First Corinthians 2:10-13
1 Corinthians 2:10-13 · Mike Doyle · Jun 7, 2020
Letters to the Corinthians, No. 11
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926191951632

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Today we're going to talk about 1 Corinthians. Roger did a great job last couple of weeks, especially last week on chapter 2, verses 7 through 9. And here's what we've learned so far, and I brought this in because what we're going to do next, it has to kind of go together.

He says the wisdom of God is not of this world, so it's different. And God's wisdom has been hidden. It's a mystery. And this wisdom, however, had been, in verse 7, had been predestined before the ages. God had determined about this wisdom, about His wisdom, before He ever created anything. And the predestined element of this wisdom was it's for our glory. Think about that. God predestines wisdom, His wisdom, for our glory.

So, and the proof of this is that the rulers of the world didn't understand, and the proof is that they wouldn't have crucified Christ if they did understand. So we can see today, we can see today in in all that is going on in the world, and if you watch the news, which is getting to be more difficult to do, that nobody has any wisdom. There's no understanding. There doesn't seem to be any clear path. And it doesn't change.

It's been that way since the beginning, since Adam sinned, because, and we'll see in a minute why, but the real proof of that was the crucifixion of Christ. If they'd have known, they wouldn't have done it. If Satan would have known, he wouldn't have done it.

So, true wisdom can't be discovered by human research. You can't learn wisdom, God's wisdom, by studying, by listening, by any type of perception that the natural man has. The spiritual truth has to be received by a spiritual person. You can give the example of a foreign language, but even that isn't a really good example because as verse 9 said last week, it never has entered in the mind of man the things that God has prepared for those who love Him.

They've never even imagined what those things might be. So now Paul is going to give us some very definite instructions as to this wisdom and how we get it and how it comes to us in an unconfusing manner. The scene of glory in which the wisdom of God has destined His people lies outside the range of the natural man. One of the things that makes us so different from those who aren't believers is this predestinated wisdom for our glory.

And so he quoted the prophet Isaiah to show that God has secrets into which man can't enter. impossible for him to do it. And that's from Isaiah 64. The Jewish prophet was inspired to stop with the knowledge of the inability of man to perceive because the veil hid his mind. He says, in verse 9, that it has never entered the mind, or if they ever conceived of what God has in store.

So, the apostle Paul Because the veil was rent on the day that Christ was crucified, the veil has been rent in a Christian's mind. Now he's indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and now he can begin to see some things, spiritual things. And it's interesting. The things that we see are eternal things. They're not time-space kind of things. We seek to have our mind on things above.

When Colossians 3.1 says, set your mind on things above and not on things of the earth, you can't set the natural man's mind on things above because it wouldn't understand. But we have this new life in Christ that can understand the things of God. They're heavenly things and they're hidden from the natural man.

But they're revealed in such a way that there is no doubt about them and they remain forever. So what God has prepared for those who love Him, He has revealed to us by His Spirit. So this sets us up and prepares us for what comes next. And the next thing is where and how is this true wisdom to be found? The fact that the wisdom of God lies outside the comprehension of the natural man doesn't imply that the things of wisdom cannot be seen, because they can. It doesn't imply that they can't be heard, and it doesn't imply that they can't be known.

As a matter of fact, Paul said, God has revealed them. God revealed them, and the things that God has prepared He has revealed to believers. So the verses we'll talk about today are 10, 11, 12, and 13. 10 says, for to us God revealed them through the Spirit, for the Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.

Now you'll notice on the overhead, I put a line through them, because them isn't there in the Greek. God is the source of revelation, and it comes from Him down to us. It filters down. But the reason them isn't there is because this verse isn't about the things.

It's only about the fact that God is emphasizing that He does reveal. So we can say, for God to us revealed. We haven't talked about what the things are, but he does this thing calling revealing. And he did it to Paul, and he did it to the apostles, and from them to us. The content of the revelation isn't the point here. The focus is on the divine act of revelation from Chester Macaulay. Now, also, you'll notice in that verse it says, through the Spirit, for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God.

So the agent, who's the agent? Who's the one that makes this happen? It's the Holy Spirit. He's the one who does it. He communicates what has been revealed to us. If God has revealed these things by His Spirit only, then the Spirit alone is competent to do this job of finding out what the things are and being able to reveal what they are. So it's through the Spirit only, okay? Is he qualified to do this job? I think so.

It's expressed in the word, he searches all things, even the deep things of God. So the act of searching means to investigate something with a view to comprehending it. Since the Holy Spirit knows all things, His investigation can be complete and it's totally successful. So when He's nosing around, searching, He's doing it with a view to comprehend what He's looking for.

So there are times, though, I think with us as believers that we excuse our lack of spiritual energy and understanding by saying that these things are just too deep for us to grasp. But let's remember that these things are not too deep for the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit searches all things, yea, the deep things of God. And guess what? The Holy Spirit is in us. He possesses us. So if He knows them, they're not too deep for us. The Holy Spirit in us searches all things. There's nothing hid from Him. He searches both God and us. Both of us.

So this declaration may well silence every argument of unbelief. I think it does. I mean, you know, there's no sense in which a believer should ever say, well, it's just too deep for me. It's not. It's not too deep. What happens is that you distrust.

We distrust the gracious power of God by our unbelief. God wants us to know these things. So the Spirit's searching all things, He knows all things, and now the believer to whom it's all revealed, where does he get it? Where does the information come to us?

Well, it's written in His Word to start with. And he sticks with His Word. He doesn't go outside His Word. He stays right there. He explores the depths of God, and he's able to instruct his children about the Word of God and what it really means. He's ready and he's able, being there for this, As for other purposes that he has, he's worthy of God and in virtue of Christ's redemption. He's doing it and he's a worthy, worthy one to do it.

How could we illustrate that only the Holy Spirit knows the mind of God? So verse 11 tells us, For who among men knows the thoughts of a man, or the man, except the spirit of the man which is in him. Even so, the thoughts of God no man, no one knows except the spirit of God. I get together with Roger once a week and we talk about the direction and what we're teaching and that kind of thing.

But I can't read his mind and he can't read my mind. And one of the guys that led me to Christ told a class one time that if you could read his mind, you'd never talk to him the rest of your life, of all the garbage that's in there. The point is that the thoughts of a man nobody can see. I can look at Donna and she can look at me, but I can't read her mind. And it's a good thing she can't read mine. Now notice this. The word man occurs two times and has a definite article in front of it. So we're talking about a specific, a specific, the stress is on the individual, on the specific individual man.

Everybody in the audience today and everybody on Zoom knows that they cannot look across and read another person's mind. No one knows another person's mind. What's in man's mind is not known by any person, but the spirit of the man inside of him knows. He knows what his thoughts are. You know what your thoughts are. No one knows the uncommunicated thoughts of my mind except my own spirit. Therefore, no one knows the uncommunicated thoughts and counsels of God except the Holy Spirit of God.

If I paraphrased it, I could say, What person knows the thoughts of another particular man except that particular man? One of the reasons that God gave us the ability to communicate is so that we could communicate our thoughts. But still you don't... I mean, if you're like me, a lot of times you engage in a conversation with somebody and they don't understand what you're saying because you're not clear or you didn't present it in such a way that it's understandable.

The Spirit of God never has that problem. When he starts to communicate to us the things of God, he's very clear about it, because he's using God's Word. And God doesn't want us to fumble over concepts and ideas. He wants us to trust Him and to learn from Him through the entire process. In a man, what man knows the things that are passing in his mind, only the Spirit of the man knows. Now we have the Spirit of God. Everybody in this room, everybody on Zoom has the Spirit of God. And the Spirit knows the things of God and therefore we who are in Christ can know them also.

Notice the key is being in Christ. That's the key to it. It was revealed to Paul first and the apostles communicated by Paul in the words of the Spirit and the reception spiritually by spiritual men. Paul even told Timothy at the end of his life, he said, take these things that I have taught you and teach them to spiritual men so that they can teach them to others. This process goes on and has been going on for over 2,000 years.

If you can't read the mind of another being, though, how could we possibly expect to know the mind of God? The only one who knows God's mind is God Himself and His Spirit. But with the incomparably greater force, no one can come to know the things of God unless they are revealed. Only the Spirit of God knows them. The Holy Spirit is God, and therefore He knows God's mind. which qualifies him as the agent.

To be a party to this is an immeasurable privilege of the believer. When you think about what God has done here, He has made us a party to knowing the things of God. No mystery. And He caused the Spirit to indwell us for what reason? We have the privilege to know. And one of the cool things of all eternity is we're going to continue growing in Christ and containing more of Him the whole time. The whole time. We're going to grow in the depths of knowing the things of God. So Paul goes on now, unfolding this to verse 12.

And he says, Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is of God that we might know the things that are freely given to us by God. One of the things I've noticed with believers is that God wants us to know what He freely gives us. Not what we have to work for, not what we have to agonize over, but He freely gives them. He wants us to know them. The apostle and other vessels of revelation, believers, receive the Spirit which is of God. What's the purpose? So that we know the free things that are given to us.

It would be interesting to know if I was invited someplace and everything that I went into that place to have would be free to me. You know, go on one of those vacations where everything is, you pay once and everything is free supposedly from then on. Well, the vacation that we're talking about here was paid for on the cross of Christ. And everything that's in the resort is free. Everything from Christ is free. You don't have to earn any of it. Would it not be common to all Christians to have the mind of Christ? Is that common to every believer?

Sure. It should be. And here's what we may say is the intelligent and the intelligible. Separate those two words, intelligent and intelligible. Intelligence is the capacity without the thought. Intelligible, if I add that in, I have the thought as well as the mind to understand.

So the Spirit of God makes things intelligible to me. I can understand them. This is the knowledge of the things themselves. Not only that God has revealed, but now the Spirit of God is beginning to reveal or show us that He's revealing things. He's showing us as receivers of the revelation things. And the word here, know, is the word oida, which has to do with implication to know, to be aware of, to behold, to consider, to have a lot of really solid knowledge about what I'm learning. In a primary sense, the truth of verses 10 through 12 was initially limited to the apostles, I think, but is now revealed to every one of us. A couple of examples. In Romans 8, 14 through 16, I'll read the verses.

For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God. For you have not received the spirit of slavery leading to fear again, But you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry Abba Father. The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are the children of God.

Now, break this down a little bit. Sons are adult sons here. We're not just babes. We're adult sons. If we are in Christ, and we're led by the Spirit. It doesn't mean if you are. Every son is led by the Spirit as an adult son. And so we're associated with God on the basis of us being an adult because we were risen with Christ. Therefore, to His own saints who are sealed by the Spirit, those sons whom God is bringing to glory, we're led by the Spirit.

And being led by the Spirit It has nothing to do with your religious service, nor guidance in a particular path. It refers to that general control by the blessed Holy Spirit of those born of the Spirit, living by the Spirit, and in the Spirit. When you became a believer, how much did you know the first day about walking in the Spirit? Zero.

We have to be taught. That's what the Spirit's job is. He leads us. In the sphere and mode of being and is there the fact that we have been sealed for redemption, the fact that we're adult sons, all of these things we have to be taught because we don't know. That our being in the Spirit's sphere and control is a proof of the reality of our sonship. No non-believer can say they're led by the Spirit of God.

Can't say that. He may control what's going on with them, but they're not led by Him. So we want to avoid the thought that assurance of our sonship is based on a perfect obedience to the Spirit. It's not based on that at all. It's based on being a son. Nothing is based on us. Everything is based on Him. If one of God's true saints disobeys, It's the office of that same spirit to convict him and restore him to fellowship, to intercede for him. And the Lord Jesus Christ at the same time intercedes for him above. Now notice the contrast.

Israel received the spirit of bondage. Why? Because they got the law. What does the law do? It requires you to do something in order to be pleasing to God. You had to obey. The spirit in the believer doesn't have a requirement for you to be blessed because Ephesians tells us we have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus. It's already done. We may not live in it like we should because of lack of faith, but it's finished. All the blessings are there.

Now, the manner of the communication between the Holy Spirit and our spirit actually is a mystery. All men All man's overhyped knowledge is challenged by Jehovah's words to Job, who has given understanding to the mind? Understand that? God said to Job, who has given understanding to the mind of man?

We don't speak now with the mere purpose of ridiculing man's vaunted knowledge, but simply to state the facts, the difference between the natural man and the spiritual man. Human philosophy and science know absolutely nothing about the quality and the nature of the Spirit. Nothing. God in His passage in Romans, He doesn't address Himself at all to human intellect, but the consciousness of His saints with our Spirit.

He communicates with our Spirit. We're not told that the Spirit bears witness to our Spirit as if it as if the knowledge that we are God's children were some unheard of, undreamed of matter in our spirits. But he says he bears witness with our spirits, showing that the child of God, having had communicated to him God's very own nature, And Christ's very own life is fundamentally and necessarily conscious of the glorious fact of a family relationship with the God of the universe. We're family. We're legitimate, organic offsprings of the God of the universe. Not because He created man, but because we were recreated in Christ. We're His family.

And so what's the result of all of that information? We respond. What's the response? Abba, Father. And not only do we say it, we cry it out. When that truth comes home to us, that God is our Father and He's our Daddy, it has an impression on us that's just far greater than just the understanding of it. He's my Dad.

Second example, Galatians 4.6, Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, doing what? Crying, Abba, Father. Would we ever know that we were the sons if the Spirit had not revealed this fact to us? We wouldn't know it. It's dependent on Him. But He wants us to know it. And notice the phrase, because you are sons.

It gives the reason for God's act of sending the Spirit to take up his permanent residence in not only our hearts, but the hearts of the Galatians. The act of the Spirit in placing Galatian believers as adult sons of God is the first and objective step which the preceding context has spoken of, being a son. This brought about their release from the position of minors under the law and placed them in the position of adult son. Minor sons are under the law, young sons, not adult sons. And the spirit of his son in our hearts, the soul of the Holy Spirit given to the Galatians, a consciousness of a family relationship between themselves as sons and God being their father. So instead of looking upon God as a judge, they can now look upon Him as their Father, with whom they have the privilege of living as His sons. The fact of their possession of the indwelling Spirit was enough to demonstrate to these Galatians that they were no longer under law, but now were under grace. Because all of God's sons live under grace. They don't live under law. And the word crime. It has nothing to do with tears. It just has to do with crying out, making a loud pronouncement, oh my goodness, I'm a son. He's my dad. It's a really cool thing.

Verse 13, which things we also speak, not in the words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. The phrase, we speak, we also speak, if you narrow it down a little bit, the pronoun we doesn't refer to just anyone.

It refers to Paul and the apostles to start with. The apostle was a divinely chosen man called to be an instrument of God for the purpose of revelation. And second, he says, so we speak defines the revelation. Revelation is couched in human language. This is another point I want us to get clear about. There are three features of divine revelation are found here.

One, first is that God's revelation is not expressed in words chosen by man. It's made clear, as we're told, that what Paul spoke is not in the words taught by human, not in his words. God didn't reveal truth to Paul without supervising the words used to express the truth. The second part of this is that God's revelation is expressed in words chosen by the Holy Spirit.

He chose the words. Notice that the Holy Spirit gave words and not concepts. Specific words. We call this verbal inspiration of the Scriptures. The third aspect of this is that the words of Scripture fit the truth that's revealed perfectly. All of us study the Word of God, and that was one of the things that just... I couldn't find places as I read things and learned things.

The Scripture always says it best. It always says it clearly. It always says it perfectly. And my concept of it and my relating what I think it means is not as clear as the Spirit of God says in His Word. It's as clear as it can be, and it's lined up perfectly with those words.

So, in communicating these things, the Apostle is careful to shut out any possible error in man's by saying that these things are not communicated. in the words which man's wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches. One of the big problems with Christendom today is that problem right there. Men who claim to be Bible teachers do not teach the word. They teach what they think the word says. There are several translations that are literal translations of the Word of God, and then there's a lot of them that are transliterations, which means man's opinion showed up in there. That's not what the Holy Spirit does.

He is not going to engage you in a man's opinion. He's going to engage you in what the Word of God says. Now, the last part of this I want to talk about a little bit is the word combining. The word has a lot to do with making this concept come together. It means to join something together in a perfect fit. Take the Spirit of God and the Word of God and He joins that truth together in a perfect fit.

The truth God chose to reveal is expressed perfectly in the words of the Bible. And this conviction is based on expository preaching. And expository preaching and teaching is the only method that fully honors the inspiration of Scripture. It's the only method that does that. It is only in the Word of God that the wisdom and the words find perfect union one with another.

Furthermore, these things which are made known to the Apostles by the revelation of the Spirit have been passed on to us by inspiration of the Spirit. That's why the Apostles could talk about, and we can talk about, the claim of verbal inspiration. The very words are used, are inspired by the Holy Spirit.

Spiritual things are communicated by spiritual means, and the instruments were not made infallible. This is a good point. The person who, the apostle, we'll take Paul, who communicated these things to us, he wasn't made infallible, but he was guided perfectly by the Holy Spirit, and that's what inspiration really is. Last part.

It's certain that the apostle is describing in verse 13 whether the revelation of divine things which the Spirit of God only knows and can give. Next week we're going to talk about the reception of those divine things, which is due to the power of the Spirit also, the one receiving.

But the intermediate process of conveying in words spiritual things when disclosed, that they may be received by spiritual men only, one must be born of God in order to have any hope of understanding. This word combining appears to be carrying one on the thought of speaking the things of God to others. And the Greek word here, the first part of it is characteristic of the manner and the means of reception. And the words used technically in ordinary Greek language have to do with investigation to ascertain whether the action or whether the words are a lie or not. That's what the Word of God does. As the one aptly expresses, the putting together spiritual things with spiritual words so as to furnish that concrete whole, the Word of God, so the spiritual man can explore and he can examine accurately. That's a common sense of the Word of God. The Word of God is not complicated if you're spiritually born again and you trust God to show you what's there.

So I'm going to close with Acts 17.11.

Now these were more, talking about the Bereans. Now these were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the Word with great eagerness. examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so. It was so important to them, these Bereans, that they would examine what Paul said. They'd listen to him. And you should do this. You should examine everything I said this morning and line it up with the Scriptures just to see if what I said is so. That's our job as believers. We need to do that.

So thank you. Let's close and then Roger will come up and introduce Andrew. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for your grace. We thank you for your spirit that teaches us precisely and accurately the words that show us the things that you have freely given us. And we pray in your son's precious name. Amen.