I'm not seeing it yet...

 Read Hebrews 2

In the next service I will focus on 2 words:  PAY ATTENTION.

I thought about preaching two other words:  CALM DOWN. That never seems to work.

I thought it went well with Be still and know that I am God. Actually, it works about as well. We don’t know how to calm down or be still or trust in the Lord with all of our hearts.

We struggle. Sometimes we go for a good stretch trusting God or at peace with God and our neighbors, but then we give into our human nature and own understanding.

We struggle.

Can you blame us? God is in control and this world looks like an absolute mess.  How can I calm down? How can I be still?

Why do I even want to PAY ATTENTION? We will spend more time on that later.

There are a few other words in this chapter that I want to spend some time on as well. Most folks don’t focus on them, but you are getting them this morning.

For in that He put all in subjection under him, He left nothing that is not put under him. But now we do not yet see all things put under him.

We have yet to see all things put under him. We don’t see the orderly world that we think we should see. What does that mean?

Sin is still thriving in the world.

The Devil has not yet been consigned to his fiery eternity.

The righteous must endure the rule of the wicked for a while longer, though the faithful know this time will not endure.

We just don’t see everything falling into place like it should be, or like we think it should be. So, does that mean that God’s plan has gone awry?  

If you ever pay attention to a card trick, you will find that the owner of the trick wants you to follow along closely. He or she just wants you to follow the wrong things, so that he can pull off the trick.

We don’t see the perfect things of God because we get distracted. It is not God who is distracting us. We distract ourselves by relying on our own human nature which includes our own understanding.

Think of Peter being distracted by the storm and taking his eyes off of Jesus.

We don’t need sleight of hand to distract or deceive us. We deceive ourselves by not believing the promises of God.

We must affirm the statements and promises of God as we go through our lives.

It’s not a once-a-week thing to affirm that God has good plans for us. That’s a daily thing. In this upside world, it might need to be an hourly thing or a moment-to-moment thing.

We need to affirm to ourselves and each other that God really does love us.

We need to affirm to each other that God is love.

We need to affirm that God really is in control.

We need to affirm that God is indeed sovereign.

We need to affirm that the blood of Jesus really did take away our sins.

We need to take on his yoke and follow him.

We need to put his words into practice.

If we affirm these things on a regular and recurring basis, we might get a glimpse of the world turned right-side-up. It won’t happen on our schedule but we can see what is to be in the kingdom of God.

Therefore, we should live by what God has told us is true and will come. Thus…

We are never discouraged. God wins.

We never lose hope. He is faithful and just. He’s got us.

We never throw in the towel for we know what God did for us in the person of Christ Jesus. He stepped out of heaven and lived and died as a man so our sins would be forgiven and we would have a great High Priest who knows firsthand what it is to live the human life.

Jesus was tempted in every way but did not sin. What advantage did he have?

He knew his Father's kingdom was for real. He knew the journey, no matter how arduous, was worth it.

In his blood we receive his righteousness. Let us also receive his assurance that these trials are temporary and that heaven is real.

We are to be strong and courageous.

We live to be known as his disciples by our love.

We don’t know the whole story now, but we trust the Author.

We can’t see the whole picture now, but we trust the Artist.  OBTW—this is the same Artist that made you into a masterpiece.

We don’t know what tomorrow holds, but we know Who holds tomorrow.

Amen.

He's got us!

 Read John 10:22-30

 Jesus was in the temple area and many Jews were gathered around Jesus.  They had questions.

Just tell us. Are you the Messiah or not?

Jesus responded: I already told you but you did not believe. Why didn’t you listen? I already showed you. Why did you not see? Because you are not my sheep.

Jesus had been terse with the Pharisees before, but these were just the common people.  They had questions. They had plenty of evidence to consider that should have convinced them that Jesus was the Messiah, but they could not see it.

Jesus was telling people that the time for fence-sitting was over. If you disown me, my Father in heaven will disown you.  Yes, we are at that point.

We believe or we don’t, and if we believe, we know his voice.

We believe or we don’t, and if we don’t believe, we can’t distinguish the voice of our Master from the clutter for the clutter has become our god.

Imagine Jesus looking at you and saying, you are not one of mine. Could we bear to hear him say, I don’t know you?

Jesus will not disown us because we make mistakes.

He won’t kick us to the curb because that promise to work on my language is a few years late in the making.

He won’t cancel our reservation in heaven because we missed a day or two or two hundred in our Bible reading.

Do you want Jesus to disown you? Then disown him and the Spirit of God.

For those who believe, we do not need to go down this road. We disown the whole concept of God disowning us. We need to disown the status that the pagans give the things of this world, but Jesus will not disown us.

He has claimed us and that’s forever.

Jesus goes so far as to say no one can take away those I have claimed as my own—those the Father had given him.

We could go down a predestination and the elect rabbit trail here, but we will save that for another day.

For now, think about knowing the voice of our Master. If all we hear is the clutter, we need to declutter for his sheep know his voice and if you have grown deaf to his voice, it is time for action.

It’s easy to let the world creep in gradually, often unnoticed.

Long ago and far away in my college days, a new concept was introduced called narcotizing dysfunction.  Simply stated, modern media had become so overwhelming that it could bombard someone into a state of dysfunction.

We can get bombarded into a state of dysfunction as well.  How do we avoid this?

We know his voice.

How do we know his voice?  We pray and listen. We read his word faithfully. We discuss his word with other believers.

Here’s one that we should know. How do we know his voice? By putting his words into practice. Yes, his voice becomes clearer with each step of trust and obedience.

We know his voice because we talk with him often. We listen to whim all the time. We know his voice.

I said that I believe but how do I know that I meant it? Did I really mean it? How do I know?

Sometimes, we believe enough to be curious but do we believe enough to trust in the Lord with all our hearts?

The answer to do I really believe is can I trust the Lord.  If you want to test your own belief, try trusting the Lord with everything you have.

Trust is directly proportionate to our spiritual hearing.

Do you want to hear God’s voice more distinctly?  Start trusting him more.

Once we trust him enough to put his words into practice, this thing called abundant life can take hold and once the Lord is running everything in our lives, we can enjoy this eternal ride.

First, we need to know his voice. Know his voice.

·       Know his voice.

·       Put his words into practice.

·       Enjoy the blessed assurance of Jesus claiming you forever.

Amen.

Trust and Obey over our Own Understanding

  Read Genesis 3

The other day someone asked me what I was doing for the fall.  I thought they meant the fall of civilization, so I started telling them how much ammunition and toilet paper I had stored. They meant fall as a season.  Oh, well, to me the season doesn’t change much as far as what I do, other than when we get to winter, I don’t get to walk into the office much.

To me, I don’t care who breaks out the pumpkin spice or when they do it. It’s not going in my coffee.

Today we will look at what has been labeled the fall of humankind—subtitled Sin Entered the Word, but there was no fall or sin without God already having a plan of redemption for our shortcomings.

We know the story.  Here is the truncated version.

God asked Adam if he ate from the tree that was off-limits.  Adam said the woman that you put here gave me the fruit.  The woman said that the serpent tricked me, and the serpent didn’t have a leg to stand on.

And the story of the fall begins with enter the snake. We don’t know if it enters stage left or stage right, but the serpent is surely center stage at the beginning of this chapter.

And it was not just a serpent.  It was crafty, skilled in argument and deception, and it talked.

We don’t get any chit-chat to begin this conversation.  The serpent gets down to business.

He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

Perhaps the serpent knew what God had said to Adam.  Maybe it heard a conversation between Adam and Eve as they were discussing what they would have for dinner. In any case, the serpent knew of the one thing that God had told Adam not to do. The serpent apparently also knew that God had told Adam that he could eat from any tree in the garden.  He just skipped over the single exception as he posed his question.

The snake didn’t say, go ahead.  It’s ok. The serpent let Eve do the deceiving herself.  “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

The thought, the idea, and the doubt were not placed in Eve’s mind.  It was enticed out of her mind.

Look at the question.  Did God say this?

The answer should have been yes we could eat from any tree except that one right there and that should have ended the conversation. God said it.  I believe it.  Hit the road, Jack.  Adam and I are having avocados for dinner.

But, the woman chose to converse with the serpent.  There was something to this line of conversation that interested her.

The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”

We should remember that God gave instructions about this tree to Adam while Eve was still a rib. Adam obviously felt inclined to share this divine prohibition with Eve.

That was surely a good idea. We are talking about 50% of the people in this story who didn’t know of the prohibition; but where did the part about not even touching the tree come from?  Did Adam add that part?  Did Eve convince Adam that they needed extra safeguards? Were Adam and Eve the authors of the first OSHA manual?

Were the first two people that God created the very first Pharisees?  Did they add their own rules to God’s one and only prohibition?

The serpent’s question asked, “Did God really say that?”  The direct answer would have been, “God said we can’t eat from that tree or we will die.”

The conversation continued, “But surely you won’t die.”  It’s a statement in the form of a question.  Remember that the sender of a message can imply but only the receiver can infer.

An aside would have been appropriate at this point in the story so Eve could share her thoughts with posterity.

Would I die?  What is death? Why am I even standing near this tree that God put off limits and we added the prohibition about touching it? Should I not trust in the Lord more than my own understanding?

The serpent continued. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

As much as we don’t like the serpent in this story, what he said was accurate.

And so, we come to the intersection of trust and obedience to God and Eve’s own understanding.

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.

The PowerPoint slide looked like this:

·       It’s good for food

·       It’s pleasing to the eye

·       It has the added benefit of gaining wisdom

Those first two were characteristics of every tree that God gave them for food—pleasing to the eye and good for food. So far, so good, right?

In 2022, you would also have to listen to 2 minutes of possible side effects after the 15-second commercial.  What am I talking about? Possible side effects include:

·       You and the serpent will be eternal enemies

·       Women will have real pain in childbirth

·       Your husband will rule over you

·       The man must work to produce food now

·       There will be thorns and thistles among your crops

·       You will work your whole life just to decompose and make more dirt when you are done

·       OBTW—you will be evicted from paradise

There was no commercial at that time, just the prohibitive command from God. Eve ate the fruit from the tree and then gave some to Adam and he ate it. Their eyes were opened and they noticed that they were naked.

Consider the thought process of the woman and the man.  The woman goes through her analysis and eats the fruit.  She then offers some to the man and he is like, “Yeah, ok,” and eats it.

Enter the Lord God walking in the cool of the day.  These two naked people in their makeshift clothing hid among the trees.  Their first response to having disobeyed God was to hide from him

God played along.  “Where are you?”

Imagine God walking along and he says, “Marco.”

Adam replied, “Polo.  Oh, I can’t believe I fell for that.” Adam and Eve were not experienced in hiding from God.  They had never done it before.

In their own understanding, Adam and Eve thought they could hide from God. OK, let’s read the actual account.

But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”

He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”

And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”

I love Adam’s reply.

The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”

The woman that you put here gave me the fruit.  The woman that you gave me. She gave it to me. That woman—yeah the one you put here.

God turned his attention to the woman. Adam is probably thinking that he is off the hook.

The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

Remember, the analysis that Eve went through before she ate.

·       It’s good for food

·       It’s pleasing to the eye

·       It has the added benefit of gaining wisdom

But she rationalized what she did when she answered to God.  There really should be an aside here for God to tell eternity:  That dog don’t hunt.

Here’s the executive summary with which I began.

God asked Adam if he ate from the tree that was off-limits.  Adam said the woman that you put here gave me the fruit.  The woman said that the serpent tricked me, and the serpent didn’t have a leg to stand on, or at least he wouldn’t by the end of the chapter.

This chapter is sometimes titled the fall of man or mankind or humankind.  Some subtitles say, sin entered the world, but we should consider that our earthly nature was already present.

Tom would title this sin manifests itself or mankind chose its own understanding over trusting God.

We are of the earth and of God and our earthly nature understands us so well.  Our nature which comes from being made of the earth knows exactly how to appeal to us.  It doesn’t trick us.  It allows us to trick ourselves.

The words free will are never used here or elsewhere in the Bible, but we see man’s will surfacing in this chapter.  Both Adam and Eve chose of their own free will to disobey God.

They could not invoke the Flip Wilson defense.  What? The Devil made me do it.

The serpent asked the questions. Yes, he was crafty in composing his interrogatives.  The serpent challenged the understanding of these first humans, but both Adam and Eve went through their own thought processes and made their choices.

Don’t beat up these two people too much.  I doubt that any of us could have resisted the temptation to know something that only God knew. At some point—some may have held out longer than others—our own desire for understanding would have led us to take a bite of the forbidden fruit—to disobey God.

The chapter ends with an eviction notice for Adam and Eve and an angelic sentry posted so no one can approach the Tree of Life. It was likely a whole detachment of angels assigned to guard the tree.  They would be there for a good while. While God sent these two packing, he clothed them first.  He did not disown them. They still had their orders to multiply and subdue the earth.

Do not become discouraged or disheartened for we have the full biblical witness and we see the tree of life available to all who follow Jesus.  You just have to go from the alpha to the omega to get that part of the story.

For now, let’s not choose our own understanding when it conflicts with God’s instructions.  God has good plans for us.

For now, understand that if the premise is false, then everything thereafter can be proven to be true—at least it will appear so.  What’s that got to do with a snake in the garden?

If our premise is contrary to God’s instructions—I’m talking the full biblical witness again—then we can convince ourselves of anything, even the worst things.

For now, and forever, let’s try this.

Trust in the Lord with all of your heart and lean not on your own understanding.  In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight.

Next week it’s sex, children, murder, and more children.  It sounds like a Netflix series but it’s chapter 4.

Amen. 

Do we truly understand our own way?

 Read Proverbs 20

 

Do this.  Don’t do that.  This action has this consequence.  This is good.  That is bad.  Wise is good.  Foolish is bad.  Better off poor than a fool or a liar. 

OK, Solomon, we get it.  Give us something more challenging.  Here we go.

A person’s steps are directed by the Lord.

    How then can anyone understand their own way?

Don’t I get to make my own decisions?  How can I not understand my own way? 

Let’s put this in the context of Proverbs 3:5-6.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart

    and lean not on your own understanding;

in all your ways submit to him,

    and he will make your paths straight.

The promise of this proverb is that the Lord will direct our steps.  He will keep us on the right path. We have to trust him with our very being to realize this promise, but God will keep us on the right path.

I’m going to modify something that I have said before.  I have said that we understand our own understanding because it’s our own understanding.  Now, I should refine it to say, we think we understand our own understanding.

Here’s the dichotomy.  We don’t always understand God’s ways.  His ways are higher than our ways.  His thoughts are higher than our thoughts.

But Solomon goes on and says that we really can’t understand our own ways either.  Of course, we think that we can.  They are our own ways.  How could we not understand them?

While we are creatures that think we understand almost everything in the universe; it turns out that we don’t know diddly on the big scale of things.

There is a whole scale of human wisdom that purports and I subscribe to that says the more that I know, the more I realize what I don’t know.

So, is Solomon telling us that we are all a bunch of dummies? Sort of, but not exactly.  He is saying that trust in the Lord is the only solid foundation for knowledge. For as much as we learn and understand and synthesize and think that we know, trusting the Lord to guide us is the only thing that we can know for sure.

The Lord knows the way.  Let me trust him.  He alone keeps me on the right path.

Knowledge is good.  Wisdom is good. Understanding is good. Trusting the Lord is certain.  Of all the wisdom and knowledge and expertise that we may acquire, trust governs.  If we want to stay on the right course, we must trust God completely. 

In so many ways, God directs our steps.  Will we accept his direction or rebel? 

Accept or rebel?

Live God’s way or rebel against him—there really isn’t a figure it out on your own option.  For all that we want to believe that we can figure out things on our own, we never really have complete knowledge.

We like to think that we are super smart creatures, but our true intelligence boils down to trust.  Will we walk in the way set by the Lord?

How do we know this way? By design.

The human spirit is the lamp of the Lord

    that sheds light on one’s inmost being.

Our spirit is designed to know God’s Spirit and thereby know God’s will—his steps for our life.  It’s not that we have a good chance of doing God’s will.  It’s that from the onset of creation, we have been designed to live God’s way.

I have my own personal mantra that I put forth sometimes.  It’s don’t complicate the simple.

Don’t complicate the simple.

It’s along the lines of the Law of Parsimony.  You probably know it as Ockham’s Razor. 

Our nature is to say this is what God says, but…

Solomon tells us this is what God says, now put away your other conditions.  No ifs, ands, or buts if you will.  God has already computed the consequences and sequels to what he has directed us to do.

Just do it.  God has factored in what we can and cannot understand and just told us the right answer. He has directed our steps without us having to resolve all the possible contingencies.

We are creatures who long to learn.  We long for God’s wisdom and knowledge and for understanding, but Solomon tells us that trust is what gets us through the day.  Learning to trust God is likely the wisest thing we can learn.

The only thing that we have to know and understand completely is to trust God.  Everything else will always be just a bit beyond our grasp.  It’s fun to pursue knowledge and wisdom, but the one thing that we can comprehend completely is to trust God with everything we have.

Here’s the kicker.  Solomon says that when we lean on our own understanding, we don’t really understand it anyway.  Quit fighting the Lord as he directs our paths.

A person’s steps are directed by the Lord.

    How then can anyone understand their own way?

Trust in the Lord with all your heart.  It’s just that simple.

Amen.

Trusting God is Wisdom

 Read Proverbs 3

I begin our journey into chapter 3 by going to Deuteronomy 6.

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.  These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts.  Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.  Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.  Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

Solomon and Lady Wisdom both speak here in this chapter.  They speak not of their own accord but of God’s.  The commands are simple and should have sounded familiar.  These proverbs were in accord with what God had spoken five centuries earlier.

·       Keep my commands in your heart

·       Let love and faithfulness adorn your neck so you never leave them

·       Internalize love and faithfulness—write them on your heart

In so doing, you will:

·       Prolong your years

·       Live in peace and prosperity

·       Win God’s favor and a good name in his eyes

These are more conditional promises of God’s wisdom.  Keep my commands.  Live long and prosper.

But now we come to the best-known proverb within this group. Trust in the Lord…

So are we still talking about wisdom or have we moved on to trust?  Yes.

If you revere God so highly that the fear of anything in the world pales in comparison, you have begun a journey that leads to knowledge that leads to wisdom that embraces the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

Wisdom leads you to trust in God.  Trust in God leads you to wisdom.  Trust is wisdom, at least when that trust is placed in the Lord.

So, why is this hard to realize?  We comprehend that the God of creation wove wisdom into the fabric of the universe at the moment of creation.  Wisdom is part of the divine design, so why is it so hard to get in sync with wisdom?

Consider the second part of the 5^th verse—lean not on your own understanding.  Why not just leave it at trust God with everything you have?

We must understand that we can understand our own understanding.  Understanding God and his wisdom are beyond us at times.  We can wrap our minds around our own understanding.

We easily define our paradigm, our efforts to navigate this world, our blueprint for living based mostly upon our own understanding.  Trusting in the Lord with everything we have is in constant conflict with our own human nature and our own understanding.

And you can’t straddle this fence without getting a splinter in your butt.  We must follow God’s way or we surrender to the everything else.  If we chose the latter, we should not question why we are not blessed.

God longs to bless us.  He waits patiently for us to walk in his way so that we may receive bountiful blessings.

Let’s try it this way.  God through his Spirit that lives within you has instructed you to plant tomatoes this year.  You want to plant okra.

You buy one discount tomato plant and hastily stick it in the ground in a spot that never produces anything.  You buy the top-of-the-line okra seed and plant half a dozen rows in your best soil.

You pray every day that God will bless your garden with a good crop.

Weeks go by and your okra finally starts putting on some pods.  They are just too small to pick.  You will check them again in the morning.  When morning comes the pods are a foot and a half long and the fiber in the plant has hardened so much that you can barely cut them off the stalk and surely, they are not edible.

Meanwhile, you continue to harvest tomatoes off the one plant in the sorry soil.  You harvest and it keeps producing more fruit.  Those are some good-tasting tomatoes.

God told you to plant tomatoes but you wanted okra. Your own understanding was that you wanted okra.

There is God’s way and there is everything else.

God says trust me and I will bless you.

The proverb says to trust in the Lord with all of your heart—with everything you have and don’t hold back anything.  The coupling to this part of the proverb is to lean not on your own understanding.

The conditional part is now that you have chosen trust over your own understanding, is to acknowledge God in everything that you do and he will keep you on the path best designed for you.

God wants to bless you in your obedience!  Obedience is not punishment but the path to blessing.

God wants to bless you in your trust.  Trust may bring you through trials and trouble but trust is not trouble itself.  It leads to the path marked with blessings.

Distrust, lack of obedience, and rebellion don’t have the same promise.

What do you call a blessing in your disobedience?  What do you call a blessing in your rebellion?

A rebuke!  A reprimand!  A call to turn away from your path of rebellion and return to God.

There is God’s way and there is everything else.

When you trust God’s way, the best blessing that you receive is wisdom.  Trusting God is wisdom and you will be blessed with even more wisdom for God loves to be very generous with his wisdom for those who seek him.

You know how we finish this morning’s message.  Trust in the Lord…

Amen.

Faith not resting on Human Wisdom

Read 1 Corinthians 2

We continue our exploration of faith, so let’s begin with what should be a very familiar defining verse from the King James Version.

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

This morning, I hope that you all understand that we have received God’s grace in the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen.  Regardless of your story, this is a main element. 

We all have that faith only connection.  For all the studying, for all the fancy preaching you may have heard and all of the terrible jokes you have endured in so many sermons, it was faith and faith alone that brought you to salvation. 

Faith in the Christ and his victory over sin and death stood alone, at least at one point in your life. 

There may have been a verse in a hymn or a sentence in a sermon that prompted you to come forward and profess that faith, but it was faith alone that brought the gift of salvation into your life.  We all received grace by faith.

We grow and mature now, but at the inception of this journey, it was faith alone that put it all in motion.

In Chapter 16 of Matthew’s gospel, after the religious leaders wanted a sign from Jesus and after admonishing them for being so worldly-minded, he told them that all they would get was the sign of Jonah. 

Jesus then warned his disciples about the worldliness of the Pharisees and Sadducees.  Their teachings were void of God’s Spirit and intent.  They knew the words but did not know the divine heart of God.

Jesus then asked them, “Who do people say I am?”

They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”

“But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”

Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven.”

The world says, “seeing is believing.”  Faith says, “believing is seeing.”

If we see it and can touch it and it exists in the physical world, it’s probably not faith.  Paul would say that we walk by faith not sight.  We live by faith not what we can see and touch and feel. 

Faith says, there is more to us than what we can actually see and touch and feel in this world.  There is more to our life than what human wisdom can comprehend.  Understand that because we have faith, we can see God’s hand in so many things of this world, but the other way around never gets you all the way there.

What am I saying?  We can’t get to God through human wisdom.  Logic may get us close.  Examination of the creation may get us close.  Math, science, literature, and a well-rounded education may get us close, but there is always an element of faith involved.

Sometimes our own understanding, our own human wisdom, actually gets in the way.  Sometimes it is easier to come to Christ by faith unencumbered by math, science, or any human argument.

Paul told his readers in Corinth that when he first spoke to them, he was not eloquent.  He did not hone his metaphors the night before.  His analogies were few.  He said that you received the Christ, you proclaimed Jesus as Lord, that you believed not because of any human wisdom on his part or theirs, but because God’s own Spirit was at work.

The message that they received was not built upon human wisdom and therefore no barrage of human wisdom can tear it down.  That holds true today.

Our faith is not built upon human wisdom.  Just as God’s own Spirit revealed to Peter that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, so too God’s Spirit has revealed to us that Jesus is Lord.  Jesus is the way.

He is the Son of the one true God.  He did enter this world in the flesh.  He did die for our sins.  He did rise from the dead.  He lives!

God has revealed this to us.  We may have had a lot of help along the way, but we still had to receive his grace by faith.  Our own spirit had to receive this gift of faith that came by God’s own Spirit.

Paul would go on and use many metaphors and analogies and various figures of speech to get his point across to this church and others, but his initial invitation was void of his own human understanding.  He did not want to get in the way of the Holy Spirit. 

Once you have received this gift of grace that comes by faith, then our disposition should be one of a teachable spirit.  We should hunger for God’s word.  We should long for those daily conversations with God’s Spirit.  We should desire wisdom.  Our new nature will desire to rightly divide the word of truth.

As we embrace God’s wisdom, we can discern what is from God and what is of the world, but we all begin with faith.  Paul explains it this way.

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.  

No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began.  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:

“What no eye has seen,

    what no ear has heard,

and what no human mind has conceived”—

    the things God has prepared for those who love him—

 these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit.

The person who has not received God and his Son by faith just can’t understand.  They don’t get it.  They have not yielded their human understanding to the Spirit of God.

They have not taken a leap of faith.  That could seem like a huge leap for many.  It may be a mustard seed’s leap in reality.  Some don’t like the term leap of faith but I think it’s accurate.

We step out in faith all of the time, but our journey began with a leap, perhaps of a very small distance.  What’s the difference?

With a step, only one foot loses contact with the ground and any time.  With a leap, you lose contact with where you are and can only land where you are going.  At some point we all had to do this.

Imagine someone going off the diving board and trying to hold on at the same time.  Consider small children learning to swim for the first time.  They do just that.

They try to get into the water and hold onto the edge of the pool at the same time.  At some point, you have to let go if you want to swim. 

At some point, we all had to let go of the world’s grip on us.  We had to depart from human wisdom and take a leap of faith to truly know God.

Since then, we have studied to gain wisdom and understanding so that we can continue in faith by putting our Master’s words into practice.

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.  The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments,  for,

Who has known the mind of the Lord

    so as to instruct him?”

But we have the mind of Christ.

Our human nature wants God to fit inside of our model or paradigm.  Our human wisdom says that we can make him fit.  Any God who fits into your box is not really the one true God. 

He defies our human wisdom and the world calls us fools because we believe God over human understanding.  We put God’s words into practice in spite of what the world has to say about it.

We trust in the Lord with all of our heart and lean not on our own understanding and do it on a regular basis because somewhere along the way, we took a leap of faith.  At some point in our lives, we acted solely, exclusively by faith.

Somewhere along the way, we had to act solely upon our faith.

Paul told the church in Corinth that he had divested himself of his own best arguments and persuasion so that the people could believe by faith alone. 

When we examine ourselves and try to figure out what’s next, remember where our journey started.  It all began with faith unencumbered by human wisdom. 

When we do our best to put God’s kingdom and his righteousness first in everything we do, remember, this journey began in faith alone.

When we try to apply the power, love, and sound mind that we have been given, remember that those things only bring us to godly choices.

When we are of sober mind and seeking God’s wisdom, remember that we do not care if the world calls us fools.

When our human wisdom does its best to convince God that our way is better, consider Paul’s words that we heard earlier.

Who has known the mind of the Lord

    so as to instruct him?”

But we have the mind of Christ.

Our faith has taken us from being governed by human wisdom to be directed by the mind of Christ.  Our starting point is faith unencumbered by human wisdom.  Our present location is that we have power, love, and a sound mind. 

Our true wisdom is that we have the mind of Christ.

At some point we let go of human wisdom and received the grace of God. 

Since that time the world has been calling you to come back.  Sometimes, it makes a convincing appeal.  Sometimes, living as a stranger in this world seems too tough.  Sometimes, human wisdom is just so much easier.

So remember, this journey of faith began with faith alone.  God has not ceased the good work that he began in you and your faith must not be cluttered by human wisdom.

We must continue to be people who trust in the Lord with all of our hearts and people who do not lean on our own human wisdom and understanding.

We all began with the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen.  We began this journey with believing is seeing.  Let us not return to the wisdom of the world.

Let us continue to live by faith alone.

Amen.