Sermon by Pastor Brent Kompelien
March 19, 2023
INTRO
We are continuing our series called “Disciple-by-Doing” where we are using the Greatest Commandment, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, to guide us through how we can embody a whole-life, whole-hearted discipleship where every square inch of life is brought under the Lordship of Jesus and becomes a witness to the world to point to the Kingdom of God and the truth of the gospel.
Today, we are focusing on loving God with all our mind, and this means “rediscovering the truth.”
There’s a connection to the first two: If you love God supremely with all your heart, and if your inner being is transformed and you now have a new identity as a child of God because of Jesus’ substitutionary death on the cross on your behalf, then this has implications for what you accept as truth and how you will engage your intellect and what you believe about the world.
Here’s the most prominent way this affects our moment in our culture: We must assert that there is objective truth. Not only is there objective truth, but what we are going to see today in our passage is that truth is from God and is revealed by the Spirit of God!
Open with me to 1 Corinthians 1:18-2:16.
We are going to look at a passage in 1 Corinthians where the Apostle Paul writes to a culture not too different from our own where debates about truth were raging. These early Christians were trying to find their footing, some doubted, others were tempted to compromise, and some continued to live in their old ways. And Paul boldly reminds these believers that there is a solid foundation, there is revealed truth, there is only one way, even if it looks like foolishness to the world.
Background
This is a letter from Paul to the church in the ancient city of Corinth, which was like the San Francisco of the ancient world. I lived in San Francisco for 5 years, and if you study ancient Corinth, it was a popular port city that was known for its global commerce, its promiscuity, and for being a center of pagan religion.
The early church in this city consisted of Greek and Jewish converts to Christianity. And Paul writes to these believers who came from different background to show how the cross of Christ cuts through the wrong-headed desires of both Greek and Jews.
Greeks valued wisdom above all.
Jews valued demonstrations of divine power above all.
And here we see Paul preach a crucified Messiah, what seems like foolishness to Greek and weakness to the Jews.
But Paul’s whole point boils down to this: the cross of Christ is the ultimate expression of God’s wisdom and God’s power…and to understand it as God’s wisdom and as the power for salvation, you need the Spirit to show you.
Let’s read our text. READ 1 Corinthians 1:18-2:16.
ORG SENT — There are two parts to this text: First, Paul lays out a contrast with the concepts of wisdom and power, and he applies them to his readers and then to himself (1:18-2:5). Second, Paul then explains how we come to know the deep truths of God; that we gain the mind of Christ as the Spirit reveals the message of the gospel to us (2:6-16).
MAIN 1 — Wisdom and Power (1:18-2:5). (SLIDE 2a)
Go back to verses 18-19 with me, and I want you to notice that our two key concepts are introduced right away here. (SLIDE 2b) READ vv. 18-19.
If you look at the footnotes of your Bible, you’ll see that this is a quote from Isaiah 29.
The first half of the book of Isaiah from chapters 1-39 have in the background the imminent attack by King Sennacherib of Assyria whose army was leaving a trail of destruction through the northern region of Israel and was now on the doorstep of Jerusalem.
And chapter 29 is a prophetic warning to the city of Jerusalem, telling them that they are dangerously close to being wiped out in judgment by God through the instrument of Sennacherib and the Assyrian army.
Just listen to the words of Isaiah 29:13-16 — (SLIDE 3 and 4) The Lord says: “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is based on merely human rules they have been taught. Therefore once more I will astound these people with wonder upon wonder; the wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish.” Woe to those who go to great depths to hide their plans from the LORD, who do their work in darkness and think, “Who sees us? Who will know?” You turn things upside down, as if the potter were thought to be like the clay! Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, “You did not make me”? Can the pot say to the potter, “You know nothing”?
Woah! Paul is taking this warning and he is applying it to the city of Corinth!
This is a city where people pay lip-service to God.
It is a city where people think they can hide from God or carry on as if God doesn’t exist or doesn’t know what they are doing.
It is a city with people who have turned everything upside down and elevated themselves to be gods.
APPLY — This sounds exactly like our culture. The “wisdom” of this age teaches us to say to our own Maker, “You know nothing, we’ll take it from here.”
But what does Paul say? Go back to verses 20-25. I can’t say it any better than Paul, so let me read again what Paul response to those who trust in human wisdom and human power. READ verses 20-25. (SLIDE 5a)
Did you notice the play-on-words throughout that paragraph? There is a reversal here that is critical for us to understand:
What the world calls “wisdom” is actually foolish because it results in NOT knowing God. (SLIDE 5b) But what the world calls “foolish”, which is the cross of Christ, is actually wise because it results in our salvation!
And what I love about this, is that Paul uses himself and his readers as proof. (SLIDE 5c)
If you look at verses 26-31, Paul says that the believers in the church in Corinth prove the upside-down nature of the gospel. They embody NONE of the marks that Corinthian society traditionally associated with greatness: power, income, education, and a noble family. These are the things that people valued above all in Corinth.
Instead, Paul says that God chose to use the foolish, weak, and lowly things of this world (YES, he’s talking about us too!) to display God’s wisdom and power so that no one can boast in themselves!
Paul knows this personally, because when he was suffering, the Lord said to him in, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
This is why Paul goes on to say in the beginning of chapter 2 that his preaching is not dependent on his own wisdom or his own strength, but that the message of the gospel is preached best through weakness, and without flashy eloquence, and only through a demonstration of the Spirit, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.
ILLUST — You see, every age has his “wisdom”. Every age has its markers of success or signals that you’ve arrived. Our culture today, for example, has a distinct moral hierarchy.
ILLUST — I mentioned that I used to live in San Francisco. I made it my goal to understand the culture of that city like a native. I spent time in all 35 neighborhoods, rode every bus line, went to coffee shops all over the city, I wanted to know this place like the back of my hand. I was doing church planting there, and I really wanted to understand it as a mission field.
In the city of San Francisco, there is a very neatly defined moral hierarchy. At the top of the list are people who have adopted a rescue dog. If you are able to tell a sob story about your poor rescue who was about to be euthanized at the shelter, but you saved this poor pooch from certain death…you are the on peak of the moral Mount Everest! You’re the king or queen of the moral kingdom.
Only slightly below that are people who have embraced LGBTQ+, people who fight for social causes, people who work in education or social work.
Somewhere in the middle are the tech bros and financial executives.
At the bottom are those who believe in exclusive truth claims like Christianity. These are the paupers of the moral society of San Francisco. They are the “fools” of the city, just like these believers in Corinth!
But you know what…Paul embraced being the weak and dishonorable fool in the world’s eyes! The only status that mattered to him, the only thing worth living for, was his status as righteous in Christ.
APPLY — May it be so with us! Friends, may we be perceived to be fools in the world’s eyes if it means that we stand firm on the gospel of Jesus Christ!
You see, if we ever lose sight of the centrality of the gospel, of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, and of the work of God in the grand scope of history to bring about his kingdom through the forgiveness of sin, the new birth, and the everlasting blessedness of the face-to-face presence of King Jesus in the new heavens and new earth…we has lost everything.
Let me say it even more bluntly, because this is what Paul is saying in our passage today: If we ever lose sight of the cross where Jesus atoned for our sin, we’ve become the real fools.
ILLUST — I heard Don Carson recently preaching on Romans 3 and the centrality of justification in the scriptures. This is what he said, (SLIDE 6 and 7) “The fundamental question that the Bible asks is: ‘Granted our sin, how shall we be right with God?’ Of course, there are all the social and horizontal questions to ask, all the ethical instructions, all the different genres of literature, all the exhortations and voices of praise, the lamentations, the depictions of God, the apocalyptic expectations of what is to come, there is hope set forth…but at the heart of all of it is the question: How shall we be right with God? And if we get that wrong, we have nothing. Nothing but moralism and false hope and idolatry.”
May we say what Paul says in 2:2, “For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.”
This doesn’t make sense from a worldly point of view. It seems like foolishness. It looks like weakness. But Paul’s whole point is that Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross is the pinnacle expression of wisdom and power, the most real reality that has ever existed, the highest moral achievement in history, an event that confounds the wisdom of this age, and without it, we have nothing.
How do we come to believe in this most profound display of God’s wisdom? Paul calls it “having the mind of Christ.” How do we know that it is really true? We need the Spirit of God to show us and to change us.
MAIN 2 — The Mind of Christ (2:6-16). (SLIDE 8a)
READ vv. 6-9.
ASK: How do we know that Christ crucified is really God’s wisdom? ANSWER: It is revealed to us by the Spirit of God. (SLIDE 8b)
Interestingly, Paul doesn’t first appeal to historical evidence or logical proofs. Of course, these are true and they matter! Later in 1 Corinthians 15 Paul talks directly about physical evidence of the resurrection!
But he begins here by emphasizing the role of the Holy Spirit in illuminating our understanding of the gospel.
KEY — Paul IS presenting the gospel as plausible and logical and historical. But his point to the church in Corinth is this: Even if you present a logical case for Christianity or historical evidence or explain why someone needs Jesus…they still may call it foolishness! It takes the illumination of the Spirit of God within us to reveal that it REALLY IS TRUE!
APPLY — You see, we need to consider the unique context of our culture, and think about why so many people struggle to believe that the gospel is plausible.
ILLUST — Missionary and theologian Lesslie Newbigin wrote a book back in the 1980s called Foolishness to the Greeks. In this book, he explains our culture so well.
Newbigin says that one of the fundamental markers of the modern world is this: There is now a divide between “facts” and “beliefs.” This divide is now assumed in our culture, but it wasn’t always that way. (SLIDE 9)
Facts are viewed through a scientific lens and are presented as public truth.
Beliefs are viewed through a mythological lens and are presented as private truth.
Once this dichotomy is adopted, then faith moves to the private sphere and religious beliefs become mere personal opinion. It sounds like this: “You can believe whatever you want to believe, as long as it’s your truth and you don’t make me believe it.”
But not everything in our culture follows this logic. Gender identity is one area where personal inner feelings, desires, and self-perceptions are allowed to cross over into the realm of public facts. This becomes a situation where personal inner desires must be recognized by everyone in the public square.
There’s an irony here: Once meaning is created from within, it requires an audience to approve of it and accept it, or else it loses all its meaning. It is fragile. It must be recognized and celebrated, it must become a public display of my meaning or it loses its power.
But here’s the difference for us as Christians — As human beings made in God’s image, as blood-bought children of God, loved by his grace, our identity is conferred upon us. (SLIDE 10a) It is secure by Christ’s blood, proven by his resurrection, and promised as our sure hope forevermore in heaven. It is not a self-defined identity or a subjective truth that depends on the trustworthiness of our inner desires or the wisdom of this age. Looking inward for self-made meaning is a false gospel. (SLIDE 10b)
ILLUST — What I’ve found is that graciously asking good questions can expose this inconsistency in our culture. My Q&A question to a transgender activist.
(SLIDE 10c) Newbigin says that one of the ways for the church to have a “missionary encounter” with the modern world is to point out the inconsistency of “public” versus “private” truth, and insist that God has revealed objective truth, and show how the gospel of Jesus Christ is “public truth” that affects every part of our lives.
KEY — We have a prophetic call to be witnesses of the truth to our world. This is why Paul insists in 2:13-14, (SLIDE 12) “This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.”
Let me come back to our central theme today and ask a question: How do we love God with all our minds? (SLIDE 13, blank)
We do it by embracing that there is objective, revealed, eternal truth. Then we need to open ourselves up to receive it, to surrender to the Spirit’s revelation of Jesus Christ in our hearts and in our minds so that we come to know the deep spiritual realities of God and his good plans for us. May we see a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, as Paul said.
We need to not be be afraid to say that the gospel is public truth, and to boldly and graciously and winsomely stand firm on God’s Word, even if the world looks upon us as fools.
May we be like David when Saul’s daughter Michal despised him for making a fool of himself in celebration when the Ark of the Lord returned to Jerusalem and say, “I will celebrate before the Lord. I will become even more undignified than this!”