What’s your plan today? How about for your life? Plans can sometimes stress people out. Sometimes they give us great comfort. Today, we’re going to be looking at what Paul has to say to the Corinthians church about the wisdom of God and how he revealed his plan. So let’s pray together. Gracious God and heavenly Father, we thank you that you did not abandon your people. You did not leave us to fend for ourselves in a broken world, but that you came into it. You revealed your son. You revealed your grace and your love through your work. I pray, Lord, today that through the words that we study from your word, God, that your spirit would reveal to them, to us in a new, fresh way. In Jesus precious name we pray. Amen. Looking together at 1 Corinthians 2:6-13. 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. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. ‘ ‘None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
‘ ‘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. These things God has revealed to us through the spirit. For the spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. 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. 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. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. You can be seated. You may have heard I always love to hear when someone says, What’s the plan? Or more terrifying when someone says, What’s your five-year plan? Or perhaps even on a smaller scale, which is my favorite plan to ruin, which is, Hey, we should get together sometime. I’m terrible at following through with that. Dwight Eisenhower once said… Eisenhower? Yes, thank you. I can say last names sometimes.
Said, Planning is nothing, but planning is everything, if that makes any sense. So plans, sometimes we have them in our life, but they’re hard to follow through with. Some of us get a lot of comfort from our plans, and some of us get a lot of anxiety for plans. Why? Because plans can be constricting. Plans can seem like they’re limiting what we can do. But what makes a good plan? What does a good plan look like? There’s a lot of comfort sometimes when we have good data to make a decision so we can look forward in the future. Our hearts are living in this world, we like to have certainty. We like to hold on to something that can really make us steady in a world that is really uncertain. For some of us, that looks like gathering money. We make a plan to gather money. For some of us, we make a plan to be near our children or be near a family or be close to our friends or be in a place that we like to live. We make plans because it brings us comfort. And so whether we think about it or not, our lives move because of plans.
Some of us, we like to gather knowledge, and that’s our plan. We gather certificates, we get degrees, or maybe even go to school to learn more information, because through that, others will approve of us or we will get smart enough so that we can stand out in a crowd. And some of us enjoy that. This was no strange thing for the church in Corinthians. So they also loved a variety of teachings. According to the historians, it was a very important trade city, a very important coastal town that many travelers and goods came through its ports. The church there was not immune to the novelty of attractions that came through, and new teachers and ideas were very exciting to listen to. Following those different teachers and their wisdom made them feel distinct, and maybe even their appetites to consume new content drew them away from Paul’s simple message of the cross to idolatry. Paul was reminding them here in chapter 2 at the beginning, saying he didn’t come to them with wisdom or fancy speech, but he came to them in weakness, and he claimed to only know one thing, Christ crucified. Yet here, he also wants them to know, as we look at this passage, that just because the message of the cross is very simple, it doesn’t mean it’s not devoid of wisdom and depth.
But it’s not a wisdom like they were expecting. It was surprising. When God made Adam Eve in the garden, it was a place for them to worship him, to live with him, to work, and to experience his eternal wisdom. In the first chapter of the Bible, God gave them a plan. He said, Be fruitful and multiply and have dominion over the earth. We were made in his image to follow that plan. Except, what do we do? We chose our own plan instead of God’s plan. Adam and Eve chose to trust a creature instead of the creator. And so now, because of this, we live in a rebellious and broken world, removed from God’s perfect presence. Yet God, he did not completely abandon us. He revealed his wisdom and his plan to his people. And that’s what we’re going to look at today. God reveals a glorious plan, so we should trust in him. And I want to look at specifically three different features of this plan, which I think are revealed in this passage about God’s wisdom, his eternal plan, his abundant plan, and his free plan. God reveals his eternal plan so that we should trust in him.
God’s eternal plan is ageless, hidden, and glorious. Looking together at verse 6, the wisdom that Paul says he was imparting was not a wisdom of the world. He even refers to the wisdom of the rulers of this age, which are all temporary and passing away. Now, maybe you remember 8 track, anyone? Or cassette tape, maybe? Dvd, even, has probably expired. When I was a kid, we had a small orange plastic. I mean, it was bright orange plastic, black and white television. If we ever wanted to watch a movie, we had to go to a store. Imagine this. You have to go to a store and rent this giant plastic box. I know it seems really strange. Kids are like, What? You have to do that? They had this sign on the back of the store when you would go and buy this plastic VHS player. It said, be kind, rewind. Does anybody know what that means now? That word has no meaning in our society anymore. And that’s so true of many things that are here today, even. Throughout the ages, philosophies, powers, politics, they’ve all gone away. They’ve come and they’ve gone. It’s easy to have a feeling like our age, we finally arrived.
We’ve have the superior technology. We have the superior technology, and we are better than everyone before us. But it’s true that if the Lord delays his return, that these things, these technologies that we have now, the powers and rulers, they will all fade away, too, just like a lowering tide. But what will remain? What remains is God’s ageless word, his eternal word that never decays or fades away or needs rewinding. Let’s look at verse seven. God’s wisdom was also a hidden mystery. God’s eternal plan was to have a hidden mystery. I love a good mystery. I don’t know about you, but our family, some of us in our family, not everyone, enjoys watching murder mysteries. We all have a mini competition to determine who can figure out who the killer was or who did it before we get to the final reveal. Usually, when you finally see and solve the mystery, you can look back and see all the clues that led up that we totally missed that were revealed through it. But God’s covenant promises through his scriptures to his people, they’re more than just clues in a murder mystery. They were announcing what was going to happen.
But it wasn’t revealed until Jesus’s death and resurrection. That was what he revealed. After his resurrection, there was a moment where Jesus walked with two men on the road to Emmaus. You might remember, as they were walking together, their hearts were burning and realizing as he spoke or realizing later that he was revealing to them everything that the law and prophets were saying about him. The whole Bible was about him. All that was written was about him. Paul says in Ephesians 3:9 that God sent him to make plain the mystery which was kept hidden in God. This is why this hidden plan, this ageless plan, is also for our glory. Looking again, too, at verse 7, Paul says God’s ageless plan was hidden for our glory. Now, unlike the wisdom of the world that comes and goes, like flowers in the field that grow and fade, God’s eternal plan has a weight and a glory that God announced before and shared with his church. Christ crucified is the wisdom of God, the secret hidden for ages meant for his people. Now, Paul’s gentle reminder to the Corinthians was that God’s wisdom is different than the world’s wisdom.
They can turn off the distracting philosophies that kept coming into their town and the teachings that were going to pass away and rest on the eternal revealed plan of God. So are you stressed when you think about your future? Do your future plans make you anxious? God’s plan is to share his glory with his people. You can rest in the finished work of Christ. No government, no AI, no TikTok guru will last beyond his work. God revealed this glorious eternal plan so that we can trust in him. I know life gets busy, and sometimes we forget that we made a plan. We just live automatically. We don’t even think about it. Where’s the focus of our lives? Are we focused on our temporary plans, or have we looked up and seen what God’s eternal plan was? God’s revealed wisdom will not just fade away, will not just not fade away. I have to get all the right negatives added in there. Otherwise, it’s really bad, right? It’s also glorious. God reveals his abundant plan to us so that we can trust in him. Let’s look at verses 8 and 9 together. None of the rulers of the age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
Paul is connecting the dots for us in verses 7 and 8. In one verse, he’s talking about God’s wisdom. And in the next verse, he’s talking about Jesus. He’s talking about Christ, the word made flesh, the Lord of glory. What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined what God has prepared for those who love him. You know, But growing up here in Montana, we’re used to the beauty of the mountains and the lakes and everything surrounding us here. It seems like normal life. But there was a period when we were gone for four years, we came back for the first time. I I remember we were driving towards Big Fork, and it was one of those perfect days that were sunny and not smoky. We were driving there, and just the mountains looked so blue and so beautiful that I had to pull over and take a picture. My kids were like, Dad, why? They were laughing at me saying, Didn’t you grow up here, dad? Why are you taking pictures of the mountains? But it’s true, they’re beautiful, and we don’t notice those things. The immensity of God’s creation is glorious.
It’s why so many people say, Man, nature is my church. I don’t need to go to church. I can find God in the mountains and find God resting in his beautiful work. Well, creation is part of God’s resume that he’s writing, sustaining, creating, not just to display his creativity, but his character. It’s a love story of something even more glorious that will be revealed. This eternal plan, it was a whispering wisdom, a soft-spoken voice in a storm. This plan was a baby born in a manger. The creator of all those mountains and all the skies and all the stars, he came to Earth. And if The kings and rulers, if they had really known who they were talking with, Paul said they wouldn’t have crucified him. But God’s plan was not to come with a crash of bravado, but he came with weakness to display his power in suffering. And the world could not recognize that God was among them. The immensity of his revelation is just as glorious, if not more, than his creation. The grandeour of the mountains are just a glimmer of the grandeour he planned through his son. Like children who have departed from the garden, when we see Christ and his work revealed in our hearts, we begin to rejoice and worship.
Two years ago, I had met a young man who he had a plan. He had grown up in another religion, and he thought that Jesus was just a prophet. He was just another good teacher. And that Christians had made up stories about him being the Messiah, the Christ, the savior of the world. And so he had a plan that he would read the entire Bible and prove how wrong it was. But guess what happened? The Bible actually changed him. And the Holy spirit of God revealed the glory of the entire story from creation, exodus, exile, to the announcing of the Messiah, all of those things. He saw the face of Christ. He saw the glory of Jesus. He had never met a Christian in his entire life, but he encountered God’s abundant plan in his word. When the religious rulers of the time when Jesus came, when they met Jesus, what happened? They were afraid. They were angry. They felt threatened that this miracle worker from Nazareth, he was going to take away everything that they had. He was going to take away their importance, their power, their glory. They thought there’s only so much glory to go around.
It’s limited. They weren’t planning on sharing any of it. So if you love God, have you tried to imagine what God has prepared for you? Maybe you think it’s a small amount. A small amount of mercy. Or maybe you think that his kindness has run out, or that whatever you’ve done is too big for him to forgive. But I want you to imagine that his kindness and forgiveness is more glorious than the tallest mountain peak, and it is deeper than the deepest sea. God reveals this abundant plan through Jesus so that we can trust in him. I want us all to be able to partake of God’s wisdom that is full and eternal. We have read, it’s not a wisdom that we can receive or transmit. It’s not like the world’s passing away. It’s not expensive. It’s actually it’s free. And God reveals his free plan so that we can trust in him. This unperceivable by eye, by ear, by heart plan of God, this eternal plan that will not fade away like the world’s things, Paul says that it’s revealed to us by the spirit of God. These things, this in verse 12, God has revealed to us…
Sorry. These things God has revealed to us through the spirit. And in verse 12, Now we have received the spirit of the world, but the spirit… 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. We cannot receive sight or understanding of the things of God without God Through the spirit revealing them to us. When our son was young, he discovered this amazing thing called Minecraft. I don’t know if you’ve heard of this. One Sunday morning, we were getting ready to leave, and I had received several emails, it’s broadly on a Sunday morning, that I had bought some things that were worth quite a bit of money, that were connected to this game. He wasn’t supposed to be playing games at this time, and especially, he wasn’t supposed to be spending any of his mom’s card to do so. I was pretty upset, and there was yet something that was tugging on our hearts. I think my wife’s praying helped lead us in a different direction than maybe that would have ended. He was bracing himself for discipline after We told him what we found.
He thought we would come down pretty hard on him. But instead we said, Son, we know what you did is wrong, but we want you to know that God loves you and Christ has paid for you. So instead of a discipline today and having to pay your mom back, we’re going to pay you so you can have money to spend on what you want. And he said, No, No, that’s not fair. He cried. He said, I deserve discipline. You can’t do this. It’s not right. And he was right. But God’s grace is different. It goes the other way. We might have run up a large bill in the way that we’ve treated our families, our friends, our coworkers. We might have hurt others in deep ways, but God’s abundant wisdom planned to pay for our sins in Christ. We can’t see it directly, but God reveals it through his spirit. When I was a teenager, they had these things called Stereograms. Does anybody remember those? They look like random dots. But if you squint your eyes like a boat or an animal would pop out, or they said that even you might have to cross your eyes, but don’t cross your eyes too long, otherwise your eyes will permanently be crossed.
That’s what they weren’t. I don’t know if that actually ever happened to anyone. But seeing the plan of God in the Bible is not like squinting our eyes at the Bible. It’s not like drawing lines across a passage to try to decipher what God is saying. It really takes the spirit of God to reveal it, the creator himself to reveal it to us. And no human effort found it through time. Angels long long to see it. But now God’s revealed his plan so that we can receive it today by trusting in him. His abundant plan is this. It’s Christ. And so we can trust in him. It reverses the curse of the garden. Adam and Eve rejected trusting in God. You trust in God’s son. You’re trusting in God’s eternal plan that he wants to share himself with you, his glory with you. The free wisdom of God was Christ, and yet the world did not recognize him. It’s not like seeing the mountains and then going away for a long time and forgetting the mountains. It’s only through the spirit of God that we can see the glorious mount of Calvary where Jesus died.
To the world, he failed. It was a failed plan. But by his resurrection, by his spirit, this plan is revealed, his beautiful plan to rescue us. Is it hard to remember the last time that Jesus’s plan was sweet in your ears? Is it hard to remember when the cross of Christ warmed your heart? Have the world’s fake mountains and fake glories clouded your vision? Maybe like the smoke has clouded our vision of the mountains today. God will forgive you in Christ. He is freely offering his grace today. O sinner, he is here for you. Maybe like many of us and the Corinthians, you think that human knowledge will make you more acceptable to God. The Corinthians fell into this trap, the more and more trap. Are we trying to understand God’s word through our human eyes, ears, and heart? The wisdom of our age tells us, Hey, nothing is free. You have to work for it. You have to earn it. Why wouldn’t God require the same from us? You can’t just get grace for free. But are we exhausted trying to show everyone that God loves us? It It could be that we should change trusting in ourselves into receiving and trusting what Jesus has done.
God freely gives you this glorious plan so we can trust in him. In conclusion, I don’t know how many times I’ve made plans in my life that have fallen through. Life rarely works out the way that I think it will or that I want it to. I can get so focused on a plan that I forget the purpose that I was created for. And I easily forget what God’s eternal wisdom is. So which plan will be the focus of your life? Your plan or God’s plan? What do the false gods of the world ask of us? They ask us to suffer for them, to pay and to give ourselves for their secret knowledge and secret wisdom. They want us to click on their recipes, read the 10 tips to better parenting, or watch an ad to learn five things that you can do to improve your health. God’s wisdom was hidden because to the world it was the opposite of every other wisdom we naturally know. Instead of working and suffering for a God, God chose to work and suffer for us. Instead of paying for the master class secrets, he freely gave himself. To the world, it looks like it was a failed plan.
Yet God is a God who reveals himself. He wasn’t hiding in the heavens. He came to us to suffer along with us, knowing our pain and to rescue us from the sin that enslaved us. So Have you trusted in the one? Have you trusted in the Lord of glory whom the world did not recognize? Even today is the day. You’ve heard a lot about him. Maybe growing up, you’ve heard a lot about Jesus. But have you looked up? Have you looked at him? Have you seen him? Has the spirit made you aware of his kindness to you? By faith, you can look up You can receive his son and rejoice in the gift of grace and forgiveness he has given you and trust in his eternal plan. In Christ, we proclaim the hidden victory, the King of glory, Jesus crucified, buried and resurrected. This is hidden from all the world to see. We’re announcing that his return is coming very soon. God’s glorious eternal plan for you. Freely given, it’s Jesus. So trust in him today. Let’s pray. Gracious God, renew our vision of you. Renew our hearts. Open our eyes that cannot see through human strength alone, but open our hearts through your spirit, Lord, so that we can behold your beauty and your goodness, the abundant grace and forgiveness that you have for us in Christ.
In your precious son’s name we pray. Amen.
Discaimer: This sermon text was generated by an automated transcription service.