“The Wisdom of the Spirit” – 1 Cor. 2

Everybody likes an underdog, right?  People love to cheer for someone that beats the odds and becomes the champion of something when logic and wisdom seem to say that they cannot do it.  Many of you have probably heard the name Rosie Ruiz before although it has probably been a few years.  Rosie came out of complete marathon obscurity to do so well in the 1979 New York marathon that she qualified for the 1980 Boston marathon.  And to the surprise of everyone, she won the Boston marathon with a record-breaking time.

 

She had no world-class trainer.  She didn’t have any sponsors.  She didn’t even have top notch equipment.  All she had was the will to win and…the subway.  Yes, when people started to talk about how they didn’t see her running and when she got to the finish line she wasn’t out of breath or even sweaty, then they started to check out her story.  Come to find out, she rode the subway for at least half of both races.

 

That’s a crummy story, isn’t it?  We all love underdogs but when one cheats that just ruins it.  It ruins it because we see real athletes sweat and sacrifice and work so hard to finally earn their reward and we know that is how it works in this world.  You don’t get something for nothing.  You have to work for everything you get.  You have to “pay your dues” in this world.  And that’s true but here’s the catch.  This world is a physical world.  In spiritual matters, it doesn’t work that way.

 

In anything spiritual, we cannot work hard enough or be good enough or claim enough success to reach our goal.  When our goal is to have a relationship with God, every physical attribute we have is worthless because God is spiritual.  And as physical beings that can be hard for us to understand.  It doesn’t make sense.  It’s not fair.  Why would God do that?  Why would He create us without the ability to know Him?  Why would He keep secret the way to have a relationship with Him?  Why would He make it so difficult to understand how to get to Heaven?  How can we as physical, created beings know how to get to where the spiritual Creator is?

 

Well, the answer to those questions is the same as it has been since the disciples were told by Jesus that He was leaving them.  You remember the scene in John chapters 13-17 where Jesus and the disciples are sharing a meal and Jesus tells them He is about to leave but that they know where He is going.  I can just hear Thomas doubting that as he says, “Lord we don’t know where you are going.”  And Phillip says, “Lord, just show us the Father and that will be enough.”

 

But Jesus says in chapter 14, “If you love me, keep my commands. ¹⁶ And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to help you and be with you forever— ¹⁷ the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.”  Later He goes on to say, “But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.”  In John 15, “When the Counselor comes, whom I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father—he will testify about me.”  Then again in chapter 16, “But very truly I tell you, it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.”

 

I often think that I don’t know how people get through this hard old life without having a relationship with the Lord.  It’s just too difficult.  I don’t think I could do it.  I would be a mess if I had to go through some of the things people have to endure if I didn’t have God to lean on.  And do you know what?  That’s how God intended it.  That was His plan from the beginning.  His plan was not to make you strong enough to be able to endure this life.  His plan was to be your strength.

 

In fact, that is the job of the Spirit that Jesus was talking about to His disciples.  When you have questions, the Spirit that lives inside us as Christians will help answer those questions.  When we don’t have the energy to go on, the Spirit is there to carry us.  When you don’t know what to do or you don’t know where to go and ultimately, when you need the wisdom to get to Heaven, that’s when the Spirit comes in and says, “Here, let me help you.”

 

I hate to put it like this but it’s almost like cheating.  Rosie Ruiz got dressed and went to the starting line and took off running but pretty soon she caught the subway to the finish line.  That’s basically what we do in this life.  We do what we are supposed to do but everything we need to finish the race comes from the Spirit of God Himself.  And that is how God intended it.  That is His plan because if we ran the race; if we were good enough to get to Heaven we would brag about how good we were.

 

Somebody asked me this week, “How do we know when we are good enough to get to Heaven?”  I’m so glad to be able to tell you that you will never be good enough to get there.  You will never deserve Heaven.  You will never be worthy to be able to talk to God.  We talked last week about how Jesus is our righteousness, holiness and redemption.  He died and was resurrected to be our substitute for those things.   We don’t have to be good enough. But it is the Spirit of God that helps us while we are here on this earth.  The Spirit helps us live our lives in such a way that it almost feels like cheating because He basically does all the work.

 

Let’s continue our look at the wisdom of the cross.  This is our 4^th of 5 sermons on what the world calls foolishness but the Bible says is wisdom in 1 Corinthians.  When you tell people that the Gospel is simply the fact that Jesus died on the cross to be the blood sacrifice that we couldn’t be and to pay the price for sin that we couldn’t pay, and that He then rose again after 3 days and that we can now have a relationship with Him, people will hear that and call that foolishness.

 

But 1 Corinthians 1 and 2 talk about the wisdom of God and the wisdom of the world and the huge gap that is between them.  And today we will look at the wisdom of the Spirit in chapter 2.  It’s a short chapter so let’s read the whole thing to keep it all in context.

 

And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. ² For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. ³ I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. ⁴ My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, ⁵ so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.  ⁶ We do, however, 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. ⁷ No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. ⁸ None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. ⁹ However, as it is written:  “What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived” the things God has prepared for those who love him—¹⁰ these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit.  The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. ¹¹ For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. ¹² What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. ¹³ This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. ¹⁴ The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. ¹⁵ The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, ¹⁶ for, “Who has known the mind of the Lord
so as to instruct him?”  But we have the mind of Christ.

 

There are only 16 verses in that chapter but, as Paul usually does, he packs it full of wonderful insights, including speaking of the Spirit or spiritual things at least 14 times.  And while we could camp out here for a while, I want to focus on only 2 things about the wisdom of the Spirit.  I want us to see that the Spirit empowers testimony and the Spirit empowers maturity.

Paul starts out in a way that I would imagine everybody who has ever preached has felt.  He said I came to you in weakness and in fear and with much trembling.  If you have ever done any public speaking at all, you can appreciate what he felt.  But this was more than just an admission of having some butterflies before he spoke.

The Corinthians were very proud of their eloquence and oratory.  They felt that if a man could speak well and persuasively that he must be close to God.  And lots of people still feel that way but just because a person can speak well is no measure of his spirituality.  There are plenty of powerful, persuasive preachers, both men and women, who are not necessarily speaking the word of God.

But Paul is not just talking about his preaching in the synagogue.  The words he uses mean more than that.  It includes that but also means the way he lived and his speech outside the synagogue.  It was his testimony.  It was the Good News.  It was what the Lord had done in his life.  And instead of trying to impress them with flowery speech and powerful oratory, he left it to the Holy Spirit to demonstrate power.

And that, again, was God’s plan all along.  I know I have told some of you this story but if you have heard it I know you will nod politely as I tell it once more to illustrate how the Holy Spirit empowers testimony.  Some years ago I worked for an outfit that customized trucks, duallys mainly and some 18 wheelers.  I had been burdened for one of my co-workers for a while that I didn’t believe was a Christian and was looking for a chance to witness to him.  And one day I saw my chance.

I had to do something underneath a truck one day and I saw that Rick was already under there doing something else and so as I gathered my tools I asked God to give me just the right words to be able to witness to Rick.  But as I continued to get what I needed, the only words that were coming to me were, “Say something about church.”  And, no, I was not hearing audibly from God.  But I knew I was being spoken to but I wasn’t hearing what I wanted to hear.

“C’mon God.  Tell me what to say.  I’m about to get on the creeper and I’ll be next to him for a while.  Now’s our chance.  Just tell me what to say.”  “Say something about church” was all I was getting.  God and I continued this way for a while and finally I got under the truck and I’ll admit I was a little put out with God.  I was ready.  I had the time.  But all God would say is, “Say something about church.”

“Ok, fine.  I’ll show you, God.  I’ll just do it.”  And so as I crawled under that truck I turned to Rick and with a bad attitude and no enthusiasm, I simply said, “We had a good day at church yesterday.”  And I promise this is the truth.  Rick put down his tools, propped himself up on an elbow and said, “Really?  Tell me about it.”  And for the next 30 minutes Rick and I talked about not just church but Heaven and Hell and what sin is and the Trinity and what Jesus had done in my life and so much more.

And do you know what I had to do with it?  Nothing!  I even had a bad attitude but I said what I was supposed to say and then I laid there and watched as the Spirit demonstrated His power.  Talk about not having eloquence or superior wisdom!  And if I had used eloquence and my own wisdom, I might have something to brag about but as it was, verse 5 was proven to me and to him.

Rick and I both saw that our faith was not based on man’s wisdom but on God’s power.  And that’s exciting!  It’s exciting to see God at work and so comforting as well because we know that the responsibility of a person’s eternity does not lie in our hands, but in God’s.  All we have the responsibility for is to speak up and God even provides the opportunity and the boldness to do that.  Like I said, it almost feels like cheating when the Holy Spirit does all the work.  But that is God’s plan and the wisdom of the Spirit.

The Spirit empowers our testimony and He also empowers our maturity.  In verse 7 Paul goes on to speak of God’s secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden.  Shhh!  Don’t tell anybody.  It’s a secret.  Actually, I don’t think it is a secret that we are to keep but rather it is a secret that not everybody can understand.

Have you ever been asked how you know that the Spirit is talking to you?  It’s usually asked by someone with skeptical eyes squinted and their head tilted forward and their arms folded across their chest.  And when you tell them that you just know and you can’t really explain how (because you know they won’t understand) they look at you and they might as well have a neon sign over their head that says, “That’s foolishness.”

Or what about answering the question of why bad things happen to good people?  The world says either God is unable to stop it or He just doesn’t care.  And trying to explain that God is all-loving and all-powerful is foolishness to them because they don’t have the Spirit in their lives to make them understand.  In fact, even Christians have a hard time with things like that and will until they mature.  And Paul says that maturity comes from the Spirit.

He says that the Spirit searches all things even the deep things of God.  He is not saying that the Spirit searches trying to find those things.  The Spirit is God and knows the mind of God and as we mature and spend time with Him, then the Spirit empowers our maturity and we are able to understand the deep things of God.  We start to understand the wisdom of God as the Spirit reveals it.  We start to get wisdom.

In James chapter 1 it says that if anyone lacks wisdom, he should ask God.  Paul tells us specifically that it is the job of the Holy Spirit in our lives.  That’s one of the reasons why Jesus told His disciples that it would be better for them when He left because He would send the Counselor.  That is the difference that you see in Peter, for instance, who, while with Jesus, did foolish things like chopping off the guy’s ear and saying foolish things like, “Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you wish, I will put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.”

But after Jesus went back to Heaven and the Spirit came at Pentecost we see Peter emerge as a great and powerful leader of the first church, making wise and mature choices to lead in godly ways all because he now had the Spirit living inside him.  And it wasn’t because Pete had all of the sudden gotten smarter.  It wasn’t because Pete had done anything except be obedient.  It was the Spirit living inside him that empowered his wisdom and maturity.

In Acts 2:38 Peter is preaching and says, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”  He saw the Spirit for what it was: a gift.  And he wanted everybody else to have it as well and so he spoke boldly and with confidence about it.  And do you know what happened?  It says in Acts 2:41 that about 3,000 people were added to their number.

Not only had the Spirit empowered Pete’s maturity but it also goes to show that the Spirit had empowered his testimony.  3000 people were not added to the Kingdom that day because of Peter’s eloquence or superior wisdom.  It was not about Peter.  In fact, it is sort of like Peter cheated, isn’t it?  He spoke the words in obedience but the Spirit did all the work.  And that was God’s good and perfect will.