Episode Transcript
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Lord, there are many things that
are overwhelming to us, many things that
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are constantly changing and weigh us and
trouble us, and so we asked that
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you would speak to us clearly,
that you would help us to know the
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Gospel and have confidence in it.
We asked that your spirit, when speak,
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would speak to us this morning the
very words of Christ, that we
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might know him and love him and
find our salvation in him. We pray
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this in Jesus name. Amen,
please remain standing for the reading of God's
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Word From First Corinthians, First Corinthians
chapter two. I'm going to be preaching
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on verses nine through sixteen, but
I'd like to begin reading it verse one
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of Chapter Two. First Corinthians two, verse one, as we're all start.
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This is the word of God.
Let's give our attention to it.
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And I, when I came to
you, brothers, did not come proclaiming
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to you the testimony of God with
lofty speech or wisdom, for I decided
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to know nothing among you except Jesus
Christ and him crucified, and I was
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with you in weakness and in fear
and much trembling. and My speech,
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to my message were not implausible words
of wisdom but in demonstration of the spirit
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and of power, so that your
faith might not rest in the wisdom of
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men, but in the power of
God. Yet among the mature we do
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impart wisdom, although it is not
a wisdom of this age or of the
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rulers of this aged who are doomed
to pass away, but we impart a
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secret and hidden wisdom of God which
God decreed before the age is for our
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glory. None of the rulers of
this age understood this, for if they
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had, they would not have crucified
the Lord of Glory. But, as
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it is written, what no I
has seen, nor ear heard, nor
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the heart of man imagined, what
God has prepared for those who love him.
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These things God has revealed to us
through the spirit. The spirit searches
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everything, even the depths of God, for who knows a person's thoughts except
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the spirit of that person which is
in him? So also no one comprehends
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the thoughts of God except the spirit
of God. Now we have received not
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the spirit of the world, but
the spirit who is from God, that
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we might understand the things freely given
us by God. And we impart this
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in words not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the spirit, interpreting
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spiritual truth to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the
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things of the spirit of God,
for they are folly to him and he
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is not able to understand them because
they are spiritually discerned. But the spiritual
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person judges all things, but is
himself to be judged by no one,
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for who has understood the mind of
the Lord so as to instruct him?
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But we have the mind of Christ
men. Maybe seated after the sermon,
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we're going to sing him four hundred
and thirty one, and I want to
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read to you aligne from that hymn. And this is a favorite hymn of
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ours here and of many people.
And can it be that I should gain?
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In verse four, we read Long. My imprisoned spirit lay fast,
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bound in sin, and nature's night, thine eye diffused a quickening. where
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I woke, the dungeon flamed with
light, my chains fell off, my
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heart was free. I rose,
went forth and followed the so you hear
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the progression right, it begins with
being imprisoned, being chained up, and
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then something happens that leads to freedom, and the way it's expressed here is
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thine. I diffused a quickening ray. It is as though God looks upon
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us and like a ray coming from
the sun, that ray changes us in
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a way. It awakes us.
The dungeon that we are imprisoned in flames
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with light, the chains fell off
and fall off and we find ourselves free.
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That Ray of light, we might
say, is the Holy Spirit,
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the power of God that goes forth
to bring about our salvation. And it
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is the Holy Spirit that I want
us to focus on this morning because in
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our passage first Corinthians two, nine
through sixteen, Paul explains to us how
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it is we know the gospel of
Jesus Christ. We know it through the
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preaching and the special revelation of the
Holy Spirit. Now Peter says something similar
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in First Peter One hundred and twelve
and first Peter one hundred and Twelve,
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the Apostle Peter tells us that those
who preached the Good News, the Paul's,
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the peters, the Stevens, the
Timothy's and ministers today, those who
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preach the news, did so by
the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. It's
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remarkable, isn't it, that he
says that they did it they by the
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Holy Spirit sent from heaven, and
this is a very important truth, one
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that Paul is spending a whole set
of verses here on in this letter.
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He wants to make it crystal clear
to the Corinthians and to you, to
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me as well, that is by
the Holy Spirit that we have the gospel
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of Jesus Christ. We could put
it this way. The fact that they
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preached the good news by the Holy
Spirit is as significant as the sun that
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they preached. Or, to put
it another way, the whole Holy Spirit
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empowered preaching is just as important as
Christ centered preaching. Now this is not
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because Christ is insufficient in some way, but because his ministry is inseparable from
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the spirits ministry. You cannot have
one without the other, and that's not
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because of a weakness in Christ,
but that's because God is Triune, because
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there never is the father without the
son and the spirit. There never is
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the son without the father in the
spirit. There never is a spirit without
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the son and the father. These
three are one. God and the Holy
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Spirit are it. It is important
for us to remember his role in that,
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and so holy spirit empowered preaching is
just as important as Christ centered preaching.
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The good news about Christ was preached
by the Holy Spirit, says Peter,
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by the Holy Spirit, says Paul, and the Holy Spirit comes to
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us from the Sun, who sent
him, and the father is well,
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who has given all things to the
sun. So, with that said,
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let's think about why this matters.
Might say, okay, I got that,
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it's in the scriptures, but why
is that an important thing? Why
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should that be something that's on my
mind? Why is Paul spending all this
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time to impress upon us that the
good news of the Gospel comes, of
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Christ, comes to us through the
preaching empowered by the Holy Spirit? Why
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does God want you to know that
are that this word of salvation comes to
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us in this way? Well,
the first reason is that there are things
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that you simply cannot know simple just
in natural revelation. There's things that you
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cannot know just by looking at the
world. Now, the Scripture says there
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is a lot that natural revelation reveals. There's a lot that creation reveals.
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The Sky Proclaims God's Handy Work,
the stars speak and knowledge is revealed,
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says Psalm nineteen in Romans one.
Paul, who of course is writing this
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letter as well. He tells us
that we know things about God in the
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things that God has made. You
can go and look at the stars and
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the mountains, go on a hike
on a Sunday afternoon and come to understand
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something about God, his infinite power. Your smallness in the world, but
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also your glory in the world,
is part of creation itself. You can
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see God's righteousness in these things.
You can sense his moral law, to
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know the difference between right and wrong. These things are revealed in this world.
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The rulers of this age that Paul
mentioned earlier, they don't understand nothing.
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They understand some things. They have
real wisdom, they just don't have
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this wisdom. You see what Paul
saying in this passage? He's making a
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distinction between one kind of wisdom and
another kind of wisdom. One kind of
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wisdom is penultimate, it's underneath the
ultimate things. The other kind of wisdom
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is ultimate, and he also says
some other things about it will get which
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we'll get to in a moment.
He says the ruler of this age,
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they they rule and they have wisdom, but it doesn't bring about satisfaction in
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all things. It doesn't bring about
the knowledge of the salvation that we need.
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And so this is one reason why
we need the spirit of God,
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he says it's because you can't get
at anywhere else. You can't find the
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good news of the Gospel by just
going on a hike. You're not going
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to know about the incarnation of the
son of God by looking at the mountains.
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You're not going to know about how
Jesus came into the world and died
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for our sins by looking at the
stars. You're not going to know about
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how, if we put our faith
in him, that God saves us from
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all of our sins by fishing in
a river. Those are good things and
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they tell us good things, but
they don't save us. They're not sufficient
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for that. A second reason we
need the spirit of God to reveal these
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things. Not only does natural revelation
not reveal that, but we might say
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it in a positive way, as
Paul says it here, and that's that
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the Gospel was hidden. God specifically
hid these truths. Notice what Paul says
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in verse nine. What know I
has seen, what no ear has heard,
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nor the heart of man imagined,
what God has prepared for those who
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love him. So it's not just
an incapability of natural revelation of creation,
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but there's also this positive hiding of
God, positive in the sense that this
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is something God is doing. He's
active in this. As it said in
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verse seven, we impart Paul speaking
about him and other ministers. They're preaching,
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he says, we impart what a
secret and hidden wisdom of God.
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There I happen to have a preview
of tonight's sermon. So Christian will speak
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more on this from one of the
parables of Jesus, so you'll have another
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opportunity to think more about this.
But notice what what Paul saying? Knows
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what the Holy Spirit is saying,
that God chose to hide these things,
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to keep them secret, but now
they are being revealed, now we are
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finding them out. To Go back
and think about Peter in that passage I
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quoted earlier, he tells us that
prophets searched and inquired diligently about the things
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that we now know. Angels,
he says, long to look into these
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things that all of us here in
this room now know and have heard.
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And they didn't know it, they
didn't hear it, they didn't see it.
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Why? Because God hid it,
God kept it secret. Paul tells
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us the Gospel was hidden. It
has not been revealed. Peter says these
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things about prophets and angels. Let
me ask it this, let me ask
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you a question in this way.
If the truths about Christ can't be figured
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out by angels and Prophets, there's
certainly no way I'm going to figure it
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out by going on a hike.
Right. Paula says, you're quoting the
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scriptures, that these things can't even
be imagined. Right, it's you can't
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even figure that about by just sort
of sitting around and say, I wonder
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if maybe this might be true about
the good news that's coming to us.
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I wonder if they can't even be
imagined. Paul says, you can't sit
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in a room and turn off the
light and sort of close your mind off
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to all your presuppositions and just use
reason and then find yourself at the Gospel.
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Why? Because God hit it from
you. If God hide something from
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or from the world, if God
hide something from the world, you're not
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going to find it. Reason isn't
that powerful to overwhelm God. Imagination isn't
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that powerful to pry open his secrets. Deuteronomy two twenty nine says that the
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revealed things belong to us and the
hidden things belong to God, and that's
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just the way it is. One
of the ways Paul gets at that here
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in this passages he says, think
about your own souls. People don't know
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about your interior world, your values, your thoughts, your wishes, your
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hopes, your dreams, unless you
reveal it, unless you tell them.
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That could be through body language or, but usually most often, our words
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in a similar way. Unless the
spirit of God reveals the things of God,
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you're just not going to find it
out. Why would we think that
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we can keep things secret but God
can't? Why would we think that there
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are things that we know that nobody
else can know? But if we just
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apply ourselves or really open up our
minds or impress ourselves into this things of
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the world, we can crack open
God's secrets? That's a pretty presumptuous thing,
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and that's another thing that Paul is
doing here in this passage. Not
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only is he telling us about telling
us the limits of natural revelation and God's
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action and previous history of hiding and
keeping secret these things, but he's also
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humbling us, isn't he? Too
many people think that they can find the
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blessedness of the divine, apart from
the divine self revelation. If I go
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into the desert and spend several days
quietly and alone, the world and God
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and the divine will just open up
its secrets to me, won't? You
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will still have yourself and your messes
in the world. Maybe you'll get clarity
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on a few things, on this
or that, maybe you'll be able to
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clear some clutter out of your mind
and get focused on your priorities. There
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could be some benefit of that,
but you're not going to find out the
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Gospel. You're not going to find
out the very thing that you need for
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your salvation. Other people think that
if they just apply themselves to the wisdom
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of this world, finding out how
the whether it's how markets work or how
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people work or how a nature works
or whatever it is, if they apply
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themselves to their work, they can
find out God. But they can't remember
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that because of our sin are the
work itself that we do is cursed because
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of sin that came into the world. We can't just not only can we
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not produce the results of our work
that we desire to produce fully and easily
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as we like, but that's certainly
not a path to to getting things out
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of God that he's not ready to
reveal. People want to look deep into
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themselves, but there's a whole mess
of sin in there. People want to
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look at human love in general,
or dark sayings and mystery, or some
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people look at just change or whatever, various things in this world. But,
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beloved, remember that God is awesome
in his power, awesome in his
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wisdom. His thoughts are not our
thoughts. We have no access to them
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unless he reveals them to us.
And that, as I said, ought
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to humble us. It ought to
put us in our place and go I
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guess I'm not God. I guess
I need him to give me himself in
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order for me to know him,
in order for me to love him.
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It makes us dependent on him and
not Lord's over him. That's part of
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why God does this, is he
humbles us. We come to God on
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his terms because he's God and we
are not. But these truths about the
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revelation of God coming to us only
from God himself and specifically from the spirit.
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It's also encourages us, I think, and that's what Paul says in
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Verse Five. He says, I
want you to remember that my speech didn't
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come to you in plausible words of
wisdom, but a demonstration of the spear
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it and of power. Why?
Verse Five? So that your faith might
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not rest in the mid wisdom of
men, but in the power of God.
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How many times have you know?
My family is preparing for family camp
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and we put our our packing list
together, but we're wondering in the back
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of our minds did we get it
all? Did we bring the right things?
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Are we bringing too much? And
if we struggle to put together a
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packing list for a trip and Assembol
all of our things, what makes us
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think that we can just dig into
ourselves and discover the divine? Then we
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can dig into ourselves and fit together
all the pieces of reality and the heavenly
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things and God's plan for the universe, and if we can just settle into
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that and live out our lives in
this truth that we have selfdiscovered, don't
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be ridiculous. We're creatures, we
struggle with limitations and, on top of
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that, sin. It's not just
that we are a limited and we are
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in these things, but we also
have sin in us that's constantly counteracting truth,
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fighting against truth, hiding truth,
deceiving. We deceive ourselves. But
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remember, I'm trying to encourage you
here, here we are being given the
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spirit of God, so that you
can rest and know that God himself has
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revealed this thing to you. You
don't need to doubt it like you doubt
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yourself, like I doubt myself.
You don't need to wonder, did I
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get this right? Do I have
enough? Is it all been revealed?
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Is there's some peace missing? That's
all. There everything that you need,
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every single thing that you need.
John tells us that there were so many
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miracles and things and signs Jesus did
that you can't even write them all down,
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but these ones I give to you
so that you would know that Jesus
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is the Christ, is the son
of God, and so that, believing
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in him, you would have life
in his name. Occasionally Paul will reference
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a letter to the Laodiceans or something
like that. You'll read in the in
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the scriptures, other letters and things
that were written. You don't need to
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worry about missing them, because God
has given you everything that you need.
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This springs a lot of confidence for
the one who's trusting in the Lord and
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not in themselves. We have confidence
when we remember the source of the revelation.
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It also reminds us that there is
true power in these things, because
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they're not simply self derived or come
out from some other person. We know
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that God himself is at work.
As Paul says, this is a demonstration
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of the spirit and of power God
is at work when he reveals these things.
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The Holy Spirit, we confess,
is the Lord and Giver of Life.
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These are the truth that we find
in his word, in the Gospel.
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In this spirit empowered, Spirit revealed
Gospel, we also find the love
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of God poured out for us.
Notice in verse twelve that says we have
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respieved not the spirit of the world
or world, but the spirit who is
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from God, that we might understand
the things freely given us by God.
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I think that word freely reminds us
that these things are of grace. These
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things come to us because he loved
us, as he says in verse nine,
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what God has prepared for those who
love him. He changes our hearts
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so that we can rest in him, so that we can abide in his
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love, love him and and as
he loves us. There's this relationship that
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is formed. We're no longer afloat
in the world wondering where we fit in
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and what family we belong to,
what people we belong to, and all
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these things. God comes to us
and says, you belong to me.
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My banner over you is love.
I am your husband and you are mine.
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We're together now. I make this
covenant by the blood of my own
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son. You're safe, you're protected. These are the things that the spirit
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of Christ, the spirit of love, reveals to us. It is good
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to know that these things are not
determined by us, but revealed to us
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by the Holy Spirit. Well,
close by reminding you that, as God
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reveals these things to us by the
spirit, the scripture also testifies to us.
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The spirit testifies to us that he, the Holy Spirit of God,
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also dwells in our hearts, testifying
to us that these things are true.
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He says in verse thirteen. We
impart these in words, not taught by
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human wisdom, but by taught by
the spirit, interpreting spiritual truth to those
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who are spiritual. You see what
he's saying. He says you are able
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to receive these because I, the
Holy Spirit, has have I've changed your
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hearts, I've made you into a
person who is now marked by me,
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who has been changed by me.
So that you are able to now interpret
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these truths and understand them and apply
them and grow in them. The true
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is that I reveal every aspect of
you. Your heart, your mind,
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the activities of your soul, these
are all being changed by the very spirit
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of God, and what a wonderful
truth that is. In other words,
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we don't just sort of get this
holy spirit information which then we process in
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this very man centered way. We
get the revelation of God, which we
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then process in a divine way,
because the Holy Spirit himself is at work
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within us. And so, as
we are humbled in these things, this
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we are reminded to get off our
high horses and stop having so much pride
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in our abilities. We are also
encouraged, beloved, we are encouraged to
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look to God, who has now
revealed these things. Paul wants our faith
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to be strong, to be at
rest, not in the wisdom of men,
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but in the power of God.
So, instead of blaspheming the Holy
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Spirit, instead of refusing the Holy
Spirit, instead of not listening to the
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Holy Spirit when we hear the preaching
of the Gospel of Christ, let us
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listen to the spirit of God and
be thankful for him. At work in
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our hearts and in our minds and
as he does that work in us,
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may bog may God be Glorid,
to produce the fruit of the spirit in
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us to his glory. I'm in. Let's pray together. Our heavenly father,
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we ask that you would indeed bless
us and you would do so by
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the power, by the power of
your spirit, through the word of Christ.
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We thank you that the spirit has
been given to us by our Lord
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and who does not speak anything other
than what that which he has heard.
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Thank you, Oh Holy Spirit,
that you search even the depths of God,
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knowing everything that is said by the
father to the son, everything that
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is said from the son to the
father in the reve and then revealing these
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things to us that we might hear, that we might know, that we
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might speak divine things, things of
God. We thank you, oh Lord,
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fisdom that you have revealed in this
world. We thank you for the
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laws and the principles and all that
we might study, but we do not
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look to it for our salvation.
Instead, we look to the hidden secrets
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that have now been revealed in the
cross of Jesus. Christ, Lord,
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help us to see your will and
your word in him. May Your spirit
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be active even among us today,
in also in those who do not yet
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know you. We pray for our
family members, we pray for our friends
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who are still hard of hearing,
whose hearts are still hard and seeking after
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a heavenly things here on earth.
Lord, we ask that you would send
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your spirit to them, that they
might that their eyes might be open,
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that their ears might be open,
that might no longer call the Cross of
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Christ folly and stumble over it,
but instead stand on it and rest in
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him and his perfect sacrifice for sins. Lord, you have told us in
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your word that we have the very
mind of Christ. Let us rejoice in
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this, for this is something that
is beyond beyond any human knowing, but
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only comes to us through your revelation. We also ask that, as this
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ought to humble us, that you
would indeed humble us the you would encourage
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us, emboldened US and help us
to trust in the power of the Gospel,
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in the love of the Gospel and
in Christ himself, who has been
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freely offered to us. I pray
these things in Jesus name. AM
