PAUL: A FOOL FOR CHRIST - Foolish Spiritual People
April 8, 2018
1 Corinthians 2:14 (p. 794)
Introduction:
I’ve shared this with you often, but once again I would remind you that “Jesus didn’t die on the cross and rise again so good people could be better…He did this so dead people could have life.”
“We don’t need rehabilitation…we need resurrection.”
Before someone is born again, there might be activity in and around their house, but on the inside, because of sin and our sinful nature, is a dead man or woman.
When elderly Adele Gaboury turned up missing four years ago, concerned neighbors in Worcester, Massachusetts, informed the police. A brother told police she had gone into a nursing home. Satisfied with that information, Gaboury's neighbors began watching her property. Michael Crowley noticed her mail, delivered through a slot in the door, piling high. When he opened the door, hundreds of pieces of mail drifted out. He notified police, and the deliveries were stopped. Gaboury's next-door neighbor, Eileen Dugan, started paying her grandson $10 twice a month to mow Gaboury's lawn. Later Dugan's son noticed Gaboury's pipes had frozen, spilling water out the door. The utility company was called to shut off the water. What no one guessed was that while they'd been trying to help, Gaboury had been inside her home. When police finally investigated the house as a health hazard, they were shocked to find her body. The Washington Post (10/27/93) reported that police believe Gaboury died of natural causes four years ago. The respectable, external appearance of Gaboury's house had hidden the reality of what was on the inside. Something similar can happen to people: We may appear outwardly proper while spiritually dead. All sorts of religious activity may be happening outside, while the real problem is missed: spiritual death on the inside.
This body we live in is just a house…in reality just a tent…it’s temporary…But inside this temporary dwelling, no matter how good it looks on the outside, or even if there’s activity going on…is a spiritually dead person.
Being spiritually dead and physically dead are not the same things…But the Apostle Paul says you can clearly tell with both if someone is alive or not. How?
It’s by what kind of spirit occupies that temporary house. It’s that spirit that will dictate whether it’s a house filled with joy and life or one filled with stress and death.
Listen to our scripture for this morning:
1 CORINTHIANS 2:14-16 (p. 794)
I. IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO THINK LIKE JESUS WITHOUT HIS SPIRIT
1 Corinthians 2:11 asks us, “For who knows a person’s thought except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.”
In other words no one really knows what you are thinking…everything on your heart…your attitude and motives, other than YOU.
My wife Kari knows me better than any other person here on earth. She knows my facial expressions, my pet peeves, my sense of humor and what really breaks my heart…I speak truth to her in the most intimate and open language I can…but even with her I filter my words…I protect her…I don’t speak every thought I have and everything on my heart…no one does.
The only way she could really know every single part of me was if you put my mind in her body. If for a moment my spirit infiltrated her mind. (I see real terror on her face as I share this thought.)
But this is the truth the Apostle Paul is sharing about Jesus…we cannot really think like Jesus or understand who He really is unless, miraculously His Spirit is put into our body…unless His spirit infiltrates our minds.
When Jesus speaks to the Pharisee Nicodemus in their nighttime meeting, he says:
JOHN 3:3-7 (p. 740)
It’s impossible to see God’s Kingdom without being born again…It’s impossible to enter God’s Kingdom without being born again…This is a spiritual rebirth, not a physical one…And it’s God’s Spirit that gives birth to our Spirit. Jesus compares this spiritual change to the birth process. Not from our mother’s womb…but from the womb of God.
[Think about that process…The seed of the Gospel is planted in our soul by the good news. It begins to take root and grow nurtured by the Holy Spirit…We accept Christ, confess His name, repent of our sins, are baptized in the water of baptism…and come forth “a new creature in Christ, all the old is gone, and new things have come.”
(2 Cor. 5:17)]
The same Spirit that raised Jesus on Easter Sunday has raised us to new life…born again…Romans 8:11 says “His Spirit now lives in you.”
Because of this, the Lord is our instructor, because of this “we have the mind of Christ.” Now we can understand what God has freely given us…it’s what we speak. It’s how we speak spiritual realities with Spirit taught words. It’s how we understand spiritual truths.
But it’s vital as Christians we understand that lost people don’t think like this, it’s impossible without the Holy Spirit.
“The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.”
It’s vital that we remember this truth as we share the good news of Christ to those outside His Kingdom.
Lost people cannot understand spiritual truths like born again people.
[Jesus was criticized for many things by the Pharisees while he was here on earth…allowing His disciples to eat grain on the Sabbath, not washing His hands properly, healing on the Sabbath Day, being from the wrong hometown and a bunch of other issues…but the biggest criticism came when they saw who Jesus ate with.
“When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw Him eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they asked His disciples: ‘Why does He eat with tax collectors and sinners.’” (Mark 2:16)
When Jesus heard this He said, “It’s not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” (v. 17)
Other translations make the accusation clearer: “Why does your teacher eat with scum like that?” (NLT)
The Pharisees judged people according to “moral value” and Jesus saw people who needed healing.
Verse 15 in our text says “The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments.
Spirit filled people do not make value judgments about the worth of people. They make judgments about circumstances, people’s needs, words that need to be spoken, help that needs to be given…People will make human judgments about them…“But they are accountable to a higher power.”
[It’s so easy to place ourselves in the seats of the Pharisees…All our friends are good church going people. We become cloistered and protected from “lost” people because we don’t want to hang around people “like that.” You know…“bad people.” And even if we don’t say it maybe we think…“They should straighten up their lives…quit cussing on Facebook, come to church.”
It’s ironic that our calling is to go to them…to be in the world and not of it, to seek and save that which is lost…and it is impossible for the church to fulfill it’s mission if all our lives are spent with those already saved.]
Listen, I understand the dynamics of the Christian life. When we become Christians…brand new babies in Christ, sometimes we have to distance ourselves from old friends, people we used to drink and get high with. We’re not strong enough to be in those situations as babies in Christ…and we make new friends, Christian friends…and it’s comfortable and safer with these folks…but eventually you have to mature spiritually enough to head back into the world…or you’ve missed the point for your salvation.
“For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”
II. OUR LIVES ARE TO BECOME POWERFUL MESSAGES OF GRACE
It’s not my job or your job to convict lost people of their sin…it’s the Holy Spirit’s job.
The reason the Lord added to the church daily in Acts 2:47 is that those who had been redeemed by the Holy Spirit were living out the good news among their families and friends every day. The Holy Spirit gave them opportunities to share Jesus at work on Monday and in their kitchens on Thursday nights as well as in the marketplace and their neighborhoods. They did not view the people who weren’t part of them as scum…but as people who needed what they had found. The power did not come from them…it came from a God who lavished His grace upon them. It came because they were not playing at religion…it came because they were absolutely not ashamed of the one that loved them beyond measure….Enough that He gave His Son…and even more.
This makes no sense to a selfish world…a “me first” sinful heart cannot fathom a God of grace…and a Savior who gave himself…grace is more than amazing…it is beyond human understanding.
Brewster McCleod, who baptized me into Christ, had some quotes from His favorite, most influential book posted last week. It’s also one of my favorite, most influential books…It’s called the Ragamuffin Gospel, written by Brennan Manning…I’ll end with these two:
“This is the God of the gospel of grace. A God who, out of love for us, sent the only Son He ever had wrapped in our skin. He learned how to walk, stumbled and fell, cried for His milk, sweated blood in the night, was lashed with a whip and showered with spit, was fixed on a cross, and died whispering forgiveness on us all.” - Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“My message, unchanged for more than fifty years, is this: God loves you unconditionally, as you are and not as you should be, because nobody is as they should be. It is the message of grace…A grace that pays the eager beaver who works all day long the same wages as the grinning drunk who shows up at ten till five…A grace that hikes up the robe and runs breakneck toward the prodigal reeking of sin and wraps him up and decides to throw a party no ifs, ands, or buts…This grace is indiscriminate compassion. It works without asking anything of us…Grace is sufficient even though we huff and puff with all our might to try to find something or someone it cannot cover. Grace is enough…Jesus is enough.”
- Brennan Manning, All is Grace: A Ragamuffin Memoir
