Searching for Sophia-1

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I would like for you to open your Bibles to 1 Corinthians 2:9 
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."

Has anyone here ever quoted that verse?  I have.  And in my mind
that verse has always described the glorys of the new heavens
and new earth that God will prepare for His children when sin is
no more.

Anyone else think that way?

As I have read this chapter over and over, I have come to the
conclusion that there is even more to this verse than we have
seen before.  There is a theme that we find running through the
first part of the book of 1 Corinthians.  I don't know if you
have picked up on that theme or not, but if you read the first 3
chapters over and over, it will begin to come to you.

1 Corinthians 2:1  "And I, brethren, when I came to you, did not
come with excellence of speech or of wisdom (sofia) 
........declaring to you the testimony (WH- musthrion) of God."

1 Corinthians 2:2  "For I determined not to know anything among
you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified."  Crucified - Aorist.
 ongoing.  Paul taught that people "are being" saved, and "are
being lost."  By the same token Jesus "is being crucified" in
the continual effect  of the cross.

In the previous chapter Paul wrote:  1 Corinthians 1:22  "For
Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom;"

What is foolishness, and what is wisdom?

Again Paul answers in the verses that follow.

23  "but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling
block and to the Greeks foolishness,"

24  "but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ
the power of God and the wisdom of God."

25  "Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the
weakness of God is stronger than men."

The message of wisdom / foolishness is the story of the
self-sacrifice of a man worshipped by believers as the Son of
God. Outside the Judeo-Christian tradition in those days, those
who believed in a pagan god stressed his power and freedom from
pain, suffering, and death. Elaborate philosophical arguments
were developed among the Greeks to show that the god must be
free from distress and even from influence from any source
outside himself. It was impossible for the divinity to be
overcome by weak and fallible men. A divine being could not
suffer as men do, and therefore it was unthinkable that a son of
God, a being with divine characteristics, could endure death
like a criminal. 

This is why the cross was declared to be foolishness to those
who, by rejecting its saving power, were perishing. But Paul
going against the grain of Jewish thought and pagan traditions,
says to us who are being saved the cross is God's power.  

And Paul includes himself in that statement. This is why Paul
was absolutely sure that the message of the cross has the
ability to speak to the human heart, to affect conscience, to
make plain the nature of sin, and to give a basis for hope and
life. Because he had experienced it.  He was living it.

When the story is told, God's power is set in motion. But this
is foolishness to some, because there is nothing that can be
proved in an ordinary sense. Faith plays an important role in
this process, as we will see later in the chapter.

	Let us continue with the text.

1 Corinthians 2:3  "I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in
much trembling."  Why? Did the power of what he was doing fill
him with awe?  Did he feel that the message was much larger than
he was?  That might be the case, because he goes on to say:

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."

Paul is pointing out the dilemma of power vs. power.  Paul had
used the power of human persuasiveness on Mars hill.  It brought
several converts, specifically mentioned Damaris and Dionysius. 
But there was something about this presentation that did not
satisfy him.  As he looks back I can almost hear him chastising
himself for the preaching that he did there.

Paul goes on to talk about Sophia.

1 Corinthians 2:6  "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."

An Old Testament quotation extends this idea to note that, under
human conditions, wisdom and shrewdness come to nothing. It is
precisely the proclamation about the cross, foolish as it seems,
that reveals the bankruptcy of human wisdom. When we who are
being saved understand the action of God in Christ, it suddenly
hits us that no wise man could ever have discovered that God
would do this. God's action is the kind of surprise that makes
startlingly clear the ultimate uselessness of the deepest human
intelligence and its irrelevance to destiny.

1 Corinthians 2:9  "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.""

Isaiah 64:4  "For since the beginning of the world Men have not
heard nor perceived by the ear, Nor has the eye seen any God
besides You, Who acts for the one who waits for Him."

1 Corinthians 2:10  "But God has revealed ".......  apokalupto 
(apocalypse!)                		

1) to uncover, lay open what has been veiled or covered up

1a)  disclose, make bare

2) to make known, make manifest, disclose what before was unknown

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

11  "For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of
the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God
except the Spirit of God."

What are those things that God has revealed to us?  Eye hath not
seen, neither ear heard........  But it has been revealed to
us.... As it says in the next verse........

12  "Now we have received, not the spirit of the
world..............  kosmos, world ..........but the Spirit who
is from God, that we might know....... oida  

 1) to see

 1b) to perceive by any of the senses

 1c) to perceive, notice, discern, discover

 1e) to experience any state or condition

  2) to know

 2b) to know, i.e. get knowledge of, understand, perceive

Tense (completed in the past, once and for all, not needing to
be repeated.)

......... the things that have been freely given to us by God."



1 Corinthians 2:13  "These things we also speak, not in words
which man's wisdom....  sofia  ..... teaches but which the Holy
Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual."

14  "But the natural man does not receive the things of the
Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he (is
he able).....  dunamai -- dynamite

1) to be able, have power whether by virtue of one's own ability
and  resources, or of a state of mind, 

.......know them, because they are spiritually discerned."

15  "But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself
is rightly judged by no one."

116  "For "who has known the mind of the LORD that he may
instruct Him?" But we have the mind of Christ."

 Mankind prides himself in how much he knows.  Someone has
estimated that, if all of man's accumulated knowledge from the
beginning of recorded history to 1845 were represented by one
inch, what he learned from 1845 until 1945 would amount to three
inches and what he learned from 1945 until 1975 would represent
the height of the Washington Monument!  Since then it has
probably doubled.

Few people, however, would argue that the incredible leap in
scientific, technological, and other such knowledge has been
paralleled by a corresponding leap in the common sense wisdom,
not to mention spiritual and moral wisdom.  If anything, man's
understanding of what he is doing and why he is doing it seems
to decrease as his practical knowledge increases.   

The more learned he becomes in that superficial kind of
knowledge, the less need he sees for the knowledge that comes
only from God. 

But Paul implies that the deepest human need is the knowledge of
God: the world does not come to know God through wisdom. Great
minds had been searching for knowledge to fill the void which
left life without meaning, groping for reality and sense of
destiny. These searches had been fruitless, had not proved that
there is or is not an ultimate reality, that there is or is not
an ultimate divine concern for humanity. 

Paul declares that this also has been part of the wisdom of God:
the inability of the human mind to discover God has been part of
God's wise plan. Paul does not develop this idea here; but later
he points out that the difference between God and men cannot be
bridged by the wisdom of man.

   Instead of trusting Christ, modern-day thinkers insist on
using human wisdom alone for answers to eternal questions. 

   The tragedy of man trying to know God through his own efforts
 was graphically illustrated in a humorous skit performed by
Karl Vallentin, a Munich comedian. Walking on a stage where
everything was dark except for a small area under a street lamp,
he began to look for something on the ground.  He told the
policeman who came on the scene that he was trying to find a
key, whereupon the two continued the search. 

Finally the officer asked, "Are you sure you lost it here?"  

"Oh, no," said Vallentin as he pointed to a corner, "It was over
there, but here is where the light is!" 

When man seeks for wisdom from God based on his own abilities,
he is like the comedian, searching in the wrong places, knowing
it is in the wrong place, but not knowing where else to go.

Here in the South, we have a saying about this.  There are a lot
of coon hunters here.  They have dogs that run long and far in
pursuit of raccoons.  But once in a while, the coon will pull a
fast one on the dogs, and the hunters will run to the tree where
the dogs are barking only to find that the coon is not there. 
Thus the saying "barking up the wrong tree."

If we try to know God without the Holy Spirit, who is the
provider of wisdom, we end up with earthly wisdom, which on the
eternal scale is foolishness.  We end up barking up the wrong
tree.

The Jews were looking for a saving action of God that would
occur through the sending of his Messiah (Christ). They expected
that the messiah would be made known by mighty signs, perhaps in
the sky, perhaps on the earth. He would inaugurate a glorious
kingdom and would sweep to power over the forces opposing God.
Remember how Jesus reacted to those who were asking for a sign. 
But He would not play their games.  If we are waiting for such a
manifestation, we are barking up the wrong tree. 

Now to proclaim that God's messiah had come and had been
crucified without a marvelous identifying sign of some kind was
an offense to Jews.  In their minds, Jesus could not have been
God's Messiah since he was maltreated, scorned, and put to death
as a lawbreaker by the will of men.

The Greeks represent those Paul had been writing about, who
consider God's wisdom to be foolishness. To affect them the
message must overcome the obstacles created by cultivated human
knowledge. But God's foolishness is wiser than men, and God's
weakness is stronger than men. The foolishness of divine love is
wiser than the wisdom of human pride.

God's wisdom is displayed in the unadorned, stark display of
willingness to enter the worst condition that ever faced a human
being. This is wiser than the security sought by the skill of
intelligent persons because it accomplishes what no human wisdom
can achieve.

 The weakness of God is the weakness of the death of Christ. In
human experience death is the ultimate weakness, but the death
of Christ is more powerful than all human strength. As Paul
matured in his relationship with Christ it caused him to change
all his previous ways of thinking. Here was indeed the supreme
metamorphosis. The reclaiming and remaking of the victims of sin
and death.  Now he understood that wisdom and strength were to
be found in weakness, life in death.  We will continue with this
in 2 weeks, but as we close today, I want to ask you a question.

Today, are looking for that wisdom that Paul found?  Do you want
the assurances that this true knowledge brought him?  If you do,
right now take just a moment with me and ask your Savior to give
you this wisdom, and he will give it abundantly.



 

Prov 11:2  "When pride comes, then comes shame; But with the
humble is wisdom."