LET
WISDOM BUILD THE HOUSE
Mount Hope
UMC
Sunday,
February 2, 2020
1 Corinthians 1:18-31 The Message (MSG)
18-21 The Message that
points to Christ on the Cross seems like sheer silliness to those hellbent on
destruction, but for those on the way of salvation it makes perfect sense. This
is the way God works, and most powerfully as it turns out. It’s written,
I’ll turn conventional wisdom on its head,
I’ll expose so-called experts as crackpots.
I’ll expose so-called experts as crackpots.
So where can you find someone truly
wise, truly educated, truly intelligent in this day and age? Hasn’t God exposed
it all as pretentious nonsense? Since the world in all its fancy wisdom never
had a clue when it came to knowing God, God in his wisdom took delight in using
what the world considered dumb—preaching, of all things! —to bring those
who trust him into the way of salvation.
22-25 While Jews clamor for
miraculous demonstrations and Greeks go in for philosophical wisdom, we go
right on proclaiming Christ, the Crucified. Jews treat this like an anti-miracle—and
Greeks pass it off as absurd. But to us who are personally called by God
himself—both Jews and Greeks—Christ is God’s ultimate miracle and wisdom all
wrapped up in one. Human wisdom is so tinny, so impotent, next to the seeming
absurdity of God. Human strength can’t begin to compete with God’s “weakness.”
26-31 Take a good look,
friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many
of “the brightest and the best” among you, not many influential, not many from
high-society families. Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and
women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these
“nobodies” to expose the hollow pretensions of the “somebodies”? That makes it
quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God.
Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a
fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. That’s why we have the
saying, “If you’re going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God.”
Paul tells the church at Ephesus what I sincerely and
constantly pray for you “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of
glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of
Him” and later in Ephesians he adds “and to know the love of Christ which
surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of
God.”
Let me
see by a show of hands, how many of you claim to know God? Go ahead, raise your hands if you know
God. Let me assure you, Beloved, none of
us truly knows God. We don’t even know
ourselves, yet we claim to know God, and not just know him, we profess to know
him intimately. We don’t know God. We know what we perceive God to be in our
minds. See, we can never know God with
our intellect, our mind. We become
intimately acquainted with God in our heart.
Momma used to tell me that I let my heart rather than my head lead
be. It was not meant as a
compliment. She was telling me to think
things through, to analyze a situation and not let my heart lead me into
something without thinking it through first.
But God wants our hearts because most of the time our
minds lead us down the wrong path. We
cannot begin to truly know God because our knowledge is so finite, so limited,
and we serve an infinite, limitless God.
God says in Isaiah in 55:8, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways.”
But 1 Corinthians 13:9-12 assures us that “Now our
knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only
part of the whole picture! But when the
time of perfection comes, these partial things will become useless.
When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a
child. But when I grew up, I put away
childish things. Now we see things
imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see
everything with perfect clarity. All
that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything
completely, just as God now knows me completely.”
If we were honest with ourselves, some of us are still speaking
and reasoning like children. That is
those who believe the message of the cross is foolish nonsense. We don’t want to take advice; we hate
criticism and we don’t want anybody telling us anything that might enhance our
knowledge because we already know it all. I’m not talking about anyone here at Mount
Hope, but those other people. You know
them.
God cannot be found through intellectual reasoning and
man’s finite wisdom. God reveals himself
to those who believe in such simplicity that those who think they are wise are
confounded because God reveals himself in love. “Beloved, let us love one another, for love
is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God,
because God is love. In this the love of
God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so
that we might live through him (1 John 4:7, ESV)
Then Paul recites Isaiah 29:14. In Eugene Peterson’s
version of The Message Bible, he phrases it this way. “These people make a big show of saying the
right thing, but their hearts are not in it.
Because they act like they’re worshiping me but don’t mean it. I’m going to step in and shock them awake,
astonish them, stand them on their ears.
The wise ones who had it all figured out will be exposed as fools. The smart people who thought they knew
everything will turn out to know nothing.”
Wednesday in Bible Study, we read from the Book of Amos,
Chapter 5, verses 21-24 which says, “I hate, I despise your feast days, and do
not savor your sacred assemblies. Though
you offer me burnt offerings and your grain offerings, I will not accept them,
nor will I regard your fattened peace offerings. Take away from me the noise of your songs,
for I will not hear the melody of your stringed instruments. But let justice run down like water and
righteousness like a might stream.”
This was the scripture Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. quoted
in his “I Have A Dream” speech on August 28, 1963 in Washington, DC. In speaking about the Negro being satisfied
with being treated as second class citizens he says, “We can never be satisfied
as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger
one. We can never be satisfied as long
as our children are stripped of their adulthood and robbed of their dignity by
signs stating, ‘For Whites Only’. We can
never be satisfied as long as the Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and the
Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied and we will not
be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a
mighty stream.”
Paul was writing to the church in Corinth. Amos was talking about the unbelieving and
disobedient Jews in Judah. The Rev. Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was speaking about the United States Government. These warnings are just as relevant today as
they were then. God does not accept our
worship out of obligation and duty. He
does not accept our offerings out of guilt and expectation. He does not accept our songs of praise when
our hearts are not in a mindset of worship and love, honoring Him who is
exceedingly abundantly above all that we can think, ask or dream according to
the power that is within us.
Paul says that God saw to it that we will never know God
through human wisdom. That’s because our
wisdom is so limited. It’s limited by
our environment, limited by our resources, limited by our ability to accept
those things we cannot understand.
Proverbs 3:5-6 tells us to “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and
lean not to thine own understanding. In
all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.” Why?
Because we cannot begin to comprehend the wisdom of the all-knowing,
all-wise, omniscient, omnipresent God.
See, James put it this way, “But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first
of all pure (we are not pure), then peace-loving (we are a contentious people,
always disagreeing with one another about something or another), considerate
(we are not considerate because we are so selfish), submissive (we always want
to be in control), full of mercy (mercy is as mercy does), good fruit (do we
really bear fruit? Who do we tell about
the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living?), impartial (we are biased
because we only comprehend based on what we’ve been exposed to), and sincere
(few of us are sincere in our speech and our actions. We will say one thing and do another).”
But those of us who are saved and trying to live a holy
and upright life, we know that Jesus is the very power and wisdom of God. We know that God’s plan for us is better than
any plan we could ever dream up.
When we walked outside God’s purpose for us, things never
went right for too long. We’d take 1
step forward and 2 steps back. I don’t
care how hard we tried; we just didn’t seem to be able to make ends meet. We constantly struggled and wrestled with
just the normalcy of trying to make a decent living, raising a family and
day-to-day life. Many of us had to get
real low, dejected, depressed and filled with anxiety about how we were going
to make it – not just financially. We
had lost our way spiritually, or we were spiritually bankrupt. See, not all of us grew up in the
church. And even if we did, the church
wasn’t in us. We’d come do our duty on
Sunday and Monday through Saturday we did what we wanted, how we wanted, with
whom we wanted.
Then God called us out of the mess of our lives. That’s where he found all of us who accepted
Jesus. He didn’t go to the wealthy and
powerful or the sanctified and Holy Ghost filled. He came to us and made us an offer we
couldn’t refuse -- everlasting life with him in eternity. And if we really trusted in Him, confidence
that in this life we would have the comfort of knowing that he would always be
with us and never forsake us.
We are now united with Christ, as the scripture
says. One with Christ. One with the Spirit who lives within us. By the act of salvation, we are now pure and
holy and free of sin. “There is
therefore now no condemnation to those of us in Christ Jesus!”
We had enough wisdom to accept Christ as our Lord and
Savior and the one who gets wisdom loves life; the one who cherishes
understanding will soon prosper (Proverbs 19:8 NIV).
Paul said in Ephesians 4:17-24, “With the Lord’s
authority I say this: Live no longer s the Gentiles do, for they are hopelessly
confused. Their minds are full of
darkness; they wander far from the life God gives because they have closed
their minds and hardened their hearts against him. They have no sense of shame. They live for lustful pleasure and eagerly
practice every kind of impurity.
But that
isn’t what you learned about Christ.
Since you have heard about Jesus and have learned the truth that comes
from him, throw off your old sinful nature and your former way of life, which
is corrupted by lust and deception.
Instead, let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes. Put on your new nature, created to be like
God – truly righteous and holy.”
Then we will partake in God’s promise for us in Jeremiah
32:38-39 “They shall be My people, and I
will be their God; and I will give them one heart and one way, that they may
fear Me always, for their own good and for the good of their children after
them.”
Let the wisdom of who we are and whose we are build our
house. We are new creatures, born of
water in Baptism and the Spirit which now lives within us. Can’t nobody do us like
Jesus. He is the architect and finisher
of our faith. And he who the builder
rejected has become the chief cornerstone.
‘Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus!
Don’t be
like 2 little pigs who built their house of straw and sticks building your
house with material that will not last.
Build your house on a firm foundation with the wisdom that Christ is
your Solid Rock and in that way nothing and nobody including the big, bad wolf
or the enemy will be able to huff and puff and blow your house down.
Remember the words of Proverbs 24:3-4 (NJKV) – “Through
wisdom a house is built, and by understanding it is established; by knowledge
the rooms are filled with all precious and pleasant riches.“
