Latest / Reformed Thinking / The Divine Ambush: God’s Sovereignty Over Human Wisdom (1 Corinthians 3:19–20)

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The Divine Ambush: God’s Sovereignty Over Human Wisdom (1 Corinthians 3:19–20) · Reformed Thinking

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  Welcome back to Reformed Thinking.
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  It is really good to be back at the table with you.
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  Good to be here. We are getting back into the
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  text today, and honestly, this is one of those sessions where
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  the whole reason we do the show comes into very sharp focus.
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  We always say we want to look at the world through the lens of
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  Scripture, right? Instead of looking at Scripture
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  through the lens of the world. Right, the proper order.
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  But today, today we are tackling a text that says if you get that
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  order wrong, you aren't just mistaken, you are actually
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  walking into a loaded trap. That's a great way to put it.
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  It's good to be here. And you are right.
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  We are opening up First Corinthians chapter 3, and we're
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  going to zoom in specifically on verses 19 and 20, OK?
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  And I think for a lot of us, this text functions like a
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  splash of ice water in the face. It really wakes you up.
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  It is the Apostle Paul at his most, let's say combative, but
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  also his most comforting. It just depends entirely on
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  where you're standing in the room.
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  Right. And to set the stage for that, I
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  think we need to talk about that feeling we all get sometimes
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  that, you know, that specific feeling of intimidation, I
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  think. I know where you're going with.
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  This I know. I felt it.
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  You look at the culture around us, you look at the
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  universities, the scientific establishment, the philosophers,
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  all the cultural elites, and it feels like the church is the one
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  on trial. It feels like we are the ones in
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  the dock sweating, trying to explain ourselves to these
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  incredibly smart, sophisticated people who think we're
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  backwards. What is the common experience?
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  Yes, we feel like we're standing in the court of public opinion
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  and the prosecutor is the spirit of the age.
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  That's good. But what Paul does in these two
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  verses is he just absolutely shatters that perspective.
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  He flips the courtroom upside down.
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  He tells us that while we might think God is on trial, the
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  church is on trial. The reality is that the world
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  has already been tried and the verdict is already in.
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  That is the hook for me, this idea of the courtroom of the
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  cosmos. Yeah, and Paul is dropping the
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  gavel. He's introducing us to a theme
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  that we can call the Divine Ambush.
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  A divine ambush. I like that.
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  The text suggests that God isn't up in heaven wringing his hands,
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  worried about the latest arguments from atheists or
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  secular humanists. He isn't stressed about their
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  logic. No, he is actively trapping the
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  whys in their own schemes. A trap that is a very different
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  image than you know a passive observer got.
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  Totally different. So our mission for this deep
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  dive is pretty clear. Then.
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  We want to dismantle that intimidation Christians feel
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  when they look at the intellectual elites, right?
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  And we also want to expose something dangerous inside the
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  church, what the source is called the idol of pragmatism.
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  That's the plan. We're going to look at why Paul
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  is so aggressive here. Then we'll look at the trap
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  itself, how God operates, and finally we'll look at the the
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  futility of human thinking when it tries to operate without God.
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  OK, let's unpack this Section 1, the context.
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  Why is Paul dropping the gavel so hard in First Corinthians 3?
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  I mean, usually you think of a pastor trying to be gentle, but
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  Paul comes out swinging. What is the back story here?
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  Well, to understand the anger, or maybe let's call it Apostolic
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  passion, you have to understand the city of Corinth, OK, the
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  church there had a spiritual disease.
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  They had essentially imported the values of the surrounding
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  culture right into the sanctuary.
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  What kind of values? Corinth was a city that was
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  obsessed with rhetoric, with status, with public reputation.
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  It was a a celebrity culture. So they're.
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  Treating their pastors like rock stars.
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  Precisely. Or like famous philosophers, you
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  had people in the pews saying I follow Paul, or I follow
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  Apollo's, or I follow Cephas. The reforming factions.
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  Big time factions based on who is the most eloquent, who is the
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  most polished, who had the most intellectual swagger.
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  That sounds uncomfortably familiar.
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  It does, doesn't it? But here's the thing.
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  They thought this was spiritual maturity.
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  They thought, oh, look at us, we are so discerning.
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  We know who the best speaker is. Oh wow.
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  But Paul looks at this and diagnosis it not as discernment,
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  but as worldliness. The source material uses a
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  phrase that just stuck with me. They were baptizing vanity.
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  Baptizing vanity. That stings.
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  So they were taking their own ego, dressing it up in religious
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  language and calling it wisdom. You got it.
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  They were measuring spiritual things by a worldly yardstick.
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  And that brings us right to the verdict in verse 19, Paul
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  writes, For the wisdom of this world is folly with God.
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  OK, let's stop on that word. Folly in the Greek.
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  That's Moria, right? Yes, Moria, it is where we get
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  our word moron. So he's not pulling any punches.
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  Not at all. Paul isn't saying that worldly
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  wisdom is just incomplete, or that it's a nice try but falls a
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  little short. He is saying it is absurdity.
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  It's stupidity. But notice the qualifier he
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  uses. This is key.
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  He says it is folly Paritatheo, which means with God or in the
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  presence of God. OK, so if you measure it by the
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  world standards it looks impressive.
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  It looks like APHD dissertation. But if you bring it into God's
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  presence, it just it looks like a joke.
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  That is the great reversal. The world looks at the cross, a
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  bleeding dying Messiah, and says that is foolishness, that is
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  Moria. But God looks at the world's
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  self important philosophical systems, their attempts to
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  explain reality without a creator, and he says no, that is
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  foolishness. So it sets up a clash of
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  worldviews. A total flash.
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  You simply cannot have it both ways.
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  You're either wise in the eyes of the city and a fool to God,
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  or you're a fool to the city and wise in Christ.
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  And Paul doesn't just state this as his opinion, he he brings
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  evidence. This is where it gets really
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  interesting for me because he starts quoting the Old Testament
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  to prove his case. He does.
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  He calls 2 witnesses to the stand.
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  The first one is in verse 19 where he quotes Job 5.13.
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  He catches the lies in their craftiness.
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  OK, and I noticed something in the notes about this quote, Paul
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  is quoting Eliphaz the Temenite he is.
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  Now for those who know the book of Job, Eliphaz wasn't exactly
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  the best friend to Job. I mean he gives him pretty bad
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  advice. He sure did.
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  So is it OK for Paul to quote? Him.
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  It's a fascinating detail, isn't it?
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  Eliphaz absolutely misapplied truth to Job specific situation.
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  He assumed Job must have sinned to deserve his suffering, which
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  was wrong. However, the specific statement
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  ELF has makes about God's nature, the God catches the wise
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  in their craftiness. That statement in itself is
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  true. It's an inspired truth regarding
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  God's governance. Paul is basically pulling a
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  diamond out of a pile of coal there.
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  And the image he pulls out is really intense.
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  The source material highlights the Greek word drossami.
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  Drossami. Yes, it's a kinetic, almost
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  violent word. It means to seize, to clench
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  with the fist, or to snap a trap shut.
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  Snap a trap shirt. Yeah, and this really challenges
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  a lot of modern views of God. We tend to think of God as
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  passive, just kind of watching history unfold from a distance.
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  But this text paints God as a hunter.
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  A hunter. So he isn't just watching the
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  wicked, he is actively engaging them.
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  He's the active protagonist of history.
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  He is actively entrapping the arrogant, and the way he does it
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  is the brilliance of the divine ambush.
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  He uses their own craftiness against them.
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  Let's define that word too. Craftiness.
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  In the Greek, it's Panorgia. Panorgia.
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  It's a compound word, pan meaning all and ergon meaning
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  work. It describes someone who is
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  ready to do anything. Ready to do anything?
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  It implies a lack of scruples. It's that, you know,
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  unscrupulous, manipulative results at any cost kind of
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  wisdom. So it's like the wisdom of the
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  political strategist who creates a crisis to seize power.
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  Or the businessman equips the books.
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  Yes, it's being shrewd in a dirty way.
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  And the mechanism of God's trap is that he uses that very
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  shrewdness to destroy them. Exactly.
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  The trap isn't something external that God drops on them
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  from the sky. The trap is the sin itself.
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  The skiing becomes the snare. OK, we have some great
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  historical examples of this in the notes.
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  The first one is Pharaoh from Exodus.
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  Pharaoh's the classic example of Panergia.
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  He had a wise policy, or so he thought.
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  Right, he was worried about the Hebrews.
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  He was afraid they were growing too numerous, so he ordered the
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  death of the male infants. That was his crafty strategy to
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  secure his power. But look at what happened.
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  Because of that very decree, Moses was placed in a basket in
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  the Nile. And found by Pharaoh's daughter
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  of all people. Found by Pharaoh's daughter,
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  raised in Pharaoh's own household, eating Pharaoh's
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  food, receiving the best education on Pharaoh's dime.
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  Wow. Pharaoh's own craftiness
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  literally paid for the upbringing of the man who would
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  come back and destroy his Kingdom.
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  That is the boomerang effect. The wisdom of the wicked creates
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  the instrument of their own destruction.
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  There was another example, Haman from the book of Esther.
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  Oh, Haman is another perfect case study.
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  He builds A gallows 75 feet high, The text says,
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  specifically to hang Mordecai. He builds the weapon.
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  He constructs the instrument of death with his own hands, but
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  Providence flips the script. Haman ends up hanging on the
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  very gallows he built for his enemy.
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  It really drives home the point that you cannot outsmart God.
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  You just can't. You're fighting against the
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  architect of reality. If you try to use the building
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  blocks of reality to fight the architect, the building is just
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  going to fall on you. That's a great way to put it.
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  And this leads us to the second witness.
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  Paul calls. He moves from the external trap,
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  the events of history, to the internal trap.
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  OK this. Is verse 20.
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  The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile.
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  He's quoting Psalm 94 here. He is, but there is a subtle
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  edit Paul makes and it's really important that's that.
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  In Psalm 94 it says the Lord knows the thoughts of man, but
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  here in First Corinthians Paul changes it to the Lord knows the
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  thoughts of the wise. He is sharpening the arrow.
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  He is targeting the elite. He's targeting the experts, the
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  academics, the people who think they have it all figured out.
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  Got it. He isn't talking about the
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  random thoughts of a toddler. He's talking about the dialogis
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  most. Dialogis most that sounds a bit
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  like dialogue. It shares the same root.
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  It refers to structured reasonings, calculations, whole
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  systems of thought. Oh, OK, so like ideologies?
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  Exactly. Think of things like secularism,
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  Darwinism, critical theory series, these massive
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  intellectual edifices that people build to explain the
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  world without God, Paul says God looks at these complex systems
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  and issues. A1 word verdict.
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  Mattias and Mattias means futile.
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  Futile. Vain.
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  It means they are devoid of result.
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  They simply cannot achieve what they promise.
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  And this brings us to a pretty heavy theological concept, the
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  noetic effects of sin. Noetic comes from the Greek word
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  for mind, noose. So we are talking about how sin
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  affects the brain, our thinking. Correct.
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  Reformed theology teaches that the fall didn't just affect our
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  will or our emotions. It affected our capacity to
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  reason. It corrupted our minds.
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  So it's not that we can't think, it's that we can't think, right?
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  That's it. The source material uses a
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  fantastic analogy here. Think of a calculator with a
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  broken algorithm. OK, you can punch in the most
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  complex numbers. You can be a genius, have a high
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  IQ, have three PHD's. But if the the internal
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  algorithm is flawed, the result will always be wrong.
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  So if the core algorithm is there is no God, then every
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  calculation you make about the purpose of life, the nature of
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  humanity or morality is going to come out as zero in the end.
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  Precisely. It's garbage in, garbage out, no
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  matter how sophisticated the processing power is.
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  Can you give a modern example of this?
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  Well, a modern example of this feudal thinking that the source
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  mentions is the sexual revolution.
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  Oh, that is a big one. It is.
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  Think about the wisdom of the mid 20th century, the
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  intellectual elites, the wise. They argued that if we just cast
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  off biblical morality, if we remove the restrictions on
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  sexuality, we would enter a utopia of freedom and mental
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  health. That was the reasoning the
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  dialogues most. That was the reasoning.
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  But what happened? The trap sprung.
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  Yeah. Look around.
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  Do we get utopia or do we get record levels of depression, the
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  breakdown of the family unit and a crisis of identity where
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  people don't even know who they are anymore?
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  The reasoning was Matteo's. It was futile.
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  It promised freedom but delivered bondage.
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  And God knew it would, because he knows the thoughts of the
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  wise are empty. It is heavy to realize that
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  entire cultural movements are essentially just people stepping
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  into a bear trap that God set up to expose their folly.
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  It is. But this brings us to the
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  ultimate trap, the biggest bear trap in all of history.
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  The cross. This is where the whole divine
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  ambush idea goes cosmic. It does if we connect this to
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  the bigger picture. The cross is the supreme example
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  of God catching the wise in their craftiness.
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  OK, unpack that. Think about the rulers of that
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  age, both the human rulers like Pilot and the high priests, and
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  the demonic powers behind them. What was their wise plan?
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  Kill the Messiah, silence the threat, stamp out the movement
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  for good. That's it.
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  They thought that by nailing Jesus to the cross, they were
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  winning. They thought they were flexing
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  their strength and putting an end to this problem.
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  But they were wrong. Totally wrong.
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  Colossians 2.15 tells us that in that very act, God was disarming
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  them. The cross was the trap.
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  By killing the offer of life, they triggered the very
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  mechanism that destroyed the power of death forever.
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  Let's talk about a reversal. The weapon they used to destroy
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  him became the weapon he used to destroy them.
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  The ultimate ambush. So if the wisdom of the world is
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  a trap, and our own best thinking is futile, how do we
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  escape? What's the way out?
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  The escape route is the thing our pride hates the most.
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  Which is. You have to admit you are a
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  fool. You have to look at the cross,
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  which the world says is ridiculous, and say that is my
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  wisdom. That is my only hope.
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  The source material has a beautiful image for this.
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  The door out of the trap is open, but it's very low.
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  You have to crawl through it on your knees.
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  Submission, submission and union with Christ.
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  That is the theological key. When we are united to Christ, He
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  takes our vain thoughts, our craftiness, and He exchanges
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  them for his mind. So we get his wisdom.
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  Yes, First Corinthians 1.30 says Christ became for us wisdom from
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  God. We stop trying to be smart on
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  our own, and we accept His righteousness.
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  That is the only safety. Now I want to pivot to
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  application. Yeah, because this isn't just
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  theory. This hits the modern church
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  right in the face. The outline mentions the idol of
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  pragmatism. This is where we have to be
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  really careful because we do this all the time.
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  Pragmatism says if it works, it's true, or if it works, it
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  must be good. And in the church works usually
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  means gets more bodies in the seats.
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  Right. And here's the danger To get
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  those results, we often turn to Penn Rucha to craftiness.
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  We use marketing manipulation. We soften the hard truths of the
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  Bible because they might offend the visitors.
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  We turn the worship service into a concert or a Ted Talk.
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  We do. We try to use the world's tools
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  to build God's house. And the warning from this text
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  is that if you use the world's tools, you step into the world's
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  trap. God will not bless cleverness if
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  we build with wood, hay and stubble, which is what worldly
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  wisdom produces. It will all be burned up.
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  So what's the correction? The correction here is that we
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  have to rely on what the world calls foolish.
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  We have to rely on the ordinary means of grace, preaching the
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  Bible, prayer, the sacraments. It doesn't look like a flashy
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  marketing strategy, but it is the power of God.
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  So stop trying to out entertain the world.
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  We can't win that game and God doesn't want us to play it.
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  Now what about the individual? I'm thinking of the listener who
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  is a student maybe in a university class or working in a
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  very secular corporate environment.
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  They feel that intimidation we talked about at the beginning.
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  This text is their shield. It has to be when you're sitting
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  in that classroom and the professor is mocking the
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  biblical worldview or your Co workers are looking down on you
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  for your morality, you need to remember the courtroom.
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  Remember who is actually on trial.
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  Remember that the person mocking you is standing in a bear trap.
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  That changes the dynamic completely.
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  You don't have to be afraid of them.
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  You should pity them. That's right, their wisdom is a
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  mirage. It's going to collapse, so the
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  strategy isn't to seek their validation.
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  I mean, why would you want applause from a sinking ship?
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  Good point. The strategy is to pray for
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  them, to love them, but to hold your ground knowing that you
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  possess the mind of Christ, you are in touch with reality.
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  They are the ones living in a fantasy world of their own
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  making. That is incredibly empowering.
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  It takes the pressure off. We don't have to be the smartest
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  person in the room by the world's standards.
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  No, we don't. We just have to be faithful to
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  the one who actually knows everything and.
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  Practically, regarding the church structure we call
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  ecclesiology, this text demands we stop the celebrity worship.
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  Going right back to the I follow Paul problem.
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  Yes, pastors or servants, not brands.
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  If your faith is built on the personality of a specific
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  leader, you are doing exactly what the Corinthians did wrong.
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  So our unity comes from the word.
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  Unity comes from submitting to the world, not from rallying
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  around a guru. So no more I follow and famous
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  pastor name here. Please no follow Christ.
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  The pastor is just the waiter bringing the food to the table.
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  Don't worship the waiter. Love that.
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  OK, let's wrap this up. We've covered a lot of ground.
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  We saw the verdict. Worldly wisdom is folly.
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  We saw the trap. God actively uses history to
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  snare the wicked in their own schemes, and we saw the
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  futility. The internal reasoning of the
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  wise is MD because of sin. It's a three-step argument that
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  just dismantles human pride. So as we sign off, what is the
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  final thought we should leave our listeners with?
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  I would leave you with this image.
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  You are in a war, but it's not just a war of ideas.
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  It's a war against the architect of reality.
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  If you're trying to navigate life using the wisdom of this
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  world, living for self, ignoring God, redefining morality, you
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  are trying to fight the Architect with the very weapons
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  he created. That is a battle you cannot win.
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  The trap will spring. So what's the only way out?
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  The only safety, the only safety, is to surrender.
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  Surrender to the foolishness of the cross.
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  Crawl through that low door. Because inside that door there
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  is no trap, There is only life. Amen.
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  This has been reformed thinking. Thanks for joining us for this
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  deep dive into First Corinthians.
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  We will catch you next time.