Human wisdom vs. The Wisdom From Above

1Co 2:9  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"-- 1Co 2:10  these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.

One of the many profitable things about studying the Bible verse by verse in its context is that we sometimes realize that verses we have heard preached all our lives and have quoted ourselves, have been done so out of context which many times results in a misunderstanding.  Verse 9 above is a good example.  It is generally taken to mean that Heaven is so wonderful that we can’t even imagine its glories. 

To be sure this is a truism.  There is no way we can fathom what it will be like to stand before the triune, eternal, omnipotent, holy God.  Paul hints at this in Rom. 8:18 when he tells us that this life cannot compare to the next and in 2 Cor. 12:4 when he is not permitted to relate what he saw while in Heaven.  It is a “no brainer” that we have no real idea what lies ahead, but this verse in 1 Cor. 2 is not referring to that.

The context of chapter 2 is pitting the natural wisdom of man against the wisdom of God that can only be known by special revelation.  Vs. 7 says that while saints have this wisdom, the lost do not; it is hidden from them.  Vs. 8 is a case in point.  Had Herod, Pilot and the Jewish leaders had this wisdom, this revelation and  believed it they would have never have crucified Jesus. 

In this context Paul quotes Isa. 64:4, not verbatim but in spirit.  If you study out Isa. 4 you see that this is used to relate the idea of how wonderful it is for God to reveal himself and have a relationship with man.  Vs. 4 suggests that as a rule no one really understood the glory of God until he comes down and reveals himself to them in some way and this is why Paul uses it in 1 Cor.  The natural man has no interest in the plan of God in saving sinners and bringing them to glory.  The Jews didn’t even see themselves as sinners so they had no interest in a savior who was going to hang on a tree, become cursed by God all for the forgiveness of their sins.

Vs. 10 proves that vs. 9 is speaking of those lost who are in darkness because it says that whatever is hid in vs. 9 from them has been (present tense) revealed to us.  That is why I highlighted it.  Whatever vs. 9 is speaking of we already know it!

So what is the meaning and why make it a point to explain what this verse really means?  First of all, because it is never good to misquote a verse if we change its meaning.  God put it here for a reason which is more important than any point we might want to make by misapplying it.

Secondly, this is showing that the natural man is unable to believe the gospel until God reveals it to him by changing his heart and mind.  To me, this is a decidedly Calvinistic verse in a decidedly Calvinistic couple of chapters.  All of us are born into this life in the darkness of sin in which we love ourselves and hate God and we care nothing for why he made this earth and the salvation he has provided and what is more we are quite happy to remain in the dark.  This is the worldly wisdom of this age that is taught in the universities and promoted in the media.  And if it is held to it will lead us merrily to God’s Judgment. 

What this passage is saying is that unless God comes and reveals himself to us and changes our hearts to believe on him there is no way we can come to the knowledge of salvation on our own.  In other words, this passage is teaching the effects of total depravity and the necessity of the sovereign intervention of God to save without which we are all lost because our darkness won’t allow us to see and love and believe who God is and what he is doing.  If you read through these first two chapters with this in mind I think it will be clear.

Dating Christ But Unwilling to be Married to Him

Hag 1:4  "Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, while this house lies in ruins? Hag 1:5  Now, therefore, thus says the LORD of hosts: Consider your ways. Hag 1:6  You have sown much, and harvested little. You eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And he who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes. Hag 1:7  "Thus says the LORD of hosts: Consider your ways. Hag 1:8  Go up to the hills and bring wood and build the house, that I may take pleasure in it and that I may be glorified, says the LORD. Hag 1:9  You looked for much, and behold, it came to little. And when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why? declares the LORD of hosts. Because of my house that lies in ruins, while each of you busies himself with his own house.

Every so often I meet someone who denies what Haggai says in the above text.  Of course, if the truth be admitted it is something we all struggle with but some have seemed to have given up the fight entirely.  Haggai tells the people that their lives are not turning out the way they should, that they are not fulfilled because they are living for themselves instead of for God.  They have failed to realize that life can only be fulfilled and meaningful if God is center of it and not just getting along in the flesh.

I have seen this is a couple of obvious ways in people’s lives.  One man told me that his priorities are God, family, church.  My response is that the church is the body of Christ through which God speaks to us and builds us up in the faith.  It is then the place in which your family is fed spiritually and come to learn of God’s will for them. Therefore I would see it more of God, church, family. Of course what he was telling me was that while he has to acknowledge God as the most important thing in his life, after that his next biggest obligation was to take care of and enjoy his family and then attending church comes after that.  More specifically, feeding and protecting his family took precedence over having his family under the ministry of the Word of God. 

Apparently the fallacy of this type of thinking is not as obvious as I might suppose.  My primary response to him is that making sure your family knows God’s will and has the proper relationship with Christ (their spiritual food) is more important than their physical needs.  Of course caring physically for your family is a top priority for any father and husband, but when these two things get mixed up bad things happen just like in the above text.  How many parents will sell their souls so to speak to provide for their families and usually way beyond what they actually need by working during church or being too tired to make it to church and being too busy to train them in the Word of God and their children grow up to follow their example by putting material concerns over spiritual? 

Secondly, this was illustrated oddly enough but not surprisingly by this man’s grown son.  Like so many “Christian” parents, he assumed that the children being involved in all sorts of activities including sports teams was more important than anything else including church services.  Since his son was a gifted baseball player he was involved in all the city and school teams which, of course, means playing on Sundays.  And this in turn meant that the whole family had to support him by being at the games even if it meant missing church. 

When I asked what about having his family in church, his response was that since his boy had committed himself to the team it would be wrong if he didn’t attend all the practices and games.  Now, it is hard for me to take such a response seriously but actually it was quite serious in more ways than one.  My immediate question is what about your supposed commitment to Christ and his body?  What about the souls of your children?  Is it more important to be a good athlete or a good Bible student? 

Yet this is the norm today, not the exception.  Clearly few have any concept of the glory of God and the seriousness of serving him.  I recently heard someone put it like this: “A lot of people are dating the church but are not married to the church.”   Think of it like this, what woman with an ounce of brains and self-respect would agree to have a relationship with a man who just wanted to date her but not commit to marriage with her?  What if he said, “I would like to get together once or twice a week and spend a little time with you but the rest of the week is “me time”.  She would know right off that she wasn’t very high on his list of loves.

And yet many think God will accept this from his creatures.  “God, I have a lot of things I want to do every week, make money, have fun, rest, spend time with others, etc., so when I can I will spend an hour with you and your family but then I have to get back to living my life.  Oh, and sometimes I just won’t have time to get there at all, and I definitely won’t be able to get there more than briefly Sunday morning.”  We are willing to date Christ, but we are not willing to be his bride!  Hearing what he has to say and learning how to serve him is far from the top of our priority list and we wonder why our “faith” doesn’t seem very satisfying, why we don’t get anything out of the messages, why we don’t have much in common with his body, etc. 

Like God said through Haggai, “Consider you ways”.  Busying yourself with your own house while ignoring his house will not end well for you or your family that you say you love.  If we love our families and our own souls we will make sure he has first place in our lives and that our children see that he does.  

What is it to "Preach Christ"?

1Co 2:2 For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.

It is not unusual for many to view Christianity as just another world religion.  There are several reasons someone might think this way but I can think of at least one reason that nominal and even true Christians themselves are guilty of conveying to the lost.  

When the Apostle Paul walked into a city to evangelize he didn’t rent out the local coliseum, hire the best speakers and the best musicians and try to wow the lost into “considering” Christ.  He also didn’t present Christ as the latest and best guru who can turn your life around if you will follow his teachings.  It is this last point in particular and all of the above to some degree that causes more confusion than help in evangelism. 

Many of the best known TV preachers today do not preach the cross of Christ as the focal point for sinners to find forgiveness.  They present Christ as a great teacher and they might claim he is the divine Son of God as well, but they focus on living like he taught as the answer to life’s problems rather than telling sinners to bow the knee to him as Lord and Savior. 

We have referred to this as using Christ to deny Christ.  To present Jesus as someone who teaches us a better way is getting the cart before the horse.  Sinners don’t need to hear how to do better, they don’t need to hear the Sermon on the Mount and be told that they need to straighten up their lives to get freed from the destructive ways of sin.  They need to hear how to have their sins forgiven and be made right with God by the cross of Christ. 

To preach the words of Christ without the cross of Christ will only produce self-righteous, moral hypocrites.  This is why Paul preached the gospel alone when he came into Corinth because sinners don’t need to be told to do better they need to be told that they can’t do better and that is the problem.  To be clear, our first duty is not to point them to Jesus’s teachings and example as if they need to shape up their lives but to point them to a Savior who alone is righteous.

Preaching Christ is not to be done in a way to get what we want; it is to display the glory of Christ Jesus and our need of him.  I believe John Piper put it something like this, “Watch out for the preachers who never mention these things, for whom the cross is a mere token symbol, for whom the exceeding sinfulness of all our hearts is scarcely mentioned, who use power, wisdom, fame, and luxury to beckon the self-centered middle-class American to consider himself Christian at no cost to his pride and self-sufficiency.” 

Others, like the slick TV preachers, think we have to sell Christ to the lost, make him and following him look so attractive and the answer to all their problems so that they will jump on board.  They make him look attractive by suggesting that we are capable of living in such a way to invoke the blessings of God.  This is just another form of legalism that thinks God’s blessings come from some other source than the cross.  As I said to begin with, all this does is make Christianity look like every other religion that tells sinners there is something they can do to gain God’s favor.

Refusing the Blessings of the Lord

2Ch 36:20  He took into exile in Babylon those who had escaped from the sword, and they became servants to him and to his sons until the establishment of the kingdom of Persia, 2Ch 36:21  to fulfill the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed its Sabbaths. All the days that it lay desolate it kept Sabbath, to fulfill seventy years.

Israel had failed to keep the covenant in pretty much every area but here the Lord is clear that the length of their captivity is determined by the number of times they failed to keep the Sabbath years.  Apparently they had failed to do this at 70 times and so now the land will get its rest.  We might wonder why the Lord chose this particular sin to determine the length of their punishment.

For one thing God had told them before they entered the land that this would happen if they failed to keep the covenant, Lev 26:34  "Then the land shall enjoy its Sabbaths as long as it lies desolate, while you are in your enemies' land; then the land shall rest, and enjoy its Sabbaths. Lev 26:35  As long as it lies desolate it shall have rest, the rest that it did not have on your Sabbaths when you were dwelling in it.  And I think that one reason he uses this particular sin is because it is a sin that attacks his very person in a very “in your face” kind of way.  And I say that knowing that all sin is a personal attack on the Lord.

Briefly this law was a command to be blessed by the Lord as all commands are but this one is so obvious that it is good to remind ourselves of it.  Every seventh year they were not to plant anything.  They were told to take the year off, let the land rest and just enjoy the Lord.  In Lev. 25 when he gives the particulars of the law he says that on the sixth year they shall get such a large crop that they will have enough for three years.  In other words, they would have enough for the next year, and since they were not to plant anything the next year, they would have enough for that second year and even though they would plant on the second year the Lord was giving them an extra year to boot so they could be generous to those in need.  You see why this was such a wonderful Law.  They were given every seventh year off from having to work the farm and make a living. 

And so think of the sin here.  On the sixth year everyone got a triple harvest and yet it seems the majority of the people either wouldn’t trust the Lord to take care of them through the next two years and even worse even though they had all they needed in their hand they still wanted more and went ahead and planted anyway.  Either way they were not content and satisfied with the Lord neither would they commit themselves to his care.  It seems the Lord took it pretty personally and we wouldn’t expect anything less.  I would add to this that if they lived this way every seventh year we can pretty much assume they lived like this the other six years.  God was being very gracious to hold just the Sabbath years against them when they were failing to trust him pretty much nonstop. 

Their actions were the opposite of living by faith which isn’t just trusting the Lord but living for him and being satisfied in knowing and having him.  This is a good lesson for us to remember.  The Lord has promised to supply all that we need and I think of Ephesians 3:20 Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us.  As a rule he does and gives us more than we actually need.  And yet, like Israel of old, we often fail to look back on his years of blessings and provisions neither do we look forward in faith based on his promises and keep on working and worrying like all that matters is making as much money as we can.  We act like if we don’t take care of ourselves no one will.  And we live as if taking the time to enjoy and serve the Lord isn’t as important as securing our place in this world.  Like Israel we forget that our “crops” are given to us to serve him and we come to believe that our life is ours to live as we want. 

No wonder the Lord picks this epic failure as the key point in the length of the Babylonian Captivity.  

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

Deu 28:63  And as the LORD took delight in doing you good and multiplying you, so the LORD will take delight in bringing ruin upon you and destroying you. And you shall be plucked off the land that you are entering to take possession of it.

Without question the above verse should cause a Christian to do some serious reflection on just exactly who God is and what he expects of his creatures.  It isn’t a passage that we should read through casually for sure.  But I think equally obvious is that most people and probably most Christian don’t realize the Bible even contains such passages.  When our theology is mostly a questionable interpretation of John 3:16 it is going to be very difficult to understand a God who does all things for his own glory including judging sinners instead of trying to get as many saved as he can. 

The fact of the matter is that sin brings God's wrath upon the sinner.  Sin is to live our way and to reject God as the sole reason and motivation for living.  Such an affront to God must be punished if God is a righteous Judge.  I recently made a statement while preaching that we are not saved from sin so much as we are saved from the wrath of God.  Such a statement caused some of my own people who have heard such preaching before to take notice.  I suppose it is because in modern times we tend to hear only that God loves everyone and very little else about the nature of God. 

Right after I made this statement in a message I had it illustrated to me when I came across a recent development in the Presbyterian Church USA.  It looks like the committee putting together their new hymnal has rejected the Getty song, “In Christ Alone”.  The reason stated is because it contains the phrase, “Till on that cross as Jesus died/The wrath of God was satisfied”. 

One wonders why this would cause controversy.  The Bible speaks of the wrath of God towards sinners throughout, Rom 1:18  For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.  Eph 2:3  among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.  

But evidently there are many in the PCUSA (and all other denominations) that don’t want to think about the wrath of God.  They asked the Gettys if they could change the words to, “As Jesus died/The love of God was magnified”.  Thankfully the Gettys said no.  There is certainly nothing wrong with what the committee wanted to change the lyrics to but it is the fact that they were offended by the first ones that show why these lyrics cannot be changed.  Too many today have no idea that they are going to face a wrathful God someday unless they repent and believe in Jesus. 

By rewriting biblical truth we take the teeth out of the gospel.  If God loves us just as we are then what incentive do we have to repent lest we fall into the hands of an angry God if God, in fact, isn’t really angry at all?  By all accounts Jonathan Edwards was a dry speaker who read his sermons verbatim.  Yet it was through his and other’s preaching about “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” that led to the Great Awakening.  I imagine this explains the ineffectiveness of the church in our day when some are doing everything they can to remove all references to this “Angry God”

Don't Worry About the Secret Things, Live in the Light

Gen 42:36  And Jacob their father said to them, "You have bereaved me of my children: Joseph is no more, and Simeon is no more, and now you would take Benjamin. All this has come against me."

Act 23:11  The following night the Lord stood by him and said, "Take courage, for as you have testified to the facts about me in Jerusalem, so you must testify also in Rome."

You might be wondering what these two verses have in common other than they are both in the Bible.  What they have in common is that they both speak of what God calls all Christian to experience in this life.  A lot of people, especially those who speak on TV seem to think that once you decide to become a Christian God is so happy to have you in the family he will do whatever it takes to make you happy and trouble free in this life as long as you have faith. 

What the Bible actually teaches us is that the call to serve the Lord as Christians is to live in weakness so that the power of God can be seen in us, 2Co 12:9  But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 2Co 12:10  For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.  Paul is a good example of this in that while he served and glorified the Lord as well as anyone before or after his time, he did it through primarily suffering, not comfort.

With that in mind the above two texts start to come together for us.  In Jacob’s case he couldn’t seem to fathom why the Lord was taking his sons away from him.  He seems to have resigned himself to this and is willing to accept it from the Lord but he is missing something very important in his thinking.  The Lord is not just being cruel; he was actually putting his family through all this in order to supply food for them so that they would not starve to death.  He didn’t have Romans 8:28 to read like we do so we should expect more of our faith since we have more revelation to believe in.  We know that all the hardships and trials and what to us seems like needless suffering is actually God working in us an opportunity to display his glory and teach us that he is better than what this world offers. 

Paul’s case teaches us this also.  The Lord tells him that he is going to eventually get to go to Rome and preach the gospel.  But Paul isn’t told immediately that the way to Rome is the way of hardship, not glory.  The Lord gets the glory when in our weakness we succeed and in suffering we are faithful, joyful and content.  So while Paul is fully in God’s will, it is clear that God’s will is trial not comfort.

Let me say it like this: we must not live by his providence but by his precepts.  By his providence I mean what seem to us as circumstances.  We many times can’t put his providence together to make any sense.  It seems like random circumstance even though we know that is not the case.  The lost live by “happenstance” of everyday life, unable to make any sense of it, having no direction as to what is going on and what to do about it.  We can’t understand his providence but we can understand his Word.  Only his Word provides a foundation for living.  We can easily misinterpret circumstance just like Jacob did and get depressed or fearful or worried.  But if we keep in mind what God says about life we will realize that suffering is what we have been called unto and be patient and joyful in tribulation because we have the light of God’s Word to explain what is really going on and how it is all going to end. 

So we live by the Word and watch God do his work and not fall apart in the mean time because this is the way he works.  We leave providence to the Lord and worry about what he has revealed to us, Deu 29:29  "The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.  Why worry about what we cannot know when the Bible is there to guide our way?  

Psa 119:104  Through your precepts I get understanding; therefore I hate every false way. Psa 119:105  Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.

Working Up a Thirst

Joh 19:28 After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the Scripture), "I thirst." 

Far from being merely an historical account of Jesus’ death, the Gospels recount these events in such a way to explain what is going on spiritually.  John alone omits the three hours of darkness as Jesus hung on the cross but he is the only to tell us that Jesus said “I thirst” after the three hours of darkness.  Why does Jesus call out only minutes before he gives up his life that he is thirsty?  Was it necessary for him to get a drink and then die?  I think the word “thirst” is significant.

When someone is thirsty we might say that it is because they have exerted some sort of work and are weary because of it.  I think this is the point here.  He was doubtless thirsty three hours before but it is here that he proclaims his thirst.  His thirst right after his great work of making atonement for sin, of bearing the wrath of God, of suffering the effects of the curse points to the fact that he has done some great work and is therefore thirsty.  This comes right after the three hours of darkness when he suffers the separation from the Father as the Father’s wrath is poured out on him.  This is specifically the work of substitutionary atonement in which he does the work that we could not do for ourselves. 

He told the woman at the well that if she would believe in him or drink from spiritual water she shall never thirst again.  How can he keep this promise?  Because he in his death has provided eternal life, he became thirsty by doing a work that we could not do so that we would never thirst like he did that day.  He took our shame, pain, death, punishment, abandonment, Hell, burden, all the futility and all the unfilled desires that sin brings.  He suffered the abandonment of God so that we never will have to.

The Samaritan woman’s thirst, not just physically but spiritually would be continuous because she had no way to gain life in herself.  Hell is eternal for this very reason.  Sin will always leave us wanting because to be separated from God is to never be fulfilled, never happy, never satisfied, totally ruined.  Only in Jesus’s work can sin be atoned for and our “thirst” be satisfied. 

I am glad that one day Jesus was thirsty so that someday I never will be in need of anything again.