Imparting the Wisdom of God

Brandt Lyon

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Imparting the Wisdom of God

1 Corinthians 2:6-16

I. Introduction

A. Stephen King on Religion- I'm not a vampire type when somebody shows me the cross. …But organized religion gives me the creeps.—Stephen King, U. S. fiction writer

B. Oprah Winfrey and the dead end of “Your Truth” - In Oprah Winfrey’s Lifetime Achievement Award acceptance speech at the 2018 Golden Globes, she said, "What I know for sure is that speaking your truth is the most powerful tool we all have."

II. We Speak Wisdom (6-9)

A. Explanation

1. Yet among the mature – Those who are growing in Christ and their faith

2. We do impart Wisdom – Literally – We speak wisdom

a. Not of this age of the rulers of this age who are doomed to pass away

b. These rulers only have the wisdom of the age – they do not know the eternal truth

3. What we do impart

a. A secret and hidden wisdom of God

b. Decreed before the ages for our glory

c. None of the rulers of this age understood this – If they had they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory

4. The evidence from scripture

a. This is not one verse he is referencing but appears to be a conglomeration of several verses from Isaiah

b. No one has seen heard or imagined what God has prepared for those who love Him

c. This Wisdom is the plan of salvation

B. Application

1. There is a difference between worldly wisdom and the wisdom of God

C. The Secular Lens

1. Human – it comes from human logic and reasoning

a. Human logic and reasoning are fallible – it is just plain wrong sometimes

b. It is blind – It lacks the full understanding of everything

i. The problem with the argument of saying someone is on the wrong side of history is that we can’t see how the future will see history

ii. We also can’t see outside the box (Universe)

iii. We can’t see how we originated and where we are going apart from the revelation

c. It is changing

i. What is immoral in one era may be moral in another

ii. We could not have seen gay marriage as being a possibility 25 years ago

iii. We could not have imagined the abortion problem and even infanticide 50 years ago

iv.And yet we, as Christians are told that we are on the wrong side of history – going forward, maybe, but certainly not looking back

D. The Theistic lens

1. Eternal

a. The wisdom of the human will pass away – It is mortal, It is of a finite mind

b. The wisdom of God will remain forever

i. Decreed before the ages for our glory

ii. It doesn’t change

iii. It sees the past and future

iv.1 Peter 1:24–25 (ESV) — 24 for “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers and the flower falls, 25 but the word of the Lord remains forever.” And this word is the good news that was preached to you.

2. Divine

a. It is the wisdom from the one who created us and the universe

b. He doesn’t just know all things, He is the source of all knowledge

3. Revealed

a. You cannot know the truth of God and His gospel apart from His revelation

b. None of the rulers of this age understood this

c. If they had they would not have crucified Christ

d. God has prepared something for His people that they never could have imagined – Isaiah 64:4 (imprecisely quoted)

4. Illustration – The time in Florida When Lisa was trying to shut the van door and I kept reopening it with the remote. Inside her little world, she couldn’t make sense of what was happening until more information was revealed.

III. We find truth in the Spirit (10-13)

A. Explanation

1. These things are revealed by the Spirit

a. He is the Spirit of God and therefore knows the things of God

b. He alone can understand the depths of the things of God

2. We have received the spirit of god so that we can know his wisdom

3. The Spirit is the source of such wisdom

4. Through Him, we can understand the things that the world does not

5. We impart (speak) this in words taught by the Spirit

6. Interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual – those who can hear it

B. Application

1. We must stop speaking to the world as though they should understand spiritual things. We should impart the wisdom of the gospel so that they may find spiritual life and then they can comprehend spiritual truth

2. Illustration – All of the hot topic issues today can be seen through this lens – Euthanasia. I am a strong pro-life person. In Canada, there is a strong push for euthanasia. I must see the intrinsic value of every person because we are made in the image of God. This is a truth not given by the world, but only by the Spirit. The world cannot know it because it is from outside their space and time

IV. We have the mind of Christ (14-16)

A. Explanation

1. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit because they are folly to him (Moria/Moronic) to him

2. He does not understand them because they are spiritually discerned – Those who are enslaved by sin, blinded, dead in their trespasses and sins

3. The Spiritual man judges all things (according to the Spirit) but is not judged by the world. That judgment will be left to God

4. We mustn’t be instructed by the world

a. No one = the world

b. We don’t listen to the world for the truth

c. How does one without the Spirit teach the one with the Spirit?

5. We have the mind of Christ – through the indwelling Spirit

B. Application

1. We need to realize that the natural man is unable to see things clearly because He does not possess the Spirit which is necessary to understand the world rightly

2. Illustration – When I want to understand a product, I read the manual which is written by the creator of the product. In the same way, to understand the world, we must God back to its creator.

V. Conclusion

A. Jimmy Carter and the truck driver

Truck Driver Powerfully Communicated a Simple Faith

In the year he was elected president, Jimmy Carter was one of three men invited to speak to the 17,000 delegates at the Southern Baptist Convention. Each had a five-minute time limit.

The first of the three presenters was the eloquent evangelist, Billy Graham. The speaker following Graham was a truck driver. The man was not well educated, and seated beside the next U.S. president, the truck driver shared that he had never given a speech in his life. Nervously he confessed, "I don't think I can live through it. I just can't do it."

After Billy Graham gave his powerful talk, the truck driver rose to speak and stood silently before the audience. Taking a glass of water handed to him, he mumbled into the microphone.

"I was always drunk, and didn't have any friends. The only people I knew were men like me who hung around the bars in the town where I lived."

The truck driver went on to describe how someone told him about Christ. Once becoming a Christian, he wanted to tell others about the Lord. Spending time in Bible study and with other Christian men prepared him for witnessing. Since he felt comfortable in barrooms, he decided to talk to people there. The bartender wasn't sympathetic, telling the new convert he was bad for business and a nuisance.

Not discouraged, the truck driver kept on with his mission, and in time the people at the bar began asking questions. He said, "At first they treated me like a joke, but I kept up with the questions and when I couldn't answer one, I went and got the answer and came back with it. Fourteen of my friends became Christians."

Carter writes, "The truck driver's speech, of course, was the highlight of the convention. I don't believe anyone who was there will ever forget that five-minute fumbling statement—or remember what I or even Billy Graham had to say."

Source: Jimmy Carter, Sources of Strength, Meditations on Scripture for a Living Faith (Times Books, 1997), pp. 71–72

The Dead End of ‘Your Truth’

In Oprah Winfrey’s lifetime achievement award acceptance speech at the 2018 Golden Globes, she said, "What I know for sure is that speaking your truth is the most powerful tool we all have."

“Your truth.” Those two words are so entrenched in our lexicon today that we hardly recognize them for the incoherent nightmare that they are. Among other things, the philosophy of "your truth" destroys families when a dad suddenly decides "his truth" is calling him to a new lover, a new family, or maybe even a new gender. It's a philosophy that can destroy entire societies, because invariably one person's truth will go to battle with another person's truth, and devoid of reason, only power decides the victor.

"Your truth" also puts an incredible, self-justifying burden on the individual. If we are all self-made projects whose destinies are wholly ours to discover and implement, life becomes a rat race of performative individuality. "Live your truth" autonomy is as exhausting as it is incoherent. Depression is the inevitable result and “the inexorable counterpart of the human being who is her/his own sovereign.”