Download Notes - Bonnyville Baptist Church

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TITLE: We Have the Mind of Jesus
TEXT: I Corinthians 2:13-16
THEME: God reveals His heart to believers through His Word.
OPENING
SENTENCE: I have a confession to make- there are some things that really irritate me.
INTRODUCTION: One of the things that irritates me is people that claim to have some deep
insight into God that no one else has- exclusive only to themselves. I have found most of these
people are poor students of the Bible who do very little research and yet imply that their
“revelations” carry with it the weight of scripture. When I hear such claims my red flags go up.
For instance, I knew of one pastor in Idaho Falls who had a superficial knowledge of the Bible
whose classic line was, “God told me.” With that line followed something that was supposed to
be deeply spiritual and by the way it was phrased carried with it something of a spiritual elitism.
Yet, it was clear to me some of the things he said were not from God. He is not the only person I
have known like that.
Some go so far as to even claim that their “revelations” supersede all other claims to truth. Most
of you know I have done extensive research on Mormonism- a religion based on Joseph Smith
and his claim to have new revelations from God that supersede even the Bible. Vaunda and I
went to Palmyra, New York this last November while we were at the FEB conference to visit the
place where Joseph Smith was raised, had the Book of Mormon printed and is the birthplace of
the LDS church.
For those of you who don’t know the story Joseph Smith claims to have received a vision from
God while he was in a grove of trees behind his house on the farm the family owned. In the
vision an angel told him that all other religions were false and corrupted and that God would lead
him to some golden plates that would reveal to him a restored gospel to restore what was lost.
Some years later, he claims to have found these plates on a hill called Cumorah, a few miles
southwest from his house. God then divinely empowered him to translate them into English
from Reformed Egyptian through two crystals he called the Urim and Thumim. Out of this
“translation” came the book of Mormon which he had printed at a local printer and started a new
religion called “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.”
The Moslem faith was founded in a similar way. Mohammed claims to have had an encounter
with the angel Gabriel who is said to have given him new revelations regarding God’s new plan
for which he calls to be a prophet to promote. He taught that this revelation supersedes that of
that of the Old New Testament. The rest, we know, is history
TRANSITION
SENTENCE: These kinds of claims by individuals to exclusive truth from God are nothing new.
TRANSITION: This was one of the problems of the Corinthian Church. As Richard Hays says,
“Apparently some of the Corinthians were priding themselves on their rich endowments of
spiritually inspired “speech and knowledge” (cf. 1: 5)… his counsel suggests that some members
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of the community must have been claiming spiritual superiority and dominating the community’s
worship with virtuoso displays of glossolalia.” (Hays, Richard, p. 34).
SAY WHAT YOU ARE GOING TO SAY: This morning we will look at a passage that speaks
directly to this issue and clarifies what it is to have spiritual wisdom and ask, “What distinguishes a person who has spiritual wisdom?” We see that the he understands spiritual realities
that comes from the Spirit within Him and gains God’s perspective on every aspect of life.
TEXT: I Corinthians 2:13-16
THEME: God reveals His heart to believers through His Word
What distinguishes a person who has spiritual wisdom?
I.
He understands spiritual realities. (13)
13 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.
A. That results from the indwelling Spirit.
Last week we saw that every believer in Jesus has received the Holy Spirit and therefore every
believer has access to the heart of God to know the deep things of God. It is not just given to a
few specially endowed believers to the exclusion of everyone else. Yet, almost every form of
spiritual elitism has appealed to this text even though each of these is the opposite of Paul's
intent. Paul uses numerous terms that the Corinthians used to justify their spiritual elitism
("wisdom," "mature," "secret," "spiritual") and redefines them so that they include that which is
available to all believers.
Today’s passage will restate the contrast between human and spiritual wisdom. “Human"
wisdom refers to that which is merely human, that is, unregenerate or as the KJV says, "the
natural man." This is a person who in his ordinary, unredeemed state of earthly existence, which
he inherited from the Fall of man. Such a person "does not accept" Christian truths. (NIV Com,)
William Barclay's says this kind of individual "lives as if there was nothing beyond the physical
life and there were no needs other than material needs." Such a person "thinks that nothing is
more important than the satisfaction of the sex urge" and thus "cannot understand the meaning of
chastity." One "who ranks the amassing of material things as the supreme end of life cannot
understand generosity," and one "who has never a thought beyond this world cannot understand
the things of God." In contrast, the "spiritual man" simply refers to the person with the Spirit,
and, hence, to any Christian. Paul is trying to make it clear that he is not suggesting that one
individual believer might possess some exclusive superior spiritually not available to others.
One problem we have in translating this passages is that we miss Greek idea of the second
person plural. When I grew up in Virginia they had a word that comes close the Greek idea, it
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was the word “y’all” as in “you all.” That is the sense used throughout this passage. Paul is
speaking in the second person plural- “y’all.
Richard Hays, “The Moral Vision of the New Testament” says of this, “Paul dares to assert
more: the community is the place where God dwells. “Do you not know,” he asks, “that you
[plural] are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you [plural]?” (3: 16). To read this last
sentence as though it spoke of the Spirit dwelling in the body of the individual Christian would
be to miss the force of Paul’s audacious metaphor: the apostolically founded community takes
the place of the Jerusalem Temple as the place where the glory of God resides. When the
community suffers division, the temple of God is dishonored. But the presence of the Spirit in
the community should produce unity rather than conflict.” The constant use of the first-person
plural throughout this passage is deliberate. Paul is saying that the most immature Corinthian
shares what all Christians even today share: an ability to commune with God, understand his
will, and make sense of the foundational truths of Scripture.
B. That comes from Spirit taught words.
There are implications from this in regard to how the Spirit communicates the deep things of
God to us. Notice the verse again, “This is what we speak… in words taught by the Spirit,
explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. The obvious question from this verse is,
“Who is the ‘we’?” It clearly refers to Paul and other apostles,
Notice what I Corinthians 3:10-11 says, “By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as a
wise builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should build with care. For no one
can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.”
The Holy Spirit teaches and explains to us spiritual realities through words. These words must
be consistent with what the apostles have already revealed to us in the Bible. If you are the only
one to have the “truth” and that denies, contradicts or supersedes what the apostles taught then
they cannot be of God. None us have some exclusive claim to truth.
ILLUSTRATE: Go into a Christian bookstore. It is ironic that the generation with the greatest
number of accurate, understandable translations of the Bible, study helps from brief annotations
to massive commentaries, should be one of the most biblically illiterate societies in the history of
the church. When we are dependent on a handful of prominent leaders or claim to have a
spirituality that is not grounded on God’s Word, we become unable to reject false teaching, we
become susceptible to immoral behavior and having our ears tickled by our favorite authorities.
APPLY: Could it be to a false notion of spirituality as being individualist and exclusive? Paul
teaches us that every believer has direct access to God’s heart. It is not exclusive to some
specially empowered individuals. He teaches us these spiritual realities through his Word.
THEME: God reveals His heart to believers through His Word
II.
He accepts the things that come from the Spirit of God. (14)
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14 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.
A. These things are not accepted by those without the Spirit. This implies that there will always
be a tension between the church and the world. We cannot expect a person without the Spirit
of God to know and understand spiritual things. They will always appear foolish and
unreasonable to Him. It is not something apologetics can fix.
B. These things cannot be understood apart from the Spirit. Only the Holy Spirit can penetrate
the heart of man to make him receptive to these spiritual realities. Only one with the Spirit
can discern what is of God and what is not.
ILLUSTRATE: In the novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Garcia Marquez, the author
describes in his magical but realistic way a village suffering from an insomnia plague. As this
plague continues, it gradually causes the loss of memory. To try and salvage memory, Marquez
describes how a man named Jose developed an elaborate plan that involved labeling everything:
"With an inked brush he marked everything with its name: table, chair, clock, door, wall, bed,
pan. He went on to the corral and marked the animals and plants: cow, goat, pig, hen ... banana."
As their memory continued to fade Jose decided that he needed to be even more explicit. He
posted a sign on a cow that read: "This is the cow. She must be milked every morning so that she
will produce milk, and the milk must be boiled in order to be mixed with coffee to make coffee
and milk. Thus they were living in a reality that was slipping away, momentarily captured by
words but which would escape ... when they forgot the values of the written letters." Eventually
the village put a placard at the entrance to town that said, "God exists," as that knowledge too
was slipping. (Gabriel Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude (Harper Perennial Classics, 46)
APPLY: When people have forgotten and do not know God they cannot understand even most
basic things about spiritual reality and the further they get away from Him the less clear it is.
THEME: God reveals His heart to believers through His Word
III.
He has God’s perspective on every aspect of life. (15-16)
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person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to
merely human judgments, 16 for,
“Who has known the mind of the Lord
so as to instruct him?” Is 40:13
But we have the mind of Christ.
A. He is not subject to human evaluation that ignores God’s perspective.
Believers have the ability to bring God's perspective to bear on every aspect of life. Verse 15b
must be interpreted in light of the entire context: Christians are not subject to any merely human
evaluation, that is, one that does not take God's perspective into account. It ultimately only
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matters what God thinks of us. Verse 16 rounds out the passage by quoting Isaiah 40:13 on the
mysterious nature of God's ways, but it echoes the thought of verses 7 and 10-12 that some of
this mystery has now been removed in the Messianic age, in which the Spirit brings Christ's
thoughts to believers by living in them. (NIV Application Commentary)
B. He sees things as Christ sees them. We have the mind of Christ. We share insights on His
purposes, His humility, His nature, His truth. We can know and feel what He knows and we
can obey the Father as He does. We see the world in a whole new light and it shapes who we
are and what we do.
ILLUSTRATE: On his 39th birthday, poet Christian Wiman was diagnosed with an incurable
form of blood cancer. He wrote frankly about the agonizing effects of his illness and the
treatments.
I have had bones die and bowels fail; joints lock in my face and arms and legs, so that I could not
eat, could not walk … I have passed through pain I could never have imagined, pain that seemed
to incinerate all my thoughts of God and to leave me sitting there in the ashes, alone.
When the diagnosis came, Wiman was a rising star in the literary world and the editor of a
prestigious poetry publication. Though Wiman confessed his Christian faith had "evaporated in
the blast of modernism and secularism to which I was exposed in college," the diagnosis started a
journey that ultimately led him back to God. It wasn't a particular doctrine that drew him back to
the faith, but Wiman found a friend in the suffering Messiah.
“I am a Christian because of that moment on the cross when Jesus, drinking the very dregs of
human bitterness, cries out, "My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me." … The point is that
God is with us, not beyond us, in suffering. I am a Christian because I understand that moment of
Christ's passion to have meaning in my own life, and what it means is that the absolute solitary
and singular nature of extreme human pain is an illusion. I'm not suggesting that ministering
angels are going to come down and comfort you as you die. I'm suggesting that Christ's suffering
shatters the iron walls around individual human suffering.” (Drew Dyck, Yawning at Tigers)
APPLY: In the face of brutal, isolating pain we don't really want answers. We want a person. At
such times there is simply no substitute for the presence of Christ whose mind we share.
THEME: God reveals His heart to believers through His Word
SAY WHAT YOU HAVE SAID: This morning we looked at a passage that helps clarify what it
is to have spiritual wisdom by asking, “What distinguishes a person who has spiritual wisdom?”
We discovered that the he understands spiritual realities that comes from having the Spirit within
Him and gains God’s perspective on every aspect of life.
TIE INTO OPENING SENTENCE: The claim to spiritual exclusivity is one of the things that
irritates me and was issue to Paul as well prompting him to devote much of his letter to the
Corinthians to the issue. He argues that every believer has direct access to the deep things of
God because His Spirit teaches in spiritual words that reveal the mind of Christ.
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APPLY TO SPECIFIC AUDIENCE:
1. We are bombarded by claims that the key to being a happy, healthy Christian is to be found
in some new technique of evangelism, practice of certain spiritual disciplines, strategy for
church growth, self-help therapy, form of music or style of worship, and on and on. When
these so-called "keys" move away from the humbling, central focus on the cross of Christ,
they have become elitist and potentially divisive and must be rejected.
2. We must learn to walk the narrow path between the equally dangerous deceptions of hyperintellectualism and anti-intellectualism. The first often replaces the message of the cross and
the role of the Holy Spirit with a belief in naturalism which closes the door on God’s
intervention in His world. The second often replaces a shallow, pseudo spirituality with
sound wisdom and reason. We need to stress that Christ is the principle of coherence in
every department of life.
3. If we have the mind of Christ and see things from his perspective we have a wisdom that
exceeds anything the world can give us and we will see each day a new opportunity for God
to work in and through us. We can celebrate each day as the best one you will ever haveeven if we are facing hardship and disappointment.
HAYMAKER: I want to close with a reading I came across by Dr. Gregory M. Lusignot: Today
when I awoke, I suddenly realized that this is the best day of my life, ever. There were times I'd
wondered if I'd ever make it to today, but I did. And because I did, I'm going to celebrate.
Today I'm going to celebrate what an unbelievable life I have—the accomplishments, the many
blessings, and, yes, even the hardships that have come into my life, because they have served to
make me stronger. I'll go through this day with my head held high and a happy heart. I'll marvel
at God's seemingly simple gifts—morning dew, sun, clouds, trees, flowers, birds. Today none of
these miracles will escape my notice.
Today I will share my excitement for life with other people. I'll make someone smile. I'll go out
of my way to perform an unexpected act of kindness for someone I don't even know.
Today I'll give a sincere compliment to someone who seems down. I'll tell a child how special
she is, and I'll tell someone I love just how deeply I care for them and how much they mean to
me.
Today is the day I'll quit worrying about what I don't have and start being grateful for all the
wonderful things God's already given me. I remember that to worry is just a waste of time,
because my faith is in God and his divine plan, and that assures everything's going to be fine.
And tonight before I go to bed, I'll go outside and I'll raise my eyes to the heaven. I'll stand in
awe at the beauty of the stars and the moon. I'll praise God for all this magnificence.
As the day ends and I lay my head down on my pillow, I'll thank God for the best day of my life,
and I'll sleep the sleep of contentment, of a contented child, excited with expectation, because I
know tomorrow is going to be the best day of my life ever.
This could be the best day of your life—and tomorrow and the day after that. It's all the Holy
Spirit us wisdom so that we have the mind of Christ.