1 Corinthians 2:1-16 | Episode #980

July 11, 2025

Hope Alive: Applying God’s Word to Your Daily Life

1 Corinthians 2:1-16

I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.

If you would like to revisit today’s Bible study, please visit our website at https://hopealive.buzzsprout.com/ to download the transcript. 

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Transcript

This is Chad Harrison and you're listening to Hope.

Applying God's word to your daily life.

As we finish Faithful Finance, we want to produce our winter Bible study done at Lake Community Church on First Corinthians.

It'll be a fairly long Bible study.

We will break it up into different parts and so you will get a really good, really fast study through the book of First Corinthians before we move on to the book of Joshua,

chapter two.

And I, brethren, when I came to you,

did not come with excellence of speech or wisdom, declaring to you the testimony of God.

Now let's do take a step back, okay?

I already told you I was in the bottom 0.5% of my class.

On a list of the smartest men to ever live.

The apostle Paul is probably in the top 10.

He is the author of.

Of most of the New Testament,

which is the foundation for the largest world religion that exists.

He wrote not only one,

but two,

in my opinion,

great books linking the theology of the Old Testament to Christ and teaching the theology of the New Testament to the Romans and the Greeks,

Romans and Hebrews.

Of human beings that have lived.

The apostle Paul is one of the smartest.

Notice what he said when he showed up to Corinth.

When I came to you,

I did not come with excellence of speech or with wisdom, declaring to you the testimony of God. What he's saying is, I didn't try to prove it by flesh,

for I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

He said, I determined that I was not going to get into anything else. But all that I was going to tell you is about Christ and him crucified.

I was with you in weakness, in fear and in much trembling.

What he's saying is, I was humble before you.

I came with humility.

I came in weakness.

I came for you to. To. To understand that this is not about the flesh. It's not about your wealth, it's not about your knowledge,

it's not about your spirituality because you worked your spirits of the world.

He says, I was with you in feet, in weakness and fear and much trembling. And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom,

but in demonstration of the spirit and of power.

Now he's explaining to them why he did what he did there.

And what he did was he operated in the gifts of the Spirit that show the power of God.

That's what he's saying, isn't it?

Right.

He says, I operated in the gifts of the Spirit. Which unveil the power of God,

that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.

So what he wants you to do is have your faith.

In what?

In the power of God.

Now I'm going to say that again.

He wants your faith to be in the power of God.

Right. What does it say?

If we confess with our mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in our heart that God raised him from the dead,

meaning our faith is based off of resurrection power,

our faith is in resurrection power.

Then you are saved.

If you confessed his lordship and you believe in his resurrection power, you can be saved, you can walk in salvation, you can be sanctified, you can be sozo.

However,

we speak wisdom among those who are mature,

yet not the wisdom of this age,

nor the rulers of this age, which are coming to nothing.

But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery. Meaning the things that are of God,

that are going to be understood,

the spiritual things,

have to be taught through the mystery of the Holy Spirit, revealing it to you.

The Holy Spirit reveals God's word.

And that is mystique. There's a mystique about it. It can't be taught in a didactic form.

I've told you all the story. I tell it again real quick.

I took a literature class, Literature of Antiquity class at Princeton. I had to take a literature class,

so I took the Literature of the Antiquity.

Now I'm going to tell you, my professors at Princeton. They all were real good.

It's an undergraduate institution. The best professors taught, had to teach undergraduate classes.

Every history class I ever took, and I took. All my. All my electives were history.

But I took this History of Antiquity. And man, we read them all. We read, you know, Homer and all those old writings.

And man, that professor would get up there and teach and I mean, it'd be like.

It'd be like I was watching YouTube. You know what I'm talking about? It was YouTube before there was YouTube, you know. You know, it was just some great stuff.

And I was sitting there going, man, I'm looking on my syllabus here.

About halfway through, we're going to get to Galatians.

It was either that or Ephesians. I can't remember. It's one of them.

I said, man, I can't wait for him to teach this.

It's going to be some good stuff. He going to talk about Jesus.

That rascal got up there and started talking about Ephesians. And he was clueless.

He didn't have any idea what he was talking about.

I sat there the whole lecture and I was going,

you.

You a ding dong. You don't even know what you're doing.

I am totally depressed about this.

It made me not want to go back to the class Next week. We talked reading another book of antiquity. It was great, great again. He just didn't know.

I want you to hear me.

The wisdom of God can only be taught by God, by His Spirit. And he's going to say that. He's going to explain that here.

That's the whole point of this.

However, we speak wisdom among those who mature. Not the wisdom of this age, nor the rulers of this age, who's coming to nothing. But we speak wisdom of God in mystery.

The hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for. For our glory. Meaning, so that we might reach the point of glorification.

So that we might go through justification. That we might be sanctified to the point where we glorify God with our lives.

He says, which none of the rulers of this age knew. For had they known, they would have not crucified the Lord of glory.

They didn't know if they'd have known.

If Pilate had really been for sure of who Jesus was, he would have never crucified him.

But it is written. This is a quote from the Old Testament. So you need to. And I'm going to tell you. Isaiah 64. 4. All right.

This is one of those verses I always, always, when I'm teaching through these books, I want you to remember. There's verses that I would suggest to be memorized.

No eyes seen, nor ears heard, nor have entered into the heart of man. Nor mind has conceived. Is. It's also translated, the things which God has prepared to do for those who love him.

Nor ears heard, nor eye seen, nor mind has conceived what God is prepared to do for those who love Him. But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit.

Notice. How are we. How is. How are these things revealed by spirit? I'm telling you. That's why I do what I do on Sunday morning.

I do not ask you to respond to what I say.

I ask you to respond to what God says to you.

Okay? You cannot learn about God unless you deal with him in koinonia,

in intimacy, one on one.

For the Spirit searches all things.

Yes, the deep things of God.

Now I want you to hear this because this is. This is encouraging.

For what man knows the things of man, except for what man knows the things of man, except the spirit of the man which is in him.

What is that Talking about when you're born again, what is born in you?

A new human spirit.

And I want you to hear me. Your mind does not understand you.

And I know that for a fact because I talked to y' all.

I have people come in my office all the time, and they just really don't know what's going on. I just don't know what's going on. And I read Facebook and it's just basically post after post.

I have no, why is this happening to me?

Can you believe this happened? And then they'll videotape it and go, look at that.

Human beings do not understand why they are and what they are and what they're doing, and they can't fix themselves.

But God places in you the fullness of himself by giving you his spirit.

And that spirit communes with an aspect of you that was not there,

but was conceived in you by the Holy Spirit. Your spirit,

your soul is still worldly, your flesh is still carnal,

but your spirit is perfect. And your spirit understands you.

And that's scary.

He says, for what man knows the things of the man except the spirit of man, which is in him.

Even so, no one knows the things of God except for the spirit of God. Now, if you've got a question about whether or not there's a spirit, a human spirit,

this. That verse explains to you. There's the spirit of man, and then there's a spirit of God.

When you're born again, you get a new human spirit. When you're not born again, you don't have anything.

How do I know I'm born again?

I hear the voice of God.

If I hear the voice of God, even if I'm just as miserable and sorry as I possibly can be, I'm born again.

You better get to listening.

Now. We have received not the spirit of the world,

but the spirit who is from God that we may know the things that have been freely given to us by God. You have the ability to know the things that come from God innately given to you.

When you are born again, you have access to the kingdom of God. You are in the spiritual realm. You have eternal life,

eternal being, defined as that which has no beginning nor end.

So when you're born again,

you have an aspect of you that wasn't you before that has no beginning, no end. It's perfect.

It knows the mind of God, and it communes with the mind of God.

These things we also speak not in words,

which man's wisdom teaches, but which.

Which the Holy Spirit teaches. Comparing spiritual things with spiritual but the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God for they are foolishness to him.

It says it again what are they foolishness to him Nor can he know them because they are spiritually discerned can't understand them but he who is spiritual judges all things yet him he himself rightly judges,

rightly judged by no one Meaning if you're spiritual you have the ability to make discernment about things you can actually discern truth,

God's truth but you're not under judgment.

That's what he's saying.

For who has known the mind of God,

the mind of the Lord that we may instruct him but we have the mind of Christ saying who has known it? You don't but you now have the mind of Christ because you're spiritually born as you go today I pray that the Lord will bless you and keep you that he'll make his face to shine upon you and that he will give you hope and peace today in Jesus name.