“Receiving the Mind of Christ”
1 Corinthians 2:1-16
Ever since The World Health Organization declared Covid-19 to be a pandemic back on March 11, 2020 things have not been the same.
Sure, there was a short respite at the beginning of the summer, once the vaccines arrived and the case-loads began to dip.
But with not enough people getting the vaccine and the virus being given the ability to mutate, we are right back in the thick of it.
And for those who are not vaccinated, things are worse than they ever were.
We all know people who have died.
Many of us know people who are in the hospital, on ventilators right now.
This is a scary time.
Add to this a climate crisis that is bringing with it, seemingly, never ending fires out West, stronger and stronger hurricanes and hotter days every year…
…Oh, and don’t forget the unrest in the Middle East, the political divisions in our country, a never-ending news cycle, and things can sometimes seem too overwhelming to deal with.
So how do we deal with life when things seem too crazy and we feel too small and vulnerable to do anything to change things?
Do we turn to God?
Do we know God so that we can turn to Him?
It is much easier to forget about God and our need for God when everything appears to be going well.
But we are facing hardship.
We are dealing with death.
Creation seems to be trying to buck us off the planet.
Is there any hope?
Is there anyone who loves us?
In our Scripture lesson for this morning, Paul tells us that there are deep and intimate things in God which only His Spirit knows; and that Spirit is the only One Who can lead us into an intimate knowledge of God.
And do you know that God’s Spirit is always working on us, nudging us and loving us—moving us toward a knowledge of God’s love for us for our entire lives?
This is called Prevenient Grace—it is the grace that goes before us…
…it is the love of God working in our lives before or even when we don’t know it.
It’s happening right now; are we aware of it?
God wants to be in relationship with us.
He wants us to know Him and to experience the life-changing peace and joy that comes only through a living and growing relationship with Him.
And whether we know it or not…
…this is what we crave.
This is what our lives are missing if we don’t know God and God’s love for us.
A long time ago there was a guy who, more than anything wanted to get to know God and know that God loved him, accepted him and had saved him.
And so he read his Bible.
He studied it hard.
He got to know all the “Thou shall nots…” and the “Thou shalls…”—the whole shabang!!!
He even went off to a really good seminary—one of the best—where he studied about God and the rules of the Church.
And then, he himself became a priest.
And he found a group of like-minded folks, who wanted to please God.
They got together and formed what would soon be called “The Holiness Club.”
And “The Holiness Club” worked really hard trying to follow all the rules in the Bible correctly.
They figured that if they just tried hard enough they could be perfect and acceptable to God.
But this was a frustrating thing to try and do, because try as they might, they were just human beings with temptations, flaws, sinful inclinations and so forth just like everyone else in the world.
They did a lot of things.
And their intentions were good.
But ultimately they were left feeling defeated and alienated from the God they were trying to emulate.
Eventually, the young priest who had set out to make himself the perfect Christian decided to give up.
He realized that he couldn’t achieve his goal.
And oh, was he depressed.
And oh, did he feel like a failure.
He had really hit rock bottom.
He felt that he would never, ever be able to measure up to the high standards of God as written out in so many pages of the Bible.
One night a friend of his invited him to go to a special Bible study.
And he didn’t want to go.
He’d been to enough Bible studies to last a lifetime, thank you very much, and see where they had gotten him?
But his friend was persistent.
So, reluctantly, he went.
And this Bible study, well, it wasn’t an incredibly academic affair.
It wasn’t like his seminary classes.
There was no highly educated scholar up front using high and lofty words.
Instead, someone was simply reading something that someone else had written.
It was something that a man named Martin Luther had penned some 200 years earlier.
But as the down and out priest listened to these simple and straight forward words—something started to stir deep in his soul.
And an epiphany started to come upon him.
His heart started to beat faster, and he felt perspiration begin to form on his skin.
And then something amazing happened.
This man who had been reading the Bible and trying to follow what it said for so long experienced something he had never experienced before.
And the best way he had to describe it is this, he said that he felt his heart become “strangely warmed,” and for the first time in his life he did believe that Jesus Christ had died for his sins—even his—and had forgiven him and saved him from the law of sin and death.
He then, spent the rest of his life growing in his new relationship with God through faith in Christ and sharing it with others.
This man’s name was John Wesley.
He went on to lead the biggest Christian revival the world has, perhaps, ever known.
The Methodist Church is a direct result of God’s actions in and through his life.
As are many, many other churches—arguably the majority of protestant churches in the United States and the rest of the Western world.
John Wesley didn’t learn about God’s great salvation and love in school.
He didn’t learn it from trying to follow a bunch of rules.
He learned it through the message of Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
It wasn’t a message filled with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power—which gave him insight into God’s secret wisdom.
In our Scripture Lesson Paul says that “The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.
For who among people knows the thoughts of a person except the person’s spirit within him or her?
In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.”
And we receive this Spirit when we believe that Christ has died for us—even us-- and has forgiven us and saved us from the law of sin and death.
And Paul says we are given “the mind of Christ.”
This doesn’t mean that when God’s Spirit enters our lives that we suddenly have all the answers to the universe.
What it does mean is that we have a new awareness and a new love for God and the world that we never would have known existed otherwise.
We come to care about the kinds of things God cares about, and begin to care less about the things we used to worry about—such as the material and worldly things and even death.
It means that when we encounter someone who is in need; we will have to force ourselves—against the Spirit living in us and seeking to guide us to turn from them with an uncaring attitude.
It means that we will begin seeking justice for those who are suffering.
It means that the problems of others will become problems to us.
As the Spirit that has access to the inner thoughts of God works within us we will be on our way to making a very positive difference in our world.
And isn’t this what our world needs more than anything?—People who love rather than hate, people who do not retaliate but empathize, people who seek justice and resist evil, people who feed and welcome the stranger, people who seek to find housing and shelter for the homeless, and live lives of freedom and confidence in a world that is cowering and dividing in fear?
Paul says to the Corinthians that when he came to them he “didn’t come with eloquence or superior wisdom…”
Instead, he says: “For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified…My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power…”
…And that “We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us.”
Let me ask you this morning: Do you understand what God has freely given you?
Do you understand what it means that Jesus Christ gave His life in order to save you?
Do you understand that it is by grace you are saved, through faith?
And that this salvation is a gift of God; there is not anything you can do to deserve it or get it?
And that God has saved you because
God loves you and has great plans for your life?
And these plans are the reason you were created by God in the first place?
Do you know this?
Do you believe this?
Has it warmed your heart?
Has it changed your life?
