God's Secret Wisdom
Some spontaneous “overflow” from one of the Saints in response to something or another, when a throng of Believers were together........
“For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (1Cor.1:18-2:16)
There is something supernatural in the process of believing that God would die for people who don’t care, and there is something supernatural in the process of being willing to die for people who don’t care. It is the Power of God! God’s power is released in the process and the attitude of heart that is willing to extend ourselves for people who don’t care. This willingness to die for people who don’t care is foolishness to people who are perishing—the people who are headed for hell. To them there is nothing more stupid than being willing to sacrifice everything for somebody who never says “thank you”... there couldn’t be anything more stupid than that!
But the power of God is released in that attitude of mind and that state of heart. “For it is written: ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.’” In other words, people who rely on natural powers, their thinking processes, their talents, or their experiences, will LOSE. God’s intent is to find a way that He can’t be reached through any means other than a supernatural means. God intended to find a way where there would be only ONE door open for people to find the power of God. And that way would be through the foolishness of the cross, because the intelligent and the wise are frustrated by it. It doesn’t make any sense to them. If someone tries to rely on their experiences, their talents, or their intellect, they will never find God. God found a way to make the only approach to Him possible through a supernatural avenue. The one and only way to HIM is the foolishness of the cross—the belief that Jesus Himself, God, would be willing to die for the ungodly while they are yet sinners. He would lay down His life for people who don’t understand and who don’t comprehend. Even for the twelve, who ran away from Him, God had the willingness to extend Himself. That’s the Mystery of Godliness, and the Mystery of the Cross.
Now, if I can, let me repeat this point, with some practical significance and “marching Orders” for our daily lives. This Secret Wisdom, the Wisdom of a “foolish” cross for the still ungrateful and imperceptive, is not only the Gospel of Jesus Christ as He lived it out, but it is ALSO the Enabling Power of “the Good News of the Kingdom” (Acts 8, Acts 28) for US to live out. If we will “take up our cross” for others, as Jesus did, we PARTICIPATE in the Power that raised Him from the dead! (Eph.1:7-2:22) God’s power is released in the process of REALLY laying down our lives and risking for others—even those who are ungrateful at first. The attitude of heart that is willing to extend ourselves for people who don’t yet “see the point”—who are blinded by their fears and the traditions of men, and the false religion that has been thrown at them, is that same Attitude Jesus had. “Let THIS mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus.” Lay your life wide open, daily, for those who, if they COULD see the Truth, they WOULD have the desire to “come after Him.” Be willing to risk all for those who may be willing to leave the hamster wheel of religious mumbo-jumbo, theatrics, and word games behind. They haven’t had a CHANCE yet. What will we do to make a difference, while they are still “children in the marketplace,” yet unwilling to mourn and unable to dance? Will we RISK for them—being willing to extend love and truth and patience to them on a daily basis, until they “would not”?
This cross for others, while there is NO satisfaction or reciprocation to be gained from them, is the MYSTERY of God’s Wisdom, expressed in the Son—and in our lives together, as well. This is the Mystery and Foundation of any True and Alive Fellowship that we could ever have with Him, or any TRUE Life we could ever have with brothers and sisters in a Lampstand, a true local church. This way of living with Him and one another is the ONLY doorway into Supernatural Life on a daily basis. Anything else can be no more powerful or Real than “attendance” of some religious meeting, and some self-serving companionship. YUCKO! This is the Way in: being willing to sacrifice everything for somebody who never says “thank you.” They can never “love the Light”—if they never SEE it. “Without VISION, the people cast off restraint.” We cannot “build” around a common “lifestyle” or “meeting style” or series of books or doctrines. We cannot “build” our existence around geographic proximity, or common last names and DNA. The TRUE Church does not exist for our own pleasure, and our “worship experience” and “fellowship.” True “Church” can only be SUPERNATURALLY EMPOWERED DAILY TOGETHER-LIFE. And THAT can only happen, if and only if.... it is “built” by the Life of the Cross. And the Life of the cross is not something we “believe in” or talk about on some set day of the week. The Life of the Cross that touches Heaven and draws in Heaven’s Life and Power is the daily loving and caring of one another, and imparting hope and forgiveness and Truth, as Priests of the Most High. It is not “Church” unless we ALL “from the least to the greatest,” visibly live as if we are willing to die for others who will love the Light.
This is His Secret Wisdom: Life is birthed and empowered, not by commitment, or knowledge, or belief system, or programs, or meeting—types, or by personality, impressive words, or even gifts. Life is birthed and enabled and equipped from Heaven—in unshakeable Power and Fruit—by Jesus’ Cross for undeserving others, and OUR CROSS for others, on a tangible, visible daily basis. That is “foolishness” to the proud, and a stumbling block to the hypocritically religious whose religion “consists of mere words.” But by PARTICIPATING in His Life and His Cross daily for others, you will witness that the True “Kingdom of God consists not of mere words, but of POWER.”
God’s Secret Wisdom. It is a WELL-KEPT SECRET, and mostly impossible to participate in, in the “attendance-based” religious world. It will cost you. It will cost you your reputation, perhaps many friendships, and certainly all your self-centeredness and sins. But try it, and watch the Floodgates of Heaven open up to you! You too can “see Heaven open, and the Son of Man STANDING at the right hand of the Glory of God.” THIS, and this alone... is “Church.” THIS is “Christianity.” THIS is Jesus. : ) This is God’s Secret Wisdom—the way of the Cross—lives sacrificed for others, as He has done for you.
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate. Where is the wise man, where is the scholar, where is the philosopher of this age?” ...All the guys who think they have it figured out, where are they? “Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world, for since in the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom did not know Him, God was pleased with the foolishness of what was proclaimed to save those who believe. Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block for the Jews, foolishness for the Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.”
So Jesus represents in His person this avenue of eternal life. As a person, He personified the only approach to God, and that is through the foolishness of extending ourselves, or Himself then, for people who don’t care. The Jews want to see power, and the Greeks are looking for intellect... and you can still find people in those two categories today. The Jews want miraculous signs and say, “Show me a miracle, then I will believe.” There are still people today who are power-hungry and who want some sort of physical evidence in order to believe anything. And there are others who have to approach it through the intellectual side. The Greek side of things is, “Prove it to me. Show me a reasonable way, one that I can accept with my mind, and then I will believe.” So, some go after signs and wonders, and others go after intellect.
But God said, “For since in the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom did not know Him.” The only way to know God is through the foolishness of the cross, and to adopt His attitude in ourselves—to believe God for this foolish act that He made of dying for the ungodly. This thing is still totally baffling! It’s different than approaching it through knowledge, or approaching it through the miraculous, neither of which will ever allow us to know God. The way to know God seems very foolish... to die for others while they are yet sinners seems very foolish. We don’t like that approach.
No Bravado
“The foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength. Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards. Not many were influential, not many were of noble birth, but God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world, and the despised things, and things that are not to nullify the things that are, so that no one might boast before Him. It is because of Him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God that is our righteousness, our holiness and our redemption. Therefore, as it is written, let him who boasts boast in the Lord. When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I came to you in weakness and in fear, and with much trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power so that your faith might not rest on man’s wisdom, but on God’s power.”
Again, Paul is elevating this idea that the eloquence, the power, the influence, the noble birth, and the education that people have... all of those things are nullified in Christ. Those things are of no account and they have no true value in Christ. Those are not the issues, nor the way to know God or to find God. A king said to Paul, “Has your great learning made you mad?” A king acknowledged that Paul had great wisdom and great knowledge, but Paul didn’t approach life that way. Jesus obviously had great knowledge and great wisdom, but He was viewed as a despised thing, something that had been rejected by God—with no beauty or majesty that we would be drawn to Him. There was something about Jesus’ heart, and Paul’s heart, that when men with great learning and all sorts of things in their favor saw Jesus and Paul, they weren’t that impressed based on the externals. Jesus and Paul did not carry themselves as ones who would be impressive. As we walk in the Spirit, it is actually going to be backwards. The more of God’s ways that we walk in, the less “impressive” we will be to those who are looking at externals.
A Child’s Heart can See it
Jesus’ intent is that someone like a child would receive His Truth and Wisdom, and someone who is extremely wise in their own eyes and experience would despise it. “I praise you, Father, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned and revealed them to little children.” If we are really walking in the Spirit, we are actually NOT going to be impressive to the people of the world who want to “size things up”. We are actually going to lose! If we are really walking in the Spirit as individuals at work, or as a church, or in any situation, people are going to look at us and say, “What’s the big deal? They are not so sharp! That’s not so impressive, that’s not so cool... that’s not so awesome. I didn’t see God.” And the same thing is recorded in Isaiah 53—they looked at Jesus and said, ‘I don’t see God’... and there is God Himself in the flesh, carrying Himself in such a way that people, unless they have the heart of little children, don’t see Him. The little children run up and drop into His lap, and the common people heard Him gladly. But the wise and the learned (the people who approached things on the basis of wanting to compare, wanting to evaluate, wanting to analyze, wanting to be impressed by signs and wonders, wanting to be impressed by reasoning, philosophy, and intelligence), those people never found Jesus. They didn’t believe Paul, and they won’t receive what God is really doing today, either. Paul said, “I’m willing to be a fool for Christ. That’s my desire, and the closer I get to God, the more foolish I am going to appear to the intellects, and the more powerless I’m going to appear to the power mongers. The Jews are going to want something they can’t have, and the Greeks are going to want something they can’t have. And the closer I get to God, the less impressed people are going to be with me, if they are approaching it from an intellectual or power basis. Keep that thought in your mind and heart that Jesus didn’t impress people, nor did Paul. Our willingness to be a fool is definitely an attitude to cultivate. Paul said, “I came not with wise and persuasive words, I came with fear and trembling. But what I wanted to happen was that you would see the Spirit of God and not me. That you would not be impressed with me, but rather would be impressed by God.”
True Wisdom... Secret Wisdom... Hidden Wisdom
He said, “We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age who are coming to nothing.” In other words, he is not speaking of the wisdom of people who are successful in the present age—the rulers, the bosses of the world governments, and the like. We speak a wisdom to the mature. For the people who have an ear to hear and know Jesus, it’s a wisdom for sure. It is wisdom, but it is a wisdom that only a person in touch with God can hear. To someone else it’s foolishness. But we do speak a word to the mature that is truly wisdom. This wisdom is not the wisdom of this age, and it’s not a wisdom that the Gentiles speak of. You are not going to read about it out of the Business section of some local bookstore. (There is so much “stuff” the wisdom of this age generates: MegaTrend 2000, the One Minute Manager, time management for the busy executive, the philosophies of men, the psychology of “if you have more than fifteen people in a group make sure you split up” and, “you have to do it this way to administrate it properly and this kind of paperwork and that kind of counseling session.....” ) The wisdom of this age, Paul said, is not what we are about. The thing that we are doing would be foolishness to the Gentiles who depend on the wisdom of this age to exist in IBM and Rand McNally, etc. “It won’t work. It’s not practical.” I can’t tell you how many hundreds of times I’ve heard those phrases—“Well, I see that it is Biblical, but it is not practical, so....” The wisdom of this age is only appealing to the people who are walking in the spirit of the world. We speak of God’s secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. So the end of this picture is really amazing! God has a secret wisdom that He has hidden away, and if we will walk in it, He destined our glory to be manifest in His secret wisdom. A wisdom of which man hasn’t conceived and “no eye has seen, no ear has heard...” The point is that God has a glory for those people who will walk in the foolishness of dying for their enemy, who will walk in the foolishness of appearing to be ignorant to the intelligent and appearing to be powerless to the power people. There is a SECRET wisdom for the mature that God has HIDDEN away. It’s a whole special category of wisdom which seems stupid to people who are saturated with the wisdom of this age. “We speak of God’s secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began.” That one sentence is so powerful! It’s as if He has a treasure chest for us that He has hidden away. And it cannot be attained through all of man’s hard work, all of his wisdom, all of his experiences, his intellect, his technology and all the books he has written about himself for himself... all of these things that have minimal results! (As some studies have shown, the person who first begins to go to a psychologist usually ends up taking five times as long to heal as a person who just goes through something alone. ) Man’s wisdom does not truly have benefit, although man thinks he has it all figured out. The point is that God has hidden away a secret kind of wisdom.
The wisdom that He has hidden away is a wisdom that is not of this age, it’s not revealed in this age, it’s not utilized by men of this age to accomplish their Gentile goals in business or anything else. That kind of wisdom is fine for IBM, but God has a SECRET wisdom that is destined for our glory, for the glory of His people. There is something that will elevate His people, to where in the last days someone will grab hold of our cloak and say, “We want to know your God. Teach us your ways.” There is a kind of glory and a kind of wisdom that God intends to impart to His people. And who are His people? His people are those who are consecrated to Him, who are not saturated with worldly principles, who are not driven by worldly motives, who aren’t driven by worldly trinkets—they live in the world but are not of the world. They are not afraid of having material objects, but they are not possessed by them in any way. That sort of attitude is essential in order to be able to find the treasure chest that God has hidden away.
There is a secret wisdom. Let’s define terms here... a wisdom is something that makes something tick. What makes something tick? For example, what is wisdom about how a machine works? If I am wise, then I can listen to a machine, and if I can hear it go “Thump, thump, thump”, then I can hear that we have a problem, perhaps, with the gears bottoming out. I can hear some sort of “gap bounce” (as it is called in the printing industry) where there is too much pressure between the cylinders and there is bouncing. I can hear that. If I am wise about the material world, I can hear and I can sense things. Maybe I can’t prove it to you without taking the machine apart, but I have a sixth sense about something if I am wise. The same is true about human relations. Many companies have a Human Relations Department or Personnel Department where they will handle grievances. Someone who is wise in personal relations, and Dale Carnegie kind of stuff, will hear of a problem and they will find some way to outsmart the situation. They will apply some secular wisdom in order to help two people who hate each other get along well! They are both “fooled” into thinking that it is in their best interest to work together rather than to work against each other; and then the Human Relations people wash their hands of it and they are delighted that they were able to accomplish such a task. This is worldly wisdom to accomplish worldly goals. So God’s wisdom is a way to accomplish a task out of a sixth sense, if you will. A gut feeling about how something really works, and then finding a solution to a problem based on the way something really works.
Well, there is a wisdom from God, the scriptures say, that He has hidden away about how things work! I once saw an Einstein documentary, and the opening remark really struck me: “Once in a great long while a man comes along and sees the universe through different eyes, and then because he can see it through different eyes, he changes the universe.” The same thing is spoken about in 1 Corinthians 2, “The secret wisdom that God has hidden away.” Men don’t comprehend it. Men have not understood it. Men can’t really think this way. They don’t see the universe the same way God does. God has hidden away the secret wisdom about how things work, what really accomplishes a goal, and how to really solve a problem. There is a secret wisdom that is in God’s heart that He has hidden away, and He has DESTINED this secret wisdom for our glory. Something is going to explode out in the future for those who are consecrated to God, for those who live in the world but aren’t of it, who have possessions but aren’t possessed by them, and who are willing to not conform to the patterns of the world. (I’m not talking about being afraid of the world and living in some monastery with some masochistic mentality, I’m talking about people of which the world has NO HOLD.) That sort of attitude will allow us to be in a place where we can receive this secret wisdom from God (that man can’t attain), in God’s own, sovereign timing. This secret understanding about how things work is going to allow us to solve problems and to accomplish God’s purposes. He has destined this secret wisdom for our glory. So look toward the horizon and capture that idea that there is supernatural revelation that God wants to bring.
For Those who LOVE Him!
“None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory.
However, as it is written, no eye has seen or ear has heard, nor mind has conceived what God has prepared for those that love Him.” You can say a lot of things about that vision of something that is way beyond our comprehension, but keep in mind that whatever this thing is that your mind can’t conceive of, the rulers of this age don’t care about it. They killed Him, so they aren’t impressed by it... They crucified the wisdom and revelation of God in Christ Jesus. But it’s the power of God, and it’s for those who love Him. How do you get access to this stuff? Well, it’s pretty clear in Paul’s heart, as he is looking into the Spirit’s eye, that it’s the cultivating of love for God. (Obedience is not even the main issue—if you love him you will obey him. Jesus was clear about that, John was clear about that. But that’s not really the issue. ) The real issue is that “eye has not seen, and that ear has not heard” ... it has not entered into the mind nor the heart of man what God has prepared for those that love Him. If you don’t do anything else right in life, make sure that you learn how to love Him and that you are not cheap with that. Make sure you are not wasting God’s time on a love affair with other stuff to where you have no room in your heart for Him, as He said. Make sure that you are learning how to sing to Him, that you are learning how to talk about things, that you are learning how to open up your heart to Him. Make sure that you are learning how to love Him, because all this stuff, this wisdom that God has held in His heart, this secret wisdom from God, is reserved for those who love Him. Work on that one.
Who lives inside?
God has revealed it to us by His Spirit. “The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God”... the secret wisdom from God is that the spirit of God knows these things, even the deep things of God. “For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man’s Spirit within him. In the same way, no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. We have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom, but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truth in spiritual words.” Again, “The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual man makes judgments or discernments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man’s judgment. For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ. “We did not receive the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us.” Again, back to this idea of being able to see God’s supernatural treasure of wisdom, to be able to experience it, to be able to draw on this hidden wisdom that is from God, the supernatural treasure chest that is designed that we might express and live in glory, supernaturally. “We’ve not received the spirit of the world, but rather the Spirit of God”, that we might understand these things, that we might be able to experience these things by being drunk on the Spirit of God.
The contrast here is between the spirit of the world and the Spirit of God. This is one of the things that really struck me hard recently. I’ve thought about people being worldly, and about people who perhaps are selfish or always ill of temper or always prideful or consumed with some sort of passion of “things” or whatever it happens to be. But something I hadn’t really thought of until recently is that just as one can be filled with the Spirit of God, the scripture says it’s also true that someone can be filled with the spirit of the world. The contrast here in the scriptures is the spirit of the world versus the Spirit of God. We can receive the Spirit of God, and the Spirit of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost can come live inside of us. It’s almost personified in a sense, and Jesus said, “My Father and I will make Our home in you”—the person of God can live inside of us. It’s a person that lives inside of us. So, if that’s true, that a person can live inside of us (not just “I’m a good person rather than a bad person”), well, the scriptures say it’s also true that the spirit of the WORLD can live inside of you, which in a sense makes that a person, too!
I can know a person who is living in the Spirit of God, and I can understand that comes from a person who lives inside of them. But then there are people I run into who claim to be a Christian, and well, somehow everything they say is always on the wrong channel. They are zealous, perhaps, and they talk about a lot of things, but somehow everything they say just has this sense about it that is kind of grating and kind of frustrating... like everything they say is wrong! You don’t even know where to start. Has anybody ever met anybody like that in the workplace? You want to talk about it, but you almost don’t even know where to start. There is just something wrong. It’s like someone trying to speak English that doesn’t really know the language. Supposedly we are talking about the same thing and having a conversation, but every word that I say doesn’t mean to them what it means to me, and every word that they say gives me the impression that they don’t know what they are talking about. I can’t agree with them, and I can’t disagree with them. The words might be there, but I can’t possibly agree with them, because I know they don’t mean what they are saying. They have no idea what they are talking about. It’s just always missing, like two airplanes that are on different levels.
That’s what Paul is talking about here. He is saying that for those who are living in the spirit of the world (not just bad people versus good people but the Spirit of Christ versus the spirit of the world), it is almost as if a person can be possessed. Certainly there can be demon-possessed people, but I am talking about being possessed or drunk on the spirit of the world, just as a person would be drunk on, or possessed if you will, by the Spirit of Christ. That was a new thought for me because it explained something that I have encountered ten thousand times: a person belonging to the spirit of the world or the spirit of the age, doesn’t have to be “demon-possessed” to be living in the spirit of the world, and to be possessed or inhabited by the spirit of the world. They have actually been made a habitation or a home. Either “My Father and I will make Our home in you....” or, the spirit of the world will make its home in you. Let me give you an example that is too real to not mention... someone who “looooves” nature. There is something about a person who REALLY loves Jesus, and has a deep affection for nature, that is solid as a rock. It’s gorgeous. They love Jesus with all their heart, and they can smell the roses as a natural product of being in love with Jesus. And then there is something else that is NOT the spirit of Christ, but rather the spirit of the world which loooves nature. The thrust is: “I gotta get out in nature, I have to experience nature”. The focal point isn’t God, and smelling the roses with their eyes on God! Instead, it’s “I’m looking at the mountains, looking at the clouds, listening to the waves crash, I gotta feel the warmth of the beach”. This attitude is a very world-oriented sort of thing. It is essentially worshipping the creation rather than the Creator who is ever to be praised. It is the spirit of the world—it sounds right—“God created nature. I loooove it.” But in essence it’s a worship of a false god, and it’s the spirit of the age, a spirit of the world, and NOT the Spirit of God, even though the words sound the same in some sense. “Well, God made it. Isn’t it right to love it? To love good music, a good orchestra, a symphony, a beautiful oil painting, and those sorts of things?” That is the spirit of the world and the spirit of the age, as opposed to the person with the Spirit of Christ. It personifies the spirit of the world as a person, almost, inhabiting someone.
That just really helped me to grab a hold of this thing that has forever bothered me about why somebody can say the right things and somehow you know it’s just all wrong. It’s almost like you just can’t get anywhere when you are trying to talk about it, because anything you say would be totally misunderstood. That’s what Paul said you can expect to happen. There is going to be this forever “you can’t get there from here” sort of experience. Because the wisdom of God is foolishness to those who are perishing... they cannot understand it. That’s what it says, “They cannot understand it.” It just doesn’t make sense, and it won’t make sense because they have the wrong thing, the wrong person, if you will, inhabiting them. The wisdom of God is not comprehensible to them and they cannot understand it. It’s just total rubbish to them.
The Sheep KNOW.....
I’m not saying you can’t grow in your understanding. There are many, many things that we can see just a fair glimpse of, and our maturity level doesn’t allow us to fully grasp it or comprehend it. It’s still out there in the distance somewhere, and yet we are hungering and thirsting for it. We can’t explain it, and we can’t really grab a hold of it or own it, but somehow or other it’s compatible with who we are and compatible with what we want. It may even be hard for me, but somehow the sheep know the Shepherd’s voice. Perhaps I can’t explain it, and I can never repeat it if somebody asked me to, but somehow it just fits right, and in the end I have a confidence and a peace that God will make these things clear to me and that it will all work out. But, if we are living in the spirit of the world, rather than in the Spirit of Christ, then it isn’t even something we want. It’s intolerable... “I don’t want that. It’s wrong. It has to be wrong because it doesn’t fit my life, my heart, my perceptions, my desires and my appetites.” So there is constant fighting with this thing that is afar off, rather than a longing for it. It’s a constant fighting and friction and chaos and confusion and anarchy. So I’m not saying we’ll all understand everything perfectly that is from God. But the difference between the two attitudes is that one longs for it, can barely taste it on the tip of the tongue, and is moving that direction and is willing to pay a price to get there. The other person just doesn’t even want it, because it grates who they are and where they are going with their life. They want an alternative. They want a way to serve God that doesn’t involve a cross, that doesn’t involve a sanctification or a cutting off, or a circumcision of the spirit of the age with its trinkets and its illusions and alluring powers.
So please consider this phrase regarding the secret wisdom of God and then this concept of the spirit of the world versus the Spirit of God, those two things being opposites, being possessed by the one versus being possessed by the other.
An analogy
Something that you said reminded me of talking about the wisdom of the world. A couple of years ago at work there was a maintenance man on the press that I operated at that time. He was very knowledgeable of his job, and knew all about hydraulics and pressure. But he was a very worldly man, and so he took pride in his knowledge. He was very arrogant, and very boastful. One day he was standing next to me just watching the operation and he went into this long spiel about his knowledge, but what he said was profound in the sphere of the physical realm, as far as wisdom is concerned. He complains a lot about the requirement to wear earplugs, and he said, “You guys don’t realize that the most important aspect of my job is to be able to hear how this thing runs. The high pressure lines are under 4500 pounds per square inch. All the high pressure lines run from the press, under the ground, back to the pumps. You guys function up here and run this job, but my job is to know, without being able to see it, what is going on underneath the floor. I know what is going on. I know what is unseen underneath, and I have to be able to hear it.” He didn’t have a clue what he was talking about as far as the spiritual wisdom behind that aspect. It was totally just running a job to him. But I was bursting inside; I just let him go on like this, and when he was finished I said, “You do not understand—you just described this world that we live in, that is falling apart and is going to burn up one day, and the unseen world of God. You just described in a physical way what a Christian knows and understands about his God in heaven.” And he just looked at me and nodded and walked away. It was amazing, but he described it to a “T” in a physical sense. It was wisdom of the world. He was absolutely right in the application of seeing what is under the floor and knowing how it works. Everyone else just sees the surface stuff, but he sees the unseen.
Take the Earplugs out!
Even though he has that wisdom about what could be happening underneath, if he has earplugs on, that wisdom is of no use! If his senses are blocked to where he can’t feel, he can’t hear, and he can’t see, then even his wisdom is of no use. And that’s where perhaps a person in the spirit of the world, who is drunk on the spirit of the world, has no comprehension. They don’t even have any knowledge or any wisdom, or any feel for what is happening underneath, and they don’t care. They are not in touch with that whole other world. All they can deal with is what they can see and feel and touch in this present age and they are controlled totally by that. Whereas a person who lives in the Spirit has the ability to sense what is happening, to be able to work with and comprehend and solve problems before they even happen. They have a gut for what is happening in a place when they can’t even see it with their naked eye. But if we get into the spirit of the world, if we live like the Corinthians, Paul goes on to say “you guys are a bunch of babies. You are living selfish lives, you are being prideful... What do you have that you did not receive? Why are you thinking so highly of yourself? You are comparing yourselves to one another and you are copying this and that, and you allow sin to happen around you and you don’t do anything about it. You allow yourself to have some ‘secret sin’, and you see someone else that has some sin, and you don’t do anything about it because you want to accomplish this thing for yourself.”
Paul is saying in this letter to the Corinthians that they are living like mere men. He goes on to say it again and again. “You are living like mere men. You are living like the people who can’t see or hear anything because you have blinders on and earplugs in. You have, in Christ, the capacity to understand the wisdom that is from God. The secret wisdom that He means for your glory—you have the capacity for all that NOW—but you are living with earplugs in your ears and you are living like mere men, like these other people who can’t understand anything. That’s his call to them in this letter essentially. That’s the thrust of what he is saying in this letter, is to stop living like mere men. Get rid of the junk, take the earplugs out of your ears so you can experience the secret wisdom from God that was meant to manifest itself. We are not meant to carry on in every day life where everyone goes home at night and they are bored and tired and they get up the next morning to the “same ‘ol same ‘ol”, and at the end of life they have just expired, they’ve punched their card so many times there is no card left, so they die. That is not what God intended. He means this secret wisdom for our glory, but we are going to waste it if we live with earplugs in all the time. If you are living self-centered lives (if you won’t deal with the people in your home, if you won’t deal with the people in your neighborhood, if you are always going to be demanding intellect or demanding the power of the Greeks and the Jews, if you are always going to be approaching things like mere men), then you will never be able to tap the thing that is meant for Glory, which is the secret wisdom that God has hidden away for those who love Him that eyes haven’t seen nor ears heard nor minds been capable of conceiving. So watch, and pray, and consider, and see how you can serve and lay down your life in the wisdom of the cross.
“Holy Father, by your Spirit we invite you to rewire us and to help us to cherish what you cherish and to take the things that were once foolishness to us and against our nature and to make them of greater value to us than diamonds or precious stones or silver. We always our whole lives, most of us anyway, have been raised to have a value system that treasures things that are temporary, that will be burnt up and to think of other things as foolish that you think of as being of greater worth than even the life of your Son. We ask you to help us to see things Your way.....”
2/10/1994
