Sermon Tone Analysis
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Okay....
I am going to tell on myself a little bit.
When I was a kid, I used to stand in front of the mirror and flex.
I imagined that I was this guy with large muscles and I sure hoped that I would grow into a guy with large muscles.
I became a teenager, and I started thinking that perhaps I was turning into this guy with large muscles, as I flexed in front of the mirror.
Unfortunately, I was not.
The older I get the more I realize that I will not be turning into Arnold Schwarzenegger anytime soon.
When I began to realize this fact, I started learning humility that much more.
Don’t get me wrong: God taught me humility in many different ways.
But, this was one of them.
As humans, we can tend to think too highly of ourselves, what we look like, what we can do, how we can reason.
We can think so highly of ourselves that we forget God.
We are adequate for ourselves for the tasks of today, and maybe tomorrow.
In the face of our pride and our self-sufficiency, we are urged to pray: Lord, give us humility.
The Corinthians as a church thought a great deal of themselves.
The culture said that one’s value was based upon which teacher you were following.
So the Corinthians split into factions, depending on which teacher they were following.
They thought that their wisdom and ability in picking good teachers gave them a higher importance than the other people in the church who picked a different teacher to follow.
This was just their pride.
Their self-centeredness.
How can I advance?
How can I look better?
Look what I can do with my vision!
They are standing flexing in the mirror, thinking that they are all that.
But, they are not.
Lord, give us humility.
Paul writes to these Corinthians who are obsessed with their own wisdom and their teachers:
Pray
Paul prays for himself and the Corinthians: Lord, give us humility.
He urges us to do two things in answer to that prayer.
Don’t pursue wisdom
He says: don’t pursue wisdom.
In case you didn’t catch what Paul said, he said:
The world around us has a standard on what is wisdom.
This standard, unfortunately, is always moving.
People will say: you better get good grades in school.
If you do, you are wise.
People will say: you better have a good career.
Don’t waste your resources by majoring in art history.
That’s not wise.
People will talk about wisdom when it comes to whom we marry.
People will talk about wisdom in politics, both in whom we elect and which policies we pursue.
People will talk about priorities and choices.
People will talk about which furniture to buy.
Which car to drive.
Which clothes to wear.
Everyone has an opinion about everything, and they couch it in terms of what is wise and not wise.
We bring that understanding to church.
People have an opinion about everything from the color of countertops to the proper application of Revelation 4.
And we think that we can know what that wisdom is.
Disney has popularized the phrase: Follow your heart.
And the non-denominational church can very much have popularized the phrase: follow your mind.
The world says: if you want it, do it.
And the Biblical church says, if you have reasoned it out, it must be true.
But, most everything that is felt or reasoned boils down to human wisdom: what we can achieve.
Lord, give us humility.
We should not pursue human wisdom.
Paul says,
It has no worth
Paul says:
The pursuit of human wisdom does not have worth in the scheme of eternity.
Human wisdom is about how I can advance.
How I can learn enough.
How I can reason.
How I can make sense of this world and act in a way that is accepted by others?
What should I do in this situation?
What should should I say?
It is about me.
God says that all that wisdom is foolishness.
As Paul had said in 1 Corinthians 1:20
Human wisdom does not have worth.
We cannot reason our way into salvation.
When we stand before the judgment seat of God, God is not going to look at all the decision that we made and say: you know, according to what culture and the world says, you did a pretty good job, enter into glory.
I’ve said this before: God is not going to look at our grades either and say: you were a straight A student! Welcome home good and faithful servant.
Our pursuit of human wisdom has no worth, and if we are proud of how wise we are, we should probably take care.
We are proud of something that has no worth, that is vanity, a chasing after the wind.
Lord, give us humilty.
Paul says that human wisdom does not have worth because
We don’t need it
He wrote:
If we have placed our faith in Jesus Christ, trusting in him for our salvation, not in anything we do, whether it is our baptism, our good works, our church attendance, our communion, our families, faith.
If we have trusted in Jesus alone for our salvation, God has given us everything we need.
He gives us identity.
He gives us endurance and encouragement.
He gives us hope.
He gives us love.
He gives us peace.
And, yes, he gives us wisdom.
He gives wisdom when we have the humility to say that we don’t have it.
When we admit that we don’t know, and we turn to God, he will give wisdom.
James writes:
He gives us his wisdom through his word.
He gives us wisdom through life.
He gives wisdom through the teachers that we are following and those that we are not.
Through the teachers that we agree with and those that we don’t.
I find it telling that here in verse 19, Paul quotes Job.
This is one of two quotes from Job in the New Testament.
The first is in Romans 11, quoting one of God’s speeches to Job, which makes sense.
Here Paul quotes Eliphaz, one of Job’s bad friends, who normally is giving Job bad theology.
At the end of the book, Job has to sacrifice for his friends to atone for their sin in telling horrible things about God.
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