Today is Palm Sunday. It’s a day when we stop to remember Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. It was the last week of His earthly life. Today, Jesus enters into the most important religious city to the applause and praise of multitude of people. From Sunday’s praise and Palm branches to Friday’s chants of “Crucify Him!” Have you ever wondered, “How did the people change their opinions of Jesus so quickly?”
Today’s message is designed to answer two questions: 1) Why People Conspired Together to Kill Jesus Christ and 2) Why Do Only Some People See This.
“Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. 7 But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. 8 None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 But, as it is written,
“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”—
10 these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. 11 For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 12 Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. 13 And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.” (1 Corinthians 2:6-13)
1. Wisdom Isn’t the Same as Being Smart
Americans live in an age of information. Better said, we live in a day of where information acts a tsunami wave threatening to overwhelm us. Recently, The New York Times published a report by the University of California, San Diego where the average American has 100,000 words cross their eyes and ears in a single 24 – hour period. Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace was 460,000 words in length. This is a 350 percent increase in the amount of information we consume since 1980. We all know smart people who don’t have common sense. Yet, the Bible gives us a category called “wisdom” that is different than common sense. Paul is trying to tell us what wisdom is on this Palm Sunday. He’s trying to tell why some people kill God and His prophets and thinking they’re serving God: “Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God” (John 16:2)
And he does it by contrasting the real wisdom versus the myth of wisdom. At least seven times so far Paul has assaulted “wisdom.”
1:17 — “For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom...”
1:20 — “Where is the one who is wise?”
1:21 — “in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom...”
1:22 — “Jews demand signs, Greeks seek wisdom, but...”
1:26 — “Not many of you were wise . . .” (v. 27)
2:1 — “I … did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom.”
2:4 — “my message were not in plausible words of wisdom…”
The false impression that you could get here is that there is no place for wisdom in the Christian faith. But Paul corrects that impression in what follows, but he does it in a way that takes back none of the humbling words he has spoken so far. His aim is still to guard against any ground of boasting in man. “Let him who boasts boast in the Lord” is the big picture of these chapters. The Bible gives us a test of weather a person is wise. If you are wise according to God, you will need to acknowledge there exists wisdom that comes from God and is not associated with the outside world. We see this from the end of verse five: “…it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away.” (1 Corinthians 2:5) The rulers who put Jesus to death are probably the most vivid example of the fact that you can measure a person’s true wisdom by whether they recognize Jesus as the Lord of glory:
“None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” (1 Corinthians 2:8)
You can tell whether a person’s mind is dominated by the wisdom of the world or the wisdom of God… by whether he acknowledges the crucified Christ to be the Lord of glory. So there is a way of looking at the Jesus Christ nailed to a cross of wood and yet not see. The cross is opaque to unspiritual persons. So there are two kinds of wisdom: One kind of wisdom is here today and gone tomorrow (like rapper MC Hammer’s pants back in the 1990’s)
Nevertheless, Real Wisdom that is permanent. This style never seems to be in style. It comes from God Himself. And you can distinguish between the two by what you think of Jesus Christ on the cross. The hinge on whether you are wise is Jesus’ question in Matthew 16:15 “Who do you say that I am?” Or…. “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”
1 Corinthians 1:18
Remember our question: Why Did People Conspired Together to Kill Jesus Christ? “God has “decreed” this wisdom “before the ages” (verse seven). The Bible labors to tell you that the message of the cross has been laid out before time began. The perspective is from eternity to eternity. This was marked out by God on His horizons long before Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden. “He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you…” (1 Peter 1:20) Verse nine says that “God has prepared” the cross.
The Bible is telling us that God is in control of the cross: “this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.” (Acts 2:23)
“I must go on my way today and tomorrow and the day following, for it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem.”
(Luke 13:33)
The first question is: Why Did People Conspired Together to Kill Jesus Christ? The answer is they were blind to God’s true wisdom. They were ignorant. Yet, this only begs a second question: Why Do Only Some People See This?
2. How Wisdom Arrives
“But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory.” (1 Corinthians 2:7) The Bible says there is a wisdom that is too profound for human discovery. There is a wisdom that human senses cannot detect. The Bible tells us that the brilliant scientist with his Ph.D. is no better equipped to understand the gospel than anyone else. It calls this wisdom “hidden” or a divine secret. Think with me for just a few moments.
Most of mankind’s intelligence is seen as scientific breakthrough… or technology… How we arrive at our knowledge? The three great sources of human knowledge is seeing, hearing, and thinking.
Notice verse nine: “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9) The “hidden wisdom” of God is revealed: “these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.” (1 Corinthians 2:10) Yet, Revelation is God’s Self Disclosure. The word literally means “pulling back a curtain.” God pulls back the curtain to show us Himself.
We are given three characteristics about the people to whom God shows Himself. First, we are told that He reveals Himself to the “mature” in verse six. The Bible doesn’t know anything of two classes of Christians. Some people think there is a higher form of Christianity – a people who have moved beyond the cross. No. You don’t move beyond the cross. Instead, REAL WISDOM consists in a more detailed unfolding or unpacking of God’s purpose in the cross of Christ. Second, God shows Himself to the person who loves God: “who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9) God’s prerequisite isn’t a certain amount of knowledge. Rather, it’s love God don’t show Himself to people who are self-inflated. That the prerequisite for grasping the wisdom of God is not a certain level of intelligence, or education, or experience. The prerequisite is moral, not intellectual. It has as much to do with what you love as with what you think. To be considered spiritual, you must love God and hate evil.
And they came again to Jerusalem. And as he was walking in the temple, the chief priests and the scribes and the elders came to him, 28 and they said to him, “By what authority are you doing these things, or who gave you this authority to do them?” 29 Jesus said to them, “I will ask you one question; answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. 30 Was the baptism of John from heaven or from man? Answer me.” 31 And they discussed it with one another, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’ 32 But shall we say, ‘From man’?” — they were afraid of the people, for they all held that John really was a prophet. 33 So they answered Jesus, “We do not know.” And Jesus said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.” (Mark 11:27-33)
In God’s order of things you cannot separate the holiness of your life from the depth of your understanding. It is not having power but hunger for power that blinds a person to the glory of God in the suffering Messiah. Not natural ability but spiritual humility opens a person to the wisdom of God.
The third characteristic for God to show Himself is you must receive the Spirit.
“Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.”
(1 Corinthians 2:12)
“At that time Jesus declared, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; 26 yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. 27 All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”
(Matthew 11:25-27)
We Can Make Truth Understandable, but not understood for in the last analysis we do not make anyone understand the truth of the gospel. It is possible to be so opposed to an idea in your heart that it becomes nothing but foolishness in your head. If we oppose an idea strongly enough, our will can create an intellectual atmosphere that makes understanding that idea virtually impossible. This implies two things for sharing the truth of the gospel. It implies that the work of the Holy Spirit is absolutely essential. He can remove the deep opposition to the truth and open the mind to consider it honestly. It implies that we must make every effort to make the gospel understandable and attractive. The Holy Spirit coordinates his convicting work with our evangelistic work. He doesn’t open the hearts of men and women where there is no understandable truth to look at. He has a work to do from the inside softening the heart, and we have a work to. God has revealed his very wisdom, but he has chosen to do so only among the mature, that is, the spiritual—not a religious elite or a pious clique Any and all who by resting in God’s promises are becoming loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, meek, and self-controlled. This is the person who will have a heart for God’s wisdom rather than man’s. The people who can receive the wisdom we speak are the people in whom the Holy Spirit is at work overcoming jealousy and envy and strife and selfishness and replacing them with the fruit of love and meekness and patience and goodness. These are the mature, the spiritual — the ones who see Christ in all his suffering and meekness as the Lord of glory.
