1 Corinthians 2
And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. 2 For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, 4 and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5 so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.
6 Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. 7 But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. 8 None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 But, as it is written,
“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the heart of man imagined,
what God has prepared for those who love him”—
10 these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. 11 For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts 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 understand the things freely given us by God. 13 And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.
14 The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. 15 The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. 16 “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.
Sermon transcribed by AI. Please forgive any errors.
We have been working our way through Paul's first letter to the Corinthians over the last few weeks, beginning right at the beginning. First Corinthians Chapter One. During this time we we saw a number of sermons the first one, in that opening sector was about how Jesus is enough that with all the things that people care about, the only thing you truly need is Jesus. When you have Christ, you have every gift that you ever need. The next section we talked about divisions in the church, whether divisions within our congregation, or divisions outside our congregation in denominations, and how the sad fact of it exists, even though Christ has made us one as a body, by baptism into him. Last time, we talked about what people expect from a Christian religion, how in America, we expect a religion that works. In other words, it makes our life better. And how that is not always the way the cross is right? Is the cross doesn't make life better. It just points us to Jesus. Today, St. Paul continues talking about the cross against the wisdom of the world, and how the wisdom of the cross is the only thing that remains when Christ returned. Let's take a look. And I when I came to you brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you, except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. And I was with you in weakness, and in fear and much trembling. And my speech and my message were not implausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit, and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. Here St. Paul begins to set up a distinction between the wisdom of the world and the wisdom of God in the cross, that He came proclaiming Christ crucified, and nothing else and he didn't want them following him, because he had a whole lot of worldly wisdom. That doesn't mean that that Paul was an anti intellectual. Paul was a learned man. And we know this because St. Paul quotes philosophers from the era in Acts chapter 17. He is speaking to the Athenians and equals two philosophers, one Epona, FM and IDEs, and a stoic philosopher auratus. You are all of course very familiar with their works. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Me to. St. Paul isn't saying that because he wants to get rid of all that book learning. No, he isn't an anti intellectual. He didn't come to Corinth, knowing Christ, and only him crucified. Because he was against learning. He became he came to them to preach Christ and Him crucified, because he wanted to make sure that their faith was not in the impressive, powerful looking worldly wisdom. But they had the message of the thing that lasted forever. Though he had an education, he didn't put that on display. Though he was wise in the ways of the world, he didn't show off. He just preached Christ, and Him crucified. And he says, that their faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. And to get there, he demonstrated it with the Spirit and of power. When we look at x, we can see that wherever St. Paul went, when he got there, for the very first time, he was always doing miracles. He would heal the sick, he would cast out demons who do amazing things, just like the apostles did everywhere they went for the very first time. I kind of liken it to what happened when the allies invaded in D Day. You know the story right? D Day the Allies invade the beach at Normandy. Now when most of us think about that, we think about that Saving Private Ryan scene, right? They've got the guys running up to machine gunfire, there's all sorts of casualties. It's very scary, very bad. That's not actually how most of it went. In many places, the the Allies just walked on with little or no resistance. Why was that? Because they had spent a really long time with their battleships, firing artillery, at the fortifications to destroy it. So when they got there, they didn't have to do a whole lot. That's kind of how I see these miracles in the book of Acts. When St. Paul invades a new area to take that territory from Satan for Christ, he shoots off the big guns, heals the sick, cast out demons does all of those things. But it's not the healing that saves are the casting out demons that makes that makes it powerful. What he leaves with them after that is simple. The preaching of Christ, and Him crucified. And it's the preaching of Christ that remains afterwards as they go on. Because that is the power of God. The power of God to give salvation for everyone who believes it's this cross and the resurrection that delivers eternal life, both to the Corinthians and to us as well. Now, if you've been following along over the past several weeks, you've been seeing that St. Paul talks only about the cross in these things right? Here has not said anything about the resurrection, which I think is kind of weird, don't you? Because the cross doesn't make a whole lot of sense, without a Savior who rises from the dead. And of course, you can't rise from the dead without a cross. What is going on here? Why is St. Paul doing this? He's doing this because the cross is what defines the church for the Corinthians. And for us today. As we as we look at what the Corinthians were like, they wanted to be powerful and impressive. And if the resurrection defined the church and our life, we would be powerful, and impressive. All our lives would be amazing. Everything would be going really well for us, God would come down with his power and might and make the church way better than everybody else.
But that's not the life of the church is it? The life of the church is often filled with sacrifice.
life of the church is looking at sadness, and suffering through the lens of the cross. And so we see in the cross the wisdom for the church so that we can see victory in death, power in the weakness of a Savior who died on a cross and wisdom in the foolishness of what the world thinks is foolish, at least wisdom in the suffering that we see in our lives. And so it's the cross then that he preaches and proclaims. Because we need to see that as defining our lives now. So that when Christ returns, the resurrection will define us as He calls us from our graves. Let's continue. Paul says yet among the mature, we do impart wisdom. Although it is not a wisdom of this age, or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. We impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this. For if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory. But as it is written, what no I have seen nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagine what God has prepared for those who love Him. These things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. St. Paul is reminding us something that we probably already know is that there is a division between the wisdom of the world and the wisdom of the cross, and that the cross looks nuts to people who don't get it. That if you don't have an understanding of what it means, there is no way you can truly understand God's wisdom. Because the cross reveals to us the nature of reality, through Jesus Christ. And this should make sense to us, you can only see past the physical to the spiritual, if someone reveals it to us. Western philosophy has tried to figure out ways to explain the world around us. And we know many of the things that have been passed down through them. If you if you follow the traditions of Western philosophy, you basically get two different camps, there are the rationalists, the ones who believe that you can understand the nature of reality, by thinking about it really hard. These guys go back all the way to Plato. You may have heard of names like Descartes, they are a continental rationalists, who think if I think hard enough, if I work through the logic, I can understand creation. One of the other major schools were the empiricist, often coming out of out of England, and they passed down to us through science, that you can understand the nature of reality, by looking at things and measuring them. Your senses, your evidence, can give you all of reality. These have had a great deal of a measure of success, because you can actually understand reality by measuring it, right. That's what we call science. That's how we get computers and technology, and all of the things that have made our world what it is today. But at the same time, you still can't see beneath the stuff of creation, if you're trying to do that, despite their claims. When the Soviet Union sent Yuri Gagarin out into space, he was purported to have said when he came back, I looked everywhere, and I couldn't find God. And I go what? Who suggested that you would. But they were trying to make light of the Christian claims. Or the Guardian wrote an article where it says, quote, Russia had made it to the stars. And as the saying went, and there was no bearded old god, they're only science. Of course, not. Similarily evolution, Darwin's theory was simply a way to try to explain everything, by getting rid of God, rather than including him. So we got this wisdom of the world. And even now we have that we have this idea that spiritual truths are up to the person, because you actually can't be they can't be real. They say, whatever it is, as long as you believe or as long as it works for you. Which means nothing is true. This is the opposite of what St. Paul is saying. He is saying that there is a reality, a spiritual reality that God reveals to us through the cross. It is not speculation. It is the truth. That God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to reveal to us the nature of creation. What these other ways of explaining reality are is a little bit like what it would be like if I were to explain how a car works. Every once in a while my wife and I, we would our car would break down. It's happened a couple of times. And you know what you do when the car breaks down and you're a guy is you you get off to the side of the road, and then you go and you open the hood, because that's what you're supposed to do. Why did I do it? It wasn't because I could actually fix anything. I'd go out and I look and says you're still broken. I have no idea how a car works. If there was a cap off or something like that. I could be like, Yep, the caps off. Or a belt was broken. I'd be like, Oh, yep, there's a belt. And that's about it. be even worse, if I tried to write a manual about how a car works, just by looking at it. I could probably come up with some really fancy names for the different parts of the engine, the spinning thingy, the belty thingy, the thing that vibrates, write really good names. Even if I took it apart and examined everything piece by piece, I would not have enough knowledge to explain how it works. That's because I it hasn't been taught to me hasn't been revealed. Because these things are so complicated. No single individual knows all of it. I think that's what it's like with reality. The spiritual truths can only be revealed through Jesus Christ, that God is not floating somewhere in heaven. He is the essence of existence himself. And the only way to truly know Him is through a God who reveals Himself to us. God did that by sending His Son Jesus Christ, to teach, preach, and then sacrifice himself on the cross and rise from the dead. And it's only through this death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, that we can understand the narrative of all existence that begins with the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve and ends with Christ's return and raising us from the dead. And without the cross at the center, you know nothing about what God is doing. Nothing about his power in the church. And when Jesus comes back, all the speculation about reality will disappear. All of the things in the wisdom that that people think they know, will pass on. And all that will remain is Christ and His power for us. salvation that He gives us, when we are raised from the dead, to live forever with Him. We continue for who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person which is in him. So also, no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words, not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him. And he is not able to understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but as himself judge to be judged by no one, for who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him. But we have the mind of Christ. St. Paul is telling us, but the only way to have this revealed to you, as the wisdom and power of God is that the Holy Spirit come to you, and do it. This should be pretty standard for you by now, because it is a a Lutheran teaching is that only the Holy Spirit can reveal Christ to us. And without his power, we can know nothing. As Luther writes, in his explanation of the third article of the Apostles Creed, he
says, I believe that I cannot find my own reason or strength, believe in Jesus Christ, my lord, or come to him. But the Holy Spirit has called me by the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith. In the same way he calls gathers and lightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian Church on earth, and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith. What this means is that that should be no surprise, when the world rejects the gospel of Jesus Christ. Because it doesn't make any sense. Without having the Holy Spirit. Without understanding the gifts that God gives us. It should make no sense to them. And so you need to have the spirit to be able to understand and to be able to believe it should it should make sense then, when even Christians struggle with the idea that the cross defines our reality. Because we're out there in a world that constantly tells us that it's wrong. That calls us that it's wisdom, it's truth claims, and everything it says, is better than what we have. But we need to cling to the wisdom of Christ, to the cross, because we know that it is the power of God. And we know that the only way to understand it is to get the spirit. So when we talk about it, we need to lead with Christ and Him crucified just as St. Paul did. Because that's how the spirit goes out. Not with powerful words or amazing wisdom, but the message of the cross it's what worked on us and what brought us here? That's what works on the world as well. Because it's the only wisdom that lasts all the way up through to the resurrection on the last day.
In Jesus name, amen.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai