Well, good morning. Wow, it is rainy, but guys, you
can do better than that. Good morning.
Yeah. Help, Right?
The sun will shine again. Yeah.
My name is Andrew Evans. I am one of the pastors here at
Church of the Resurrection. It's great to be with you.
Please turn with me in your Bibles to 1st Corinthians
chapter 2, First Corinthians chapter 2 in the Black Pew
Bibles. You can find this on page 895,
then on to the next page. And before we get started, let
me pray for us. Father, I praise you that even
on gloomy and wet mornings, you have shown the light of Christ
on us and on our lives. Pray that you would illumine our
minds this morning through your through your word.
I pray this in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
Let's talk for a minute about Ted Talks.
So they began in the 1980s in
California, of course, naturally, and they really began
to grow in popularity in the in the mid, early to mid 2000s.
So Ted, Ted talks, they are like basically the Ted, Ted stands
for technology, education and design.
And they're talks about interesting things basically.
And they've become incredibly popular, it seems.
I mean, some videos have millions of views on YouTube.
There's a Ted Radio hour on NPR. They have Ted conferences all
over the world now very popular. They are kind of, you could say,
a phenomenon now. What makes them so popular?
What makes Ted Talk so popular? I think that they are an
irresistible cocktail of three different ingredients.
They are rhetorically powerful. You could say speakers.
Unlike me, they're not supposed to use notes.
They, you've probably seen the videos, right?
They kind of wander around the stage.
There's a red circle here and they like wander around.
They've got their pointer with their slideshow and they're,
they're just talking to you, right?
And you hear them and you understand them and there's
nothing between you and them. And so you can really get what
they have to say. So we, we're getting, Lord
willing, some new wireless microphones here.
And Soleimani has threatened to start wandering around the stage
while he preaches. Maybe we need to do like a red
circle here, Say you can, you can wander this far and no
further. So rhetorically powerful, right?
That's the first thing. The next is that they explain
some aspect of the world. This is what they promised to
do. They promised to give some sort
of framework, some sort of new understanding, some sort of
secret knowledge that unlocks some aspect of reality for us.
I was listening last weekend, I was driving somewhere and I was
driving probably like four blocks away and took about 10
minutes. So I had the radio on and and it
was the Ted Radio hour. And so they were talking about
about autism, but people who aren't exactly autistic and, and
these sort of characteristics of these not quite autistic people.
Super interesting, really fascinating, really sort of
helping me to understand some aspect of reality.
That's what they're promising us, You know, that that's like,
they're helpful, right? So they're, they promise to
explain some aspect of the world.
And when you pair this with, you know, the guy wandering around
on the stage with no notes, it becomes very persuasive.
And then the final ingredient in this irresistible cocktail is
that they offer a kind of path forward.
They tell us how to act because just understanding the world,
just having this framework isn't enough, is it?
We need to know how to live, what to do in light of this.
Yeah. And so this is what they, this
is what they offer. They typically, they always
offer some sort of some sort of thing.
Sometimes it's sort of at the end.
Sometimes the whole thing is like 15 steps.
It's all global warming or whatever.
But they offer you, they give you something to do.
So this is what Ted talks offer us, what they offer the world,
right? Powerful rhetoric, a new
powerful understanding and action points things to do with
that. Now they seem they, they are a
kind of relatively new phenomenon in a way, right?
But they're actually offering something that is as old as
humanity itself. What they're offering us is
wisdom. Wisdom, persuasive,
understanding the world and how to live because of that reality.
And this is something that we just so desperately want, isn't
it? We want to understand the world,
especially our world today, which feels like the very
foundations of our world are shaking because of all sorts of
changes. And we we just desperately want
to know what is going on. And then how do we live because
of that? So, you know, we read our sub
stacks. I have my subscriptions.
I subscribed to somebody earlier this week and I read a great
essay, really helpful. We read our sub stacks, right?
Maybe we go check out the latest Jonathan Haidt or James Davidson
Hunter book. You know, the anxious
generation. We're all anxious.
Why are we anxious? We've, you know, flipped through
The Economist. I was talking to somebody
earlier and I was like, do you read the Economist?
And she said, no, but I should. I said go in peace.
You don't need to be the Economist, but this is what we
want to understand. And so all these places sort of
promise understanding. They promise to help us sort
through the the chaos of our universe, the chaos of our
world. If you read The Economist, it's
really OK. It's OK.
We want wisdom. We're looking for wisdom.
And in this we are just like the Corinthians, aren't we?
They valued rhetorical power. They sought the wisdom that this
that this insight promised. There were Corinthian Ted talks,
you could say rhetorical competitions, where people
sought to be the most the most popular, the most persuasive.
But the problem for the Corinthian church, I think, was
that they felt like they were giving up the wisdom that the
city so valued. Because, you see, Paul didn't
come to them in lofty words of wisdom.
Paul never would have been invited to a Ted conference.
Maybe he would have been like on some secondary stage and, you
know, the backwaters of, I don't know, Paris or something.
Definitely not. Definitely not in Washington,
DC. He talked about one thing,
talked about Jesus Christ and him crucified.
He talked about a savior who died, apparently intentionally.
Great message, guys. Yeah, really good Paul.
And his demeanor as he's talking his, his rhetorical power was
not particularly persuasive, was he didn't come with confidence.
He came with weakness, fear, much trembling.
This is what Paul came with. He was a terrible messenger for
a frankly uninspiring message. And so the Corinthians probably
thought like, look, I want to be a Christian, but can we do any
better? Like, is this really, is this
really what we have? Am I, I have to give up what
this city so values, in fact, what humanity has been seeking
for so long in order to be a Christian?
I think I have to give up wisdom.
And I think that we can be so tempted to think that as well.
Is Christianity really, really wise?
Is it really sophisticated? Does it actually give us a deep
understanding of what's going on in the world?
And I think that we can be tempted to say, well, as a
matter of fact, I think it's true, but it's not that
sophisticated. We're not really wise.
And, and we're tempted as a result to try to try to
sometimes trim out parts of our faith that are, that are less
persuasive. You could think about this with
the, with the focus on love that we see in so many places.
God is love. Amen.
So true. I preached about that last
weekend. God is love.
But if that's all we focus on, that God is love, we can
actually end up with a very distorted understanding of who
God is. And we can end up doing really
silly things like dismissing Paul and trying to exalt the
ethical teachings of Jesus because because Christianity
calls us to love, to a deeper love, to more than love in a
way, it calls us to to holiness, to self sacrifice, to that dirty
word purity. God calls us to all of these
things and we have to hold all of them together.
But this can feel just so profoundly old fashioned and
unsophisticated, can it? So is there real wisdom in
Christianity? And Paul's answer here is a
resounding yes. Yes, there is real wisdom in
Christianity. If you want true wisdom, look to
Christ in faith. That's what Paul is driving us
toward in this passage. He wants us to see where real
wisdom is and how we can get it. But I think it's so telling that
Paul doesn't begin by talking about wisdom.
He says in verse 6 that he does offer wisdom, but that's not
where the book starts. That's not where he starts in
his argument here. He starts with God and he starts
with God acting. This is actually the heart of
Paul's counter intuitive and kind of backward rhetorical
strategy. He does everything that he can
to point away from himself and to point to God and more
specifically to God's action in the world in Christ.
The danger of speaking too confidently, of being too
persuasive, is that people can actually end up putting their
faith in Paul and not in Jesus. But this isn't where Paul wants
people to look. Paul wants people to look to
Christ and him crucified so that, as he says in verse 5,
their faith would not be in the wisdom of men, but in the power
of God. And with this phrase, the power
of God, Paul here is inviting us to see one of the most profound
truths about the cross. Because at the cross, what seems
like powerlessness, it's actually the supreme
demonstration of God's power. At the cross, where the Son of
God died, God decisively dealt with the guilt and the shame of
his people. At the cross, he reconciled all
who would come to him in faith to God.
At the cross, it looks like weakness and powerlessness, but
it's actually the power and even the wisdom of God on full
display. God acted in Christ for you with
power, and the resurrection vindicates Christ as a
demonstration that Christ is here in power.
This is what Paul proclaimed, and this is where he wants all,
all of his rhetorical power, everything that he has,
everything that he's pointing to is pointing at Jesus, at Christ
crucified. He is lifting up before us the
God who has acted for you in Christ.
This is the beginning of wisdom. And when we put our faith in
Christ, in God's action for you, we actually begin to gain the
truest and the most lasting wisdom.
Because you see, the problem with the wisdom of this world is
that it passes away. It doesn't last sub stacks the
latest books. They might have some explanatory
power, but they will start to fall apart.
They'll show themselves to be incomplete or maybe just
downright wrong. So consider as a as a perhaps a
lighter example, eggs. Eggs.
Yeah, eggs. So should you eat eggs now?
It depends who you ask and when you ask.
As a matter of fact, because if you were to ask your great
grandparents, they would say, yes, of course.
Obviously they fill you up. They're good food.
That could be energy for the day.
But if you were to ask somebody in the 60s, they'd say, ah, yes.
The latest scientific study informs us that eggs have
cholesterol and cholesterol causes heart attacks.
So you should not eat eggs. Or if you do, just eat like 3 a
week. OK, so then a little a little
while later, say, should we eat eggs?
And you know, the dietitian will respond.
Well, as it turns out, there are two kinds of cholesterol.
There's there's good cholesterol and there's bad cholesterol and
eggs perhaps have some of those. So just go easy, maybe a little
bit. Last decade, you asked, should I
eat eggs? I'll respond.
Well, as it turns out, the the latest study says that there is
no such thing as good cholesterol and bad cholesterol.
It's all fine. So yes, eat as many eggs as you
want. So what's the truth about eggs?
What do we do? It's a silly example, but I
think it illustrates the point here, right?
That the wisdom of this world will pass away.
You know, 1800s Karl Marx claimed to explain everything
through economics, class relations, power relations.
But his theories proved incomplete and historically
disastrous. You could say Sigmund Freud,
early 20th century, took the psychological world by storm
with his psychoanalysis. It promised to explain
everything, including civilization and its
discontents. Could you get bigger than that?
But from what I understand, Freudian theory is basically
discredited today. More recently, some of the sages
of our own time have proclaimed the explanatory power of trauma
and physical memory, the memory in our bodies.
Maybe you've read read the book or or like me, read a review of
the book The Body Keeps the Score.
Seems like this theory has some explanatory power, but it also
seems like it's perhaps losing some steam.
Will it be discredited completely like Freudianism?
I don't know. It's almost certainly
incomplete. It's worldly wisdom.
It will pass away. The wisdom of Christianity is
not like this worldly wisdom. The wisdom isn't of this age or
of any age. It's not kept and doled out by
the the sages and even you could say the priests of our day.
This wisdom of the world is past is bound to pass away, but the
wisdom of Christ will last. It can be so easy to think that
Christianity is old fashioned and and unsophisticated,
simplistic, insufficient. And that's why I think we we so
quickly run to all these other theories that offer offer quick,
excellent explanations and we run to them before we do the
hard work of searching our Bibles and praying to the God
who sent his Son to die for us. You might think that the Bible
doesn't have much to say about modern issues like transhumanism
or or climate change, reproductive technology.
But my friends do not miss the riches that lie in our faith on
all of these issues. The Bible does speak to them.
Our faith does speak to them. And the starting point, the
wellspring of all of this wisdom is Christ crucified.
So before running to the latest economic theory or or
psychological or sociological book, start by reading your
Bible, start by praying to the God who sent his Son to die for
you, and then go read the books and see what they have to say.
I think you'll be surprised at the riches that you already have
access to just as simple Christians, because in fact,
you're not just simple Christians.
This is Paul's point in verse 10 and following.
If you are a Christian, if you are looking to Christ in faith,
you're not just left to your own devices to try to to figure out
what the wise course of course of of action is.
This wisdom is actually given to you by the Spirit of God
himself. Have you ever had an argument
with somebody and the person says, why are you so angry at
me? And you respond, I didn't, I
didn't actually didn't think I was angry at you.
As a matter of fact, I was, I was maybe sharp, but it was for
these other reasons and I wasn't particularly thinking about you
at all. And maybe that's part of the
problem, but but I wasn't angry and I wasn't really perturbed at
you at all until this very moment.
And wouldn't it be just so useful if they could be inside
your head and understand your thoughts, sort of have your
spirit in them so they can know what you're thinking?
That'd be just really convenient, wouldn't it?
Our spirit understands our thoughts, but other people don't
seem to have access to our spirit.
This is the source of many, you know, miscommunications between
friends, between spouses. And the same is true for God,
right? God has a spirit, and the Spirit
understands his thoughts. That's what Paul says.
But The thing is, God's spirit isn't limited in the same way
that our spirit is limited and doesn't stay separate from us.
God actually sends His Spirit to us and the result is that the
Spirit enables us to understand what God is doing and what His
plan for the world is. What God is giving us.
This is verse 12. We have received not the Spirit
of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might
understand the things freely given to us.
My friends, just pause to think about how amazing this is.
The Spirit of the God who made the universe, who has been
orchestrating all events from the beginning of time.
That spirit is in you. If you're looking to Christ in
faith, you had the Spirit of the living God in you.
As a result, we have access. To the mind of God, we can
understand God and his purposes, maybe not perfectly, certainly
not completely, but we can still have true understanding of God
and of His work. And we do this first and
foremost by looking to Christ and faith.
And the result of, of receiving the Spirit is that we have this
deep understanding, we have wisdom.
We are spiritual people. This doesn't mean that we're,
that we're, you know, have our head in the head in the clouds
and we're, you know, too heavenly minded to be any
earthly good. Rather, we're actually able to
start viewing the things of this world rightly, correctly,
properly. Our view of people will change
from from burdens, maybe opportunities to exploit, to
people created in the image of God being offered salvation in
Christ. Our view of business will change
from opportunities to get rich to perhaps opportunities to
build lasting institutions that that benefit other people and
glorify God. Our view of politics will change
from power plays that are seeking to, you know, own the
libs or resist Trump, to opportunities to promote justice
and seek the true flourishing of our fellow man.
The gospel enables all of this, and we as people indwelt by the
Spirit, can think this way. The Spirit enables us to have
true wisdom, and if the Spirit gives us this true wisdom, we
should have a confidence that is not shaken by what other people
think. Natural people might grasp some
of the truths that we have to say, but they won't get it.
All spiritless people will think that what we most believe most
deeply, most truly about Christ is folly.
Our hope is that a 1st century Jewish man who died a brutal
execution on a wooden cross at the hands of the imperial force
at the time that that he is our hope.
It seems crazy, but it's true. This is our hope, and we should
not lose confidence just because people who aren't Christian
think that what we believe is absurd.
Friends, we have the Spirit of God in US, giving us access to
His plan from before the foundation of the world.
We can see God's plan at work in Christ because of the Spirit.
And because of this wisdom that God's Spirit gives us, we can
judge those around us with true judgement, and we don't have to
fear their judgement. Verse 15, The spiritual person
judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one.
Now his point here isn't a kind of mental impunity that you can
think or say or judge whatever you want.
Being a Christian doesn't baptize everything we think.
We still are sinful, we can still make mistakes, but we
don't have to fear the judgements of those who are not
Christian. You will be judged, but their
judgement of you is not what matters.
So my friends, be at peace. If your marriage is hitting some
rough waters and all of your non Christian friends are are
telling you to abandon ship, you can stand firm and love knowing
that cruciform service that Christ showed us is the path of
wisdom. Maybe your financial advisor is
telling you you really need to put down the hatches, need to
cut back on some of this giving, but you can stand firm in love
knowing that because of the Spirit you can see all that God
has freely given you. Maybe your family is telling you
you have to affirm the lifestyle choice of the member of your
family, even though you know it is sinful and wrong.
You can stand firm in love knowing that Christ died to
redeem us from sin. If your friends are are getting
all worked up about the latest political brouhaha and they're
inviting you and they're wondering why are you not
getting all worked up, You can stand firm in love knowing that
Christ died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.
Our King sits on the throne, and all of the authorities and
rulers of this world will pass away.
This wisdom that we have in Christ gives us the confidence
to stand firm in love even when we find ourselves alone.
So, my friends, do not fear. The world cannot judge you.
Instead, you can with confidence, judge the world.
So my friends, do you want this wisdom?
Do you want the deepest, truest understanding of the reality of
of true reality and the ability to act well on that
understanding? Look to Christ, look to him in
faith. Place your hope in Christ and in
Christ crucified. And we do that by immersing
ourselves in God's Word. The Bible is where we find
Jesus, not in our hearts, not in our emotions, but in God's Word.
So what are you reading first in the day?
Is it Twitter or X or the Bible? What are you thinking about at
the end of the day? Are you thinking about the the
latest scandal? Or are you thinking about what
God has done for you in Christ? You must be in God's Word.
And this means that we must be in God's Word among God's
people. We learn about God's Word from
each other in small groups. You hear sermons that try to
unfold what's going on in the Bible.
And we come to church to pray, to sing, to read, to hear, to
even taste God's Word. And we live and we worship in
this great tradition of the church, of people through
millennia who have been meditating on God's Word.
You know, give us insight and riches that we can Plumb.
This is one of the great riches of the Book of Common Prayer,
actually. It unites the church in a
liturgy through the ages that centered on God's Word.
And the result of this marinating in God's Word that
points us to Jesus is that we will have a stability that the
world will lack. You won't be blown around by
fashionable trends, by the latest Ted Talk.
But more than that, you won't be blown around by petty anxieties.
Petty tyrants roam the halls of our offices, but you do not have
to fear them. You know that God has already
acted decisively for you in Christ.
You know that Christ is alive, that he will come again.
Your eyes are not trained on yourself and your situation, but
on the victory that Christ has already won for you at the cross
and in the empty tomb. Your faith is not in the wisdom
of man, but in the power of God. Here, my friends, here lies true
wisdom. So, friends, do you have this
wisdom In the name of the Father and of the Son of the Holy
Spirit, Amen.