So I've summarized the main point here of chapter two, proclaiming the wisdom from the Spirit, which is Christ crucified. In that sentence there, which is in reference to the wisdom, not the Spirit, because if it were the Spirit, it would be whom, for the Spirit is a person. So proclaiming the wisdom from the Spirit, this wisdom is crucified." The first five verses here of chapter 2. 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 in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. Paul makes himself very clear. It's actually in verse two in the parentheses, I have one there. of the singularity, the one-sidedness. I almost was going to say myopia, but that was one-sidedness in like a negative sense, so I didn't want to communicate negativity to Paul's singular focus. His being cross-eyed. He is focused on the cross. That is the proclamation that warms his heart, that he gets up every single morning to do, regardless of whether or not he will be stoned, regardless of the response from the people. He has been changed by Christ, by the crucified and risen Lord, who himself called Paul to himself as an apostle, and he is devoted to this Lord and Savior, and so he wants everyone to know that they have nothing worth living for if it's not Jesus Christ. And in this message of Christ crucified, he wants to make himself very clear that he didn't bring this message with the wisdom of men. He didn't bring this message with a flowery rhetoric, because that would detract from the gospel's true beauty. It would detract from the gospel's ease of understanding. Sometimes when there's such flowery rhetoric, we don't know what the person is trying to say. It sounds good, but wonder What is he really saying? Flower heretic, rhetoric, detraction of the gospels, transformative power. Is the transformation of the Spirit's work in the person's life due to plausible words, lofty words, or is it due to the work of the Spirit? detracts from the gospel's real plausibility. The real convincing nature of the message is not from words strung together in a good-sounding way, but in the Spirit. And so, this is not to say that Paul was some kind of literary lightweight. We read Paul's letters, and sometimes we don't know what he's saying. And we just got done listening to a sermon, or we will be about to listen to a sermon on Romans 11. And there's much there, especially Romans 9 through 11, that we might be confused about. In part, that might be because of just the way that it's written. It's complex, it's difficult grammar and semantics and syntax and all that because it's truth that requires nuance. And you might even... And again, this is not to say that there's no use of, say, like poetry. We have the Psalter and other scriptures that are poetic and that get you at your affections through the mind, of course. But what he's speaking of here is a plain style. I know the Puritans were in favor of a plain style. It's because they got it from Paul, his commitment to have a plain style, his commitment to preach the gospel with simplicity. In his first letter and in his second letter, he will speak of his commitment to be for simplicity, for his commitment to preach with clarity. He will speak of his commitment to preach with, again, a singular focus. His eye is on Christ and all that that person means for all aspects of life. He is committed to preach the gospel with humility. Paul is not lifting himself up. Whenever he's going to boast, it's not going to be because of how awesome he is. but because of what Christ has done for him. And he has a commitment to preach to desire to let the Word of God shine. That's his commitment. And he knows that there is power in the Word of God. He knows it, and we know it, but sometimes we have opposition to being committed to the Word of God. We might seem narrow-minded, we might not seem educated if we are committed to this document that's so old. Or we shouldn't fear the faithful proclamation of God's Word, regardless of how people respond. We have to ask ourselves, well, who are we committed to? Are we committed to the theological opinions of the person we're trying to persuade of Christ? Or are we committed to Christ, our Savior, who is the one who, by the Spirit, is shaping our theology? Yes, sir? I think it was in Africa, actually. And this native woman was singing this song around a fire with some other ladies, and she was singing this song, and the humanitarian workers And basically, it was translated, you must boil the water or you will get dysentery. That was what she was singing around the fire. You must boil the water or you will get dysentery. That's what Jeanne had taught her, the people in the village, so that they can prevent the spread of it. But people can get so emotional. preacher or teacher, you know, uses a certain flair or rhetoric or whatever. I mean, you know, one of the difficulties that the church has faced throughout the centuries, it shows up over and over again, is heretics generally are very personally appealing. And oftentimes they have more charisma about them than what an ordinary preacher has. That's why I can never be a heretical cult leader or teacher. That's right. People, not drawn, yes. So what you were saying reminds me of something that we'll talk about later on in 1 Corinthians chapters 12 and 4 on the gifts of the tongue and praying in spirit with the mind and not understanding or understanding based on interpretation. That's a good word to anticipate what we'll look at later. Paul's persona, he's weak. I think that's noteworthy. He views himself as a servant who is entirely dependent on the Lord for any kind of strength for the day to proclaim and to minister. He needs Christ. And if you were just to look at Paul's life and his learning, you say, wow, that's gotta be a strong man. He is head and shoulders above so many of us, and yet he calls himself weak. And he proclaims the message of Christ with fear and trembling, not fearing man, as he'll say in 2 Corinthians. I know the fear of the Lord, and so I persuade men. I'm not fearing man, I fear the Lord. I'm his servant, he has called me his own, he has saved me, and this is a sober message that must be shared. This is not a light matter, so I will not take it lightly. I will approach this with fear and trembling. His preaching, we already looked at a little bit, empty of lofty speech and human wisdom, devoid of plausible words, words that seek to convince with flattery. He's not here to butter up the Corinthians. There were some super apostles that he has to address in 2 Corinthians that were perhaps doing some of that buttering up. Paul's preaching was demonstrative of the Spirit and the power. And of course, it would be demonstrative of the Spirit and power because this message of the gospel is breathed out by God. This is inspired. And it's this message that is profitable. for teaching, for proof, for correction, for training in righteousness, that the man of God would be complete, competent for every good work. Well, that's only possible if the Spirit is underlying that word. If this is just man's word, it's going to fail. It's going to die with man. Paul's spirit-empowered, cross-eyed purpose, as he says in verse 5, is that our faith might rest in God's power. A couple applications here. Avoid temptations of being novel and cute in your communications. I was made aware just recently, I guess a couple weeks ago on social media, of some It was a clip by Kosti Hinn. He's the nephew to Benny Hinn. He's a follower of Christ and has tried to show some of the errors of the prosperity gospel. But he shared a clip of what was going on in what's called Bethel Church in Redding, California by a woman named Jen Johnson. She and her husband are the worship leaders at this church. That means they leave the music. And she, I don't know the setting of this, it may have been a sermon or a Q and A or something, but she was sitting on the stage in a nice comfy chair and like maybe a round table discussion, but as far as I know, she was the only one there. And she was talking about just imagining what the angels are doing in heaven. She's like, I imagine that the angels are just like texting each other. What's God talking about? What's he saying? And then, if that weren't bad enough, Kathy, I know that's the right response, having even farting contests, she says, her words, that they're just having farting contests and texting one another. And she said that God, to her, because God makes himself very personal to the individual, so really there isn't any way that we could challenge our own personal understanding of God's revelation to ourselves, but to her, God is silly. God is a lot more fun, her words. And she likened God to the genie from Aladdin. funny, and even sneaky, she said. Okay, well, based on the response from the, I don't know, the church members, they really enjoyed this. This was a novel way of communicating what the angels are doing, which is, of course, totally a wrong communication of what the angels are doing. We know what the angels are doing in the heavens. We know that they are worshiping and they're saying, holy, holy, holy, and they are covering their eyes because of the holiness, the refulgence, the light of God. And it is not a light matter. They're not texting each other if they had celestial cell phones or expelling gas. They don't have that, okay? It's ridiculous. But people like that kind of thing, to hear that novelty. sharing the message. I guess the wisdom of God is not sufficient. We have to flower it up with some weird things. Our wisdom comes from God, since our faith rests in Christ. So ask yourselves, who are you putting your faith in? We're all trusting in someone or something, And we are trusting that person, that thing, that worldview, whatever the area might be, we're trusting that person, corporation, organization, to give us the wisdom in that field. So a lot of people, Christians and non-Christians, will trust in, say, Freud and his theory of psychoanalysis and the unconscious. People will trust in all kinds of other views, and they're showing that that's where they see wisdom coming from. Paul's saying our wisdom is coming from God, as we are trusting in Christ, who is the wisdom of God. If the only message from Paul was Christ crucified that he wanted to major on, what implications does this message have for all our communications? We kind of addressed this a little bit last time. Johnny, and I'm going to come closer just so that the audio is a little more clear. I think that's what charismatic women is looking for, always looking for a new revelation, always looking for twisting the words like a fresh outpouring. Yeah, that's the Athenians that we hear of in Acts 17. They were always about finding out what's new. Now, we should, because the Scriptures are rich and we will never be able to plumb the depths of the riches of God's Word, we should be constantly searching for deeper truths for more connections from one passage to another. And we have, you know, authors who help us with those understandings. But that's a different thing because that's all connected to what the Bible is saying. That's just as proper Bible interpretation and understanding the Word of God. There's really nothing that you can get from a good necessary consequence from Scripture about the activity of the angels that Jen Johnson was advocating. Anything else to this question about the implications of the singular focus of Christ crucified for all our communications? And that is where we're at the starting point of all things. Everything else goes with evolving. You can't have a good household. You can't have a good pastor. You can't have a good elder or deacon. You can't have anything if it's not Christ-centered. Our lives need to evolve around that. And it's not easy. Christ demands a lot. And we fall short every day. But that's the essence of what we are and what He lives now. He reigns now. He is in control of all things. Good, bad, indifferent, whatever it is, it comes from his hands. So we need to be Christ-centered. We need to preach Christ in him crucified. And I think that's what Paul is getting at. It involves every aspect of our lives. And again, we do fail. We're not perfect at it. But we need to keep striving and working and laboring to do the things that we ought to be doing. everything else that we do, whether it be in your household, whether it be in your work, whether it be in play or sports or whatever it is, everything stems from that. And so that is our point, our tip of the spear. In my mind, that's how I see it. I think, unless I'm wrong, I think that's what Paul is trying to put out there. Right, well, and he doesn't just for 16 chapters say, Paul was crucified, know this, Paul was crucified, know this, Paul was crucified, know this. He's taking that message and applying it to all of his communication with all the areas of concern that are in that letter. So it's, the message of the gospel is far-reaching. I remember when I was in, when I was a being interviewed by this session at a PCA church in Peoria, Arizona to become an elder, one of the elders asked me, what's the gospel? And that's a question that we might take for granted, but he did not want to take that for granted. He wanted to know, is this guy who might be an elder, does he know what the gospel is and can he communicate it? Because if he can't, he really shouldn't be an elder, right? This, it's not, that's the message of the gospel, and that's what elders, that's what we all are to be about. That's Christ crucified, and we should not take that for granted. That's our starting point. That's how we operate. Yes, sir. Yep. Yep. On the third commandment, you shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. It says what is required in the third commandment. The third commandment requires the holy and reverent use of God's names, titles, attributes, ordinances, word, and works. And then what is forbidden, it forbids all profaning or abusing of anything whereby God makes himself known. And the larger Catechism has even more to help us tease out what it looks like to take in vain God's name. Yeah, that's a good point. Moving into verses 6 through 16. I'll read these, 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. But 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 eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him, these things God has revealed to us through the spirit. For the spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. 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 is himself 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. And so he wants to make sure, Paul is saying, verse six, don't think that we don't impart wisdom. We do. It's just of a different kind. It's not the wisdom of the world. It's not the wisdom of men. It's not this agey kind of wisdom. This is a wisdom from below, as to use James' words, that we're not advocating. We're advocating a wisdom from above, a heavenly wisdom. a wisdom revealed by God himself. And this wisdom is not understood by the rulers of this age, which might seem like blasphemous, like a blasphemous charge. How can the rulers of this age not know this wisdom? They're the rulers of the age. They're supposed to be the most wise. That's why they're ruling. That's why they're governing. We want our rulers to be wise rulers. If we did not think them wise, we would not put them in their position of governance. But Paul's saying, the rulers of this age, this world, they don't know this wisdom from God. If they had known, they wouldn't have crucified the Lord of glory. lest their own powers be neolized, made to nothing, like the white witch in the Chronicles of Narnia who killed Aslan. She destroyed her own power, her own plan. Doug Wilson in his commentary says, who says that God lacks the wisdom to bring good out of evil? Take the most grotesque murder in the history of the world. What could God possibly do with that? Well, what he did was save the world with it. Amen. This wisdom is one that doesn't pass away. Remember, if this wisdom is coming from the spirit, The Spirit is eternal. How then could this wisdom pass away? Its passing away would be dependent upon the Spirit's passing away, which is not going to happen, can't happen. The Spirit, as God, cannot pass away. It was a secret and hidden wisdom, he mentions. It's a bit ironic. We impart a secret and hidden wisdom. Well, if it's secret and hidden, how do you know it, Paul? The wisdom hidden during the Judaic age is no longer so hidden. We have the fullness of revelation in Christ. There was a time when people did not connect all the Christological dots. They did not understand the Messiah, they did not understand the Christ as they ought to, as the Old Testament was portraying Him to be. And even Jesus' own disciples had difficulty understanding and making those connections, and they didn't get those connections until Jesus was raised from the dead, and then He sent His Spirit to make known these things to them. to recall all the things that Jesus was saying and the significance of what Jesus was saying. That requires revelation from the Spirit. So, it's not a forever hidden wisdom. It is revealed, and Paul had that revelation, was able to impart it to the Corinthians. Likewise, we proclaim the message of Christ crucified It's for our glory. We share in wisdom and glory because of our fellowship, as we saw in the previous chapter. Our fellowship is in the Son by the Spirit. God has prepared unimaginable things for us who love Him. We can imagine a lot of cool things, can't we? Give a Just let a child's imagination run wild and you'll be amazed at all the things you'd never thought could be. I didn't know you even would have thought that thing. It's amazing. God has given us a wonderful imagination. But even our own wonderful imaginations don't measure up to what God has gifted us. We don't know or we cannot imagine the half of all of the saving benefits that we have by the Holy Spirit. We don't know how good we have it. We know that we have it good, but we don't know how good we have it. and we get to grow in that knowledge as we continue to see God's, as we continue to know God's word and see how God is acting in our lives and how he is taking his people and they will culminate in this glorification, being raised from the dead in union with Christ. There's a fundamental difference There's a fundamental reason why some get this wisdom from the Spirit, why some understand it, and some don't. And that's where he speaks about two kinds of persons, the natural person and the spiritual person. I did uppercase that S. Spiritual person, the one who has the Holy Spirit. I think that we should especially, well, I think, When we have the word spirit or spiritual, the default would be uppercase S, and we'd have to make a case for it being lowercase s to interpret it that way. So even in verse 13, interpreting spiritual truths, those are truths from the Holy Spirit. And spiritually discerned in verse 14, I think, is in reference to being discerned by means of the Holy Spirit. The natural man cannot understand this wisdom. It's an inability for the natural. That means the one who's not been born again. It's an inability to understand this wisdom of Christ crucified. Well, if it's an inability for this person, this is a moral inability because of his own sin, then why would we be preaching? Why would we be proclaiming this message of Christ crucified? If the natural man can't understand it, why keep telling him about it?" Say that again, Kathy. Right. Yeah. They know by hearing. How are they going to hear it? Preaching. Steve, were you going to say something else? Okay. God works through his word, spirit, the proclamation of his word. There is a human agency that is required. We must preach the gospel. Paul would say in 2 Timothy 2 that he endures everything for the sake of the elect. It's the way he goes from town to town. That's why he faces opposition and being stoned and all kinds of physical suffering. He does that because he knows that if he doesn't go over there to give the message to that person, that people, that they won't believe. But he knows that if he does go, because there are elect in that town, they will believe. because of the Spirit, and the Spirit's working in the minds of the people wherever Paul goes. A spiritual man can understand this wisdom because he has the mind of Christ. This is a spiritual enlightenment. This is not a rational enlightenment where we are praising reason. If we just understand reason rightly, then we will know all the truths of God's Word. God doesn't operate, say, apart from the use of our minds. He enlightens our minds, but it's the work of the Holy Spirit that must take place in order for our minds to know and appreciate, love this wisdom. Yes, sir? or having a broken part, and that you go, well, man is incapable of something. Isn't it kind of unfair to hold accountable to it? But I think that as we're looking at scriptures like this, it's not that man's heart is missing some part or broken in some way, that actually every part of human nature, every part of our humanity, is an act of rebellion against God. Our thoughts and feelings and our will, everything is an act of rebellion against Him. So when we hear the wisdom of God, we regard it as foolishness, not just because of a normal kind of inability, but because of a moral rebellion against God. Right. Yeah, like going back to Romans 1 where there's this suppression of the knowledge of God that is an active suppression and is replaced with all manner of ungodliness. Spiritual man judges all things and is judged by no one. This is spiritual discernment. If we have the enlightenment that we need by the Spirit, then we can also rightly discern, judge spiritual matters. This does not mean that there is no sense in which we can judge others. In fact, Paul will even speak of that in 1 Corinthians 6. Jesus speaks about judging with right judgment. This does not make the spiritual man judge of the Spirit. For this spirit of judgment is a gift from the Spirit. This gift of wisdom enables the spiritual person to know the eschatological trajectory, the end times plan here of the things that God has prepared for them. We are no longer thanks be to God in the dark about the redemptive historical things of God. We hear the voice of Christ. And this shapes how we live wisely. Calvin says, the meaning then is this, away with all the discernment of the flesh as to this matter. It is the spiritual man alone that has such a firm and solid acquaintance with the mysteries of God as to distinguish without fail between truth and falsehood, between the doctrine of God and the contrivances of man, so as not to fall into mistake. He, on the other hand, is judged by no man because the assurance of faith is not subject to men, as though they could make it totter at their nod, it being superior even to angels themselves. This does not make all spiritual persons free of error. or ignorance on all matters. It would be wonderful if we suddenly knew all things and made no mistakes, and that's why we don't need to be, that's why we can't be judged by anyone. I know all things. I have the Spirit. Who are you to judge me? Calvin says, Paul does not extend his faculty to everything so as to represent all that are renewed by the Spirit of God as exempt from every kind of error. but simply designs to teach that the wisdom of the flesh is of no avail for judging of the doctrine of piety, and that this right of judgment and authority belong exclusively to the Spirit of God. Insofar, therefore, as anyone is regenerated, and according to the measure of grace conferred upon him, does he judge with accuracy and certainty and no farther. So the application for us in this case would be be diligent in knowing the Word of God. Very quickly here, the Spirit searches divine depths. Wilson summarizes each person in the Trinity's roles in reference to this wisdom. He says, the Father is the Speaker, and the Son is the Spoken. and the Spirit is the interpretation. If you wanted to continue with an S alliteration, then I would suggest significance or signification. He is the one who is interpreting the spoken Son. And remember, the Spirit is coming from both the Father and the Son. And because the Spirit can search the depths of God, verse 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. That tells you right there that that's an act of God. That's an activity of God. So what does that mean about the spirit? Not that the Spirit is some impersonal force at the behest of God, that the Holy Spirit is God himself. He is one of the persons of the Godhead. And because he searches the depths of God, he is fit to impart divine wisdom. If you discern the things of God, you have the Spirit of God. Praise be to God. And so, be a student of the Spirit, which means be a student of the Son, which means be a student of the Word of God. If you love the folly of Christ crucified, then again, thank God for your wisdom. When we need wisdom on spiritual matters, we must listen to the Word of God. The unimaginable things for us that God is preparing make current carnality and human wisdom unattractive. Because we have something so much better, so much greater for us, we can lay aside every sin and weight that so easily entangles us. We can pursue Christ over the things of the world that do seem appealing. But we have something much better. We have Christ crucified. and all the saving benefits that accompany our Savior. Let's pray. Our wonderful God, we thank you for the grace of understanding, for the grace of wisdom and discernment, judging rightly spiritual matters, We know, Lord, that this is a grace and this is not something that we somehow earned ourselves or matured to a point where we can then receive such revelation. Lord, this is a gift from you. Help us, Lord, to always appreciate that it is a gift and to come before the throne of grace regularly asking for this wisdom in all manners of life. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.