Oakbrook Evangelical Free Church

Introduction:

Schilling Sustained by the hidden strength of God.
In the first game of the best-of-seven, 2004 American League Championship Series between baseball’s New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox, Boston’s ace pitcher Curt Schilling was in pain. An ankle injury kept him from being able to plant his foot and throw the ball with his usual skill. Schilling was removed from the game after allowing six runs in just three innings. Teammates feared Schilling’s injury would end his season and their hopes to get to the World Series.

But in the sixth game against the Yankees, Schilling surprisingly took the mound again. Facing elimination if they lost, the Red Sox watched Schilling throw an amazing seven innings in which he only gave up four hits and one run. Every time the TV camera focused on Schilling’s ankle, viewers could see blood seep through his sock. Doctors had stitched his ankle tendon into place to allow him to pitch. The Red Sox won the game, and afterwards a FOX Sports reporter asked him about his performance.

Schilling answered, “Seven years ago I became a Christian, and tonight God did something amazing for me. I tried to be as tough as I could, and do it my way Game 1, and I think we all saw how that turned out. Tonight it was all God. I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to do this alone. And I prayed as hard as I could. I didn’t pray to get a win or to make great pitches. I just prayed for the strength to go out there tonight and compete, and he gave me that. I can’t explain to you what a feeling it was to be out there and to feel what I felt.”

James 1:5-6 ” If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind.” ESV

Our need for wisdom –

New job opportunity: pros / cons; how do you measure?;

Secure vs stepping out trusting God. Raising children

Providing for the necessities of life. Needs vs wants, etc.

This passage is a contrast betw wisdom of world, wis of God.

Lie, cheat, steal, stab people in the back, bad attitudes on job.

Tempted to compromise, conform, go with the flow.

Birds travel in flocks. Eagles travel alone.

Take the high road: thermometers vs thermostats

Measure the temperature vs changing the temperature.

Culture - How it affects us

“A medical doctor suffered a serious heart attack while still in his thirties. He described the pain of that event as different from any other pain he had ever felt. He had always experienced every prior injury or hurt, whether a broken arm or a sore knee, as a hurt to a part of his body. In some measure he could separate himself from the pain. “But during my heart attack,” he said, “I was in the pain. There is no other way to describe it.” The very organ that should have been pumping life was instead disseminating pain.

Culture is like that. It has an all-consuming hold on us. It becomes the source of thinking and feeling in its members. So engulfing is this power that we cannot discuss the essential theme of our culture at its crossroads without being locked into it ourselves. We are in the culture, and we are hard pressed to find a fulcrum outside of it with which to leverage a shift…Bearing in mind that we are…in it is the first step of diagnosis.” Ravi Zacharias, Deliver Us From Evil, .18, 21

I. The Wisdom of God: Hidden and Eternal, 2:6-9

The message of wisdom

Not the wisdom of this age (marked by rebellion; man-centered)

vs the age to come)

Not the rulesr of this age (human, demonic?)

(Roman political leaders & Jewish religious leaders)

The leaders of the present world order

Who are coming to nothing – will lose all their glory

God’s wisdom: hidden and eternal

God’s secret wisdom (the cross)

It has been hidden but now revealed at the turning of the ages

God destined it for our glory before time.

None of the rulers of this age understood it.

They have their own agenda and do not understand God’s

They did not understand God’s plan for salvation of the world

They did not understand Christ crucified as God’s agent

If they had known they would not have crucified JC

It is awesome.

Rooted in eternity

Hidden but now revealed

2:6 wisdom

2:7 God’s secret wisdom that has been hidden

2:9 What God has prepared for those who love Him

2:10 the deep things of God.

2:11 the thoughts of God

2:12 what God has freely given us

2:14 the things that come from the Spirit of God

2:15 all things

2:16 the mind of Christ

Who knows your thoughts? Only you in your self-consciousness.

In like manner, only God knows the inward truths about God and his plan for us.

“the spirit of the world”

2 Corinthians 4:4 ” In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.”

Ephesians 2:2-3 ” in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience…” ESV

Paul clearly did believe in personal, spiritual forces opposed to God.

But here it is like the “self-regarding wisdom, man-centered planning, the mindset of people and society in any age and in any place including human ideas about who is wise and successful.

“as it is written” whatever the source…

Isaiah 52:15 ” so shall he sprinkle many nations; kings shall shut their mouths because of him; for that which has not been told them they see, and that which they have not heard they understand. ” ESV

Isaiah 64:4 ” From of old no one has heard or perceived by the ear, no eye has seen a God besides you, who acts for those who wait for him.” ESV

“No eye has seen (unseen)

no ear has heard (unheard)

no mind has conceived (unthought)

What God has prepared for those who love Him.

Many people have interpreted this passage to mean that what awaits us in heaven is beyond our ability to comprehend.

This is probably true. I’m sure that God has prepared for us an adventure that is beyond our ability to fathom. But this text means that God’s ways are not to be discovered through our human ability to see, hear, and contemplate.

II. God’s Wisdom: Reveal By His Spirit, 2:10-13

How can we know the wisdom of God? 2:10 Revealed it by His Spirit.

A. Only The Spirit Knows, 2:10-11

Only the HS knows all things and searches the deep things of God.

Commentators struggle with understanding the relationship of the Spirit and God. How is it that the Holy Spirit has to search or inquire? Paul is likely using the language used by his audience. Man thought that they by searching could find out God and understand Him. The Gnostics of his day were proud of their supposed secret knowledge of God. Paul is here saying that only the Spirit can know and communicate the truth about Himself.

Apart from the Spirit man remains in the dark about God.

Just as we have thoughts that only we can reveal.

So, God has thoughts that only He can reveal.

B. Revealed by Spirit of God, 2:12-13

To us – the weak and despised of the world. Not to the Sophists

We have received the Spirit of God

John 7:37-39 “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’ ” Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified. ” ESV

Romans 5:5 “hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” ESV

Romans 8:11 “through his Spirit who dwells in you. ” ESV

1 Corinthians 6:19 ” Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own,” ESV

1 Corinthians 12:13 ” For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.” ESV

And why has God given us His Spirit? 2:12

John 14:15-17 ” “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.” ESV

Who I am “in Christ”

What I have “in Christ”

What we can do through Christ

“have been freely given us by God”

the undefinable, indescribable things of 2:9

aorist = already given – not only of the future but in the present.

The Spirit enables inward comprehension of profound divine truths.

C. Divinely Revealed Through Words

“spiritual truths in spiritual words” putting together spiritual things.

divinely revealed through words.

Not subjective experiences, although we certainly need to experience God personally. It is not through feelings or impressions that we understand God.

John 16:12-13 ” “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.” ESV

Jesus therefore answered them, and said, “My teaching is not Mine, but His who sent Me. “If any man is willing to do His will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it is of God, or whether I speak from Myself. (John 7:16-17 NASB)

James 1:21-25 ” Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks intently into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.” ESV

Honest evaluation and repentance

Humble reception

A long obedience

This is my Bible

I am what it says I am.

I have what it says I have.

I can do what it says I can do.

It is the mind of Christ. It is the perfect law of liberty.

Today I will be taught the Word of God.

My mind is alert – my heart is receptive.

I humbly receive the eternal, indestructable, ever living Word of G

III. The Natural Man and The Spiritual Man, 2:14-16

The natural man does not accept this wisdom 2:14

It is foolishness to him. And he cannot understand it because it is spiritually discerned.

A. The Natural Man

yuch = soul

yucikos = natural man = the man without the Spirit

A person in their own natural resources – intellect and senses

Not a bad person or a foolish person or even irreglious.

But lacking God’s Spirit he cannot not understand spiritual truth

It is foolish for me to try and understand someone speaking Russian.

Just so, it is useless to try and explain spiritual truth to someone who is not yet a Christian.

B. The spiritual man

has the “mind of Christ”, 2:15-16 Look to and rely on God’s Spirit

pneumatikos = spiritual

pneuma = Spirit

Wisdom “among” the mature

1 Corinthians 14:20 ” Brothers, do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature.”

Philippians 3:15 ” Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you.”

Colossians 1:28 ” Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ.”

Colossians 4:12 ” Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ Jesus, greets you, always struggling on your behalf in his prayers, that you may stand mature and fully assured in all the will of God.”

Full-grown, adult, spiritual man

All Christians can be potentially mature.

But only some become actually what all ought to be.

Written only 4 years after Paul was in Corinth.

A wisdom for the mature.

The mature are those who having believed on Christ

Are ready to humbly receive God’s wisdom

Those who patiently allow the HS to guide them and

illumine them.

Those who are making progress in applying what they learn.

A long time is not required. Paul there only 4 years earlier.

The wisdom of God is known only by

The revealing work of God’s Spirit

Special revelation from God.

To the mature who eagerly and humbly receive it to apply it.

ILL: A salt water fish. Catch it. Cook it. Add salt to it and eat it.

Surrounded by salt but the salt didn’t get into it.

We are in the world but not of the world.

Choices (used 8/27/00)

“The implications of our choices carry over into what we call lifestyles. Individually they may seem to be insignificant, but when the mind-set of a whole culture is altered in accordance with those choices, the ramifications are staggering.” Ravi Zacharias

The things of God’s wisdom revealed by the Spirit enable the spiritual person to investigate and discern all things including spiritual things.

Those who are not “spiritual” have a huge vulnerability.

We are called to come up higher. To be truly spiritual

1. The true believer being indwelt by the Holy Spirit

2. The true believer humbly receiving God’s Word implanted

3. The true believer applying God’s Word over the long haul

A long obedience in the same direction.

The truly spiritual person has the “mind of Christ” in the Word of God and can thus, judge (discern) reality in their lives and the lives of others.

Why can’t Paul share this with all believers?

Because they are carnal – 3:1f.

Culture - gaining a perspective

“An old Chinese proverb says if you want to know what water is don’t ask the fish. The fish does not know any other kind of life because it is submerged in the monotony and single vision of a watery existence. To the fish, no other existence is possible; hence, it can conceive of nothing by which to measure its own existence.

Similarly, it is important for those immersed in a culture to recognize that proximity does not necessarily guarantee an accurate perspective. Proximity does not guarantee understanding. Sometimes a culture can so imperceptibly absorb and transmit ideas into its consciousness that it is hard for those within it to be objective about its practices…” Ravi Zacharias, Deliver Us From Evil, .18-19