1 Corinthians 1:26 - 2:16

Teacher: Rusty Kennedy
Series: 1 Corinthians (Acts)

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Rusty's Notes

Review where we left off 2 weeks ago:
1 CORINTHIANS 1:18
18 For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but it is the power of God to us who are being saved. 19 For it is written,
I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and I will set aside the intelligence of the intelligent.,
20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the debater of this age? Hasn’t God made the world’s wisdom foolish? 21 For since, in God’s wisdom, the world did not know God through wisdom, God was pleased to save those who believe through the foolishness of what is preached. 22 For the Jews ask for signs and the Greeks seek wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles. 24 Yet to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God, 25 because God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.[1]
 
BOASTING ONLY IN THE LORD
26 Brothers and sisters, consider your calling: Not many were wise from a human perspective, not many powerful, not many of noble birth.

• God’s foolishness in His message of Christ parallels His choice of what, for the most part, were the poor and dispossessed of the first-century Roman Empire.[2]
• Calling is situational… will is spiritual
• Before his conversion, Paul had been very self-righteous; he had to give up his religion in order to go to heaven!
• The Corinthians were at the other end of the spectrum, and yet they were not too sinful for God to reach and save them.[3]

27 Instead, God has chosen what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen what is weak in the world to shame the strong. 28 God has chosen what is insignificant and despised in the world—what is viewed as nothing—to bring to nothing what is viewed as something, 29 so that no one may boast in his presence.

• Let’s look at this from the spiritual perspective.
• In today’s social networking world, it is about puffed up knowledge.
• Who knows more and can prove their “rightness” better than the other person.
• The message and miracle of God’s grace in Jesus Christ utterly confounds (“puts to shame”) the high and mighty people of this world.
• The wise of this world cannot understand how God changes sinners into saints, and the mighty of this world are helpless to duplicate the miracle.
• God’s “foolishness” confounds the wise; God’s “weakness” confounds the mighty![4]
• They can’t even see it… the goodness of God.
• So there is no point in arguing with them.
• Sometimes, your best evangelism method is to shut your mouth and serve them.
• Well how do you do that?

30 It is from him that you are in Christ Jesus, who became wisdom from God for us—our righteousness, sanctification, and redemption 31 —in order that, as it is written: Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.[5]

• So Paul ends his statement with a quotation of Jeremiah 9:23 on how those who are wise or strong or rich by the world’s standards should not boast in those virtues or abilities or powers.
• Jeremiah 9:23-24 - “‘This is what the Lord says:

The wise person should not boast in his wisdom;
the strong should not boast in his strength;
the wealthy should not boast in his wealth.

• But the one who boasts should boast in this:

that he understands and knows me--
that I am the Lord, showing faithful love,
justice, and righteousness on the earth,
for I delight in these things.
This is the Lord’s declaration.[6]

• It’s not that there is no place for the rich or the strong—the high and mighty, as we would call them today—in God’s kingdom, but they must come with a very different attitude, recognizing that they are impoverished and entirely dependent, from God’s perspective, on Him in Christ.
• If one is boasting only in what the Lord has done for one and can do with one and through one, then one will not boast in what one has by worldly standard, or will not lament what they don’t have, but will have the right focus, a cross-centered focus.[7]
• Actually, the emphasis here is that God shows His wisdom by means of the righteousness, sanctification, and redemption that we have in Christ.
• Each of these theological words carries a special meaning for Christians.
• Righteousness has to do with our standing before God. We are justified: God declares us righteous in Jesus Christ.
• But we are also sanctified, set apart to belong to God and to serve Him.
• Redemption emphasizes the fact that we are set free because Jesus Christ paid the price for us on the cross. This will lead to complete redemption when Christ returns.
• So, in one sense, we have the three tenses of salvation given here: we have been saved from the penalty of sin (righteousness); we are being saved from the power of sin (sanctification); and we shall be saved from the presence of sin (redemption).
• And every believer has all of these blessings in Jesus Christ![8]

 
PAUL’S PROCLAMATION
1 CORITNTHIANS 2
1 When I came to you, brothers and sisters, announcing the mystery of God to you, I did not come with brilliance of speech or wisdom. 2 I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 I came to you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling. 4 My speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of wisdom but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, 5 so that your faith might not be based on human wisdom but on God’s power.

• Paul rejects verbal bullying, which was a fair summary of much philosophical oratory in Corinth in the first century.
• He rejects verbal bullying in favor of a humble response to the awe-inspiring majesty of God.[9]
• If one does not know my God, why would I expect them to understand the ways of God?
• Paul desired his message to be one of power displayed by God rather than the humanity of his own word-crafting.
• Personally, I am not a great speaker. The honest truth is that I don’t even practice or educate myself on proper speaking technics.
• I don’t care… because I have been given enough ability to teach in a way that the Spirit takes my words (and actions) and teaches others.
• I have literally taken all that I have learned over the years in seminary, growing up in church, and participating in ministry and stripped it down as much as possible to do basically two things:
• 1) Build relationships
• 2) Talk about Jesus
• I don’t need lights, smoke, worship countdowns, a building, a budget, committees, meetings or eloquent verbiage.
• Just give me an open door, (maybe a meal) and some time.
• That means I have to make room in my calendar for the Lord to lead me on this unknown, crazy and unexpected adventure.
• A certain church had a beautiful stained-glass window just behind the pulpit. It depicted Jesus Christ on the cross. One Sunday there was a guest minister who was much smaller than the regular pastor. A little girl listened to the guest for a time, then turned to her mother and asked, “Where is the man who usually stands there so we can’t see Jesus?”[10]
• My prayer is that the things we do at Leavener point you to Jesus rather than distract or block you from Jesus.

 
SPIRITUAL WISDOM
6 We do, however, speak a wisdom among the mature, but not a wisdom of this age, or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. 7 On the contrary, we speak God’s hidden wisdom in a mystery, a wisdom God predestined before the ages for our glory. 8 None of the rulers of this age knew this wisdom, because if they had known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 But as it is written,
What no eye has seen, no ear has heard,
and no human heart has conceived--
God has prepared these things for those who love him. (Isaiah 52:15 & 64:4)

• Isaiah 52:15 - so he will sprinkle many nations.,

Kings will shut their mouths because of him,
for they will see what had not been told them,
and they will understand what they had not heard.[11]
10 Now God has revealed these things to us by the Spirit,

• Paul previously described the things of God as foolishness which would lead one to believe that only the unwise could see the Truth.
• This is obviously not the case.
• Those who could get past the intellectualness of the Gospel would be able to see things from a spiritual perspective.
• They were given a spiritual wisdom vs earthly wisdom.
• How do we get this wisdom?
• It is not a fruit of the Spirit but it does come from the Spirit.
• Wisdom is a gift from God.
• God continually reveals spiritual wisdom to us.
• This is the sanctifying journey that we are on in our flesh season.
• Our time here on earth in these unredeemed physical bodies.

since the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. 11 For who knows a person’s thoughts except his spirit within him? In the same way, no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 12 Now we have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who comes from God, so that we may understand what has been freely given to us by God. 13 We also speak these things, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual things to spiritual people.

• Cory, my son, is a broker at Charles Schwab.
• We talk about his work and how his day goes many times throughout our conversations.
• I can understand the emotions and experiences he comes across on a daily basis because he talks to people all day long.
• But when he starts talking stocks, markets, trading, etc. I get lost.
• That is not my world.
• If I asked Cory to explain it to me… he could and would.
• It is not any different in the Spiritual world.
• But we have to have ears to hear.

14 But the person without the Spirit does not receive what comes from God’s Spirit, because it is foolishness to him; he is not able to understand it since it is evaluated spiritually.

• The person without the Spirit does not accept the things of the Spirit, because he cannot understand them.
• Well, that doesn’t sound fair, until we realize that understanding, in this context, is not cognitive.
• I have met some non-Christians who can explain biblical truths better than some Christians can.
• They just don’t happen to believe them; they haven’t acted on them.
• The understanding here, as consistently in true biblical understanding, is volitional, acting on, a matter of the will, and not just mental or cognitive.

15 The spiritual person, however, can evaluate everything, and yet he himself cannot be evaluated by anyone. 16 For
who has known the Lord’s mind,
that he may instruct him? (Isaiah 40:13)
But we have the mind of Christ. [12]

• The mind of Christ is our processor… not our data.
• The mind is eternal.
• To “have the mind of Christ” means to look at life from the Savior’s point of view, having His values and desires in mind.
•  It means to think God’s thoughts and not think as the world thinks.[13]
• When we trust the Spirit in us we begin to understand and see the things in the Bible that don’t make sense to the world.
• The mind of Christ causes us to view things from a different perspective.
• The mind of Christ allows us to see the spiritual battle between good and evil.
• We can see that God is not responsible for the evil that happens when He placed in a world where we can choose either good or evil.
• Where we can choose to love God or reject God.
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[1] Christian Standard Bible. (2020). (1 Co 1:18–25). Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers.
[2] Blomberg, C. L. (2017). NT334 Book Study: Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.
[3] Wiersbe, W. W. (1996). The Bible exposition commentary (Vol. 1, p. 571). Wheaton, IL: Victor Books.
[4] Wiersbe, W. W. (1996). The Bible exposition commentary (Vol. 1, p. 571). Wheaton, IL: Victor Books.
[5] Christian Standard Bible. (2020). (1 Co 1:1–31). Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers.
[6] Christian Standard Bible. (2020). (Je 9:23–24). Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers.
[7] Blomberg, C. L. (2017). NT334 Book Study: Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.
[8] Wiersbe, W. W. (1996). The Bible exposition commentary (Vol. 1, p. 572). Wheaton, IL: Victor Books.
[9] Blomberg, C. L. (2017). NT334 Book Study: Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.
[10] Wiersbe, W. W. (1996). The Bible exposition commentary (Vol. 1, p. 573). Wheaton, IL: Victor Books.
[11] Christian Standard Bible. (2020). (Is 52:15). Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers.
[12] Christian Standard Bible. (2020). (1 Co 2:1–16). Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers.
[13] Wiersbe, W. W. (1996). The Bible exposition commentary (Vol. 1, p. 577). Wheaton, IL: Victor Books.