We Have the Mind of Christ: Sermon on 1st Corinthians 2:1-16

The Foolishness of Preaching

As Paul continues the subject that he started in chapter 1, the subject of the cross of Jesus Christ, to the Greeks foolishness, to the Jews a stumbling block, but to us it's the power of God to Salvation.

Anecdote

I heard a story about a preacher named Dr. Ironside who was speaking and giving his testimony about how Jesus had saved him at an outdoor event in San Francisco and at the end of the event a man came up to Dr. Ironside and handed him his card.  And Dr. Ironside recognized the name on the card, it was a man who was a well known socialist at the time, known specifically for his agnosticism[which is basically a philosophical belief that we can’t know truth], in fact he was going around and lecturing in Universities on his version of agnosticism and ridiculing the bible and Christianity in general and on the back of the card there was a challenge for Dr. Ironside to come the following Sunday at 4 o’clock and debate the man in an open forum on the topic of Agnosticism vs. Faith in God.  So Dr. Ironside stepped again to the podium still with a few hundred people there that hadn’t left yet and read to everyone the card with the challenge to come debate Agnosticism vs. Faith in God.  And he said, I would like to accept the challenge to do this debate, on this condition.

This man must bring with him one man whose life had been destroyed by alcohol and wild living and had really come to the end of the road of his life but went to hear one of the lectures on Agnosticism and as a result found his life was changed and is now living a worthwhile life.  

Or, if he will bring one woman whose life was destroyed by prostitution and drugs and all and by going to one of his lectures on Agnosticism has been transformed and is now living a wonderful clean life.

And, Dr. Ironside promised to bring with him that Sunday at 4pm, 100 men whose lives have been transformed in just this way and 100 women whose lives have been transformed by the Spirit of God working through biblical teaching.  And he would have these 200 people on stage with him as he debated the man.

And the fellow standing there just shook his head and walked away knowing that he couldn’t produce one who had been helped by the philosophy of agnosticism, the wisdom of the world, it doesn’t change lives, it doesn't lift the fallen.  And let’s be clear, the preaching of Dr. Ironside or me or Pastor Brandon or any teacher isn’t what does it either, it’s the Spirit of God that comes in and is the only thing that can really change us, making us Born Again… Born from Above.

Let’s Pray:

Father help us today.  We need our helper, the Holy Spirit to be with us during this service.  Take out the words that are from me and from this world so that only your words are left.  We want to hear from You today.  Only You have the bread of life that we need.  In Jesus Name, Amen.

To Corinth

We are in a series on the book of 1st Corinthians in our church for as long as it takes going verse by verse studying God’s Word so open up to 1st Corinthians chapter 2 with me today.

At the time that Paul was writing to the Corinthians, Greece was known for its philosophers at the Ariopagus and its worldy wisdom and Paul is writing to the Corinthians about the wisdom of this world and how by it the world knew not God, but God chose by the foolishness of preaching to bring man to the understanding of His saving power and His saving Grace.  As a person who gets to preach, I love that phrase, “through the foolishness of preaching.”  God’s Spirit can do work on us right now through the foolishness of preaching, so let’s dive into verse 1.

The Text

1 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.

What is the testimony of God? That He so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, who died on the cross bearing the sins of the world.  That God had laid on Him the iniquities of us all, in order that through His gift to us we might receive Eternal Life and might know what it is to live in fellowship with God.  That it is possible to know God and live in fellowship with God because of what Jesus did for us.  

It was typical in Corinth for people to come and speak or lecture or preach.  They were called Sophists or wisdom tellers.  And the Sophist would come with a carefully spun story, with clever ways of articulating a message, to attract a crowd and gain a following, it was the Social Media clickbait of its day, remember to follow and subscribe for more awesome wisdom content just like this… But, Paul says, I deliberately DID NOT DO THAT.  I came with a straight forward Gospel Message.  In Acts 18, when he went to Corinth, he goes to the synagogue and he shares the gospel in the synagogue and some of the jews and many of the non jews begin to believe.  It creates a stir so he goes into a house next to the synagogue because he’s kicked out of the synagogue.  It was straight forward gospel stuff that he taught them.  Not that Paul couldn’t speak in lofty eloquent and even tricky terms.  Remember, he was a Pharisee of the Pharisees, he was perhaps the most educated man in this whole city.  He was exceptional at philosophy, remember the Ariopogus at Mars Hill in Acts 17, it says that the men of Athens and the visitors came to here of some new thing and Paul used philosophy in their own culture to point to the one true God, he starts quoting secular philosophers in his message, “for in Him we live and move and have our being.” That’s a direct quote from Epiminedes a Cretian philosopher.  And then he says “for we also are his offspring” another quote from a different philosopher, Eretus of Sole.  So he pulls from the philosophical world and he is very able to do so, but in Corinth, he didn’t come doing that.  He just declared the simple blunt good news of Jesus.

2 For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all preaching was done with that heart? Resolving to know nothing except Christ Jesus… 

I’m reminded of a story I heard once about a church that had a huge stained glass window of Jesus on the cross directly behind the pulpit and one Sunday there was a guest speaker who was a much smaller/shorter man than the pastor of that church, who was much taller and larger like I am.  Well while this smaller visiting preacher was speaking a little girl turned to her mother and said, “where is the man that is usually up there making it so we can’t see Jesus?”  

And some preaching is like that, designed to be showy and eloquent and to bring glory to the speaker, when what preaching is supposed to be is pointing the way to Jesus, not getting in the way of Jesus.  So Paul is trying to really surrender himself and do this right, he says, 

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.

The simple message of salvation is all Paul was concerned with.  To share with you the simple message of redemption through Jesus Christ.  The message of the Cross, to the Jew a stumbling block, to the Greek foolishness but to those that are saved, the power of God.

Think about this, everywhere Paul had gone to preach up to this point ended with riots.  The message created a real uproar among the people.  In Lystra, they stoned him and thought they had killed him.  In Philippi he was thrown in prison.  In Thessalonica he was brought before the judges.  They had to rush him out of Berea because he created such a story.  In Athens he was scorned.  So, can you imagine by the time he got to Corinth…

He would be trembling and in fear and in weakness… but remember as he was there in Corinth and as was usual he was brought before the judge by Sosthenes, the chief of the synagogue and the judge dismissed the case but then the Lord spoke to Paul and said, don’t be afraid, and the Lord said, I have many people in this city and so Paul stayed there for a year and a half teaching them the word of God.  Declaring a simple message that Christ died for our sins and rose again on the third day.  He didn't want their faith to stand on the wisdom of man, but on the power of God.  Faith based on the wisdom of man is a shallow faith because someone can come along with greater persuasive powers and persuade you away.  If you can be persuaded into something then you can be persuaded back out of something.  Paul wanted them to experience the power of God in their lives… just like Dr. Ironside.  The proof is in the pudding.  A life that is transformed is the best testimony of the work of the Spirit in a Christian’s life.  Don’t be persuaded.  Be transformed.

God’s Wisdom Revealed by the Spirit

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. 

Paul didn’t have much respect for the wisdom of the world, he said that comes to nothing.  And I think that history proves that point, the wisdom of man, look how the wisdom of Lenin was embraced by the Soviet Union.  The wisdom of the world comes to nothing. Whether it’s the wisdom of Nietsche or Darwin or Socrates or Aristotle or John Locke or Calvin or Armineus… And I include some Christian Philosophers in there because I always notice with Calvinists and Arminians that when people pick a philosophical side, there is always a lack of unity.  It’s like in the first chapter of 1st Corinthians when people say, I am of Paul or I am of Apollos, that’s the same as when people say, I’m Calvinist or I’m an Arminian.  With all due respect to both Calvin and Armineus, they’re both dead and Jesus Christ is alive, so don’t follow philosophy, even Christian philosophy, follow the only one who can save you from your sin… and I’ve discovered that the more spiritual a person becomes, the less denominational they become, the less divisive they become.  So, Paul didn’t come with the wisdom of the world and he didn’t even come with the wisdom of Paul.  He says in verse 7,

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. 

Reread that.

When God shows you a thing with His Spirit, He had that thing ready to show you from the foundation of the World!  Get this picture in your mind, the wooly mammoth was roaming the Earth and God was thinking, ya know what?  there’s gonna come a day when everything is lined up for my beloved child I can finally say to them in the Spirit when they stand in line in the supermarket, that person over there is sad, they’re going through something, ask them if you can help, if you can pray for them.  And they’ll find out that what that person is going through is the same thing my child was going through a year ago, and they have bible verses and testimony of what I can do and they can share hope with that sad person and God will be glorified in the supermarket on that day. 

Supermarkets hadn’t been invented yet and God had a plan to use them for His Glory.  Further back, it’s day 3 of Creation and in between causing the dry land to appear and making every kind of vegetation God thinks, ooh my child is gonna pray for them in the produce aisle next to the descendants of this vegetation I’m creating right now.  Do you ever think about what it means for God’s plans to be so much higher than our plans?  Well, when God tells you something in the Spirit, it’s not like the wisdom of the world that has been here for a few days and will be gone and proven wrong in a few days.  He had that ready from before the Foundation of the World… meditate on the power that is in God’s Words.  The Father knew He would send Jesus to die on the cross for our sins, He knew from before the foundation of the world, this is the mystery that we can now grasp in the Spirit and the World can’t understand because it has to be revealed to you in the Spirit, not by human thinking.

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.  

Isn’t that really the difference?  Isn’t that what we’re really looking for?  Now I’ve alway been an intellectual kind of guy.  I earned a minor in philosophy when I was in college, I enjoyed arguing over things, I enjoy thinking hard about things.  I think that God gives us a mind and we should use it.  I’m a math and physics teacher for crying out loud!  However, the words that really matter are the words taught by the Spirit.  Do you want to know how we can best engage with the Spirit?  When you read the bible, ask for the Spirit of God to meet you and help you understand what you’re reading, to help bring it into your heart and change you by the reading of it… to remind you of what you have read in the moment when you need it, to write it on you heart, because this Word is God-Breathed and will train you in righteousness, real righteousness, not self-righteousness, real righteousness.

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. 

I had this experience recently.  I was explaining salvation by faith to another teacher at school.  We were having a discussion about forgiveness and she was concerned that murderers can be forgiven and go to heaven.  She said that was idiotic and I told that is the whole point.  You can’t trick God and pretend that you’re sorry and want to be forgiven.  He’s God.  He sees the heart and he says if you hate your brother then it’s just like having killed him. 

If you want to be forgiven of having hate in your heart then you also have to accept that murderers can be forgiven by God.  But, guess what, with real repentance and being born again, you are no longer a murderer, you are no longer what you were before.  God can make all things new.  You are clothed in the righteousness of Christ not in your old filthy rags anymore.  But this sounds like foolishness to the unbeliever.  It’s too simple and too strange… this is why we are all prone to trying to WORK for salvation, to try to EARN it.  It just seems foolish that it can be SO FREE and SO PRECIOUS at the same time.  That there can be so much GRACE for a sinner like me.

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.

Paul is getting ready to drop the Holy Spirit hammer on this letter.  He has set the stage for us for the coming weeks.  All of these problems in the Corinthian church and in the American church and in every church ever are about to be brought up and dealt with.  So the foundation of dealing with sin and marriage and finances and what is ok to do and what is not ok to do and how the church should be run and everything else… the foundation is that we need to listen to the Spirit of God, not the wisdom of men.  Jesus Christ not only died for you, but he rose again, defeating death and sent to us a helper called the Holy Spirit so that you could have the mind of Christ.  One final note about this for you.  I think it isn’t a mistake that he says “we have the mind of Christ.” instead of something like each of you individually has the mind of Christ.  There is power in the unity and the fellowship of the believers that is such a mystery.  If you see something in the bible that you think the Spirit is teaching you, share it with other believers.  Let yourself be sharpened as iron sharpens iron.  You don’t notice everything and you don’t see everything in the Spirit but as a church, “we have the mind of Christ.”

So there are some things to think about today as we continue in 1st Corinthians.  Now, don’t be just a lazy pew-sitter.  You should read chapter 3 this week.  If you are in our bible study methods class you know that I would recommend to read it at least 5 times, pray that the Lord will open it up to you and make it useful to your life, the Spirit of God will give you the mind of Christ, to rightly divide the word of truth, in Jesus name, Amen.