Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?  (17) If anyone defiles the temple of God, God will destroy him.  For the temple of God is holy, which temple you are.  (18) Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you seems to be wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise.  (19) For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.  For it is written “He catches the wise in their own craftiness” (20) and again, “The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile.”  (21) Therefore, let no one boast in men.  For all things are yours:  (22) whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas, or the world or life or death or things present or things to come – all are yours, (23) and you are Christ’s and Christ is God’s.

The first letter to the Corinthians was written by the Apostle Paul.  There were divisions and factions in the church at Corinth and Paul wrote to “plead’ for unity in Christ Jesus, who has saved us.  Paul is concerned that the Christians in Corinth are indulging in the wisdom of this world which will come to nothing  He is concerned that the faithful there are succumbing to cults of personalities.  Paul warns that the wisdom of men is folly and to embrace the teaching of some charismatic leaders is to put their faith in mere men – a result shown to be not just worthless but distracting.  Paul has written to give the Corinthians reasons to cease boasting in things of this world – to forsake the wisdom of this world and turn to the revealed wisdom of God.  In another words, Paul is advising the Corinthians (and us)to commit to the simplistic and foolish -foolish to unbelieving men – truths of the gospel:  Christ crucified.   The Corinthians are to commit to what the world rejected as foolishness.  The wisdom of men is folly, changing and temporal.  The wisdom of God is eternal truth.

Paul tells the Corinthians to change direction:  that there is nothing which can separate them/us from the love of God.  All true teachers belong to God already.  Alll of God’s revealed truth, revealed wisdom, belongs to the whole church, not to some elites.  Believers belong to Christ and Christ belongs to God.  All things belong to our sovereign God and we possess them in Christ.

Today’s verses are Paul’s application – his bottom line for the foundation he has built chapters one and two.  The Corinthians are to repent, change their minds from the wisdom of the world and me.  They are charged with embracing God’s wisdom which is Christ crucified – which is the simple message of the gospel.   The message to us is to say no to wisdom learned from the senses and yes to the transcendent, revealed wisdom of God.  Instead of celebrating life’s diversity we should study to understand life’s diversity in the light of its unity in God – to place the highest value on ultimate certainities.   We are to renounce the secular wisdom of this age –  for christian wisdom begins with God and ends in Him.  Scripture is God’s word to us.

However, we speak wisdom among those who are mature, yet not the wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age,  who are coming to nothing.  (7) But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory, (8) which none of the rulers of this age knew; for had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.  (9) But as it is written:

“Eye has not seen, nor ear heard,

Nor have entered into the heart of man

The things which God has prepared for those who love Him”.

(10) But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit.  For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God.

The Apostle Paul wrote the first letter to the Corinthians.  He wrote to a church there that had been divided into factions and in addressing this disunity he revisits his constant foundational  doctrine of the wisdom of God and the blessings of salvation prepared by the Father – and determined by the Father – carried out by the Son, Christ Jesus, and applied by the Spirit to all believers.  The only way the Corinthians could have known of the revelation of the mystery of God is by the Spirit.  To cite Matthew Henry who wrote regarding Paul’s teaching:  Paul laid down the doctrine as the Spirit delivered it:  and left the Spirit, by his eternal operation in signs and miracles, and His internal influences on the hearts of men, to demonstrate the truth of it and secure its reception.

The judgment of God is different from that of the world.  It is a different kind of wisdom from that of the world.  This wisdom was not known by the great men of that world – here Paul is referring to the Roman Governor, the rulers of the Jewish world with authority and power.  They did not know Christ and they crucified Him by the sentence of the one and the clamor of the other.  People act as they do because they are blind to the truth or heedless of it.  They lack a wisdom that can not be discovered by only man’s reason and is available to man only through God’s revelation.  Remember that Christ in His agony asked the Father to forgive them for they knew not what they do.

Paul wrote what he taught and what he taught was revealed by God in the Spirit.  He is saying that truth does not come to us through our five senses but only by divine revelation. When Paul quotes the prophet Isaiah here:  “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, Nor have entered into the heart of man The things which God has prepared for those who love Him” Paul is speaking of the sovereignity of God and God’s plan which is foolishness to unbelievers.  Paul is imparting the redemptive plan of God through Christ and through Christ crucified – matters which are not objects of sense and cannot be discovered by reason.  Paul furthers says that the Spirit knows all things and knows God.  Who can know God but God? – or much as a man’s mind is known to himself and cannot be known by another man unless communicated, man cannot know the purpose of God until the Spirit (God) reveals it.

These verses teach divine illumination done by infallible inspiration – infallible because it is from God.  God does not reveal Himself if we ask Him but only when He wants to – One can hear the word of God but only God can speak to our hearts.  When we say yes,  Paul is saying the believer has received the Spirit of God, not the spirit of the world, that we may know the eternal things that have freely been given us by God, through the redemptive work of Christ Jesus.

And I, brethren, when I came to you, did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom declaring to you the testimony of God.  (2)for I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.  (3) I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling.  (4) And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, (5) that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

The Apostle Paul wrote the first letter to the Corinthians because of the divided and contentious state of the Christian church in Corinth.  He took pains to present the cross of Christ not as a philosophy preached by fancy rhetoric but he taught the bare facts, not theory about these facts.  He presented Christ crucified as the wisdom of God.  Paul preached  the significance of Christ’s redemptive death and declared that Christianity is for all men.

Paul declared hat he was not a skilled orator but simply a witness.  He preached that  the true foundation of faith is not man’s reason but the testimony of God.   What made God known is the cross of Christ.  This might seem lunacy to some and indeed was a “stumbling block to the Jews, and foolishness to the Greek”,  but to those who are called this is the power and wisdom of God.  It is God who chooses and calls men and in the power of the cross Christ is made to us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption.

The verses we study today contrast what reason teaches and what God teaches.   There is always the contrast of the wisdom of the gospels revealed by God to the foolishness of these gospels to unbelieving man – to the unrenewed, “the wise” of this world.   The contrast was between the wisdom of the world and the wisdom of God – when God calls, the world’s standards are turned upside down.  God’s plan of salvation accomplished by the crucified Christ was hidden from the wise of this world – the learned, influential of this world –  but was revealed to simple believers.

We see God’s wisdom in all of the Bible – it is His story.    Appearances are deceiving.  God knows what is in a man’s heart.   As i was writing this i kept thinking of Martin Luther King’s great speech when he dreamed that one day his grandchildren would be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.  His dream was that man know and embrace the wisdom and the truth of God.

Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, (15) and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.  (16) For indeed He does not give aid to angels, but He does give aid to the seed of Abraham.  (17)Therefore, in all things He had to be made like His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.  (18)For in that He Himself has suffered, being tempted, He is able to aid those who are tempted.

The author of the letter to the Hebrews is unknown.  The audience is also unknown but they are probably Christian Jews from a particular community.  The writer of Hebrews knew them and their history — he writes that he expects to visit them and asks for their prayers.   The author of Hebrews makes heavy use of the Old Testament to make his Christological point  and to argue against the permanance of the Levitical system of the high priest.  He carefully builds his case, using a Book that his readers are familiar with, to show that all of the Old Testament points to the Messiah, who is Jesus Christ.

The primary purpose of Hebrews is to urge these Christian Jews to hold fast to their Christian belief.  The first verse of this letter “God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son.”  Hebrews exalts the person and work of Jesus Christ.  his incarnation, suffering, substitutionary death and resurrection from the dead make Him the ultimate and forever High Priest who can lead his people into eternal glory.

The point of Hebrews is that Jesus Christ has entered the world and the faithful will share in his eternal rule.  In our verses today we read that those made holy by Christ’s death have become of the same family – His brothers and also His children.  Fallen man was held as servants of the devil.  Since we were human, Christ had to become human and to die for man as the perfect and final sacrifice.  The devil had wielded the power of death – or fear of death – and now, people were no longer subject to eternal death.  Man could face it with the same confidence in God that Christ had done.

Hebrews also tells its readers that whatever needs or trials they might face, Christ is adequate for them.  Christ can do this because He was made like his brothers in every way.  Christ’s role as High Priest who can lead them into eternal glory, was made perfect by His perfect sacrifice.