uh no, you're still a kid, like you're still immature, right?

You need to grow up a little bit more.

So Paul is saying, he's gonna draw a picture here of spiritual maturity, and he's gonna say, hey, we're able to talk about wisdom, we're able to talk about wisdom, but it's spiritual wisdom that only the spiritual can understand.

He's really trying to reel these guys in, to motivate them towards authentic spirituality, and to and to leave off the evidence of immaturity that's in their life.

So um, verse six.

Now it's gonna feel like I'm stuck here on verse six, and and we're gonna spend like half our time on verse six, and then all of a sudden it's gonna we're gonna make it through.

Okay, so verse six, yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age.

So um, when you place your faith in Jesus, you are placing your faith in the power of God, and with that you are reaching your intended end.

So the question is, what is it, what is mature?

What does it mean to be mature?

The word is telos, which uh is the idea of the um finality or completion.

Um and so I'm gonna actually just read this quote because I think that because there's some people who look at this and they're like, maturity is something that you um grow into, which is also contained within the New Testament.

But um this writer, and I I agree with him, Gordon Fee, he says this the argument of the whole paragraph, especially the language for using for our glory in verse 7, for those who love him and us in verse 9 or us, uh revealed it to us in verse 10, and we've received the Spirit who is from God in verse 12, it implies that Paul is, as earlier, addressing the whole church and drawing them all into the orbit of what he is saying.

He is saying that if you are a believer, if you are one of those that's been called, like he, because he used that language earlier in chapter one, of that those that are called to follow God, right, then you are, you've you've reached that end.

Right?

There's still spiritual growth, but here in the context, he's talking about a spiritually, a mature person, a spiritually mature person is one who has reached God's intended purpose for them, right?

Now, as this passage unfolds, we're gonna have the contrast of the natural man, who's a person who has not yet received Christ as their Lord and Savior.

So this morning, if you if you have placed your faith in Jesus Christ, then you are, as verse six talks about, you are the mature, right?

You are the mature in the sense of the context here.

Now that's not always what maturity means.

In in James, maturity is used in a different way.

Um, other passages use it differently, but here it would seem as if he's speaking to the whole church.

So do you notice that Paul here, after he says mature, what's the next word?

We.

We.

Not I, right?

It's we do impart wisdom.

Remember, this church is broken into four camps.

And so here, Paul is using a plural pronoun to describe all of those pastors, right?

It's broader than just Paul's preaching.

We do impart spiritual wisdom.

That'll become clearer as we go into chapter 3 and chapter 4.

We do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age who are doomed to pass away.

Paul introduces some contrasts to help the Corinthians understand what he means by this imparted wisdom.

It's not a wisdom of this age or the rulers of the age.

So the Greeks basically were the the you have the Roman government, but the society is formed around Greek culture.

And Paul's using that as a contrast with the wisdom that he's speaking.

It's not shaped by the rulers of this age.

Here's the here's ver here's what's going on in verse 7.

The wisdom that Paul imparted to the mature was a secret wisdom and a hidden wisdom, and he characterizes it in three ways.

It is decreed by God before the ages for our glory.

So it's before the ages, decreed, for our glory.

That's the second thing, and none of the rulers of this age understood it.

So Paul's gonna kind of back into this understanding of what in the world is this wisdom?

Because if you've been with us for the last two weeks, he's kind of been beating up on the idea of wisdom.

He's been talking about, he's been advocating almost something different, but now he's saying, no, no, no, there is a wisdom.

So it's like, okay, Paul, what is the wisdom?

Okay, well, it's not the wisdom of this age, it's not of the rulers of this age, it's the wisdom that God decreed before the ages.

Oh, and it's for our glory.

Remember that because we're coming back to glory in a second.

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

Here's the crazy thing.

Here's the crazy thing, because he says, if they had, if they had understood it, if the Roman government, if the Jewish elders had understood God's wisdom, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

Right?

Tying in the end of verse 7, end of verse 8.

They wouldn't have crucified.

Now, check out this.

Look at, we're gonna turn over really quickly.

I'll I'll show it to you.

Look at um, where am I going here?

I know.

There we go.

Look at this.

This is a description of Solomon, 1 Kings 4.34.

Now, who is Solomon?

The wisest man ever to live, right?

He had a dream where God said, Ask me anything and I'll give it to you.

What did he ask for?

Wisdom, right?

What does it say of Solomon?

And the people of all nations came to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and from all the kings of the earth who had heard of his wisdom.

All of the uh surrounding nations at the time of Solomon, they came to him to hear what characterized the wisdom of Solomon.

If you read through the book of Ecclesiastes, and then if you're you're unfamiliar with Solomon, and he was a king, he was a king over Israel, that God gave him this gift of having this natural wisdom, we could say.

He really had insight, wrote over 3,000 Proverbs, right?

He had insight into wisdom under the sun, and the benefit of that wisdom, not a bad thing, but the benefit of that wisdom was that all of these rulers came and sought out Solomon.

Now Jesus comes on the scene.

How do the rulers treat Jesus?

They crucify him.

They crucify him.

It's a different kind of wisdom.

I just want you to see that.

That Paul, again, he's not opposed to the intellect.

He's not anti-intellectual, he's not opposed to you going to school or reading a book.

He is just saying, look, God's wisdom is from outside.

God's wisdom displayed in Jesus is from outside the sphere of human ideas.

And it's put on display by who he chooses.

That's what we looked at last week.

Some of you who are into sports may remember Rich Berry.

Do you know what Rich Berry was famous for?

Somebody.

Rich Berry, what was he famous for?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Rick, I I put it wrong in here.

It's Rick Berry.

Yeah.

The underhanded free throw, right?

Yeah, and he was ridiculed.

So he, if you're at, if you get a penalty in basketball, you have a free throw, right?

You go up to the free throw line and you shoot a free throw, right?

It's worth one point.

So he came along and he tossed it underhand.

Now the average, the average um success rate for free throws in the NBA is 75%.

Rick Berry, you know what his percent was?

89%.

But it didn't catch on because he looked like such a weirdo.

He was ridiculed by it.

You know what brought it back?

His son.

It didn't come back for another 20 years, even though he was scoring at a rate that was 14% better than the average in the NBA.

It was not brought back until his son came along and also did the same thing and also had an above-average success rate.

All that to say, this wisdom of God displayed in Jesus, it reminds me of that, right?

It's just outside.

It's this outsider idea of how the world should work.

And God, and and what's God looking for?

Glory.

He decreed this before the ages for our glory.

So you're so God has this crazy idea of like free throws, right?

Something greater than free throws and a high, high, high success rate, right?

Yeah.

But he's like, hey, I want to, I want you to be a part of that.

It's gonna bring me glory, and I'm gonna save you, I'm gonna redeem you through this guy dying on the cross.

Crazy.

All right, let's keep going.

Paul's objective is to keep the Corinthians in a place where their faith is resting on the power of God.

Okay.

Verse nine.

But as it is written.

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

These things God has revealed to us through the Spirit, for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.

For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person?

Well, let's before we get to that, let's just go through this.

Verse 9.

Um, the thought continues Hidden wisdom is now revealed.

How, how, so Paul, remember, he says, We impart to you wisdom.

How?

How does Paul impart this wisdom?

Where is he getting this from?

Well, he starts by quoting Isaiah 64, 4.

So you can look that up at another time.

This is pulled out of the Old Testament, Isaiah the prophet.

No eye has seen, nor ear heard what the heart of man uh or nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him.

God has prepared his own plan for those who love him.

It isn't perceived by human ability, he makes these things known to us by his spirit.

So how does God's spirit factor into this?

Like what how does the spirit, so the spirit is gonna become a major theme over the next chapter, right?

The way that this Paul's logic works is like overlapping a staircase, right?

And he's just building you up.

So you're taking stacks, and he teases out these words because we're gonna hear about the spirit over and over and over again.

We've been hearing about wisdom and folly, right?

Wisdom and folly, wisdom and folly.

So we're going off wisdom here.

Paul's saying, okay, let me talk to you about wisdom, but now he's gonna talk about the spirit.

So who's the Holy Spirit, right?

The Spirit is the third person of the Trinity, right?

We have Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

But now Paul says that in verse 10, these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit.

There's these things that God, before the foundation of the earth, he's decreed for our glory.

These things, these plans of God that no human mind could come up with, you haven't seen, your heart can't even think up.

God has these plans, and then it says in verse 10, these things God has revealed to us by his spirit.

That's amazing.

Now, Paul's like, okay, let me let me explain to you how this works.

Let me explain to you how this works.

He says in verse 11, for who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person which is in him.

In other words, in in our common vernacular, we talk about self-awareness, right?

Or like the, how long ago was it, like 20, 25 years ago?

You had like emotional intelligence and kind of the whole self-awareness concept was modernized and repackaged.

You are aware of things about yourself that nobody else knows.

You know yourself, right?

Here Paul is saying that it's your spirit that knows yourself.

That you're the spirit of that person knows what's in him.

And so, in the way that you work in that way, so also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the spirit of God.

Right?

So God's spirit knows God, knows the depths of God.

Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit who is from God.

Now that's kind of mind-blowing when you put it like that.

That's crazy.

So my spirit kind of knows me.

If you're Jewish or um you're in the time of Paul, they were dualists, right?

You had the immaterial aspect of your humanity, and you had the physical aspect of your humanity.

Now, in kind of modern evangelicalism, you have dualists and you have trichotomists.

So trichotomist believes that there's three parts to the human person, that there's mind, soul, and um, oh, there's body, soul, and spirit, right?

Uh so you can kind of decide, you could have more than three parts depending on, because we have all these different definitions of who we are in scripture.

But for Paul and his audience, they're thinking the immaterial aspect and the material aspect.

So to interpret this passage, you've got to put yourself into the mind of Paul, not into the mind of kind of the modern-day reader necessarily.

And so the spirit, your spirit, you have the immaterial side of you that knows you.

God has the immaterial side of himself that knows him.

And yet then God gives that spirit to us.

We've received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given to us.

They're freely given.

So God, God is decreeing things before in the ages beforehand for your glory.

Crazy, right?

Then he's like, you can't even think this stuff up.

You can't even imagine it.

And he's made plans that line up with his love for you.

Like the plans of God are decreed and planned out.

They're for your glory, and he loves you.

But then he's like, he has his spirit, he gives his spirit to us, and that spirit is making known to us, and you see, it says freely.

He's freely making known these things to us.

The spirit is teaching us these things.

It's incredible.

Verse 13.

And we, again, there's we, not I being Paul, but we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit.

Oh, okay, Paul, you're making sense.

Now we understand why you're not using eloquent words of wisdom.

Now we understand why you don't need to flower things up and make it all fancy or try to be super persuasive.

Now we get it.

It's because you impart this in words not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit.

So Paul's communicating these things that were decreed for our glory before the ages, according to God's love, freely given to us.

He's imparting this in words that are taught by the Spirit.

And then look at he says, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.

Interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.

There's a um the nature of Paul's communication is spiritual, and it is for the person who is spiritual.

So you look at that and it's like, well, Paul, what do you mean by those who are spiritual?

He's like, I'm glad you asked.

Let me explain who the spirit who the spiritual person is.

Skip through some stuff here.

Verse 14.

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

Now, this natural man, that's this is like the next step in Paul's logic.

He's introducing a word here, natural man.

He's gonna talk in chapter three a lot about the natural man, and he's going to tie the natural man in with the carnal Christian.

That's gonna be fun next week.

But here he says, the natural person, the natural person is the person who has not yet received the Spirit of God.

He does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, right?

For they are folly.

Now, again, your friends, right, that are far from God.

I don't know who comes to mind when you're thinking about that, but you got friends that don't know Jesus yet, and they're far away from God, they would be the natural person.

And when they hear you talk about Jesus, and maybe you're here, maybe you're still natural in your mindset, and you're like, this guy's foolish.

There's folly, right?

Foolish and folly comes up again.

It's folly to him, and he's not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

Verse 15.

Interesting.

The spiritual person judges all things.

This means evaluates, closely evaluates all things, but then in himself is to be judged by no one.

Paul's playing with words here, almost like a little poem.

But he's saying, look, if you have the Spirit of God, then you're able to listen and closely evaluate all of my teaching, but the natural man is not able to closely evaluate you.

Their assessment of you being foolish, it doesn't matter.

They're not able to judge you.

You're not the spiritual person is judged by no one.

Again, this idea is coming back up again.

It's gonna repeat.

All this stuff is gonna repeat.

Verse 16 for who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?

But we have the mind of Christ.

In other words, the natural man.

Can the natural man instruct the Lord or know God's mind?

No.

God's not going to people that don't even follow him, or any person for that matter, and asking for advice.

Right?

When we pray, we're not telling God the best ideas, right?

God's already got the best ideas, right?

We're aligning ourselves with him.

We're placing our faith in him.

And Paul says, we, we have the mind of Christ.

So how does this flesh itself out in our life?

Let me give you a couple things here.

First of all, there's things just to know.

There's things for us as Christians just to know.

This is the first, is that if your faith rests in Christ, you have free access to a spiritual wisdom by God's Spirit.

God loves you and wants you to have this wisdom or have wisdom.

Just know that.

Know that God wants to make known his plans to you.

The second thing is this an action to do.

These are words literally in the text that we just looked at.

Receive, accept, understand the wisdom of God from his spirit.

Resist the temptation to be arrogant.

Just because you have a spiritual revelation does not mean you are God's favorite.

Receive it.

Now, uh here's the thing, okay?

We live in a very loud culture.

If you have a phone, right?

And we're seeing some really good pushback culturally, where psychologists are kind of speaking into our crazy world and saying the inundation of notifications, the inundation of information is not necessarily the healthiest thing.

Looking at your phone first thing in the morning, looking at your phone right before you go to bed, all of these things I do, but it's not the healthiest thing, right?

And here's God.

God's like, I have this beautiful plan because I love you, and I want to bring glory, you know, through your life, and I want you to know about it through your spirit.

And yet we can be highly distracted through our devices, through content.

I mean, how much content do we have access to?

And yet God's spirit is like, I just want to reveal to you the deep things that God has for you, right?

So the invitation that we see here in this text is not God who's like over here, all with his hands crossed, and is like, I don't want to, I don't want to show you anything.

The picture of this text is like God's like, I've given you my spirit who knows everything deep about me.

I want you to know this stuff.

This isn't a stingy God.

This is a God who's like, I love you, I've got a plan for your life, I want you to know it, right?

It seems like, as I read this, the burden's on me, right?

It's not a stingy God problem, it's a me not listening problem.

It's me not not, it's not, it's me not putting my device down.

It's me not really giving God time to speak into my life.

Now, check this out.

This is crazy.

I put this little, you're like, what, where's Josh going with the whole arrogant thing here?

Look at this.

This is the second letter to the Corinthian church.

Paul talks about all these revelations that he was given.

You can read through 2 Corinthians 12, but he says this so to keep me from becoming conceited, because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me to keep me from being conceited.

Paul had so much revelation from the Spirit of God.

Paul had so much that the Spirit had showed him that God allowed him to just suffer from an affliction that was demonic to keep him humble.

This church, now Paul's saying this to this church because they thought they were super spiritual, right?

They thought because they had all these revelations, they were they were God's favorite people.

So this, again, this text, this text is, I think it's an invitation to give God time.

In fact, I don't think I have this.

Yeah, I don't have it in my notes here, but the spiritual discipline here in this passage is again reading the Bible regularly as a primary revelation of God's wisdom, right?

God speaks to us through his word.

And then prayerful dependence on the spirit.

Let's, church, let's this week, just personally, in our own lives, let's just give God space to speak.

If this is how it works, if this is the reality of the spirit, then let's give God just that space in our time, you know, on our daily schedule where we're quiet.

I think Jesus talked about, you know, go into the to your closet and pray.

You're wherever your closet is, wherever you need to be.

You know, for me, it's like usually it's get out of the house, take a walk, you know, and meditate on scripture and think about scripture.

And so usually it's just something like that.

But I don't, I, I, I, I want to say this.

The Holy Spirit had this passage for us this morning, right?

The Lord had this for us, and and you all have different things going on in your life.

And I think the Spirit of God wants to speak to you this week.

I don't know what he wants to say, I don't know what that looks like, but the Spirit wants to speak to you this week, and so give him space to do that.