1 Corinthians 3:16-23 World's Wisdom Is Foolishness!

1 Corinthians 3:16-23  Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you?  If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple.  Do not deceive yourselves.  If any one of you thinks he is wise by the standards of this age, he should become a “fool” so that he may become wise.  For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight.  As it is written: “He catches the wise in their craftiness”; and again, “The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile.”  So then, no more boasting about men!  All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future — all are yours, and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God.

The beautiful words in today's focus were written by the Holy Spirit through the functioning of Paul's temple.  The Spirit tells us that all things, all possibilities, all wisdom, all knowledge, all understanding, all comfort, ALL THINGS are ours because we are of Christ, IN CHRIST, AND CHRIST IS OF GOD.  We are not just part of God: we are in the heart of God because of Jesus Christ our Lord, the bright and shining star of heaven.  We know his exalted position because Jesus said, I am the Root and the Offspring of David, and the bright Morning Star.  (Revelation 22:16)  When we don't truly understand or accept by faith our prominent position in God, we sometimes try to understand God and his domain with the knowledge and understanding of the world around us.  In doing this, we place God within our physical reality and awareness, sometimes making him a superman, a powerful superhero; better than we are, but much like us, just with more ability to conquer evil.  But in reality, none of us can image the future in God's presence.  We do not know what we will be like then.  We cannot even image the environment of heaven: the landscape, the beauty, the brightness, the glory, the sound.  But what we do know now is the presence of the Holy Spirit within us.  He tells us of the altogether lovely one, Jesus Christ.  He reveals, manifests, Christ in us.  The Spirit of God will always be with us, even after our biological death, for He is the one who will raise us from death.  The Spirit who is the life-giver, comforts our hearts with the words of God.  Paul tells the church at Colossia that he was commissioned by God to tell the saints the mysteries of God: To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.  (Colossians 1:27)   Paul reinforces the idea of God within us to the Corinthians by saying, Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you?  Or, to be clear, Don't you know who you are?  You are a redeemed child of God, born out of season, not in the natural way, but through the Spirit of God.  He has created you, made you a new creature, not out of the dust of this world, but out of the blood of Jesus Christ.  His life, his nature, flows through you because of the Spirit of God within you, guiding you, comforting you, teaching you the plan of God. 

Christian friend, today the Spirit says, Do not deceive yourselves.  Your life does not depend on your super human wisdom, knowledge, or understanding of the ways of this world or the ways of God.  This is not how you know God, for the wisdom and knowledge of this world is foolishness in God’s sight.  Even in the Old Testament we read, For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the LORD.  (Isaiah 55:8)  Christians sometimes attempt to mix their natural wisdom and knowledge with the wisdom and knowledge of God.  People want to become wise in this world so that they might be better instruments, witnesses, for God.  This mixture of God and man will always fall apart, for the wisdom and knowledge of men remain caught in finiteness, in this temporary existence, in this physical awareness.  Even the greatness of the universe, the stars and galaxies, does not tell us anything about the heart of God, his desire to fellowship with mankind.  If we try to find God in our finiteness, our existence, our physical environment, we will always be mixing foolishness with God's all-powerful, all-present, all-knowing reality.  The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile.   Of course, unredeemed man tries his best to understand existence, our life on Earth: How did things evolve, where did life begin, what is life, is life unique to this planet, and a plethora of questions?  The natural mind swims in this pool of investigating, questioning, seeking to know the answers to the mysteries of all things.  But how is it with God, the Creator of all that is and was and will be?  As it is written: “He catches the wise in their craftiness.”  Rather than seeking God, resting in the knowledge He exists, mankind relies upon worldly wisdom and knowledge, following a circuitous path without beginning or ending.  As Paul wrote in his second letter to the Corinthian church, So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.  (2 Corinthians 4:18)  To find the wisdom of God, we must look to the Spirit within, who will reveal divine truth to each one who asks in faith believing, each one who comes in the name of our precious Lord, Jesus Christ.

All things are yours, even the insights of Paul, Apollos, Cephas, or an understanding of life itself, of death, the present, and the future.  In the Spirit's presence within our temples resides all knowledge, all wisdom, all understanding, all comfort.  We who are IN CHRIST are temples of the Most Holy God.  He in us, we in him is the marvelous reality of salvation, total separation from sin.  WE ARE NOW PEOPLE OF THE SPIRIT OF GOD!  How does this translate into the real world where we live?  How do we know the Spirit lives in us in a vital, visceral way?  First, and most importantly, we know the Spirit abides within us because God's Word promises this in many places.  John wrote: Those who obey his commands live in him, and he in them.  And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.  (1 John 3:24)  We and others will know we have the Spirit within by how much we love others.  God is love.  Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.  (1 John 4:16)  Our love reveals God.  If we love little, God is revealed little.  If we love much, even our enemies, God is revealed much.  Does this answer all the questions man has about existence?  No, but love does answer the questions about real life, the present, and the future.  Yes, our imagination stops at the door of our existence.  We are not very good about knowing the future with God.  None of us can paint a picture of that existence.  John said, Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known.  But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.  (1 John 3:2)  But we do know that God is love, and that love has been planted deep within our hearts by the Holy Spirit.  We know we will be where love is, and that place will be comforting with no more sorrow, no more tears.  We know it will be warm with the light and radiance of God shining on us.  No longer pilgrims and strangers in a foreign land, finally, we will know we are home.  The wilderness is over, the Promised Land is ours.