Coney Hill Baptist Church
Demonstrating God’s Love Together
19th October 2008
What Am I Doing Here?
4. Seeking Some Wisdom…
1 Corinthians 1:18-2:2
Intro.
Have you ever wished you knew the answer to something?
Have you ever wished you were better informed?
Have you ever felt intimidated because you’ve felt someone knows more than you do?
I imagine the answer to all 3 of those questions is yes. It certainly is for me. It’s good to know things. It’s good to have the answer. Sometimes it’s easy to feel small and insignificant if you sense that those around you are somehow better equipped to deal with some of the questions life throws at us.
Part of why we come to church is to find answers. Not in a narrow, information seeking way, more to find wisdom. And, as any good teacher will tell you the best way to attain wisdom is not to be given answers but to be lead and encouraged to find a place where the answers might be found. This is such a place, this book, is such a place, this table is such as place.
The passage we read from Corinthians sounded quite complicated. One of those bits of the New Testament, from Paul, that doesn’t deal directly with the life of Jesus, like the gospels do, but seeks to interpret it for a new generation. All sorts of barriers seem to be in our way if we try to understand it.
I don’t wont to dissect it verse by verse today, but to de-mystify it just in a few basic points….
Be Suspicious of Claims to Cleverness….(v’s.18-23)
At one level we all are aren’t we? ‘Too clever by half’ we say.
Yet we are still impressed, sometimes belittled. The passage says don’t be.
Every culture has its favourite ways of coming across as wise … in everyone of them its more often than not a smokescreen to help people avoid the challenges that simple common sense and the big, but obvious, questions that life throws at us everyday.
The people who show off their cleverness most ardently, are often the most foolish of all.
Don’t think that if you’re not Clever you can’t be Wise… (v’s.26-27)
Sometimes we can think that we’re not cut out for this wisdom lark. We’re not academic or eloquent, or even, frankly, very interested in the debates around some of the finer points of things that clever people seem to enjoy discussing. As a result we can think we’ll jut go and hide. With any possible hope of answers closed off to the likes of us we’ll immerse ourselves instead in Football or Eastenders or our own little world, whatever that might be.
Your circumstances, your questions … and answers, your contribution, may be just the thing that opens up real wisdom … for you and for others.
Wisdom is found in a person not in a qualification, or a library…(v.30)
‘God made him (Jesus) to be wisdom itself.’
It’s discovered therefore in a relationship, an encounter that changes us, ‘made us right with God’. Something anyone can do.
The key to unlocking the wisdom of that person is this table. That’s why Paul said he was only interested in telling them about Jesus and, even then, only really interested in his death and resurrection.
Conc.
This is real wisdom … wisdom that helps us with those profound but everyday questions about who we really are, what really matters, what’s right and wrong and how can we tell, what should we do, and why?
Knowing Jesus doesn’t makes life easy. But if we know….Him, it makes it a lot clearer.
Office Address:
Coney Hill Road
West Wickham
Kent
BR4 9BU