Sermon Tone Analysis

1 Corinthians 2:6-16 God’s Wisdom and the Spirit of God

Title: God’s Message of Wisdom   1.

Is for the Mature 2. Is Contrary to the World 3. Is Mystery

In this passage, (vv.6-8)

Paul continues with his contrast of human and divine wisdom that began in 1:18, and what a contrast it is!

Remember, the human wisdom that Paul is opposed to is a well-defined system of wisdom.

A well-constructed systematic worldview that seeks to answer every question and problem humanity has by looking inward; it looks no further than humanity.

Thus it is mostly characterized by pride and arrogance.

It is a style of life, a general way of assessing life that is self-centered.

The end result of such human wisdom is twofold.

First, such wisdom leads to a kind of human self-sufficiency and self-glorification.

It is mans’ best answers to man’s worst problems.

It says we don’t need God to figure anything out.

Second, it puts man in the place of judge and gives him power to decide and evaluate activity.

If you can explain life, you remain in control of it.

Divine wisdom is in sharp contrast to this.

Read Proverbs 2:1-8.

Notice how fundamentally opposed divine and human wisdom is.

God says if you desire wisdom, look outside of yourselves and ask God for it, “for the LORD gives wisdom, and from his mouth come knowledge and understanding” (Prov.2:6).

Human wisdom, the world’s wisdom says look inside you!

God says if you need direction, insight and understanding you must store up Scripture in your life, accept God’s word, and turn your ear to wisdom. 1 Corinthians 1:30 teaches Christ is that wisdom from God!

So divine wisdom is wrapped up in the person of Jesus Christ and the story of redemption!

Divine wisdom is wrapped up in God’s activity through his son Jesus Christ and exalts self-emptying, suffering, and humiliation.

Christ said “if anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.

What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul?

Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?”

Worldly wisdom exalts status, pride, self-exaltation, comfort and ease, elitism.

Worldly wisdom seeks its own advantage no matter how much it hurts others.

Divine wisdom serves others with no regard to personal cost.

What a difference!

*I need to say something here that should go without saying but I don’t want there to be any misunderstanding.

In all of this talk about God’s wisdom and Human wisdom, the discussion is centered on their ability to lead us to God and Redemption.

None of this bad talk about human wisdom is to say the world has nothing to offer us by way of practicality or knowledge or wisdom.

We enjoy many benefits of the world’s wisdom each day, such as refrigeration, in home plumbing, plastics, disease fighting medicine, but none of us is going to go to heaven because we own a microwave or discovered DNA!  IT is to say that in comparison to the wisdom of God, it is unimpressive.

It cannot lead us to God.

The world, with all of its great philosophy, man made religions, scholars, power, strength and wise men cannot reason or force or impress its way to God.

If it could God would be guilty of some of the worse prejudice imaginable.

There is only one way to God, and that is the wisdom found in the crucified Lord of Glory.

*

It is no wonder then that to the world the wisdom of God is weak and pathetic, that the message of the cross is a stumbling block and foolishness.

Does that mean we should adopt our message to something else?

Should we change it to be up with our times?

Should we stop talking about this Christ as the one and only way?

That’s the temptation isn’t it?

It didn’t stop Paul though did it!

No! God tells us he has purposely chosen the foolish things of things of the world to shame the wise, the weak things of the world to shame the strong.

He has chosen the lowly things, the despised things, and the things are not, to nullify the things that are so no one may boast before him!

Christ is the wisdom and power of God.

There is nothing greater than that!

In 2:1-5, Paul says in light of this fact, I want my ministry to match my message so when I proclaim the message of the cross, I do not do it with mere human eloquence or superior wisdom or with manipulation so you can say I believe because of how awesome Paul is. No, he says, I resolved to know nothing except Jesus Christ crucified so you can see a demonstration of God’s power, so when you see me, you see Jesus Christ, not Paul.

As we talked about these verses it became clear that by human standards, Paul should have failed and fallen flat on his face but God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached, Jesus Christ, to demonstrate his awesome power despite such great human weakness.

So we learn from this passage that our ministry, our church is not made great by having a minister who can speak with great rhetoric and sophisticated speech, or by having music that is out of this world awesome, or by having state of the art technology so we can wow and pizzazz everyone who comes through these doors.

Those things are not necessary for successful ministry.

Our ministry is made great by God’s great power and that is demonstrated most fully through those who have learned that in our weakness God is the greatest, that we must wholly depend upon him for everything and do all things in his strength.

The goal of our ministry is to maximize God’s glory, not our own.

You may well say if the message of the cross is such folly to the world, how will anyone be saved?

How will they ever understand the message of the cross?

Paul seeks to answer this question in vv.

6-16.

We believe, we understand it because “it has been revealed to us by his Spirit” (2:10).

Before we can get there however, Paul wants us to understand there is a wisdom for the mature, his entire message is not nonsense, and he wants to make sure we understand how absolutely opposed, divergent, conflicting incompatible antithetical the wisdom of God and the world is.

*For the Mature*

“We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature…

He has just concluded in verse 5 saying he conducts his ministry in such a manner “so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power.”

This is not to say however that everything he says is sheer madness or folly!

We are not to think God puts a premium on ignorance and rejects all wisdom.

No, there is a message of wisdom taught by the spirit to the mature.

What is the wisdom he preaches?

It is nothing other than the message of the cross, that is, Christ Crucified.

The only wisdom he preaches is the wisdom of God revealed in the cross.

It is the same wisdom he speaks to all concerning God’s redemptive purposes revealed in the cross.

He speaks this message of wisdom to the mature.

Who are the mature?

Much debate has raged over the identification of the “mature.”

Many want to say the “mature” or the “perfect” as the KJV renders it, are the gifted few, an upper echelon of believers who have attained the pinnacle of wisdom.

That Paul does make reference to spiritually mature and immature believers in other passages of Scripture cannot be doubted.

Indeed, in 3:1 he will talk about the spiritually immature who argue and fight and debate over mere human leaders.

In Colossians 4:12 we read of Epaphras who is “always wrestling in prayer for you, that you may stand firm in all the will of God, mature and fully assured.”

In Ephesians 4:11-14 we read that it was Christ who, “gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming.”

However, that being said, that is not the case here when we read, “mature” or “perfect.”

The “mature” here referenced are those “who love God” (1 Cor.

2:9), who possess the spirit (2:10) and the mind of Christ (2:16).

To argue otherwise, would make Paul be guilty of some of the worse contradiction imaginable.

He has just labored and labored to get the point across that God does not cater to genius’s and intellectuals and the powerful and the wise and the cool and the beautiful.

So for the message to only be wisdom to a select few mature believers would be the heights of contradiction!

The mature are those who have recognized and embraced God’s foolishness as wisdom and the world’s wisdom as foolishness.

*Is Contrary to the World *

This wisdom that is spoken to the mature, those who love God and possess the Spirit, is contrary to the wisdom of the world.

Paul says, we speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing.

Paul certainly does not speak the wisdom of this age because it considers the message of Jesus Christ as foolishness and as a stumbling block.

What’s more, the wisdom of this age is destroyed and frustrated in Jesus Christ.

Even with human wisdom at its best, the foolishness of God is much wiser.

Indeed, as we read in 1:21, “for since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him.”

All of the world’s greatest scholars, philosophers, wise men can join together and never would they discover the wisdom of God because as we will see in the following verses, it is hidden and mysterious and revealed only to those who have the spirit and the mind of Christ.

Paul certainly does not speak the wisdom of the rulers of this age because they in their human wisdom ended up crucifying the Lord of glory!

Which, incidentally, is a great reference to Christ as God in the flesh.

They completely misunderstood the wisdom of God in Christ Jesus and this misunderstanding led to the crucifixion of the Lord of glory.

The rulers of the age did not understand the wisdom of God; and because they were ignorant, they did what human wisdom demanded – they crucified the one who for them was one more messianic pretender.

Human wisdom at its best in the rulers of this world crucified the Christ.

Thus the divine irony: The very ones who were trying to do away with Jesus by crucifying him were in fact carrying out God’s prior will – “destined for our glory before time began.”