Chapter 2, beginning in verse
1, we'll read the first ten verses. And I, brethren, when I came
to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring
unto you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know
anything among you, save Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness
and in fear and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching
was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration
of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not stand in
the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. Howbeit we speak
wisdom among them that are perfect, yet not the wisdom of this world,
nor of the princes of this world that come to nought. But we speak
the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom which
God ordained before the world unto our glory, which none of
the princes of this world knew, for had they known it, they would
not have crucified the Lord of glory. But as it is written,
I have not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into the
heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that
love him, but God hath revealed them unto us by his spirit, for
the spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. Now, in 1970, I turned 15 years
old. So I am a child of the late 60s
and early 70s. And during that time, it became
very popular for people to start and carry on these home Bible
studies. It seemed as though the church
was falling out of favor, that is, the church as we commonly
think of people going to church, or that somehow it was insufficient,
and therefore people would meet in informal meetings in homes,
and they called it, you know, home Bible studies or whatever.
And generally speaking, they were looking for something new,
something that they weren't hearing at church, something deeper. And that was partly the product
of my generation. I was born right in the middle
of the baby boomer generation, 1955. That's the middle year
of the baby boomer generation. And if there's anything that
could be said about us, It was that we constantly were looking
for some kind of experience. They even had a philosophy to
go with it. But nonetheless, we always thought that we weren't
really getting hold of the essence of things, so we were always
looking for the deeper thing. And of course, we thought that
our parents were utter idiots. Didn't know anything. So certainly
what they were teaching us it in church wasn't enough. It wasn't
sufficient. There must be something more These Bible studies though were
generally speaking people who knew nothing led by people who
didn't know much in the things of God and What they saw as the
deep things of God weren't even the things of God at all. I But
the scripture tells us the spirit searches the deep things of God. That's in verse 10. The spirit
searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. Now, it does
not mean, of course, that the spirit was unaware of these things
and he's gone out looking for the deep things of God, searching
them out, so he can find out about it and tell us. It's simply
a figure of speech or a kind of an image type of thing. We're
following him and his instruction as he goes through the deep things
of God and makes them known to us. The Spirit of God is our
teacher. He is God working in us. Remember this Bible says it's
God who works in you to will and do his good pleasure. That's
the Spirit of God working in us to will and do his good pleasure.
All the contact we have with God is through the Spirit of
God. He is called the Spirit of Truth
and he will guide us into all truth. All truth that God has
for people is taught to his people by the Spirit. And there's nothing
to be learned apart from what the Spirit of God is teaching.
There's nothing deeper than what He teaches. There is no experience
more profound than the experience of being taught by the Holy Spirit
of God. And I'll say this, there's no
experience more useless than being taught by mere men. Now,
I'm up here as a preacher. I'm trying to teach you something,
but the fact of the matter is, and I've learned this after 35
years of preaching, I can't teach you anything. I can tell you
things. Only the Spirit of God can teach
you. Only the Spirit of God can take the words that I speak,
so long as they are in agreement with the Scriptures. Only the
Spirit of God can take those words and make them living Word
of God powerful and effective in your heart. Only God, only
the Spirit of God can do that. And so the Spirit searches and
reveals the deep things of God. Now, it's good for us to seek
more knowledge, have greater understanding. I don't have a
word to say against people studying the Bible personally. Have nothing
to say against believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, getting together
informally and talking of the things of God and opening up
the Bible and seeking the truth in it? I don't have a problem
with that. We're not like those of olden
times who thought that only the approved of clergy had the capacity
to open a Bible and know what was in there. Any of God's people,
any of God's people, can know the truth. Actually, they know
the truth already. They've been taught it. God gives
special gifts to various men to be teachers. Nonetheless,
there is no child of God who does not have the capacity to
understand the things of God, because the Spirit of God teaches
him. And as proof of this, It says
of the Bereans that after Paul preached to them, they went home,
they opened up their Bibles, and they said, we're going to
check this guy out. Now, if the Bible wasn't meant to be read
by the common man and understood and believed, that would not
have been recorded that the Bereans were more noble than the Thessalonians
because they went out and checked Paul by the Scriptures. So I'm
not speaking a word against the idea of personal Bible study
or even a group Bible study of those who know the things of
God already and yet seek in concert with one another to come to a
deeper understanding of these things. Nonetheless, we do not
do these things to learn new stuff. Let me make this clear. There's
nothing new to learn. You know, that's one reason seminary is
at cross purposes with actually preparing men for the truth. Because seminaries, at least
as they are practiced, these degree-granting organizations,
they are in the world of academia. And academia always is looking
for something new. They're just like the people
on Mars Hill who are always there trying to learn something new.
And so you send a man to a situation like that and say he wants to
get a doctorate of theology, he's going to have to write a
dissertation, and they're wanting him to write something that nobody's
written before. They're wanting him to come up
with something that nobody's seen before. Brethren, there's nothing to
see that hasn't been seen. There's no new perspectives to
be gained. There's a group of people, and
I don't know what they're called now, but I just heard about them,
and they talk about a new perspective on Paul. If it's a new perspective,
don't pay attention to it. There's nothing new. There's
nothing more. Learning the deep things of God
is not a matter of learning deeper truths. It's a matter of learning
the truths we already know more deeply and more maturely. And that's a never-ending process.
In fact, it's not going to end when we die. When we die, it's
not like all at once we're going to become absolutely omniscient
in the things of God. We will forever dive into the
depths of the waters of the truth of God. But imagine this illustration
now. To illustrate this point, we're
not learning new stuff, just going more deeply into stuff
we already know. You go to the shore, the beach, and you watch
people out there, and they're out there in the ocean, and you'll
find babies right by the edge. And the water comes up and goes
around them. Nobody's concerned about it.
They're not in any danger. They're not going to drown. The
water's not deep. But the water's on them. And they're learning
water. But they get to be a little bit
older and they go out a little bit deeper. And they get a little
older and they go out even more deep to where their feet don't
touch the bottom and they're swimming around in it. And maybe
at some time they get them a set of scuba gear and they dive real
deep. Or maybe they become scientists
and they get one of those super submarines that can handle the
pressure. And they go right down there
miles deep. But here's the thing. The scientist
that goes miles deep in the water is in the very same thing that
the baby on the shore is in. Water. He's just in deeper water. That's
all. He knows some things about water
the baby doesn't know. But he still, it's just water.
That's what he knows. And when we seek the deep things
of God, We're not trying to come up with some kind of mysterious
stuff, some kind of knowledge that we can take pride in because
we know it and other people don't. You see, there was a group of
people that were arising in the church at this time called Gnostics,
and that's exactly what they were doing. They claimed to have
some special connection to knowledge. That's why they were called Gnostics,
because Gnosis is the Greek word for knowledge. And they believed
that they, you know, they didn't just have to read the Bible,
you know. They could sit there with their eyes closed and somehow
or another just absorb knowledge. They had special contact with
God that a common believer didn't have. That's why Paul said, knowledge
puffs up. And it does. When we think we've
learned something that other people don't know, I'm talking
about within the context of the church, It generally makes us
think we're better than those that don't know it. But the fact
is, you will never learn anything more than what the babe in Christ
knows. You might know it more maturely,
but you don't know it anymore. What does it say? In verse 9,
but as it is written, I have not seen nor ear heard, neither
has entered into the heart of man the things which God has
prepared for them that love him. Now, I hear people say, and they
think that this is talking about heaven. They say, oh, I tell
you, we can't imagine what heaven's going to be like. Well, I agree
with you, we can. But that's not what it's talking
about. Because the things that I have not seen the air is not
heard have nonetheless been revealed by the Spirit of God What does
he talk? What is he prepared for those
that love him Christ? He's prepared for them a suitable
sacrifice He is prepared for them a righteousness Now No,
I ever saw that that wasn't discovered by somebody going out there with
it his natural eye and looking around and seeing these things
and It wasn't by the ear, hearing it in some natural sense of the
word. In fact, it wasn't even some mystic religionist sitting
on the top of the mountain with his legs crossed in a funny way
and meditating that it entered his mind, this glorious gospel
of the Lord Jesus Christ. One of the things that makes
me confident that this gospel is the gospel of God, Because
there is no way a man made it up It is absolutely contrary
to anything that enters the mind of man And certainly different
than anything that comes out of the mind of man. I Know that
it's of God because I can look throughout the world and I can't
see a bit of it Really you look out in the world you see what's
going on. Do you see the gospel out there?
Do you see evidence? of the things that you and I
believe? No. Faith, the evidence of things not seen. The substance of things hoped
for. You and I are involved, our whole
religion's involved in things that we can't prove. We can't
demonstrate it. We can't see it. There's no experiment
that can be done to prove it. We're talking about things not
seen. And we're talking about hope, which means things which
are not possessed. Paul says a man doesn't hope
for what he already has. So virtually everything that
we are setting the eternity of our souls upon are things we
can't see and things we don't possess. That's crazy. That's crazy. Why would we do that? Because
we've been made spiritually alive, and what cannot be seen with
the natural eye, the Spirit of God has revealed to us in our
hearts. We have a sense, as it were,
that the world doesn't have. Someone said in a civilization
of blind people, a seeing man sounds crazy. We see things the world can't
see. I'm not talking visions, but
things which we believe to the point of taking them for granted.
They have no conception of. And neither did we, until the
Spirit of God revealed them. And then we couldn't help seeing
them. The deep things of God. What are the deep things of God? Verse 2. For I determined not
to know anything among you, other than Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Now, the Apostle Paul had a unique
ministry. He was sent specifically to the
Gentiles. Now, there was not a more Jewish
man in all the world than Saul of Tarsus. I mean, he says, I'm
a Hebrew of Hebrews. I'm a Hebrew, my parents were.
Purebred. And he said, everything that
was to be done to a Hebrew boy was done to me, and I was trained
in the Hebrew way. And concerning zeal, I was a
Pharisee. I was as zealous as they got. Zealous as they got, but I didn't
know anything. And yet this one who is as Jewish
as could be was sent to preach the gospel to the Gentiles. Now
that took a whole lot of conversion on the part of God, a whole lot
of work as it does with all of us. Paul had to be taught things
that he had not seen and had not heard and had not entered
his mind concerning the things of God. But God sent him to the
Gentiles to preach the unsearchable riches of Christ to, as he said
in the other places, declare to you the whole counsel of God. He had been taught by the Spirit
of God. Some even believe that that three years he spent in
Arabia, that the Lord Jesus Christ taught him for those three years,
just like he'd done all his apostles before, when he spent three years
teaching them. I don't know if it's true, the
Bible doesn't say, but it's plausible. He says, I saw the Lord. I saw the risen Christ. And he
was taught these things. And when he gives a summary of
this, what he was taught by the Lord Jesus Christ, a summary
of the whole counsel of God, a summary of what it means that
I held back nothing that was profitable to you. These are
all the ways he described his ministry. He says, he describes
it also in this way, it's nothing other than Jesus Christ and Him
crucified. Now the point of my message,
and if you don't get anything else out of it than this, lay hold
of this. The deep things of God are Christ and Him crucified. They are not things which are
intellectually difficult to grasp. but they are things which are
impossible to believe apart from the grace of God. And you, little
group that you are, you know the deep things of God. It's not these fellas that get
degrees and wear robes and hats that indicate how intelligent
they are. They got their THD or their DD
or their MDiv or whatever it is they've got. Now, some of
them may know the deep things of God. I'm not saying that no
believer ever went to seminary and got a degree. I'm just saying
that degree doesn't mean they know the deep things of God. The famous preachers today, it
doesn't take but a few minutes of listening to them. No matter
how many revelations they claim to have, They don't know anything
about God. In fact, much of what Paul had
to teach, and actually the Apostle John in the book of 1 John, was
to confirm to those believers who were being persecuted by
the Gnostic, that is looked down on by these so-called knowers,
who had a deeper understanding supposedly than the common believer
did, It was to assure them, it's not them that know, it's you.
It's not these guys that supposedly spoke to angels that understand,
it's you. You who believe, you know the
deep things of God. There's nothing more to find
out. Henry used to say this, if it's
true it isn't new, if it's new it isn't true. There's nothing
more to learn. They're simply maturing in the
knowledge you already have. What are the deep things of God?
If it's Christ and Him crucified, we must say that first the deep
things of God is the person of Christ Himself. You say, well
that's not deep. It's not? That's the most mysterious
thing there ever was. God in and of Himself is a mystery. He dwells in a light to which
no man can approach. How do you describe God? You
know, God is... We're going through a Bible doctrine
series in our Sunday school class, and we went through the doctrine
of God Himself, and one of the things I pointed out, I said,
we use words like, well, He's omnipresent, He's everywhere.
He's more than that. He is where there is nowhere. Say, well, He's eternal. He's
more than that. He's more than just everlasting, an infinite
amount of moments. He exists where there is no time.
He is the timeless, spaceless God. To say He is everywhere
is not quite enough. He's everywhere and He's nowhere. That is, He's in that place where
there is nowhere. The timeless, spaceless God.
We can't even think in those terms. We can't think without
thinking about time and space. We're trapped here, as it were. You know, people come up to Bonnie
and me, or at least to me, I'm not sure they said it to Bonnie,
but they're always asking this about our visit here. When did
you get here? And when are you leaving? Now
that's important to our way of thinking. Those are important
things. We've already got established where we are. We're here. Now,
when are you going to be here? Well, we got here Friday. We're
leaving Tuesday morning. We can't think apart from time
and space. Therefore, we simply cannot think
of God in any comprehensive manner. But it gets worse when it's God
in human flesh. How Did the timeless, spaceless
God enter time and space and not cease to be God when He did
it? That's why it says in the book, I can't even remember whether
it's 1 Timothy or 2 Timothy. I wish they'd never named any
of the books first and second. They'd have just chosen brand
new names for them. Great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh.
And virtually every heresy concerning the person of the Lord Jesus
Christ has been an attempt to understand who Christ is. An attempt to describe Messiah
in a way that our minds can get wrapped around it. It can't be
done. We say God is omniscient. And He is. He knows all things.
And yet it says that Jesus Christ grew in wisdom. How does an omniscient
person grow in wisdom? We say God is everywhere and
yet Jesus Christ was somewhere and not other places. He went
from here to there at this time and that time. And so we have
what to our minds is a complete contradiction. Jesus, God in this creation, is the
God who is outside this creation. Now, you are never going to understand
that. I don't even think we're going
to understand that when we get to heaven. We know it, but we don't understand
it. Because I said we can't think outside certain categories. But even though we cannot understand
how it can be so, we believe it to be so. It is a wonder to
think that a full-grown man could be the fullness of the Godhead
in a bodily form. Brethren, it's worse than that.
There was a time when the fullness of God was a single cell within
the womb of Mary. There was a time when the fullness
of God came forth from the womb of Mary as an infant who needed
to be cleaned up, who couldn't walk, who couldn't talk, and
couldn't feed himself. There was a time when the fullness
of God was a toddler Walkin' wobbly. Get this, there was a time when
the fullness of God was a teenager. I don't know how you do that.
Anybody's ever tried raising teenagers? Of course, those of
us that are trying to raise them, we were then once. We can understand,
how can God ever be a teenager? It happened. He was a young man,
a full-grown man. And at the appointed time, he
became a dying man, and yet he's God. Now you will spend eternity
diving into that depth, and you will never hit the bottom of
it. It's Christ. That's the deep things of God.
It's Christ and Him crucified. Now, when Paul talks about Christ
crucified, he's not just talking about the historical event, but
all that that event means, all that led up to it. Why is the
crucifixion of Christ any different than the crucifixion of another
man? After all, there were three men crucified that day. We don't
know the names of two of them. Nobody cared. Certainly Rome
didn't care who those two fellows were. Nor did the Holy Spirit
think it worthwhile to record their names for us. Their crucifixion
accomplished absolutely nothing. Why is it that the crucifixion
of Jesus Christ means something, while the crucifixion of others
is meaningless? Well, it's because of who he is, and it's also because
of how he lived. You see, when he was crucified,
he was being crucified as a sacrifice. Jesus Christ was not a failed
religious reformer. It wasn't like he was just trying
to reform the Jewish religion, which had become all tied up
in tradition and all that. And he just, he tried to move
too fast and got himself in trouble. That's not who Christ is. That's
not what happened to him. He laid down his life. He said,
nobody takes it from me. I lay it down and he laid it
down as a sacrifice. Now, the only reason that that
made any difference at all is because of how he lived up to
that point. He lived without sin. He was born without it. Adam,
he has no biological connection to Adam. Adam is not in the lineage
of his fathers. God is his father. He was born
of a woman, but he's not born of a man. So he did not bear that sin which
fell upon all of Adam's race. Because he's not part of Adam's
race. He's human, but he's not of Adam.
He's born without sin. No tendency towards it. In Him
is no sin. He knew no sin. He did no sin. More than this, He says, I did
always those things which please my Father. Have you ever done anything that
pleases the Father? I mean of yourself. Have you
ever done anything? No. We must cry with Paul when I
would do good. And brethren, if you are a believer
in the Lord Jesus Christ, you want to do good. Now let's not
fall for that idea that believing in Christ does not make a change
in a person. It does. It may not be a change
that anybody else can see. But the believer knows about
it because the things he once loved, he now wishes he didn't
do anymore. And he strives not to do them.
But with Paul, he has to say, when I would do good, evil's
right there with me. And the things that I want to
do, that's not what I do. What I do is the things I don't
want to do. So you and I, even though we're believers in the
Lord Jesus Christ, and we give it all the effort we know how
to give to do good, we can't really claim any success at it,
can we? Jesus Christ was a spectacular success at doing good. When He
would do good, only good was with Him. He did all those things
that He desired to do, and none of those things He didn't want
to do. He wanted to do always which pleased His Father, and
that's exactly what He did. Everything that pleased the Father.
God spoke from Heaven. That is, the Father spoke from
Heaven, so far as I know, only twice. And both times, this is
what He said, This is My beloved Son, in whom I'm well pleased.
The Father never said that about anybody else. And that's pretty
much all He said about the Son. And that's enough. Jesus Christ
never had a desire for sin. In fact, when Satan came to tempt
Him, He did not tempt Him with sin. You ever notice that? He didn't say, go out and steal.
He didn't say, go out and kill. He said, you're hungry. Turn
that stone into bread. And you know something? There
would have been no sin for the Lord to do it. He had the power. But you know what it would have
done? It would disqualify Him for being Savior. Why is that? Because if He's going to be my
substitute, He has to live like I live. And I can't turn stone
into bread. You look at the miracles which
Christ did. None of them were done for his
own sake. He didn't feed himself miraculously.
He walked across the water miraculously, yeah, to get to the disciples.
He needed to be there quicker than walking all the way around
the lake would have got him there. So even that was for them. Everything
he did was to show who he was. None of his miracles were done
to sustain himself. He lived like you and me, yet
without sin. He told the Lord, the devil told
the Lord, you can have all the kingdoms of the world, you know.
There's nothing wrong with the Lord wanting that. Nothing wrong
with the Lord having that. In fact, he did want it, and
he has it. There would have been something
wrong with him gaining it the way the devil was willing to give it to him.
He said, it's all yours if you just worship me. So he took that
which was good and tried to tempt the Lord with that which was
good in order to get him to do that which was evil. You see,
there was nothing in the Lord to appeal to in terms of just
overt sinfulness. So when we talk about Christ
and Him crucified, we're talking about who He is, that mysterious
person God in human flesh, and we're talking about how He lived
a perfect life up to His crucifixion. Nothing wrong. Not one sin could
rightfully be laid to his charge on the record of history. There's one of the deep things
of God. And then in Christ and him crucified is included the
deep thing that the sin of God's people was laid upon the Lord
Jesus Christ. Laid upon him in such a way that
even though they remained ours so far as the historical committing
of them is concerned, they became His so far as the responsibility
of them is concerned. Now that's deeper than I'm going
to try to describe past that. I just know this, my sins were
laid on Him in such a way that they're no longer on me. He bore my sins in such a way
that I don't bear them. Now how God in human flesh could be punished
by God to such a degree, to such a point that He's forsaken of
God? I don't know. The story is told that Martin
Luther was studying the scriptures one time and he got to that phrase,
my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? And it is written
that he just stared at that scripture for hours, just stared at it,
trying to understand that. Finally threw up his hand and
he said, God forsaking God, even anybody can understand that.
We don't understand it, but we believe that's exactly what happened. That's the deep things of God. the deep things of God, the death
of God in human flesh as a sacrifice for sinners. Many years before this happened, Abraham and his son Isaac were
climbing up the mountain. Abraham knew what was going to
happen, Isaac didn't. But Isaac said, Father, here's wood, and
you've got a tinderbox there full of coals ready to start
a fire. He said, so I know what this is about. We're going to
worship God, and I know from what you've taught me, you can't
worship God apart from sacrifice. Where's the land for the burnt
offering, Dad? Now, Abraham did not say, well, son, I was kind
of putting off telling you this. It shows us something of the
faith of Abraham. He said, son, God will provide
for himself a lamb for the burnt offering. And God did. But more importantly, a few thousand
years later, John the Baptist dressed in leather clothes, dunking
people in the water, saw the Lord Jesus Christ and said, there
he is. That's the lamb that God provides. And that's the mystery. Jesus
Christ, the lamb of God, provided by God, bearing the sin of God's
people and putting them away by the suffering that he endured. Oh, we can tell out the theology
of it, can't we? Can't we? But I tell you, sometimes
it can grip your soul and you stand in wonder. Why would God do it? How could
it actually be done? But it was done. The deep things
of God, the resurrection. That's part of Christ and Him
crucified. Because the crucifixion meant nothing if all He was was
crucified. If all He did was end up dead,
well then we're dead in Him. The Bible says we're alive in
Him. Why? Because He's alive. Summer
before last we were having some vacation Bible school and The
women that were teaching the little kids they wanted to teach
them about the crucifixion Well, you know, that's a terribly violent
story. It's a bloody story. And how do you tell that to little
kids? how do you describe to them the horror of Humans taking
another human and nailing them to a cross and And all the suffering
that goes with that. In fact, it's such a gruesome
story, there are some who think that it shouldn't be told to
children. My mother was a Sunday school teacher. This is back
when I was seven or eight years old. And the church we were attending,
you know, she was in the Sunday school department and she was
gonna teach, well, she taught the kids about the crucifixion.
And some of the adults were horrified that she'd told these little
children about Jesus Christ being nailed to a tree and the crown
of thorns and all that that went on. They said, you can't tell
them that bloody story. And my mother, who was always
very practical in her approach to theology, said, well, without
the shedding of blood, there's no remission of sins. No, you're
talking to them about forgiveness if you're not going to talk about
the blood. And so here these women, as they
were thinking about how are we going to tell these children
this story without just horrifying them. And they did it by starting this
way, and I thought it was such a great way to introduce the
subject. He said, I'm going to tell you
a very sad story with a very happy ending. And that's what the gospel is.
That's what the crucifixion of Christ is. A very sad story with
a very happy ending. Because when he bore our sins
in his body on the tree, he put the sins away. He no longer bore
sin. Therefore, he was righteous in
the sight of God. And righteous men are supposed
to be alive, not dead. And therefore, death could no
longer hold him. Death no longer had mastery over
him. Because death has mastery only when there's sin. So God
raised him from the dead, and what was that testimony of? Here's
the wonderful truth that you and I can lay hold on if we believe
the gospel. Jesus Christ really put the sins
away. They don't exist anymore. They're gone. Fully expiated. Fully put away by His sacrifice. Do you know why hell goes on
forever? Because the death of sinful men doesn't put away sin.
And though they are in agony, whatever hell he is, and I'm
not sure exactly what it's like, but whatever it is, it goes on
forever because for all the suffering of the sinful people that are
there, it is never satisfying to God. God never says, okay,
that's enough for the sin that you had. You're now free of sin.
Suffering of sinful men doesn't put away sin. The suffering of
one righteous man put away the sins of many and put them away
so much that Well, they didn't bear them because they were put
on him, and then he no longer bore them because he bore the
penalty of them. And he came out of that grave alive. And then lastly, the deep things
of God, and here's how we go deeper into these deep things,
is as we learn more and more to see all things in the light
of Christ and Him crucified. to value everything in this world
according to that.