The Wisdom of the Holy Ghost

Intro:

Good morning and welcome to our service today. I appreciate you being here, but more than that I appreciate the presence of the Lord. We are a privileged people. A people that God has revealed himself to in Christ Jesus. That statement alone is enough to glorify God forever, but we have more than that! We have the inspired, inerrant, infallible, word of God. I love the Bible, don’t you? It’s amazing to think that over thousands of years and multiple authors we have been given God’s word. As Peter said long ago, the Scriptures came as holy men of old were moved by the Holy Ghost. I praise God for that this morning!

Today, we are continuing through 1st Corinthians. With the Lord’s help we are going to finish chapter 2 this morning. I searched and searched for ways to split it up into more sermons, but without a natural divide in the text that isn’t possible. This portion of scripture is one of those that can’t be pulled apart, and it would be a disservice to you all to do that. All of that said, if you have a Bible turn to 1st Corinthians chapter 2. We’ll begin reading in verse 6. The Bible says

The New King James Version Chapter 2

6 However, we speak wisdom among those who are mature, yet not the wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. 7 But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory, 8 which none of the rulers of this age knew; for had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

9 But as it is written:

“Eye has not seen, nor ear heard,

Nor have entered into the heart of man

The things which God has prepared for those who love Him.”

10 But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. 11 For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. 12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.

13 These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. 14 But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. 15 But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one. 16 For “who has known the mind of the LORD that he may instruct Him?” But we have the mind of Christ.

Prayer

With the Lord’s help this morning, I want to preach on the thought of The Wisdom of the Holy Ghost

The Mystery of Spiritual Wisdom v 6-9

Paul begins this portion by again appealing to the Gospel. if you look back at verses 1-5 he makes it clear that the gospel owes nothing to human wisdom, and that both the messenger and the message are despised by the world. He continues in these verses teaching that there is such a thing as Christian wisdom. This wisdom centers around God’s plan of redemption as revealed in Christ through the person of the Holy Ghost, and this wisdom isn’t understood by natural man. The goal here isn’t to set up some sort of religious hierarchy, and it wasn’t an anti-intellectual appeal, but a plea for balance in all things. This balance is needed today just as it was then. You all have heard me speak on the many issues and shortcomings of modern Christianity, and one of the greatest of those is the reliance on human wisdom rather than God’s wisdom. However, Christianity isn’t just based in feeling. We are commanded by Christ in Matthew 12 to love the Lord with all our heart, soul, strength, and our mind! As one writer put it, the heart cannot love what the mind does not know. Genuine Christianity will engage your mind as well as your emotions. Paul makes it clear that it wasn’t intellectual suicide to be a follower of Jesus, but focused on understanding what he called ‘the wisdom of God’. Because Paul’s preaching focused so much on the cross, naysayers had accused him of being shallow and not dealing with deeper issues. Let me be plain this morning. If the Church ever tires of the gospel being preached, we cease to be the church. Everything in the Christian faith hinges on the gospel. If Jesus didn’t die, we have no payment for our sins. If Jesus didn’t rise, we have no hope of the resurrection. If Jesus didn’t ascend and send the promise of the father, we have no baptism of the Spirit. We must never grow tired of the gospel. Instead, we need to endeavor to know all that we can about the gospel! That was Paul’s point here, and he answers the accusations against him by saying that it wasn’t his message or his manner that caused division in the church, but the reliance of the Corinthians on human wisdom rather than God. I hope you heard what I said. The vast, vast majority of division is caused by men being men! They aren’t following the Lord most of the time, they’re following their own mind! That’s the issue. Carnal, worldly wisdom that is incapable of understanding and out of touch with the divine wisdom that comes from intimacy with God!

Before we move on I want to draw you attention to some words and phrases that Paul uses. The first is the word ‘mature’. When we are fully surrendered to the Lord, walking after the Spirit, we will mature. When Paul uses the word ‘mature’. Here in chapter 2 he begins to contrast those who are growing in Christ with those who are babes in Christ in chapter 3. Here is what Paul is driving towards. It isn’t that he lacks wisdom, its that the congregation at Corinth wasn’t in a place in their spiritual walk that would allow them to understand. We see this in the church today big time. Congregations of people who claim to have been saved for 40 years and yet they couldn’t share the gospel with someone if they had a gun to their head. These same people are the ones that will flip out once the preacher or teacher brings something out in the Bible that goes above and beyond what they learned in Sunday school. All of this is the result of the church being filled with people that say ‘entertain me, but don’t preach to me’. They don’t want to grow. They’re satisfied with being in spiritual kindergarten.

Next on this list is the phrase ‘wisdom of God’. This is a reference to the gospel in every way. This isn’t just a sermon about the cross, but everything that is included in understanding God’s redemptive purpose, His nature, and man’s destiny. When Paul says ‘hidden wisdom’ it simply means that which was hidden in the past but has now been made known to mankind by God. This wisdom was so great that no one could have anticipated it, it was a plan that no one but God could have devised and brought about, and that no one could understand unless the Spirit gave them the ability. it’s important for us to understand that Paul didn’t have a ‘simple gospel’ for babes and a different gospel for the mature. It’s the same gospel. The same gospel that brought salvation to you when you were in sin is the same gospel that the most brilliant minds in the world stand amazed by! There isn’t some secret, esoteric knowledge for the spiritual elite and the rest of us are left with the short end of the stick. God is no respecter of persons! It’s God’s plan for us all to grow and move towards maturity. If you haven’t grown past the Sunday school room, the only person you can blame is yourself!

Moving to the next phrase, we see ‘spirit of the world’ and that refers to the spirit of this age. In all of his writings Paul contrasts what he calls this present world with the world to come. This age is marked by mans rebellion against the creator, a man-centered world. The age to come is the culmination of the kingdom that God has already began to create in Christ Jesus. Paul was very realistic about the powers of this world, but his writing is filled with what Hebrews calls the ‘lively hope’ of God’s ultimate victory and triumph over all things!

That’s what he means by ‘the wisdom of God in a mystery’ The wisdom of God in Christ, that the world couldn’t receive then and can’t receive now, in part because of how greatly it contrasts with the wisdom of this world. The wisdom of God in Christ is infinitely higher and greater than anything this world could ever imagine. The thought that God would humble himself, taking on human form and dying, was as foreign to the ancient world as it is today. That’s why Paul says its a mystery. It is utterly confounding to those who are lost. They can’t wrap their minds around the idea that a divine being would humble himself to the earth and die in the place of people he didn’t know, but our God did! This is what Paul discusses with those who are mature. Those who know who Jesus is understand the superiority of the wisdom of the Spirit. They know that it is only by supernatural means that God’s people can understand these things. As the Bible says, in Spirit it was written, and in Spirit it must be discerned. Wisdom doesn’t come from this world, but from Christ revealed by the Spirit!