6 The Great Divide - I Corinthians 2:14-16

Transcription

1 1 6 The Great Divide - I Corinthians 2:14-16 This is the final sermon in the series from I Corinthians 1-2 called, Cross Purposes. Paul was wrestling with a problem that we face as well. Why is it that the world is so antagonistic to our message? What is it about the cross that offends modern folks? Paul addressed this in First Corinthians chapter one and two. We have been following his explanation for a few weeks now and come to the end of chapter two. We can summarize the main things we have learned in five key statements: 1) The people of the world hate us and our message because they regard the message of the cross as foolishness. Nothing about it will make sense to them even though the message of the cross is true wisdom from God. 2) 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. 3) 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. 4) Paul gave another reason for the world being so antagonistic toward us. We know some things that the world doesn t know and they can t stand it because they can t understand it! We should not be surprised that the world does not understand us because it cannot understand our message. The world has no clue about us because the world completely misses the message of the cross. 5) We know the truth only because the Holy Spirit revealed it to us. If the Spirit had not revealed the truth to us, we never would have discovered it on our own. That leads to one final question: If our message is true wisdom from God, why doesn t everyone recognize it and believe it? Or said another way, if the gospel is true, why aren t all the churches filled to overflowing every time the doors are open? That s the $64,000 question. The final section of Chapter 2 gives us the answer. Paul explains that there is a great divide in the human race. The fundamental division of the human race is not based on race, gender, age, money, physical appearance, skin color or ethnic background. The things that so greatly divide us as human beings don t seem to matter to God. Everyone in the world is in one of two groups. Paul calls one group the natural man, the other group he calls the spiritual man. Everyone reading these words is either natural or spiritual. There is no third category. I. The Natural Man v. 14 Literally, the first phrase of verse 14 reads the natural man. The phrase describes a person who lives on the natural plane of life and judges everything according to his senses what he sees, hears, tastes, touches and smells. He recognizes no reality beyond his senses and lives as if this world is the only world there is. His reason is based on these faculties and any other way of thinking is considered foolishness. That s why he rejects the gospel as foolishness. The Greek word for foolishness means that which is dull, boring, insipid, useless, ridiculous, and even stupid, which is more or less a catchphrase of the younger generation. This explains why you can bring a lost person to a church service and even though you find it deeply moving, he is bored to tears. Nothing makes sense to him. Nothing penetrates his heart, and the whole thing is a waste of time to him. And that s why you can give him a Christian book and he ll find it boring. You can witness to him and use all the stories and verses you know and he just ignores everything.

2 As a natural man, he naturally rejects the gospel because the gospel is supernatural. It comes from another place. Since he doesn t believe that there is another place, he rejects anything purporting to come from a place he doesn t believe exists. But this is his only option because he lacks the spiritual perception necessary to understand the gospel. Unless you have been a Christian for so long that you have forgot what life was like as a lost person, you can understand their reasoning. I can! I reasoned the same way. How could the death of a Jewish prophet over two thousand years ago from a place and culture foreign to me have any bearing on my life today? The very thought is ludicrous! Idiotic! It makes no sense to the natural man. There are four key words in verse 14 that help us to grasp Paul s point, and the last one is the most important: receive or accept foolishness know or understand discern. The word discern is a legal term from the first-century that refers to the ability of a wise and experienced judge to sift through mountains of evidence and testimony to reach the proper verdict. There is legal discernment (in the courtroom) and there is spiritual discernment (in life itself). This sort of discernment is the ability to properly translate the message of the gospel so you can understand it and believe it. Because the natural man (a term that really means the unsaved") lacks that inner translator, he never comes to the right conclusion about the gospel. It remains foolishness in his eyes. Let me illustrate. In my former church we gave birth to three ethnic churches, one of which was Korean. To me, the Korean language is both mysterious and beautiful. As I would sit in their worship or prayer times, I found myself leaning forward, trying to understand, as if by leaning forward and concentrating, I could somehow figure out what they were saying. But it didn t matter. No matter how hard I tried, I could not translate the words by myself. The mind craves order, and in a strange environment, the mind goes to great lengths to bring order out of chaos. That is why I was straining to understand what was going on in that Korean service. I remember once I was worshiping with our Arabic speaking congregation. The pastor was known for his long sermons. He was, of course, preaching in Arabic. I must admit that my mind wondered to all my other responsibilities. As I was halfway listening to him, I was positive I heard him say in clear English, Now we can play checkers. My head jerked up and I gazed in amazement at hearing him say in his best English, Now we can play checkers. I felt I had been given the spiritual gift of interpretation of Arabic! But I had not been given any such gift, if it even exists. What had happened was this: Because the mind craves order and strives to make sense of the environment, my tired brain had listened to a stream of Arabic words and had tried to make sense out of them. So my brain had taken little bits of Arabic words and had translated them into English that came out as, Now we can play checkers. Now don t miss the point. The Arabic pastor had not said anything in English. And he hadn t said anything about checkers. But because the mind craves order, my brain had created its own order out of chaos even though what was created had nothing to do with what was said. That s what happens when we don t have someone to translate for us. Remember this phrase: The mind craves order. That is also absolutely true in the spiritual realm. Even though the natural man does not understand the things of God, he still leans forward and strains to understand. But because he lacks the translator of the Holy Spirit, he creates his own order out of the chaos he is experiencing. That s why you can talk to an unsaved person for hours and they may not understand what you are saying. They just don t get it. Or you tell them, Jesus loves you. He died to save you, and what they hear is, Now we can play checkers. You said one thing, it made no sense to them, but because the mind craves order, they heard something entirely different. They fabricated sense out of nonsense. Without the translator of the Spirit, the lost person will never understand the gospel. In His wisdom and timing, Holy Spirit will translate the Gospel message we deliver into the heart of the lost person and suddenly the light will come on and faith will be born. But until the Holy Translator does that, it is all about playing checkers. 2

3 With this background, we can now understand those four key words of verse 14. The natural man cannot discern the truth of the gospel on his own. Therefore, he does not understand the message and regards it as foolishness. And that s why he does not accept it. It all goes back to his inability to discern spiritual truth. The gospel will always be a mystery to the lost, and Christians will be a riddle to them. Things totally clear to us are not at all clear to unbelievers. Their inward state must be changed by the Holy Spirit or they will never understand the message we preach. II. The Spiritual Man v The term spiritual man does not refer to a special class of Christians. Sometimes we hear certain believers called spiritual as if they were super-christians. That s definitely not what Paul means here. To be spiritual means to have the Holy Spirit in your life. If you are a Christian, the Holy Spirit indwells your body, mind and soul. So the spiritual man equals the saved or the believer or the born again. Paul basically makes two points about those who know the Holy Spirit. First, those who are spiritual understand God s truth because the Spirit of Truth lives in them. That s the implication of the phrase "But he who is spiritual judges all things. The verb judges translates a word that means to appraise something; to assess its value. In the art world, there are certain people who are fulltime art appraisers. They can look at a painting and say, That s a forgery. It s worthless. Or That s worth $5,000 at auction. Or That s a Rembrandt. It will fetch at least $7 million. These appraisers are well paid because they have the ability to spot the real value of a painting. I don t have that ability. I can look at a painting for hours and never know that it is a forgery. It s exciting when you learn the true value of something you own. That s why the PBS program Antiques Roadshow was so popular. Every episode featured someone who bought a lamp or an old trunk at a flea market for $40 only to discover that it s really worth thousands. We watch the show and then we go rummage through our garage, hoping to find that valuable piece of junk we almost threw away last week. We watch because we want to know the true value of what we own. Paul says that, because we have the Holy Spirit, we can properly appraise the real value of things. We can give an accurate spiritual assessment of spiritual things. Our own missionaries, Adam and Erin Bishop serve in Jackson Heights, New York. They have a tremendous multi-ethnic ministry. Adam was a staff minister at a great church in Alabama. Their kids were very young. They owned a home and life was great. When God began to call them to mission work in inner city New York, friends and family naturally questioned their decision. I mean, life was great as it was! Why upset the apple cart? But Adam and Eric appraised their work in Alabama and in Jackson Heights, and found that being obedient to God and going to New York was a much higher value than staying where they were. They didn t regret the move or the drastic change in lifestyle. They simply understood that God was calling and they had to go. Obeying God was of more value (and ultimately more satisfying) than staying where they were. Those friends and family members who were spiritual understood and blessed them, while those who were natural didn t get it at all. Those who are spiritual know the true value of things and make their decisions accordingly. Second, unbelievers are in no position to judge believers because they do not know what we know. That s the second phrase of verse 15 " yet he himself is rightly judged by no one. That does not mean that the Christian is beyond rebuke or question. It doesn t mean we do whatever we want and no one has anything to say to us. Quite frankly, God has often used a lost person to rebuke or question my decisions on matters. What this means is that the natural man does not have the yardstick that can correctly measure or judge spiritual matters. Think of it this way. We can understand unbelievers; they can t understand us. We understand them because we were once just like them. They can t understand us because they have never seen the light. A man who was blind and now sees can truly say, I know what it s like to be blind, but the man who has always been blind can never say, I know what it s like to see. 3

4 That is why we must treat unbelievers with kindness, patience, with a winsome spirit and a gracious heart while we wait for God to open their eyes. The saved know why the lost do what they do. The lost have no clue about why the saved do what they do. Verse 16 explains that we understand the things of God because we have been given the mind of Christ. That s why even in the worst moments, by means of Holy Spirit believers can make sense of the puzzle of life. It s not that we have all the answers or that tragedy never befalls us or that we have an easy road. But because we know the Lord, we understand that He holds the big picture of life, and even when the pieces don t seem to fit, we know there is a pattern to things that otherwise would make no sense. This gives us hope in the darkest moments and gives us faith to believe when we would otherwise give up. This explains the fundamental difference between believers and unbelievers. Spiritual vision is always greater than intellectual brilliance. Why don t unbelievers understand? They can t. They don t have Holy Spirit. They need the translator of Holy Spirit. Without that divine translator the gospel and all spiritual matters are just foolishness to them. That s why they roll their eyes when you talk about Jesus. You might as well be talking Navajo to them. That s why they laugh and make fun. That explains why you feel left out when they get together. You ve got something they don t have. You ve got the Holy Spirit. They don t. That makes all the difference in the world. What conclusions should we draw from all this? First, this teaches the absolute necessity for salvation. You must be born again. Education is good but it has its limits. You can t educate a fish into an ostrich. You can train a pig but you can t educate him into being a horse. You can improve yourself in many ways and make your life better in the process. You can take a pig from the mud, clean him up, put a pink ribbon around his neck and let him go. He ll run right back to the mud. Why? He s still a pig! Don t consider him stupid for going back to the mud. What else would you expect a pig to do? It s home to him. It makes sense to him. It feels good to him. He s a pig! The same is true in the spiritual realm. Only a radical transformation of the heart by the Holy Spirit can change a man from the inside out. Second, wisdom and eloquence by themselves will never lead anyone to Jesus Christ. This does not argue against study and preparation, or a clear presentation of the Gospel, but it does mean that we will never argue anyone into the kingdom of God. Third, unbelievers don t see because they can t see. Therefore, we should not get angry when unbelievers act like unbelievers. How else are they supposed to act? The deaf cannot hear, the blind cannot see, the lame cannot walk, the dead cannot move, and the natural man cannot understand the things of God. Fourth, Christian preaching must always center on the Jesus Christ and Him crucified. This is the heart and soul of our faith. This is the very first spiritual truth that Holy Spirit will reveal to the natural man. The Gospel is the key. We preach it, teach it, and share it and Holy Spirit has the human presentation He can bless to open the eyes of the lost. The more we talk about Jesus, the better off we will be. The further we drift from Him, the less help we can give to the world. Fifth, the Christian faith is supernatural from first to last. It is not natural in any sense. Those operating on a purely human plane will not see it. They will attempt to explain it away or to laugh it off or to find some other explanation for it. Sixth, all this ought to make us profoundly grateful for our own salvation. Once we were like the people of the world. We would still be that way if God had not touched our eyes and made them see, 4

5 opened our ears and made them hear, touched our lips and bid them speak. He sent his Spirit and gave us life. No one was ever made worse by believing in Jesus. I never heard anyone say on his deathbed, I wish I was lost again. Seventh, we can be bold knowing that the people of the world are unqualified to stand in judgment over us. Let us speak the true gospel of Christ without fear of what others may say. If people don t understand, it s because they can t understand. If they oppose the gospel, it s because their eyes are blind to the truth. Let us be bold and humble at the same time. We should pray for God to open the eyes of those around us so that they might see what we have seen. Think of the work of evangelism as having two parts: We have the message and the Holy Spirit has the translator. Your words won t work without a translator and the translator doesn t do any good unless there are words that need translation. As you share Christ, pray for God to give your friends the translator that will help them understand what you are saying. I close with a simple prayer for effective evangelism. It balances our part, God s part, and the greatest need of those who don t know Jesus: Lord, give me the right words to say to those who don t know you. And give them ears to hear the words you give me. Amen. 5