Greg Robinson - God Hath Made Foolish the Wisdom of this World - Class 3 - Man's Wisdom Hides God's Wisdom

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1. 0:01

   Well, welcome back to our third session for the morning with our brother Greg Robinson. To introduce his subject for this morning. He’s asked us to take a reading and that’s found in First Corinthians Chapter 2.

2. 0:17

   This is watching Lake Bible School 2022. This is our Tuesday morning session with a brother, Greg Robinson. His theme for the week is God hath made foolish the wisdom of this of this world from First Corinthians and his subject for today’s class is man’s wisdom hides God’s wisdom for the Greg. Thanks for the Luke.

3. 0:41

   Good morning, my dear brothers and sisters. Maybe getting a little bit better there. I think maybe. All right, Welcome to Class 3. We’re actually going to cover a whole chapter today. So that’s kind of exciting as we move move through the 1st 4 chapters of First Corinthians. And as you see there, our title today is Man’s Wisdom Hides God’s Wisdom.

4. 1:04

   Just a bit of a recap before we move on into chapter 2. In our first class, we, we looked at the wisdom of man, we looked at the city of Corinth. We looked at the knowledge, the principles that that city was based upon. It was a large, successful worldly city, but it had no real place for God in it. The Corinthian ecclesia was surrounded by this and they had problems with divisions, with strife, with contentions. The ways of the world were actually making their way into the ecclesia quite successfully because the brothers and sisters were not of the same mind.

5. 1:44

   There were self appointed leaders that were taking positions of of importance in the ecclesia and there was a mix of God’s wisdom and man’s wisdom that was guiding the ecclesia. They didn’t have the same judgments. They didn’t make the same decisions because they couldn’t agree with each other on things. So for example, the the one that that keeps coming up is the example of fornication.

6. 2:07

   Some tolerated fornication and suggested that that’s the, excuse me, that’s the course that the ecclesia should follow. And some were opposed to that. Man’s wisdom, then was coming to a head, coming head on with God’s wisdom in the ecclesia. In our second class we looked at the wisdom of God, and Paul showed them that really there should be no divisions in the ecclesia because Christ was their Lord, and that no one else had been crucified for them. He showed them that what Christ did was to make the wisdom of man foolish.

7. 2:45

   He did that by his sacrifice and that the wisdom of God was far superior because it brings life and not death. Now from man’s perspective, man’s wisdom was great because it had no cross in it. What do I mean by that? So man looked at man’s wisdom and said, this is this is exactly what we want because there’s no sacrifice for us, at least no reward would come from it.

8. 3:14

   But man’s wisdom could not offer that eternal life. So here’s where we see the problem with adapting man’s ways into the ecclesia. Man’s wisdom doesn’t have the cross in it, and there has to be the cross in order for it to be compatible with God’s wisdom. And man’s thinking has gotten to be removed. So this summed up for us in Paul’s words in the next in First Corinthians chapter one at the end of the chapter there regarding man’s wisdom.

9. 3:47

   And what we saw yesterday was that the purpose of life for most of mankind was satisfying their desires, was elevating themselves and that that led to death. And this chart made it a very simple choice, as Paul presents it against God’s wisdom where the purpose was for sorry, the purpose was to choose God’s will over our own.

10. 4:14

    The purpose was to glorify God and that purpose would actually lead to eternal life. And so by that decision, by what happens there, God has made foolish the wisdom of this world. So we’re going to go now to first Corinthians chapter one, just to the end of the verse there, or the end of the chapter, verse 30.

11. 4:34

    And Paul wraps up the chapter, and he says, But of him that is of God, are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom. So by looking at the example of Christ, we could see God’s wisdom.

12. 4:52

    And then it brings us, as the verse continues, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. So in the ecclesia there would have been some who felt that eloquent human arguments were a lot smarter than God’s wisdom. Some of the leaders were bringing in these humanistic ideas and these ideas would have seemed to be right to many people in the ecclesia.

13. 5:16

    Now to some they actually seem better than what Paul was teaching. And so with Paul not being on site, that was a a big problem for them. One of the examples then over in chapter 5 we looked at and we talked about was that of fornication. Some thought that it was good or some thought that it was OK, and some did not think that it was OK.

14. 5:38

    But the behavior continued to come into the ecclesia and the decision was simple. If we go over to chapter 5, verse four, he says, or verse five, he says that the solution was to deliver such and one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the Spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. He says your glorying is not good. Know you not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump? So God’s wisdom says let’s purge out the leaven. Let’s get rid of fleshly thinking. And if that’s the best way for us, the best course for us to follow.

15. 6:15

    So in chapter 2, Paul carries on with this argument. He says, I know that it seems like the wisdom of some of the humanistic teachers is superior to the wisdom of God. He says, I know that when we came to you, the way that we taught was was maybe not as as strong as you were expecting, or it wasn’t filled with as much wisdom as you would have liked to have seen. And since we’ve left, many of these other teachers are presenting things with eloquence. And so Paul explains in the 1st 5 verses that he came with very simple teaching for a very important reason. And that was because he wanted to focus on the sacrifice of Christ.

16. 7:01

    But when he did that, a lot of the people in the ecclesia would have thought that there wasn’t much substance to what Paul was saying, to what Paul was teaching. Now, have you ever heard a teacher that was really able to simplify things, making things so simple for us that maybe we, we actually thought that that teacher didn’t have much intellectual depth? Have you ever had that that happened where you heard somebody speak and you thought, well, they’re pretty, pretty simple on this, this topic, and maybe they don’t know much about it.

17. 7:31

    And that’s why it’s, it’s being presented in such a simple way. I think that’s what was happening with Paul. He’s presenting the cross with such simplicity that people actually looked at him and looked at what he was saying and thought that there wasn’t much depth to what he was saying. Now, often times when you go up and talk to that that teacher afterwards, what do you find? You find it an incredible depth of understanding that they have and you find that actually their simplicity was, was really because they had that depth of understanding in the 1st place. So I think that’s an important thing that that we need to realize and that’s I think what was happening with Paul in these cases.

18. 8:09

    So when Paul speaks, his wisdom is not readily available, readily visible to the people that were there. He teaches verse 30. It says, but of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom. That’s how it was with Paul. He was teaching these things. He says it says that he showed us his wisdom in Christ and that by being in Christ and choosing God’s wisdom that were made righteous. So it was a it was really a very powerful message. He says we’re made usable for God’s purpose by the sacrifice of Christ.

19. 8:51

    All right, so in the third class, then our title is man’s wisdom hides God’s wisdom. So let’s see how how all of this works out. So chapter 2, verse one, it says, and I brethren, when I came to you, I came not with Excellency of speech or of wisdom. So when Paul came to Corinth about four years earlier, he’s telling them that I came and I didn’t come with eloquence.

20. 9:18

    I didn’t come to you with clever arguments. I didn’t do what some of the teachers that are now doing, some of the teachers now are doing in the ecclesia. Instead, I came declaring unto you the testimony of God. Now, of course we know, of course we know that Paul could very easily have blown away those other teachers, but he didn’t do that. Instead, what does he do?

21. 9:47

    He makes a conscious effort to deliver a very simple message to them. And of course, that was the testimony of God. So come with me over to Acts chapter 18. Here’s the historical time when Paul actually came to the city and let’s see what he was he was thinking here if we can and get some more information about what happened with Paul actually came to the city of Corinth to teach.

22. 10:17

    So Acts 18 and verse 4 says any reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath and he persuaded the Jews and the Greeks and when Silas and Timotheus were come from Macedonia. Paul was pressed in the spirit and he testified to the Jews that Jesus was Christ. That’s the message. That simple message is what he came and he taught that Jesus was Christ. Now take that simplicity because we know that a lot of other places we have much more detail and a much more complex argument that’s that’s given by Paul.

23. 10:53

    But here’s the focus is Jesus is Christ. So go back to First Corinthians chapter 2 and let’s see what Paul says in addition to this. He says for this is verse 2. So First Corinthians chapter 2 and verse 2, it says, for I determine not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ and him crucified. So Paul resolved when he, when he was speaking to the Corinthians, not to depend on human knowledge, he came simply with the message that the Messiah was crucified. That’s the message that he came with. Now yesterday we saw that the cross of Christ is the wisdom and the power of God, that the preaching of the cross is the key to what the wisdom of God is all about. And when when Christ sent Paul, it was the message of the cross that had to be maintained.

24. 11:51

    That’s what God was looking for. That’s what Christ was looking for Paul to share. First Corinthians one verse 17 says for Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect. So actually Christ had instructed him that when he went to Corinth that he would speak to them with simplicity. He was following them the directions that Christ gave to him.

25. 12:21

    We know Paul has the ability to, to, to totally speak with with eloquence and we has the ability to reason way beyond what probably the others in, in Corinth. Actually, we’re able. I think it’s pretty remarkable then that that Christ asks him to go and to speak with, with such simplicity when he gets there and how does he react?

26. 12:43

    How does he speak when he actually gets there and he stands up in front of the, the, the brothers and sisters or those that he was he was teaching. It says in verse three, he says, and I was with you in weakness and in fear. So with nervousness and in much trembling, it says so again, the the idea that he was afraid to get up and stand in front of the people of Corinth to teach them.

27. 13:08

    Now that may be because of this, this new way that he was asked to teach or this way that he was asked to teach when he came to the city of Corinth. It’s, it’s hard to believe Paul would have trouble with this, but Paul was keeping his words simple. He was keeping his words focused, and at the same time, he says that he was trembling with fear. Now, put yourself in the audience when Paul’s speaking this way.

28. 13:33

    Put yourself there watching or, or listening to what Paul has to say. And you see this, this nervous teacher who’s standing up in front of everybody and he’s speaking with such simplicity. What’s your reaction going to be? Your reaction is going to be, well, maybe he doesn’t actually know much more than what he’s saying, or maybe he doesn’t know what he’s talking about even.

29. 13:52

    Or maybe there’s a much more fuller understanding that we should be looking for than what this man has to offer us. And that’s standing in front of us. I think that’s what some of the people would have actually been thinking about as Paul stood up and he talked with them. So Paul explains to them, look, this is how I was told to come and to speak to you. I was told to come to speak to you. And I spoke to you.

30. 14:14

    And I was nervous about it when I came and when I spoke in front of you. So he goes on in verse four and he says in my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and power. Again, I didn’t use man’s wisdom. I didn’t use man’s reasoning.

31. 14:33

    I didn’t use man’s skill. I think Paul for certain would have used the power of the Holy Spirit to show them that power. He would have had a very simple message and he would have stood up and he would have shown them the power of that by by by performing miracles in front of them.

32. 14:49

    And so Paul demonstrated then the wisdom and the power of God, which we were, we were talking a lot about yesterday, and that had a tremendous effect on people. And Paul was able then to continue to share that message with them for a year and a half. And maybe that’s why he used such simplicity. That’s one of the reasons that he used such simplicity. Now, a few things to consider is about this before we move on. The first thing is it’s the word of God that changes people, isn’t it?

33. 15:19

    It’s not the miracles, it’s not the eloquence. It’s actually when they get down and they get their minds into the Word of God. So the way that Paul was teaching here was perfect for that. Paul starts out simple. He gives them the simple message. He shows them that it’s true, that it’s backed by the power of God, and he allows the Word of God to do the work, which is exactly what we should do.

34. 15:41

    And that being the case, it’s important that all of us do the same thing, isn’t it? Because we all know enough to say a few words to people about the hope that we have about the cross of Christ. If we could get them to just listen to those few words. And then if we could get them to open the word of God up for themselves, we know that we can make progress or that the word of God can make progress, right?

35. 16:06

    We find that so often in the seminars. If, if they’ll come and they’ll listen to us and they’ll listen to us and they’ll listen to us. But if we can get them on their own to open up the word and to listen to it, all of a sudden progress begins to be made because it’s God’s word that’s doing the work there. All right, let’s move on to verse five. He says that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men. So again, Paul was concerned that the brothers and sisters not think of him as the person that they were worshipping or that they thought was great.

36. 16:39

    And so he doesn’t use that eloquent speech. Instead it says, but in the power of God. Again, just like last last yesterday’s class in in chapter 1 verse 18, he says for the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness, but unto us which are saved. It’s the power of God. So Paul’s conscious of this Paul is deliberate in doing this in the way that he speaks.

37. 17:04

    He made sure that the faith of the brothers and sisters in Corinth was rooted in him. Sorry, not in him, but in the word of God. Now I remember when I was a kid and I remember reasoning, there was a brother in our ecclesia that seemed to be to know his Bible very well.

38. 17:22

    He would give classes that that I really like to hear. So I was probably, I don’t know, eight or nine years old or something like that. And when I heard him give the classes, I would listen and I would, I would thought to myself, now if I want to be in the Kingdom of God, all I have to do is to follow exactly what he is doing and I will be able to be in the Kingdom of God. I don’t know if any of you ever thought something like that when you were a kid.

39. 17:48

    Of course. So I went to my mom and I said, I’ve got it all figured out. This is how I could be in the Kingdom of God. And my mom says, well, wait, wait a second, wait a second, wait a second. You have to get into the word yourself. You have to learn those things because the word of God has to has to have the impact on your mind just like it’s had on his mind. And that’s exactly right, isn’t it? And so that’s where where Paul’s at. He doesn’t want to become that leader that everybody’s going to follow.

40. 18:13

    He wants everybody to to get into the word and and to learn it for themselves. So after Paul left Corinth, he was there for a year and a half. And after he leaves Corinth, there would have been some in the ecclesia that weren’t careful about this like Paul was. And so we have these leaders that that began to have prominence in the ecclesia and there were people that were happy to follow them, thinking that this is this is the way to go because it’s a lot easier to allow someone else to do it and to become their follower. Those people, those leaders found it satisfying to have people following them.

41. 18:51

    They like to have the attention. And so this this practice continued. It was inevitable, I think then that some of those leaders would begin to question what Paul had taught them. They begin to oppose Paul. They begin to think. You remember when he came, he really didn’t seem to have much to tell us.

42. 19:11

    You remember how he was. He was so nervous about standing up in front of us and to teaching us. They actually probably thought that by introducing new ideas into the ecclesia, they were actually helping to make the ecclesia better. That, I think, would have been the perspective of those people in the ecclesia.

43. 19:30

    And so that’s what they did. That’s what they brought into the ecclesia. And here’s kind of the list that we looked at the other night, right? The envying the strife, the divisions, the pride, the arrogance, the fornication, the, the suing, right, not accepting wrong, not suffering yourself to be defrauded. The questions about wearing head coverings and, and the, the practice to stop wearing head coverings.

44. 19:53

    They turn the Lord’s Supper into feasting and to drinking. They use spiritual gifts to glorify themselves, and they question the resurrection. Now all of these ideas were were humanistic ideas that were already present in the cults that were in the city of Corinth. And so these ideas that began to creep into the ecclesia and and some of them said that will Paul’s not really even an authority on these things. And so we don’t necessarily need to need to listen to the words of Paul that gives us a picture of the environment of what’s happening there.

45. 20:30

    Verse 6 So verse 6, Paul stands up and he says you’re not getting it. You’re not seeing the whole picture here. You don’t understand what’s actually happened here. He says how be it we? You’ll notice the difference there. He stops saying I and now he says we. How be it we? So he’s talking here about the apostles as well as himself. He says, howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect. What does he mean by that?

46. 21:14

    He’s telling them that, look, we may have come and spoken with simplicity when we came. He says, however, we do speak with wisdom. We do speak difficult things among those that are perfect. And what does he mean by those that are perfect? He says those that are spiritually mature. Now what’s he saying to them?

47. 21:37

    He’s saying, look, if you haven’t heard us speak with difficult teaching or giving you harder things to understand, there’s a reason why that is. That’s because you’re not ready for it yet. Don’t think the message, don’t think that the wisdom of God is some simple thing, because the wisdom of God is simple, but it has depth.

48. 21:59

    It is profound. That’s what he’s telling them. And if you haven’t heard those things from me yet, Paul saying, that’s because you weren’t ready for those things yet. So he says yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the Princess of this world that came to naughty. We don’t speak man’s wisdom. We’re not we’re not going to give you the wisdom that you’re hearing from these other teachers, He says. We don’t quote those philosophers because their wisdom, their teachings are coming to nothing. There’s no advantage to the teachings that they have because man’s wisdom has always been replaced by a newer version of man’s wisdom.

49. 22:37

    Isn’t that true? Haven’t we? Haven’t we, maybe all of us? Haven’t we already seen man’s wisdom? And what man thought was the way that we should live our lives is different than it was 20 years ago. Isn’t it different now? And it’s way different than it was 40 years ago. And the next one I can’t help you with, but it’s, it’s, it’s getting so that these the wisdom of, of man is just continuously changing. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s not something that we can put our trust in or put our hope in.

50. 23:03

    But God’s wisdom, Paul is saying, is timeless. God’s wisdom is far superior to man’s wisdom. And so he says in, in verse seven, he says, but we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery. He says, we’re talking to you about the wisdom that comes from God, from the creator of the universe. It’s this word mystery means a truth once hidden is what Vines tells us.

51. 23:34

    It’s a truth that’s been hidden before and now has been revealed. This is a truth that was once a secret but now has been made manifest. It’s the message of the cell of salvation. It’s the message message of the cross. It’s the message of the Kingdom. And Paul says, look, we are revealing to you something that is from God.

52. 23:55

    And it’s it’s something that is far superior to all other wisdom. He says there’s now in a way, he’s saying there’s now an immortal ruler that’s ruling and who has now shared with us the mysteries of the Kingdom of God. I think that’s pretty amazing how Paul kind of strikes back against them their their thoughts that he really was was simple and didn’t have much depth to what he was teaching.

53. 24:22

    And he says, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho. There’s so much depth to this because this comes directly from God. And so Paul was now going to share these things with them, He says even the hidden wisdom. So it’s something that that had been given to him that wasn’t made visible fully until this point in time, until the Lord Jesus Christ through his Holy Spirit revealed it unto them. God’s plan, he says, was predetermined, He says, even the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the world unto our glory. So God’s plan is something that hasn’t changed. It’s been around since the beginning. That’s what God intended to do.

54. 25:04

    And you’ll notice at the end there he says before the world unto our glory. So this plan is actually something that brings glory to us. If we’ll follow this wisdom, if we’ll follow this wisdom that’s now been revealed. I think that’s amazing. I think it’s amazing how subtly Paul strikes back at what what they were thinking about him. In this case, we go to verse 8, he says, which none of the Princess of this world knew.

55. 25:31

    For had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. Had the leaders of the world know what Christ’s plan was, what the plan for Christ was, what God’s plan was, had they known that they would never have crucified, but they were too interested in their own power, in their own prestige. They were, they were too interested to stop and to listen to the word of God, to understand this plan. We had Christ who for 3 1/2 years was teaching these things to people, but they, they were too interested in their own lives to stop and to listen to what he had to say. And then he says at the end of that verse, he calls him the Lord of glory.

56. 26:15

    He is the one that brings us, He is our Master that leads us to true glory. He says again, I think it’s amazing. The Pharisees, the Sadducees, the scribes, the teachers of the law, they were all oblivious to this message and they were oblivious to it because they wanted to to retain the glory that they had as the leaders of Israel, right? They wanted to retain that that prestige that they had over the people that they were unaware that God had a much greater glory for them, a greater glory that that was going to come through the Lord Jesus Christ who they crucified. But they were so busy pursuing their own things they did. They just didn’t see that and they were completely blind to the wisdom of God.

57. 27:09

    In verse 9, Paul actually there quotes from Isaiah chapter 64. So let’s go over to Isaiah chapter 64 and take a look what he says there. So he’s continuing this idea, Paul’s continuing this idea about the world not knowing. And that’s exactly what Isaiah is talking about here in Isaiah 64. He’s talking about the fact that in his days the world was completely blind to God’s wisdom. And so Isaiah says, I wish you would make yourself known to the world.

58. 27:48

    I wish you would make yourself known to the world, Isaiah says, like you did to Israel on Mount Sinai. So Isaiah 64, we’re going to go at verse, go into verse 4. Isaiah says, Oh, that thou wouldst rend the heavens, that thou wouldst come down, that the mountains might flow down at thy presence, as when the melting fire burneth, the fire causeth waters to boil. I wish you would come down to make thy name known to thine adversaries.

59. 28:19

    He says that the nations may tremble at thy presence. This is what Isaiah wanted. He wanted that day to come when the world would would actually see God’s power and they would know God and they would recognize God because he says most of the people don’t know you. They don’t know your name, they don’t know your purpose, they don’t know your power. I just wish that we could actually see your power. You would actually show that to them. Verse three he says when thou didst terrible things. And he’s talking about the Exodus, isn’t he, in the times of the Exodus, which we looked not for, they were they were beyond our expectations.

60. 28:54

    He says there thou came as down the mountains flow down at thy presence. From Isaiah, sorry, from Exodus chapter 19. In Romans chapter one verse 20, Paul says that the world is without excuse for knowing God. There’s no excuse for the world to to not know that there is a God and to acknowledge that and to look for for what God has to say. They’re right.

61. 29:20

    They’re without excuse, but they’re still ignorant. They still don’t know they found a way to to completely ignore God and they’re blind because man’s wisdom gets in the way of God’s wisdom. They don’t understand the cross because if they did understand the cross, that would mean that they had to themselves sacrifice and follow the example of Christ. So verse four he says, for since the beginning of the world, men have not heard nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eyes seeing, O God beside thee, what he have prepared for him that waited for him.

62. 30:00

    People have not come to know your plan, he says. And so Paul quotes these verses and he says this is the predicament that the world is in. They haven’t come to know you. Go back into First Corinthians chapter 2. First Corinthians chapter 2 and at verse 9. So Paul quotes this he says, but as it is written, I have not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for them that love him. Isaiah and Paul were both saying that most of the world has been ignorant of God’s plans, those plans that have been in place from the beginning, those plans that continued to be revealed. But most of the world was ignorant of those plans. And that plan is all about what God has prepared for them that love Him.

63. 31:05

    Now what does verse 10 say? What does he say to us in the next verse? It’s been hidden from the world, he says, but God hath revealed them or taken off the cover, as that word means unto us by his Spirit. These are the things that God has prepared to them, that love Him, and they’ve been given to us.

64. 31:29

    And that’s been given to us by the work of the Holy Spirit, he says, And that’s been given to us by the Word of God. Those things have worked together so that the apostles had taken off the cover, they had these things revealed to them and they were now sharing them with the world.

65. 31:47

    Now what a contrast to, to the wisdom that somehow the the leaders of the Corinthian ecclesia, some of these leaders thought was, was better than what Paul had shared with him when he first came. And so they were trying to bring these, these ideas, these humanistic ideas into the ecclesia. And Paul says, you, you, you just don’t understand. You just don’t understand the big picture of what’s actually happening here, he says.

66. 32:13

    For the Spirit searcheth all things. Yeah, the deep things of God. So God had revealed these things to the apostles by the Spirit, by the Holy Spirit, and they’d revealed them, and he’d revealed them to them by his word. And they began to put those pieces together. And these are what he calls the deep things of God.

67. 32:34

    And God has given all of us this same kind of access to these things. So they would look at what what the Spirit had taught them and they would look at the the word of God. And they put those things together and they understood truths that they had never understood before. They understood deep things.

68. 32:50

    Now, where are we in this equation? We’ve been given the wisdom that the apostles has been given, had been given, and we’ve been given the word of God alongside that. And so we do the same thing, and we put those together in our minds and we develop spiritual minds at the same time.

69. 33:08

    It’s an amazing thing that happens with us. It’s an amazing thing that the Word of God can actually work inside of our minds. And what we find is that the natural mind can’t rise to these things. It can’t understand the things of the spirit unless we first begin to put the things of the spirit into our own minds.

70. 33:28

    The natural mind just can’t rise to these things. It can’t rise above earthly thinking. Why do many Christians, what do many Christians, I sorry, what do many Christians think about how the Spirit of God comes into US? Have you ever talked to them about how this spirit develops, the spirit of God develops in them, and what do they think? They believe that when they accept Jesus as their savior that the Spirit of God enters their minds and their thinking changes.

71. 34:02

    It’d be nice, right? It’d be nice if it was that simple for it just to to, to come into our minds and to change the way that we think. But Paul saying no, it it takes work. It takes us sitting down with the word of God and learning these things. So here’s a quote that I found and there’s plenty more online.

72. 34:20

    If you were to look at these about how people think that they receive the Holy Spirit and you may have talked to different Christians about this and they really do believe something like this. So this one says, if you’re familiar with Christianity, so, OK, this is bogus, right? So just so we know going in, OK, if you’re familiar with Christianity, you’ve probably heard of the Holy Spirit.

73. 34:45

    But what is it and how does it become a part of your life? He says theologians have filled untold pages with their thoughts on the subject. But the simplest answer is that the Holy Spirit is the presence of God. It was sent to guide us after Jesus ascended to heaven. You will receive the Holy Spirit after you get saved and become a Christian. So simple as that, right?

74. 35:10

    Just like that, you will have understanding and then it says something curious. I think, however, learning to recognize when the Spirit is moving, you can take a little practice. It’s, it’s probably because it never is, right? But that’s the that’s what people think. That’s the understanding that they have. They think and you talk to them, they think that the spirit actually comes into their mind and it’s not a process of meditating and thinking about the Word of God. It’s not a practice, practice of learning the thinking of the spirit.

75. 35:39

    But they just don’t understand that. They don’t, they don’t get to the place where they think that that’s actually what happens. Again, it’d be nice, but that’s not what happens. So verse 11, it says for what? For what man knoweth the things of man save the spirit of man, which is in him. This is a hard one, I think, for us to understand when we first read it, to understand what he’s talking about here. So I think this helps.

76. 36:06

    So what he’s talking about here is that we don’t know the thoughts of a person unless we hear their words. So a person might be thinking something, but until they actually speak to us, we don’t know what they’re what they’re thinking. That makes pretty logical sense, doesn’t it? I think that’s pretty simple.

77. 36:23

    And so he says Even so, the things of God knoweth no man but the Spirit of God. So in the same way we don’t know the things of God, contrary to the common Christian belief, we don’t know the things of God unless we hear God’s words.

78. 36:43

    Now that’s what’s happened to most of mankind, isn’t it? Most of mankind has never heard God’s words. So most of mankind does not know the wisdom of God. But we have been given the words of God. We’ve been given what we call the spirit word, and that’s what he’s talking about here, this spirit word, or as in the case of the apostles, the apostles were given the word directly from Christ. It was spoken to them.

79. 37:08

    And we can’t know the things of God except by developing the mind of the spirit. The spirit enters our mind, doesn’t it? When we read the word of God, it’s not magical, it’s powerful. It enters our minds and our spirits or our minds then are changed by God’s word. That’s why that’s why God gave us the capability of developing a character like His where He gave us minds that could reason His word and understand His word.

80. 37:41

    Now if you ask people that have been reading the word for some time, they’ll tell you that the reason that they believe the Bible, at least many will tell you that the reason that they believe the Bible has changed. Initially, they believed the Bible or believed that it was the word of God because of Bible prophecy. They read it, they saw the prophecy and they were convinced that the prophecy came true and they were convinced that it was the word of God.

81. 38:06

    But as as they progress in their understanding, what happens is, is we begin to believe the word of God. The Bible is the word of God because we begin to understand the wonder of the world. It’s the word itself. It begins to actually change our thinking and it changes our behavior. And we could feel that and we know that and we could see that and we know that there’s nothing else that we read that’s like that.

82. 38:30

    And that’s what Paul’s talking about here. This is this is the wisdom of God that he speaks of. It’s something that’s hidden from most of mankind for one simple reason. It’s because they don’t open their Bibles and read God’s word.

83. 38:47

    It’s an amazing thing. So in the same way, we don’t know the things of God unless we hear the words of God. Verse 12 he says now we have received not the spirit of the world. Paul says we haven’t received man’s wisdom. What we are teaching is not based on man’s words or man’s ideas, but it’s based on the Spirit which is of God. We have received the wisdom of God. Paul, I think, has masterfully shown here that what he and the apostles had been teaching was so far superior to man’s wisdom. And it was that because it had been given to them as part of God’s plan, it wasn’t just something that was what a smart person had figured out or had devised. He continues.

84. 39:42

    That we might know the things that are freely given, freely given. That’s the word grace there to us of God. So God has given these things by His grace, and those were the same words that Paul was sharing with them. And we find that in verse 13 he says which things also we speak not in the words which which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Spirit teacheth.

85. 40:14

    What a contrast the words which man’s wisdom teaches and the words the apostles came to know from the Scriptures. And had come directly to them from the Lord Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. This absolutely sets apart the teachings of Paul from the teachings of those that were bringing humanism into the ecclesia.

86. 40:39

    He says comparing spiritual things with spiritual, that word comparing means interpreting. So they could put the words that had been given to them next to the words of the Scripture and they could understand, they could interpret the words of Scripture and they could interpret the words that have been given to them. And of course we say we could do exactly the same thing by studying the Word of God.

87. 41:03

    We could greatly develop our spiritual understanding. Verse 14, he says, but the natural man. So those people that don’t go beyond natural thinking receive not the things of the Spirit. For receiveth, Vine says to accept by deliberate and ready reception of what is offered. Receiveth not means that they choose not to accept.

88. 41:38

    So there are people, Paul’s telling us, who deliberately choose to reject the revelations of God. Why do they reject them? Why do they not bother reading the word of God? Why do their eyes gloss over when you start to teach them about these things or start to to read to them from the Scriptures?

89. 41:59

    Right? The verse continues. He says, for they are foolishness unto him. Those words are foolish to them. Strong says that that word means silliness or are ridiculous to them. So these people make a deliberate choice not to to hear the word of God. They reject God’s wisdom by not listening to the words that God speaks.

90. 42:25

    The natural mind considers itself only with the things of this world because it doesn’t have an understanding of God’s plan. It doesn’t know that God has made foolish the wisdom of this world and that God has offered us eternal life. And as long as they reject the word of God, as long as they don’t listen to what God has to say, they’re not going to know the things of the Spirit and they’re not going to learn the wisdom of God.

91. 42:54

    So he says neither can he know them. They can’t grasp them intellectually because men and women don’t just absorb the wisdom of God. It takes work. And that’s what he finishes with. Because they are spiritually discerned, the things of the Spirit can’t be accepted or grasped by people who only have human wisdom.

92. 43:22

    Now, we have to be careful, I think, because all of us are going through this process of, of going from having only natural wisdom or natural understanding to a place of having spiritual understanding. And as we make that progression, we’re going to make decisions sometimes that are the wrong decisions because they’re based on the wrong wisdom, and yet they’re going to feel to us like they are absolutely the right decision. So we’ve got to be careful in ourselves about this, and we’ve got to be careful about this in others as well. We can make wrong choices then that affect our lives and maybe affect the lives of others.

93. 44:05

    And this could happen even when we’re really confident that we’re making the right decision. What’s the solution to that? How do we solve that problem? Of course, God has given us our brothers and sisters, and it’s very helpful for us to remember that our brothers and sisters are going through that same process, that there are other brothers and sisters that are at different stages in the development of the thinking of the Spirit. And we could go to them and we can hear from them correction or instruction.

94. 44:36

    And maybe sometimes if we’re a little further down the road of understanding spiritual wisdom, there’s an opportunity that we should take to go to someone and to try to instruct them on the thinking of the Spirit. I think it’s especially important in the world that we live in today, where man’s wisdom seems to be so ingrained in us that the culture, that the media, everything presents it to us as if it’s absolutely right.

95. 45:04

    And yet we know it’s not. We know it’s not. And yet it feels like this is the right Rd. that we should be on. We’ve got to be careful then that we we we follow the right wisdom and that we look to the Scriptures to find that wisdom and that we help each other to find that wisdom. So verse 15 says, but he that is spiritual judgeth all things he that is spiritual.

96. 45:34

    So if he that is spiritual is talking about someone who has spiritual understanding. So as we develop the mind of the Spirit, we develop a greater understanding in the wisdom of God. And he tells us here that if we can do that, we can judge. The word means to discern, to evaluate, or to judge. And we could do that because we could see much more of the big picture.

97. 45:59

    We could base our judgments and our understanding on God’s purpose rather than on a very limited view that man’s wisdom gives us, right? It’s a much bigger picture and this is critical in our lives and the truth in the Old Testament, the people are often condemned that the kings and for lack of judgment and the Psalms talk about when Christ comes, they’ll finally be righteous judgment.

98. 46:26

    That’s something that was missing. Go back to first Corinthians chapter one, verse 10. Look at what the problem in the ecclesia was. I beseech you, brethren, 1st Corinthians 110 he says, I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing. There be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly joined together in the same mind in the thinking of the Spirit, and in the same judgment, the discerning judgment that will come from that. We could see then why there were different judgments, can’t we, in the ecclesia?

99. 47:01

    Because they had all different ideas of what wisdom was and there wasn’t a conclusive understanding of the wisdom of God that they could turn to or that they relied upon. Or if there was that in the ecclesia, they didn’t count on it or they didn’t go to that person to to find it.

100. 47:21

     Think about David and Jonathan, they both saw the big picture. Would you agree? They both had an understanding of what God was doing when, when they were working together, they were both working with God to, to save the nation of Israel. I would say, what is the, what does the Scripture say about their souls? They were knit together, right?

101. 47:46

     They had the same spirit. It’s not that they had their own exclusive little spirit, but it’s, they both had the thinking of the spirit influencing their lives. And so they agreed on things and they made the same decisions because they were making decisions based upon what God had in mind. And so for us, if we can develop the mind of the Spirit, what Paul’s saying here, if we could develop the mind of the Spirit, then we’ll be able to rightly judge all things. Is that isn’t that a wonderful thing? We’ll be able to make much better judgments about things because it’s based upon the wisdom of God. And then he says, yet he himself is judged of no man. That sounds almost like a humanistic idea, doesn’t it? An idea today that don’t judge me. That’s a, that’s a common phrase, isn’t it? It sounds like he’s saying that, but what he’s saying here is no man is the natural man.

102. 48:43

     He’s saying we won’t be judged by the natural man. We won’t be judged if we’re following the, the, the things of the spirit. The reasoning of the natural man will be irrelevant. And so what’s Paul thinking about here? I think he’s thinking about the fact that there were some that were actually calling him, calling him out and saying that he was doing the wrong things, that he didn’t have understanding.

103. 49:07

     And he says, well, the problem is, is that because they’re basing what they’re saying on the thinking of, of man, we can’t really even count on what they’re saying. We can’t trust their judgments because their judgments are insufficient. There’s they’re, they’re making their calls, they’re making what they’re saying based upon not having enough information. I think it’s amazing how Paul puts these pieces together and explains the problems that the ecclesia was having. And I think those are the same kind of problems that our ecclesias can have today if we’re not focusing on that key element, which is developing the thing, the thinking of the spirit.

104. 49:45

     So we have this human judgment then, which was just insufficient is what’s Paul’s trying to say here, and didn’t really have any impact on him because it didn’t understand what was really happening. Now, I like to think about this, this this story of Elisha and his servant at Dothan to kind of illustrate what this is like. So the king of Syria, you’ll remember, had sent a great host to bring Elisha to him because he was tired of Elisha helping the army of Israel.

105. 50:18

     And the Syrians came and they surrounded the city of Dothan, right? You remember the situation and Elisha’s servant went out and he saw the Syrian Army. And how did he feel about the Syrians being there? What did he think? He’s terrified, right? He was absolutely terrified. He thought we’re done for. What are we going to do? I don’t know how what we could do here. And what was Elisha doing?

106. 50:43

     Nothing, right. Not worried about it at all. Not concerned about the whole situation. If I was. If I was Elisha’s servant, I would have said, Elisha, you have totally messed up this time. Here we are. We’re dead because the Syrians are here and they’re surrounding. And I might have thought, you know what, Elisha, I think maybe I should take over and and you should kind of follow my direction here because you’ve gotten us into this terrible mess.

107. 51:09

     But that’s not what it is, is it? Elisha says fear not, for they that be with us are more than they that be with them. Elisha saw the big picture. He saw the whole picture. Well, his servant only had this limited view of what was actually happening.

108. 51:29

     If we ask his servant, he would have said we should run, we should hide, we should get out of here. But that wasn’t the right answer. The right answer was do nothing. And so God finally made that visible to Elisha’s servant. It’s pretty amazing. I think we think about Christ telling the disciples about the fact that he had to go to the cross.

109. 51:51

     Let’s go over to Mark chapter 8. Mark chapter 8. I’ll just go through this quickly here. Here we have Peter with the completely wrong idea because he doesn’t understand what’s happening. So Mark 8 verse 30, verse 31 says, And he, that is Jesus began to teach them that the Son of man must suffer many things and be rejected of the elders, of the chief priests, the scribes, and be killed. And after three days rise again.

110. 52:29

     And he spake that openly. And Peter took him and began to rebuke him. So Peter goes, no, no, no, no, no, that’s completely wrong. Verse 33 But when he had turned about and looked on his disciples, he rebuked Peter saying, Get thee behind me Satan, for thou savorest. And that word savers means to think or to exercise your mind.

111. 52:50

     Your mind is thinking not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men. Your mind is still being directed by human wisdom. He says here, I bet if the disciples had taken a vote on that day, they would have all agreed that Christ shouldn’t be crucified, wouldn’t they? They probably would have all said, yes, you’re not going to be crucified. That’s not what’s going to happen here. Later in time though, when they understood, they fully agreed that Christ needed to be crucified. All right, let’s go back to First Corinthians chapter 2 and just look at the last verse.

112. 53:23

     Then verse 16. He says, For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him, but we have the mind of Christ. Let’s go over to Isaiah chapter 40 because that’s where this is being quoted from Isaiah chapter 40 and verse 13.

113. 53:56

     It’s talking about where God got His wisdom. It’s talking about the superior nature of God’s wisdom to man’s wisdom. Isaiah 40 verse 13 says Who hath directed the spirit of Yahweh? The answer of course is there’s no one who gave Yahweh wisdom or being His counselor hath taught him. No one has taught Yahweh with whom took He counsel and instructed him.

114. 54:28

     Yahweh was not instructed and taught Him in the path of judgement. Yahweh was not taught and taught him knowledge. Again, Yahweh was not taught and showed to him the way of understanding. Yahweh was not shown understanding. He says, behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket. The nations are only a drop in a bucket.

115. 54:52

     They’re nothing. The wisdom of man is absolutely nothing. They’re counted as the small dust of the balance. The wisdom of man is like a little piece of dust. It’s impossible, he says, for the wisdom of man to instruct, to instruct God, because God’s words are infallible. There is no wisdom like Yahweh’s. And that’s the point that he’s making. He’s telling them that we have access to the wisdom of God because it’s been given to us and that’s what we can share with you.

116. 55:33

     And then he says, but we have the mind of Christ. What we’ve been teaching you has come from Christ. It’s Christ who’s been instructing us, and we’re sharing that wisdom with you. Would anybody put their trust in the wisdom of man when the wisdom of God is true wisdom? When the wisdom of God glorifies God, When the wisdom of God looks at the whole picture, when the wisdom of God is unchanging?

117. 56:12

     The wisdom of God is amazing, isn’t it? And Paul is just asking them to listen to the wisdom of God because he has the mind of Christ. Thank you.