Paul says, and let's take a few
minutes to read here, when I came to you brothers, I did not come
with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony
of 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
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
men's wisdom, but on God's power. 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
speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden
and that God has 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, no
eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God
has prepared for those who love him, but God has revealed it
to us by his spirit. The spirit searches all things,
even the deep things of God. Now the subject I'd like to speak
on, what captured my mind, and I hope my heart as well, is this
phrase, the deep things of God. What are the deep things of God?
Now, I came of age, as they use that phrase, in the late 60s
and early 70s. And I recall that throughout the
70s, and I began the 70s 15 years old, So 15 to 25, my late teens and
early adult years. And during this time there was
a great deal of emphasis laid upon these home Bible studies.
The church, that is the meetings of the church, the organizational
church, was falling out of popularity. And people said, well, let's
just meet together in homes and have Bible studies. And more
often than not, these Bible studies were made up of people who didn't
know anything, who were led by people who didn't know much.
And they were people and they just opened up the Bible and
tried to come up with something. Now, let me say this. Studying the Bible is a good
thing. And I don't want to ever give anyone the idea, if they're
a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, I don't want to ever
give you the idea that you cannot open this Bible individually
or with your brothers and sisters in Christ and seek God and come
to an understanding of it. But the experience that I'm talking
about, generally speaking, was people, many of whom really had
never been born again at all, they were just religious people,
and they were led by those who really never had been trained,
and I'm not even talking about seminary stuff, they had never
sat under faithful gospel preachers and learned the truth, so they
were just a group of people groping around in the dark trying to
discover something. And these Bible studies, it seemed
they always were looking for something new. They felt as though
the really essential and deep things had not been discovered,
or certainly were not being told. So they were always opening up
the Bible, trying to see something that had not yet been seen, and
thus to say something that had not been said before. And in
searching for the deep things, normally speaking, it all had
to do with having some profound emotional experiences. Now, as
I think on this, this is not surprising. Because us baby boomers,
and I'm one of those, I was born right in the middle of the baby
boomer generation, 1955. And one of the characteristics
of the baby boomer generation in the United States of America
is that we were always seeking some kind
of deep experience. That's why you had, in the 60s,
this whole psychedelic movement, the experimentation with drugs,
the rise of Eastern religions, meditation and all that. Exploded
then and the baby boomers were trying to look for some real
and meaningful experience And the same thing was going on in
these Bible studies They're looking for something deep Paul said
right here that the Spirit of God searches the deep things
of God And Paul lets us know what the deep things of God are. Now I don't know about you, I
want to know everything about God I can know. I want to have
all the experience of God that a person can have in this life. And I can say this, there is
absolutely nothing wrong with us as believers looking to lay
hold of more than we have laid hold of before in our knowledge
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul, who had met Christ face
to face, they're on the road to Damascus and some believe
that Christ personally taught him for three years, just like
he taught his other apostles that way. But Paul had communication
face-to-face with the Lord Jesus Christ, and yet Paul says in
the book of Philippians, all that I may know him. And so if
the great Apostle Paul, who probably knew the Lord Jesus Christ as
well as anybody walking the face of the earth on that day, if
he said all that I may know Christ, then indeed it's legitimate that
you and I, who have never seen the face of our Lord Jesus Christ,
that we should long for and seek after greater and deeper experiences
with our Lord Jesus Christ. Nothing wrong with that. But
let me tell you this, and this will give you an idea of the
direction we're going on what these deep things of God are.
The deep things of God are not new things. Learning the deep
things of God is not a matter of learning new things, it's
the matter of coming to a deeper understanding of the things we
already know. Now if a person goes out in the
ocean, he may be right there near the shore. My babies will
sit by the shore and the water comes up around them a little
bit and nobody gets too concerned about it and as you get older
you get a little deeper out there and finally you're all the way
grown and who knows you may put on a set of scuba gear and you
may dive down very deep or you may do as some scientists do
they get in those bathyscaphe things and they go way down. They go deeper and deeper and
deeper. And yet, the whole time they're
going deeper and deeper, they're still in the same ocean that
they were in when they were as infants. The water just came
up a little bit around them. And so as we look at this, understand
these deep things of God are never gonna take us into new
information. It's gonna take us, if anything,
simply into deeper understandings of that which we already know.
Now, what is or what are the deep things of God? Paul says
in verse two, For I resolved to know nothing while I was with
you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. Now, the apostle Paul
was sent by the Lord Jesus Christ, he's an apostle of Christ, and
sent specifically into the Gentile nations. He's called the apostle
to the Gentiles. And he was to take to them, actually,
the very first information they had about the God of the Bible.
And he was also to deliver to them, as he described to the
elders in Ephesus, he said, I did not withhold or hold back anything
good for you. I declared to you the whole counsel
of God. And so Paul went out there and
he preached everything that God intended to tell men in the age
in which we live. He says, I didn't hold back anything
and I'll guarantee you he did not hold it back in Ephesus and
he did not hold it back in Corinth. Paul never was a man to hold
back truth. He was bold. He told the whole
truth and nothing but the truth even when it was dangerous to
do so. He never did withhold some information out of fear
that it would offend someone. I remember Henry talking about
fellows that come to a knowledge of sovereign grace, you know,
and says, and then they try to introduce it piece by piece,
as though if you introduce it slowly, people aren't going to
be offended by it. Well, that's just not so. There
is simply no way to tell the truth in such a way that men
will not be offended. And so Paul would tell the whole
truth and nothing but the truth. And how did he describe doing
that? He says, I determined, or I resolved
to know nothing while I was with you, except Christ and Him crucified. So here is the description of
the deep things of God. Christ and Him crucified. You say, well that's what was
taught to us at the first. Yes it was. And as we go deeper and deeper
into our understanding of God and what he has done, we shall
never leave the subject of Christ and him crucified. It's interesting
that people say, well, I'm learning some of the deep things of God.
And you ask them what they're learning, and they'll tell you
stuff about prophecy they've come up with. They'll tell you
something about how to live a successful, prosperous, happy, victorious
Christian life. Or they'll describe to you some
kinds of ecstatic experiences they've had. Paul says the Spirit
searches all things, even the deep things of God. And he says,
I minister to you by the Spirit of God, and I resolved when I
was among you, I wasn't going to know anything but Christ and
Him crucified. So we must consider that Christ
and Him crucified makes up all the things of God, even the deep
things of God, or we're going to have to accuse Paul of holding
back on us. No, it's the deep things of God. What are the deep things of God?
The deep things of God are Christ and Him crucified. It is to know
Christ more. The deep things of God concern
who Christ is. Now, in our Bible classes here
in the morning, Sunday mornings, we're going through a series
on Bible doctrine. And you know, some doctrines
take longer than others to cover. And right now we are on the doctrine
of Christ. And you know something, you could
just stay there forever and ever. In fact, I was doing just as
part of that, trying to prove from the scriptures that Jesus
Christ is none other than God. And finally, I just had to stop
and move on to somewhere else because the scriptures are full.
of declarations of God as Christ. In fact, any subject you want
to talk about with regard to the Lord Jesus Christ, the Bible's
talking about it and talking about it in length. You can go
on and on and on. But as we've tried to describe
Christ, tried to show him in the scriptures, we've also run
into this. No matter how much we learn about
him, There is a deep mystery about his person that we simply
cannot penetrate. And that is this, Jesus of Nazareth
is God. Now, we say that and you say,
well, that's not very deep, that's easy to understand. If you think
you understand that, you don't, for sure. This is one of those
deep mysteries. You say, why is it such a mystery?
Well, who is God? Well, God is a being who exists
outside of time and space. He just does. That's why He calls
Himself, I Am. He's not just was, is, and ever
shall be. He's that, but He's more than
that. He says, I am. He is the ever present one, always
existing in the present tense, if we could even call it that,
because he exists outside the framework of time. Time is his
invention. And so here you have a God who
cannot be described in terms of time, and you cannot describe
him in terms of place. You say, well, yeah, you can.
God's everywhere. He's more than everywhere. He exists where there's
no such thing as where. You say, that doesn't make any
sense. Of course it doesn't. Not to us. Because we are utterly bound
to time and space. We can't even think about anything
without talking about time and space. If I said something like, you
know, I saw Eric. And I did this past week. And
you're gonna, when and where? That's what you're gonna want
to know. Where'd you see him? I saw him down at his mom's store putting
up a sign. When? A couple of days ago. Nothing that we experience means
anything apart from time and space. Yet God exists outside
of that. Now, who is Jesus? Well, he's a man that exists
inside time and space. He experienced everything that
we experience as captive, so to speak, of time and space.
Why, he came into this world as a one-celled organism in the
womb of his mother. You know, you think that it's
difficult to understand or think of God being revealed in a grown-up
man. I want you to understand, God
was manifest in a single cell at one point. And then two, then four, then
eight, and onward until finally this child comes out of Mary's
womb, and it's a little infant that doesn't know how to talk,
can't feed itself, and yet, that's God. And he's a little child,
he's a toddler. You say, well, this doesn't sound
very respectful of God. It's not only respectful, it's
awe-inspiring. How can God reveal himself in
a toddler? How can God be manifest in a
little boy running around his mom and dad's house? And any
of you that have ever had teenagers in your house, how in the world
did God ever manifest himself as a teenager? Yet he did. And then as a grown man, locked
in time and space, experiencing growth. He who knew all things
grew in wisdom. He whom the heavens of the heavens
cannot attain, or excuse me, the heavens of the heavens cannot
contain him, said Solomon, and yet he grew up. He who is the
very image of the Father grew in favor with God. You say, none
of that makes sense. No, it doesn't. It is the essential
mystery that the timeless, spaceless God was manifest in time and
space. That he who does not change went
through every kind of change that humans go through. We sing that incarnation hymn.
And the last line of it. He who could never die has died,
and thus our ransom paid. What a mystery. I'll tell you
this, if you want to study the deep things of God, you try to
figure out the Lord Jesus Christ. And when I say try to figure
him out, I don't mean try to figure him out as though you
think you'll ever get him figured out, just give it a shot. Just
try to get your mind wrapped around who He is, who He was,
and who He shall be forever. And it'll blow your mind. That's
what a mystery is. An essential mystery. Something
that simply will not fit into the categories of human thought.
Can't be done. Christ. God in human flesh. As Henry used to put it this
way, as much God as if he were never man, and as much man as
if he were never God. And yet he's both in completeness. Christ in him crucified is the
deep things of God. It's his person, it's his work.
Now when we speak of Christ in him crucified, we're not speaking
only of the historical event of his crucifixion, though that's
the focal point of it. But we're speaking of everything
He did in preparation to that point and everything that has
happened to Him or been done by Him since that time. Because all of it occupies or
is necessary to our salvation. When we talk of Christ and Him
crucified, we're talking about knowing His person, that that's
God in human flesh. And then we're talking about
as a human being, He actually did everything that human beings
should have been doing all along, but neither could do nor would
do. Now, if you are a believer in
the Lord Jesus Christ, you want to do everything right. You want
to do everything that is good. Now that's just so. And if you
are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, you try. You try to stop doing things
you shouldn't do. You give your effort in trying
to do the things that you should do. And what is Your experience
in this the same as the Apostle Paul when I would do good Evil
is present with me and the good that I want to do I don't do
and the evil that I don't want to do That's what I do. That's
our experience. Is that your experience? It's
mine Now I'm not glorying in that
I'm not bragging about that truth, but it's a it's a reality and
And here's the funny thing. Funny is not the right word,
but here's what seems odd about that. The harder we try to do
good, it seems, the worse we do at it. And then if we do make any progress,
we instantly ruin all the progress we made by being proud of the
step we took. And yet our Lord Jesus Christ
came into the world never once did He do anything wrong. He
never wanted to do anything wrong. There was no conflict within
Him but with one part wanting to do the wrong thing and one
wanting to do the right thing. When He would do good, there
was nothing but good present with Him. When He tried to do
what was good, He succeeded at it spectacularly. Even in this
world full of sin, People want to present a Lord
Jesus Christ that never gets angry because they think anger
is evil. They present a Lord Jesus Christ
that is soft, easy, adjustable. But you know, when our Lord went
into the temple on that day and found the money changers and
those who were selling animals for sacrifice right there in
the temple, He was filled with a righteous indignation at the
insult that that brought upon his father's house and therefore
upon his father. And with a holy zeal, he picked
up a whip of cords and he started beating those animals and driving
the animals out of the temple. He went to the tables where they
were making change so people could pay their temple tax. He
tipped them over and just let the coins go everywhere. He yelled
and he drove everyone out. I am sure that there were some
that looked on that scene and said, man, he's lost his mind. Here's one of those prophets
that's going way overboard. He needs to learn how to moderate
just a little bit. No, our Lord was doing exactly
the right thing. He was doing what those who believe
God should have done all along. In fact, he was clearing out
what never should have come in there in the first place. When
our Lord was easy and soft and gentle, He was doing the right
thing. When He was hard, when He was
harsh, when He was vengeful, He was doing the right thing.
When He said, neither do I condemn thee, He was saying the right
thing. said to others that they were
condemned by the word of God, he was saying the right thing. You know, when it comes to our
own personal morality, we probably know what we ought to do. I'm
not saying we always do it, but we pretty much always know what
we should do. But one thing that probably gives
all of us difficulty is trying to use some wisdom and figuring
out how to answer people and deal in human relationships.
Should I speak sweetly or should I speak harshly or somewhere
in between? You know, because it's natural
for people to be afraid to do public speaking, People think
that I'm doing something special because I get up here and speak.
Doesn't that scare you? Not anymore. It terrified me
when I first started, but it doesn't bother me much anymore.
Do you know what really worries me more than anything else? What
I'm more cautious of than anything else? One-on-one interactions. Why? Because I don't know always
what to say. So often I've tried to speak
and to speak clearly and plainly and yet try to speak sweetly
and all this and still it comes out wrong. Our Lord always said
the right thing. I find that amazing. He who is the sovereign Lord
of the universe, it says, he was in subjection to his parents.
We who aren't the sovereign Lord of anything rebelled against
our parents from the word go. Some more than others, but we
all did it. He who owned everything. Because of God, it is said the
earth is the Lord's and everything in it. It was all his. And yet, while in this life,
he evidently did not have title to anything except the one piece
of clothes that he wore on his back. And in the end, they took
that from him. He lived perfectly doing all
those things that we should have done, never doing those things
that nobody should do. He lived perfectly. To speak
of Christ and Him crucified, to speak of His righteous life,
to speak of Christ crucified, is to speak of His submission
to the Father. He said to His disciples at one
point, shall I say to the Father, save me from this hour? No, it's
for this very hour that I came into the world. I can't imagine suffering a crucifixion. I mean just the physical aspects
of it. I can't imagine willingly doing that for any reason I can
think of. I would resist it with every
fiber of my being. But our Lord, knowing full well
what crucifixion meant and how it was played out, added to that,
knowing full well that when he was crucified, he'd not only
be suffering a punishment at the hands of men, but that his
very soul would be made an offering for sin in the presence of a
holy God. Yet he submitted to his father
and said, not my will, but your will be done. We find it hard to submit to
God in some of the indifferent things of life. Our Lord Jesus Christ submitted
to God in death, even the death of the cross. You want to know
the depths of God, go into Gethsemane and behold our Savior praying.
Oh Father, all things are possible for you. And if it is your will, deliver
me from this hour. Let this cup pass from me. But
if there's no way this cup shall pass, except I drink it, then
so be it, not my will. Your will be done. You want to
enter into the depths of God and begin to understand the heart
of God and how he operates? Go into Gethsemane and see the
Lord Jesus Christ pouring out his heart to the Father and see
all the love for the Father manifested there and all the love for his
people. Because it's for his sake that
he submits, for their sake that he submits. The reason he must
suffer is because they have sinned. The reason he must die is because
it is written the soul that sins it shall die and yet he will
not let his beloved ones die and therefore he goes to die
in their place. We rightly honor those men and
women who are willing to go to the battlefield and risk their
lives in defense of this nation and its blessings, its prosperity. Well we should, but they go at
the risk of their lives. And they, generally speaking,
do not accomplish anything by their death. Their death was
an accident while they were trying to accomplish other things. But
Jesus Christ came not to put himself at risk of death, but
actually to die. And his death was not an accident
on the way to accomplishing what he came to do. His death is what
he came to do. It's the very work he came to
perform. Life arises from death. Forgiveness
comes through condemnation. Acceptance with God was brought
to pass by rejection by God. Here are the depths How am I accepted? By Christ
being rejected. How am I made alive? By Him being
killed. How am I justified? By Him being
condemned. How am I given eternal blessings?
By Him experiencing eternal curse right there on the cross. That's
the deep things of God. The deep things of God speak
of his perfect life, his great love for the Father, and his
love for his people. The deep things of God are of
Christ suffering for sin, though he did no sin. The deep things
of God include Christ being raised from
the dead. Now we look upon Christ on the
cross and our hearts are broken for him. I mean, that's awful. But thank
goodness that's not the end of the story. Last year, when we
had the vacation Bible school, the ladies that were teaching
the little ones, were telling particular stories from the life
of the Lord Jesus Christ. And I believe it was the last
night they were going to tell those little children the story
of the crucifixion. Now some people think you should
not burden little children with such a horrible story as the
death of such a precious person as the Lord Jesus. There were
people like that in the church I attended when I was seven years
old. My mother was in the Sunday school
And she was teaching the kids and my mom, she was one, she
told kids everything when it came to the truth, you know.
She was telling kids about the crucifixion, how Christ was nailed
to the tree and how God abandoned him there, forsook him there
and all this, you know. And when some other adults heard
about that, adults in the Sunday school, they said, well, you
can't tell that kind of stuff to children. And her response
was, Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission
for sins. How are kids going to know how
their sins are put away if you don't tell them about the blood?
And so as the women were going to teach the little children
about this, they introduced it. And I thought it was such a precious
way for them to introduce it to these kids. They said, I'm
going to tell you a very sad story with a very good ending. And that's what the life of Christ
is. The crucifixion of Christ is
a very, very sad story with a very, very happy ending because he
raised from the dead. Jesus Christ died unto sin once,
but now that he lives, he lives unto God. He died under sin,
but such was the greatness of His person, and such was the
quality of His death, that when He died, the sins He bore were
put away. Now, if you die in your sins,
your death will not put away your sins. You will take them
into eternity with you. Why? Because we aren't righteous. We don't just bear sins as sins
assigned to us, we bear sins that we actually did. Not to
mention, our persons aren't worth anything in the sight of God.
That is, the character of our person. He's not pleased with
us because of who we are and what we've done, as he was with
the Lord Jesus Christ. And therefore, when we die, our
sins yet remain on us. Our Lord said to the Pharisees,
if you do not believe that I am, you will die in your sins. And
to die in your sins is to be a sinner forever. And to be a
sinner forever in the sight of God is to be forever under His
wrath. Sins are never put away in hell. That's why we don't believe in
anything called purgatory, whereby people suffer, and as they're
suffering, their sins are being purged out. That's what purgatory
means. No! Our suffering never puts our
sin away. His suffering puts sin away.
And therefore, since He put the sin away, that means He Himself
bore no sin anymore. They're gone. Well, the grave
is not the right place for a righteous man, is it? So God raised him
from the dead, testifying to Him and to heaven, and most importantly,
friends, to us, that His sacrifice was accepted. And Jesus Christ
came out of that tomb the same man, but a new man. He was no
longer part of the old creation, subject to death. He lives forever,
immortal. The deep things of God are this,
that because of who Christ is and what he did, sinners like
you and me may be made like him, righteous, perfect. Not just
accepted, but actually acceptable. Not just loved, though that's
wonderful, lovable. You know, it's one thing to be
loved, it's another thing altogether to be lovable. You might say, well, no, that
would be to take glory away from Christ, if you ever say we're
loved because we're lovable. God didn't start loving us because
we were lovable, but because He loved us, He's going to make
us lovable. He's going to make us just like
His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's lovable. He's going
to make His people glorious with His glory. That's the deep things
of God. What is it to know the deep things
of God? To understand the depths of God
is more than to know the doctrines of them or the details of the
history of them. Rather, it's to have one's whole
way of thinking transformed by these deep things, to see everything
in the light of the cross, to see God from that perspective. Most people look at God from
the perspective of the law. And yes, there is something to
be learned about God from the law. But if you want to know
the deep things of God, you've got to see God in the light of
the cross. And what does it tell us about God? Well, the first
thing it tells us about God is that He is a just God. For even
though that was His own beloved Son on the cross, His Son was
there with sin upon Him, and a just God will not forgive,
not even His own Son. He says, I will by no means clear
the guilty, and his son came before him as a guilty person. Guilty with the guilt of God's
people. Nonetheless, he was guilty, and
God the judge says he must die. And the holy, righteous, just
God killed his own son. Now brethren, all you here, if
God wouldn't lighten up because that was his son, do you think
he's gonna lighten up on your sins? But I tell you, not only do we
see the justice of God in the cross, we see the great mercy
of God. Because even though He's punishing
His Son, and justly so, because His Son is bearing sin, yet oh
what mercy is revealed in this, it's not His own sin he bears,
it's ours. And it was God in mercy that
put them there so he could justly condemn them and yet let you
and me go free. We say, well, you gotta lay your
sins on Jesus. And I understand in some sense
we do that. But anyone who ever laid his
sins on Jesus by faith, long before they ever put them on
Jesus, it is written, Jehovah has laid on him the iniquity
of us all. God did that, because only God
has the right to do that. mercy. He took my sin off of
me and put it on the Lord Jesus Christ. You say well that's so
simple that can't be deep. Yes it is simple and I keep diving
deeper and deeper and deeper into that and I haven't hit bottom
on that truth yet. Have you? Like I said when we were singing
I thought I was really going to give it a go there on the
chorus. For me, he died. Boy, I was gonna sing glory to
Christ. I was crushed by the thought
of it when it hit me. For me, because of me and for
my sake, he died. Do you think you're gonna exhaust
that truth? For me, he lives. He's at the right hand of the
Father right now making intercession for this sinner trying to talk
to you. I'm trying to preach to you the gospel and there's
enough sin in what I'm doing to send all of us to hell and
the only reason it's not happening is because right now at the right
hand of the Father is one who pleads for me and pleads for
you. The deep things of God. And who knows the deep things
of God? It says it's the Spirit that searches all things, even
the deep things of God. Does that mean the Spirit's searching
for them because He doesn't know them? No, the Spirit knows all
these things. He's God. And it's Him that comes
to reveal these things. What does it mean when it says
the Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God?
The Spirit of God is in every believer, just like a hand in a puppet,
moving the believer to search all these things out. Now if
you're not interested in these things, you know what that tells
me? The Spirit of God is not in you searching these things
out. He's not moving in you to search
these things out. If you don't want to know the
deep things of God, it's because the Spirit of God's not in you.
Seeking those things out, you know It says that that the spirit
bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God
another place that puts this way He has sent the spirit of
his son into us crying Abba father The spirit comes in us and cries
Abba father. What's that make us do it makes
us cry out Abba father. I And the Spirit of God comes searching
out the deep things of God, comes into us searching them out. And
what does that make us do? It makes us seek them out. And
God's people are interested in the things of God, and they seek
out deep understanding of the glorious truth of Christ and
Him crucified. And they are determined to know
that. And they're not particularly
interested in knowing anything else. And the more they are able
to bring their fleshly scatterbrained religious person into subjection
to their born again spiritual person, the more they seek him
with singleness of heart. And the more they are cut off
from all the shallow things of worldly religion, things about
like who ought to be president, That's not the deep things of
God. When is Jesus going to come back? That's not the deep things
of God. That's one of the hidden things of God. He didn't tell
us when it's going to happen. What's the deep things of God?
Christ and Him crucified. Oh may the Spirit work in us
to search it out. over and over again to dive deeper
and deeper into this ocean, never finding out something new, but
going to new depths of the knowledge we already have. The grace of
the Lord be with you.