4 What This World Doesn t Know - I Corinthians 2:6-9

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1 1 4 What This World Doesn t Know - I Corinthians 2:6-9 Have you ever wondered why the world is so antagonistic about our message? I mean, we are taught that the Gospel is Good News right? Yet many respond to it as if it was offensive to them. Have you ever wondered why that is true? The Apostle Paul wrestled with this matter in his letter to the church at Corinth. In 1 Cor. 1-2 Paul offers some conclusions. First of all, the world hates our message because it seems to be utter nonsense to them. Paul used the word foolishness. From that Greek word we get the word moron. In Paul s day, the Gospel was considered moronic, idiotic, and foolishness. But Paul explains that it is through what the world calls foolishness that salvation was made known to all mankind. Through the foolishness of preaching, God showed His wisdom in how to save souls. Then we discovered another reason the world thinks us foolish. God has not chosen to make the Gospel known through the rich and famous or the high and mighty. Rather, God has chosen plain, ordinary, common folks like you and me to proclaim the Gospel. That is crazy to the world s mind. Last week we learned that the world hates us because we have one message and one solution to man s deepest needs: Jesus. Paul determined to preach one sermon over and over again: Jesus died for our sins and rose for our eternal life. That s it! Everything else he preached or taught flowed out of that truth. The world wants a smorgasbord of truths that they can choose from. They want to make their own mix of spiritual stew that is just right for them. Most importantly, they don t want anyone telling them that they are wrong about anything! So when we quote Jesus saying, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me, they cringe and rebel. They hate us for our narrowminded message. Today I want to share with you yet another reason Paul gave for the world being so antagonistic toward us. We know some things that the world doesn t know and they can t stand it! READ the passage from 1 Cor. 2:6-9. I want you to underline one word in this passage and pay special attention to it because Paul repeats it four times. It s the word wisdom. There is the message of wisdom that Paul shared with others. There is the wisdom of this age that really is not wisdom at all. There is God s mysterious wisdom that is really hidden wisdom that the world has never understood and does not understand now. Wisdom can come from one of two places God or the world. God s wisdom leads us in one direction; the world s wisdom leads us in another direction. God s wisdom and the world s wisdom stand forever at odds with each other. The only time they come in agreement is when the world agrees with God. You can have one or the other, but you can t have both at the same time if they are contradictory. This principle explains so much that happens around us. It tells us why unbelievers think like they do, and it helps us understand why they sometimes ridicule what we believe. Put simply, they lack the true wisdom that comes from God. Paul explains this in verse 14. But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. The natural man is the lost man, the unbeliever. There are some things the world simply does not know. Paul mentions at least three of them in this passage: 1) The world doesn t understand who Jesus is. (v. 8). Let that thought hang in the air for just a moment. for had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

2 If they had known If they had understood But they didn t! Who is they? Let me share two possibilities. (1) Satan and his minions. If the Devil had known what the Trinity was up to, he would never have put Jesus on a cross! God knew Satan s heart and plan, and that plan dovetailed into the Father s plan. He allowed Satan to continue on his freewill choice to seek to destroy the Son, all the while knowing it was only going to fulfill the Godhead s plan. (2) The humans who were leaders at the time. The High Priest, the Sanhedrin, the Pharisees, etc. If they had known who Jesus really was, they would not have plotted to put Him to death. This means that Pilate didn t know who Jesus was. Yes, he had heard the stories, the wild rumors about healings and miracles, and people brought back from the dead. You could hardly keep things like that private. The news had spread like wildfire. Pilate had heard all of that, and he no doubt believed some of it. He seems to have been a cautious seeker, a man who is fascinated by Jesus but cannot commit himself to believe in him. When you read the gospels, Pontius Pilate appears as a kind of tortured soul a man caught between the demands of his job and a genuine curiosity about Jesus. What is truth? he asked. It was not an idle question. He really wanted to know the truth. I do not doubt that he wanted the crowd to choose Barabbas over Jesus. When he washed his hands with water, he was trying to say, I did the best I could to save this man but I couldn t. His blood is now on your hands. It didn t work; it could never have worked. Pilate and all the leaders of the Jews who chanted Crucify Him, stand guilty of a terrible crime crucifying the Lord of glory. Only they didn t know Jesus was the Lord of glory. Exactly who they thought Jesus was, we cannot say for certain. But this much we know they didn t know, didn t understand, and so they had him crucified. A beloved spiritual says it this way: Sweet little Jesus Boy, they made you be born in a manger. Sweet little Holy Child, didn t know who You was. Didn t know you come to save us, Lord; to take our sins away. Our eyes was blind, we couldn t see, we didn t know who You was. The world didn t understand Jesus when He walked on the earth, and the world still doesn t understand Him today. That fact ought to give us patience when we talk to unbelievers. Sometimes when lost people say foolish things that are rude and unkind, we may be tempted to retaliate with unkind words of our own. That s almost always a bad idea. It s like cursing a blind man because he can t see the color green. The lost are not only lost; they are also spiritually blind. Consider the words of II Corinthians 4:4, The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. Note three important facts from this verse: 1) It is the work of Satan to blind unbelievers to the truth of the gospel. He has a personal interest in keeping the lost blind and confused so they will continue to serve him. Satan didn t understand the Gospel before the crucifixion and resurrection, but he does now! He can t stop what is already been done, but he can blind the eyes of lost men and women so that they can t see the truth of the Gospel. 2) This blindness occurs in the realm of the mind so that unbelievers remain confused about the truth of God. The blindness is mental, moral and intellectual, but it is supremely spiritual. The light shines all around them, yet they stumble along in the darkness. 3) As a result of this moral blindness, unbelievers literally cannot see the truth of the gospel. That is why when a person says, I just don t see what you re talking about, that s not an excuse, it s the literal truth! They don t see it because they can t see it because Satan has blinded their mind. That leads me to remind you of one of Holy Spirit s great ministries to the lost. He is there to open their eyes to the truth about their sin and God s plan of salvation. Jesus stated plainly, And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin (John 16:8) So, Satan blinds the eyes of the lost but Holy Spirit opens their eyes and convicts them of sin. 2

3 This helps us in several areas: First, it saves us from the folly of thinking we can argue people into the kingdom. We can t and it s generally a waste of time to try. The danger of arguing with unbelievers is that sometimes we win! (Jonathan s experience with our neighbor) Second, this truth humbles us because it teaches us that salvation is entirely the work of God from beginning to end. Yes, we are commanded to preach the gospel to the whole world, and we are to speak the truth in love and to tell the world that Jesus saves. But it is not our words that will save people. It is the power resident in the gospel itself. Even though we sometimes talk about winning people to Christ, in the final analysis, we don t win anyone. We preach and pray and share and talk and discuss and answer questions and we become all things to all people so that we might by all means win as many as we can. But our efforts amount to a big fat zero apart from the mighty working of God s Spirit. Third, this truth frees us to be bold because everything depends on God and not on us. Our part is to be faithful and share the truth about sin and the grace of God in Jesus Christ. Holy Spirit s part is to convict of sin and accomplish salvation. When you understand that truth, and when it grips your heart, when you know that the power rests with God and not with you, then you are free to speak up and free to step out in faith even though others may misunderstand and some may oppose you. You can be bold because it doesn t depend on you anyway. It all depends on God! You re just God s errand boy. Our text suggests a second thing that the world doesn t know. 2) The world doesn t understand who we are. The world has its own wisdom. It has a worldview that systematically leaves God out of everything. That s why the elite media called General William Boykin ignorant for connecting his Christian faith to the war on terrorism and for saying that the real enemy is Satan. He was been called foolish, small-minded and bigoted. It seems that if you are a Christian in a public position these days, you dare not open your mouth about your faith or you risk public ridicule and perhaps the loss of your job. But what else should we expect from people who do not understand Jesus and therefore do not understand His followers either? When Paul says the rulers of this age are coming to nothing (v. 6), he means that in the end, they will be exposed as having been wrong about the most crucial fact in the universe. I recall something that one of my seminary professors said at the end of a class discussion on creation and evolution. Men, don t get angry at the evolutionists. They are doing the the best they can do. He s absolutely right. Apart from God, how else do you explain the universe? Where did it come from? Evolution at its heart isn t about science; it s all about religion. It s a religious worldview dressed up as science and put forward as a way to explain everything in the universe without ever referring to God. Why get angry with people like that? Apart from God, what else would you expect people to believe? But there is something else the world doesn t know about us. (3) The world doesn t know or understand what God has promised us. That s the real meaning of verse 9, a verse often quoted at funerals, Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him. I am convinced that this verse is absolutely appropriate for funerals. Indeed we have only the slightest insight into all God has prepared for us in heaven and eternity. But that is not quite what is meant in the context here. The world is wrong about Jesus. They are wrong about God. They are wrong about us. And they are wrong about heaven. For all the reports you hear about near death experiences and the out of body moments you read about, lost men and women are clueless about the afterlife! 3

4 Have you noticed how nervous lost people get at a funeral? Death bothers most of us to some degree, but it really bothers those who don t know the Lord. Funerals remind the unsaved that one day they too will die, and what will happen then? Watch them at a funeral They come late, they hang around in groups, they go up to the casket, take a quick look and then get away from there as fast as they can. Everything about death makes lost people nervous. When they come to a funeral, they don t understand the hymns, the Scripture, the prayers or the sermon. It s all a mystery to them. Why? Because apart from God they literally can t see it, they can t hear it, they can t understand how Christians can be certain that we are going to heaven. Here s what I ve noticed. You can always tell who the Christians are. Always. It shows on their faces. They smile when they hear the scriptures read and the great songs of the faith sung. The nod when we talk about the wonderful change that came over their loved ones when they came to faith in Christ. True believers love to hear about Jesus. That s one mark of genuine conversion. They love to hear the gospel. They love to hear about people being saved. They love to hear about heaven. But I notice often at funerals that not everyone is happy. Some people look puzzled, some seem troubled, and a few seem angry. During one presentation, some people walked off after I finished the story of the deceased s conversion. They just didn t want to hear it. Believers rejoice to hear the gospel told. Lost people don t know what to do with it because they don t understand it. And it shows on their faces. Notice how Paul puts it in verse 6: We speak wisdom among those who are mature, and again in verse 7, hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages. We know things the world doesn t know. We speak things the world doesn t understand. How do we know these things? It s not because we re smart and the world is dumb. Paul has already said that God chooses the weak and foolish and despised things of the world to make up His family (I Corinthians 1:26-31). It s not because we have high IQs and lost people are stupid. The people of the world are no dumber and no smarter than we are. How is it that we ended up with this incredible wisdom from God? Verse 9 says that no eye sees, no ear hears, no one understands these things. But that s not the end of the story. Look at verse 10: God has revealed it to us by his Spirit. Everything we know, we know because God has revealed it to us. We didn t discover it or figure it out through human logic. Everything we know about God and Jesus and the gospel, all that we know about heaven, has been revealed to us by the Holy Spirit of God Himself. If God had not chosen to reveal these things to us, we would not know them. We would still be blind. We would still be deaf. We would not see, we would not hear, we would not understand. There is one difference, and one difference only between us and the people of the world. That difference is God! He has revealed the truth to us by His Spirit. Now we see. Now we hear. Now we understand. It s God and God alone who deserves the credit. All praise to Him. None to us, not now, not ever. But to say this is to say nothing more than what we learned to sing a long time ago: Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see. There is no room for boasting, and no need for it either. We should never be surprised at what the world says or does. They don t understand because they can t understand. They don t see because they can t see. They don t hear because they can t hear. They are truly lost, truly blind, truly deaf, truly dead and they don t even know it. If you are among those who can see and hear and understand the truth, do not take any credit for it. Get down on your knees and thank God for opening your eyes. Thank God for rescuing you from the pit 4

5 of despair. Thank God for turning your life around. Thank God for giving you eyes to see, ears to hear, and a heart to understand his truth. And then pray like crazy for those who are blind and deaf and without understanding. Ask God to do for them what he has done for you. Speak up and tell them the truth because it is the truth that sets people free. Do not despair if they do not understand. There was a time when you did not understand either. Look what God has done for you. Who knows what God may do for those who don t know what they don t know? In that hope we preach and pray and sing the praises of our gracious God. Amen. 5