God’s Wisdom: Hidden & Revealed

God’s Wisdom: Hidden & Revealed

“God’s Wisdom: Hidden and Revealed”
(1 Corinthians 2:6-10)

Series: Chaos & Correction

Rev. Todd A. Linn, PhD

Henderson’s First Baptist Church, Henderson

  • Take your Bibles and join me in 1 Corinthians, chapter 2 (page 768; YouVersion).

 

We’re preaching through 1 Corinthians, verse-by-verse. That’s what we do here, preaching through books of the Bible. The Bible comes to us this way, as as a book to be read verse-by-verse, studied verse-by-verse, so we preach it verse-by-verse.

 

When we were last together we studied the opening verses of chapter 2 where Paul talks about his preaching. Gospel preaching focuses on the right person, Jesus Christ. Gospel preaching is not about the one preaching, but about the One preached. True Gospel preaching does not draw attention to the speaker–is the preacher funny, is the preacher smart, is he hip and cool, and so forth–but Gospel preaching puts the focus squarely on Christ Jesus. Preachers may be guilty of drawing attention to themselves when the sermon is remembered only for jokes, stories, impressive vocabularies, and so on. Paul labored to preach in such a way that people would not look to him, but rather would look to Him, Jesus. In the verse where we left off, Paul says–verse 5–I preached in such a way that “your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.”

 

Then having said that, Paul clarifies that the Gospel itself is a Gospel of wisdom. But the cross is not a wisdom understood by those after worldly wisdom. The cross is a supernatural wisdom, a heavenly wisdom concealed from the understanding of some of the wisest people on earth, and revealed by God to those who are saved, and often revealed to some of the most unlikely of people. Listen again for that teaching as I read from verse 6 and following.

 

  • Please stand in honor of the reading of God’s Holy Word.

 

6 However, we speak wisdom among those who are mature, yet not the wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing.

7 But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory,

8 which none of the rulers of this age knew; for had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

9 But as it is written:

“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.”

10 But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God.

 

  • Pray.

 

Introduction:

 

Some of you know what it’s like to think that you see okay with your eyes only to go to the eye doctor and find out you don’t see so well. When I was much younger I thought I was seeing okay until I was clowning around one day and put on someone else’s glasses and I started looking and said, “Hey, I can actually see a little better through these.” I went to the eye doctor, took a test, and got a prescription and got a pair of glasses and put those on and it was like the world came alive. I saw things I had never seen before. Driving home I saw the trees along the highway as I had never before seen them, tiny pine needles and leaves standing out crisply in brilliantly sharp hues of green. I could now read the road signs clearly–imagine that, how safer it is to see: “Danger Ahead!”–the lettering on the sign boldly appearing. It was like there was a whole world I had been missing. Before I was living in the blur and now that I could see there was a whole new world that had opened up to me.

 

The Gospel is like that. Before salvation we live in the blur. We don’t even realize this at first. We may go years this way, just going about our lives and not even realizing our blindness. And there are signs we don’t really see because we don’t really read them correctly. They warn us about what lies ahead and we just keep driving along, moving forward in ignorance. We think we’re doing okay and yet there is this world we do not see. And one day God penetrates the blur. He comes to us through the power of the cross and we hear the Gospel and something happens to us. We can see now, really see. Everything looks differently than it once did. The cross becomes to us a lens through which we now see everything so clearly.

 

Now this is what Paul is talking about here in the verses of our text. He is contrasting earthly wisdom with heavenly wisdom. He is contrasting life in the blur with life in the clear. And the reason he is doing this is because–remember this now in the larger context of these opening chapters–the reason he is doing this is because the Corinthian church had taken their eyes off the cross. It’s as though they had gotten their eyes fixed and got a pair of glasses and could see everything so clearly, but then they took their glasses off or they misplaced them, their glasses are gone, lost underneath the cushions of the couch or something. And Paul is like, “You guys find your glasses and put ‘em on!” Get your eyes back on the cross.

 

See, the behavior of these church members in Corinth indicates that had taken their eyes off the cross. Their behavior demonstrates that they were becoming influenced more by human wisdom than by God’s wisdom. The Corinthians, you will remember, had become divisive and ungodly. They had become more influenced by human wisdom and ways of thinking than God’s wisdom and ways of thinking.

 

So Paul takes them back to God’s wisdom. He takes them back to the cross. If Christians are going to be the persons God has called them to be, then they are going to live a cross-centered life, remembering Christ died there on that cross for their divisive natures, Christ died there for their sinful talking. Christ died on that cross for their gossiping, slandering, and yammering. And they too must crucify themselves regularly, remembering that all of this is possible only through Christ, the wisdom and power of God (1 Corinthians 1:24).

 

Someone said, “Christians never really move on from the cross of Christ, rather Christians move into a more profound understanding of the cross.” (paraphrase of David Prior). And that’s what Paul does here, he leads the Corinthians back to the cross that they may get their eyesight clear again. And what Paul does for the Corinthians, he does also for the Kentuckians.

 

There are three things about the cross we need to see this morning. Number one:

 

I. The Cross Precedes All of Creation (6-7)

 

Paul refers to God’s wisdom as a wisdom that had been “ordained before the ages for our glory.” See that phrase? It’s at the end of verse 7. He refers to the “hidden wisdom” of God, the “hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory.”

 

The “hidden wisdom” to which Paul refers is the cross. It is “Christ crucified.” Remember that’s what Paul has been talking about since chapter 1 and verse 18, “the message of the cross.” He says, “the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the the power of God.”

 

In verse 23 of chapter 1 he says, “We preach Christ crucified,” we preach the cross. The cross is a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the philosophical Greeks of Corinth. But again, it is the cross that is the power of God. So Paul says in chapter 2, verse 2, “I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” The cross is the wisdom and power of God (1 Corinthians 1:24; 1 Corinthians 2:5).

 

And Paul says that this wisdom of God–the cross and God’s plan to save through the cross–is a “hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages.”

 

So we begin by remembering that the cross is God’s Plan A. The cross is not Plan B. The cross is something “God ordained before all the ages.” The cross is something in the mind of God before ever He created anything. The cross existed in the mind of God before He said, “Let there be light.” The cross existed in the mind of God before He said, “Let the earth be filled with living creatures.” God’s plan of the cross existed before He said, “Let us make man in our image.” The cross precedes you. The cross precedes all of creation.

 

I think that’s important for us to remember this morning because it calls attention to God’s perfect sovereignty and perfect love, reminding us that He had this plan even before creation, a plan to bring about salvation of mankind through the power of the cross. The cross is not God’s Plan B. The cross precedes all of creation.

 

The cross is God’s wisdom. See that again in verse 6:

 

6 However, we speak wisdom among those who are mature, yet not the wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing.

 

Paul says in verse 6, “We speak wisdom among those who are mature.” In this context “mature” refers to all true Christians, all true believers. Christians are “mature” in contrast with those comprising “the wisdom of this age” or, “the rulers of this age,” those who are immature, those who are unsaved.

 

In fact, Paul says at the end of verse 6 that the rulers of this age are those “who are coming to nothing.” See that at the end of verse 6? “The rulers of this age” are those “who are coming to nothing.” The Phillips translation puts it this way: “The powers-that-be, who soon will be only the powers that have been.” The rulers of this age are coming to nothing. The so-called “wisdom of this age” is perishing.

 

Here is a much needed reminder: The things of the world are passing away. The things of the world are coming to nothing. Even the powers-that-be will soon become only the powers that have been. This world is unwinding because this world is infected by the the plague of sin, stemming from the fall. Sin causes all things to perish. So Paul says in verse 7:

 

7 But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory,

 

Here’s a paraphrase of verse 7: Those without Christ are blind. Those without Christ are living only by the wisdom of man. They go each day, blindly going about their lives. Then the Gospel comes to them. This is what we preach, the message of the cross! But they don’t get it. They don’t see the cross. They don’t see it, of course, because they are blind. They don’t understand the cross. It is hidden to them. This cross–ordained before the ages–is hidden from their understanding.

 

That’s what Paul is saying in verse 7. The word “mystery” there does not refer to something airy, ethereal, and esoteric as though the Gospel were some strange ghost-like thing accompanied by spooky music. In the New Testament, this word “mystery” simply means something that was previously not completely understood. When you read the Old Testament about a coming Messiah, you don’t immediately gather that this Messiah will come first as a suffering Servant and be crucified on a cross for the sins of all humanity. That’s just not the obvious conclusion you infer from your initial reading of the Old Testament. You and I see that, but that is because we have the New Testament which God illumines by His Spirit and we understand that and we see that.

 

The cross is the wisdom of God. It is God’s Plan A to save humanity. The benefits of the cross come to us through personal salvation, a salvation that culminates with what the Bible calls “glorification,” the final future state of every believer. That’s what Paul is talking about there at the very end of verse 7. He refers to “the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory.” See those last three words? “For our glory.” These words point to the Christian’s share in the entirety of salvation, including the future state of “glorification.” The Christian is saved and old things become new, including one day receiving a new body. I’m looking forward to that future day.

 

So, to summarize: the Gospel, the message of the cross, the wisdom of God is a “mystery” to the wise of this world. That is, the cross is beyond human wisdom. The cross is beyond the reach of human investigation. The cross is outside the boundaries of human inquiry. The cross is not a truth that man can unveil. The cross is a truth unveiled to man by God.

 

This is why, as Paul will say in his second letter, 2 Corinthians 4:3-4, “If our Gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them.”

 

All of us are blind without Christ. The Gospel is veiled to us. Apart from divine intervention we are left in the dark. Apart from divine intervention we live in the blur, dead in trespasses and sins. Apart from divine intervention we are left only with fallen minds that cannot fathom and cannot grasp the deeper things of God.

 

This takes us to the second point. We have said 1) The cross precedes all of creation, number two:

 

II. The Cross Transcends Human Investigation (8-9)

 

The cross is a mystery in that it can’t be figured out on one’s own. It is a mystery that requires outside help, divine aid. Apart from God’s Spirit, humans remain blind and in the dark. In the words of one commentator, “Humans do not find this truth; it finds them (David Garland).

 

So Paul refers to the cross, to God’s wisdom, as that which–verse 8:

 

8 which none of the rulers of this age knew; for had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

 

Had the so-called wise rulers of this age, the rulers during the time of Christ, had they known what they were dealing with “they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” Had they known they were killing God, nailing Him to wooden beams, they would not have done so. This is why Jesus said during His crucifixion, remember this?–Jesus said in Luke 23:34, Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.”

 

Or Peter in Acts 3, when he is preaching in Jerusalem he says to the crowd, “I know you crucified Jesus Christ in ignorance (Acts 3:17).”

 

The rulers of this age, the worldly rulers in power, had no clue what they were doing. I mean, they knew they were killing a man. The Jewish chief priests and the Roman procurator Pilate knew they were killing Jesus of Nazareth, but they did not believe they were killing the God-man. They didn’t know they were killing the very One who came to them to save them. It really is ironic. They are responsible for killing Christ, they will answer for it, and yet this is all in God’s plan. God–with Plan A firmly in mind–works through their fallen free choices to fulfill Plan A, the death of His Son to save mankind.

 

So Paul is pointing out here in the text that these earthly rulers were blind to God’s Plan A. They were blind to the cross. They were blind because the cross transcends human understanding and investigation. They were blind because they did not have the Spirit of God to reveal the plan of God.

 

That’s why Paul draws from the Old Testament now to illustrate lost man’s blindness to the cross. Pulling from Isaiah (Isaiah 64:4; Isaiah 65:17), Paul says in verse 9:

 

9 But as it is written: “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.”

 

And he goes on to say in verse 10, “But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit.” So apart from the Holy Spirit, man remains in the blur, man remains in darkness, man remains lost, ignorant and unaware of how the cross fulfills God’s Plan A, salvation to all who believe.

 

Apart from the Holy Spirit man is left only with his human reasoning and empirical observations. Yet without the Spirit man’s eye cannot see, nor his ear hear, nor his heart fully understand the cross, the full salvation plan which God has prepared for those who love Him. Apart from the Spirit, the cross transcends human investigation.

 

By the way, some of you may be reading verse 9 for the first time in its proper context. Verse 9 is frequently lifted from chapter 2 with no regard for its context. It is often quoted at funerals as speaking about heaven. Someone says, “Heaven is so wonderful. 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.”

 

Well, verse 9 isn’t written to describe the Christian’s comfort of heaven. Verse 9 is saying that lost people can’t see. Verse 9 is saying that lost people don’t understand the cross. Verse 9 is saying that without the Holy Spirit, lost people–like the rulers of this age–live in the blur and are ignorant of the cross.

 

Now it may be true that, “We can only imagine the beauty of heaven and the joy of the things God has prepared for us,” that may be true but that is not what Paul is talking about here in verse 9. Were Paul sitting at a funeral today he’d be like, “Man, that is so not what I meant! I wish these people would read what I wrote in context!” Paul is not talking about heaven so much as he is talking about the cross being that which transcends human observation and investigation. “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared–His Plan A of the cross–the things God has prepared for those who love him.”

 

The cross precedes all of creation, the cross transcends human investigation, number three:

 

  1. The Cross Requires Divine Revelation (10)

 

So what man cannot see apart from the Spirit is revealed to Him by the Spirit. The blur is removed and the cross seen clearly when the Holy Spirit reveals the cross to lost persons. What humans cannot comprehend or understand is made clear by the supernatural workings of the Holy Spirit.

 

Paul says in verse 9: No eye can see, no ear can hear, no heart can comprehend the things of the cross, but verse 10:

 

10 But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God.

 

See how the cross requires divine revelation? You can’t just come to God through human observation and investigation. You don’t just say, “I think I’ll study the things of God and then I’ll become a Christian.” It doesn’t work that way.

 

The cross is foolishness to the human thinker and observer. It doesn’t make sense to us. It seems to defy human logic and is beyond the reach of human investigation. No eye can see it. No ear can hear it. No heart can comprehend it. Without the Spirit, the cross remains veiled to us, the cross–including all the things of God–remain concealed from our understanding.

 

But–verse 10–“But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit.” That’s why just telling people the Gospel does not, in and of itself, result in their salvation. Salvation involves more than seeing words and hearing words. No eye has seen, no ear has heard the things of God. Salvation happens when God reveals His truth “through His Spirit.”

 

So when we share the Gospel or whenever we talk with others about spiritual things we should at the same time, pray for the Holy Spirit to do His work of opening the eyes and ears and hearts of those with whom we are sharing. We pray, “Holy Spirit, reveal to my friend the truth of the Gospel.”

 

We’re going to come back to verse 10 next time, Lord willing, and we’ll talk more about this phrase, “The Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God.” For now just know that the Holy Spirit reveals to lost people the truth of the Gospel. The Holy Spirit penetrates our blind eyes, our deaf ears, and our hard hearts. Understanding the cross requires divine intervention, divine revelation.

 

The cross precedes all of creation, the cross transcends human investigation, and the cross requires divine revelation.

 

  • Stand for prayer.

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