Human wisdom and limited blessing

Well, today is the last section in Chapter 3, and then we're going to move on to Chapter 4 for the next three weeks. So today I've labeled this Human Wisdom and Limited Blessing. It's interesting, once you study the passage, you probably create a whole different title.

But you look at it quickly, and Bob's always giving me a hard time about that, and I probably deserve it. And I deserve it. It's funny, you look at the passage really quickly, and you say, well, what is that talking about? And you choose a title, but then you study it, and you think, wow, it's about this, and about that, and about that. And you think, man, a title should be different. But that's the neat thing about the Word of God, isn't it? The more you get into it, the more expansive it becomes.

Exactly. All right, so let's just go ahead and what I've done here, this is this outline from Macaulay I've been using since back in chapter one. We're kind of in this section now at the very bottom. We're at number five. Unity is achieved by considering the nature of Christian service. So we're talking about at a high, very high level, Christian service. And I think actually a better look here is actually the next part here, which is a more detailed So I'm just going to go through this quickly here.

So basically, Randy covered, basically last week, we talked about the foundation of the church and we found that the foundation of the church, there's no other foundation that we can lay than Jesus Christ. That's the foundation of the church. So that's point one. And the foundation which we are to build upon as believers, we're building upon the Lord Jesus Christ.

And it talks about the six things that you can build upon. Three are good and three are not so good. You've got gold, silver, precious stone. Those are the ones that are going to last. And then you have wood, hay, and straw or stubble. And those are the things that are going to be burned up.

And then the next point is that the quality of each man's work will be judged. And I think it somewhat connects to the judgment seat of Christ where those things will be revealed and will be judged basically and the ones that will be rewarded for those. And that's a whole topic on rewards and stuff and I'm actually not going to go that direction today. But what today we're going to talk about, we're going to start basically with the local church.

And this is an interesting thing that I discovered. We know that each believer is the temple of the Holy Spirit. We're going to find out that the local body is also the temple, is also called a temple. In this passage, in fact, it's kind of hard to see, but if you kind of bear with it and look at the original, you'll see that I think it's clearly calling out that the local church is the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells there.

The next, we have the idea of there's a problem of self-deception, the warning of self-deception, the problem of human wisdom. He kind of comes back to that again. We talked about that in chapter one, about human wisdom and God's wisdom. There's no comparison between human wisdom and God's wisdom. We'll talk more about that in 19 through 20. And at the end, we're going to have this wonderful resume, if you will, about the possessions a believer has in the Lord Jesus. So that's kind of the overview of where we're going. So could someone read, next page is the 16 through 23. Could someone read those verses?

Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If any man destroys the temple of God, God will destroy him. For the temple of God is holy, and that is what you are. Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you thinks that he is wise in his age, he must become foolish, so that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness before God. For it is written, he is the one who catches the wise in their crackiness. And again, the Lord knows the reasonings of the wise, that they are useless. So then let no one boast in men, for all things belong to you, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or things present or things to come. All things belong to you, and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God. Great. Thank you. So we're going to see here, the first two verses are going to talk about this fact. And as you first read that, it looks like it's talking about the believer.

And the critical part is going to be, what the tense of the U is, you know, if you're, and we don't have, I've forgotten our name now, but from the South, you know, or actually, you all, which is a nice way to say a plural, we're going to find those are you all's up there. We don't say you all, we say you all. You all, well I know. Y'all means you all.

We're going to find that in those two verses, that's y'all. And then verse 18 is going to talk about this idea of self-deception. We're not to be self-deceived. We're to be wise. We're to be wise in God's Word. And then 19 and 20 is going to talk about this idea of God's wisdom versus man's wisdom. We're going to refresh what we had back in chapter 1. And then we're going to talk about 21, a really cool verse. So let no one boast in men. We're not to boast in men, we're to boast in the Lord Jesus Christ.

And then starting in the B part of 21 through the end is this resume of these all things that belong to you. And it's really a cool deal. I mean, it's just amazing. We have Paul, we have Apollos, it's kind of their teaching, what they taught us. So we have Paul, Apollos, even though Apollos isn't recorded in scripture, Cephas certainly is here.

And then we have the world, or life, or death, or things present, things to come. And the final verse, You belong to Christ and Christ belongs to God. I had never actually picked up on that being here in Corinthians. We know back in John, we know that we're in Christ and He's in us, that duality of the identification we have with our Savior. So just a wonderful section here, segmented into bits and pieces here. So let's just jump into the first verse here. The first verse is, This is something we should know. This is what Paul does a lot.

Do you not know? He uses that maybe a dozen times. Do you not know this? Do you not know that? He's kind of focusing on, you should know that. Do you not know? It's kind of like saying to your kids, don't you know that? I told you about that. Or you use their middle name. You say Sarah Ann or whatever it might be. I was wondering where that came from. We were talking about that the other day. Where does it come from, adding the middle name? That's a whole other discussion.

Do you not know? that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you. So the pronoun you occurs three times. and is plural in each time. And actually, that's not actually that hard. You know, they're studying upstairs. There's various ways you can get to that. You can say, well, I can never figure that out. That's too hard. Or there's various helps that you can zoom in on that and find out that's plural. So I mean, it's not outside the realm of possibility to realizing that's plural. So including the plurals, 16 would read this. And you can put you all in there, y'all.

You plural. do you plural not know that you plural are the temple singular of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you plural so that that makes that verse the thrust of that verse quite a bit different some people in fact I know some people aren't real careful and they'll link this verse with the verse we're going to cover later in chapter 6 which talks about that we're the temple of the Holy Spirit and they'll say well this is just another hash at that. And actually, in this context, we're going to find by understanding this, it kind of explains the next verse, which is very harsh, because God says he's going to destroy, he's going to destroy something. It sounds like he's going to destroy us. Pretty, pretty severe language. But by realizing that this is the local body of believers, and you see what's going on here, it actually helps out a lot, I think.

Bob? The neat thing about no here is it's a factual Exactly. Verbs. It's factual. Indicative. These are the facts. Experientially. Whenever you see the indicative mood, that's a mood of reality. That's a fact. We can count on that's a fact. It's a wonderful thing to know that the collection of the body of believers, God considers that His temple, His sanctuary. That's a special thing. As we gather as believers, that is a special thing that God has designed for us, as well as having us individually as being a temple. So it's pretty cool. Okay, so the word temple, naos, is a shrine or sanctuary.

And it's used kind of in a variety of ways. It's used as a physical structure, metaphorically of Christ's body, of the local church, like I mentioned, and then of individual believers, which we're going to see down the road. So I had a couple of A couple of verses here just to give you a little flavor.

Could someone read Acts 17.24? God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands. This is the same word in Eos. In this case it says that the God that we know doesn't dwell in a physical temple. That's not his dwelling place. He doesn't live there. We're going to learn down the road that local assembly is going to be his sanctuary, but he doesn't live there.

Let's look at John 2 verse 19. Right. And we know it explains that later. He says he was referring to his body because they got all confused. I thought, well, this is this massive physical temple and it took all these years and you're going to destroy it. And he says, no, it's my body I'm talking about.

And then the next one, 2 Corinthians 6.16. Let's look at that one, 616.

What agreement hath the temple of God with idols? For ye are the temple of the living God, as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them, as I will be their God, and them shall be my people. Right. So that one, what do you think about that one? That looks like that might have a couple of, actually I had forgotten I had included that verse in there. The temple of God. Well, and don't you think it's because the Jews at the time all thought that God was in the temple.

Exactly. And that God was the holiest of holies and all this. They couldn't go behind the veil and all this. And so they're just contradicting that and saying, no, that's not where God is. Good point. And that's exactly what the Jews, I mean, they have the Day of Atonement, the Holy of Holies, and that's where God was. And that's where we, you know, I agree. That's great. That's a good point.

And then actually, I'm going to save 619. It's going to talk about that each believer is a temple. I'm going to save that for a little bit later. We're going to cover that shortly here. But that talks about that. So I actually kind of want to answer the question, how is temple used in this verse?

And I believe it's used, speaking about the local body of believers in Corinth there, that they are a temple. And the fact, there are two facts, that they're a temple of God. So the verse says that you are. And this is factual, as present tense, continuous action, indicative mood, you're a temple of God and the spirit of God dwells in you.

So two facts about that temple there, the body of believers in Corinth. So Paul's setting up here, he's setting up the fact that There's problems in Corinth, and he's pointing out that this new body of believers is just not a random gathering of people. You just didn't show up for cards that night or for bingo.

It's more than that. It's God's structure. It's what he has designed for believers to grow in, to encourage one another. It's his institution. So now we're going to switch to 17, which comes on very strong. If any man destroys the temple of God, God will destroy him. So, wow, you look at that and you think, that's pretty heavy. You almost think back to Anax there, Ananias and Sapphira. You think about that, it kind of goes through your head a little bit.

But let's look at the word destroy, which is going to be really important here. It signifies to destroy by means of corrupting, so as to bring about a worse state. So with that definition, we're not so focused on wiping something out or leveling it flat. It's more that there's a corruption going on here. There's something is in a worse state.

If you think about what's going on in Corinth, right? You got these folks here that are, they have the, it's almost like a political campaign, right? Apollos and they have the, I'm Apollos and I'm Paul and whatever, and I'm Cephas. And so they're all shaking their banners and they're all, there's factions.

So the fact is that that's what he says, if any man is engaged in this corrupting, that God's going to do something, destroy him. And once again, it's the same word, destroy. It's the same word in both cases here. So it doesn't mean he's going to annihilate that person. That person is going to be worse off or be in a worse state. Okay, so let's look at I'm going to read 1 Corinthians 15. This is going to show the idea of corrupting. This is the same word that is translated destroy here, but it's translated corrupt. You could put destroy is good morals.

If you did that, you'd think, wow, that sounds a bit strong. Once again, it's important to see what the original word means and then take that meaning and fit it into the context of what you're reading. So how were the Corinthians destroying the temple? And I kind of alluded to that already. So Macaulay says they were destroying it by their dissension.

I think a verse that kind of talks about that is 1 Corinthians 10-12. Could someone read that, please? Now I plead with you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment. For it has been declared to me concerning you, my brethren, by those of Chloe's household, that there are contentions among you. Now I say this, that each of you says, I am of Paul, or I am of Apollos, or I am of Cephas, or I am of Christ. So that seems to be, and he keeps repeating this over and he's been repeating this since chapter one as we see, this comes up again over and over again.

That seems to be the corrupting influence or the influence that Paul wants to address here. So the last part of this question, how will God destroy the Corinthians? And I found that the toughest part. It's the same word again. So it says, God will destroy him.

Let's just go back. It talks about a man. A little bit of a problem here, because it was plural before, now we have singular in a man. So I kind of saw it was possibly a loss of fellowship, something like that. I don't know. You know, Roger, this is puzzling has been to me, too. And I think I think this extends beyond the Corinthians. Don't you think this applies to the day? Sure. Absolutely. Absolutely.

So I think that the temple of the Lord is holy and sanctified. And ultimately, the destruction would be in the power of this dissension having any impact on the pure and holy temple of the Lord. So the destruction is really of the true church, if you will, and from standing on the foundation of who we are in Christ and Christ is in us, and we need to stick to biblical truth. And the destruction is in the errancy of those positions.

So it's not physical destruction. He's not going to pierce them down with a sword or any other type of artillery. It's ultimately destroying the message that's being delivered from these people. I don't know. It's a tough one, and I think you're on the right track there.

The temple is perfect. It is, it's holy. And basically, because the rest of this verse basically says, for the temple of God is holy, and that is what you are. So the temple of God is holy, you're holy, so if some person is trying to impact that, and malign that, and destroy that, in the sense of corrupting it and dispersing it, or whatever they're trying to do, or confuse it, their efforts will be of no avail. Maybe it's more that God's going to thwart that effort. In some way, because the truth will prevail. God will prevail because of who he is and because it is holy and sanctified.

As opposed, like you say, to annihilate. Well, actually, if it said destroy not annihilate, you'd have a big problem here. Well, it'd be another word. Right, it'd be another word. Right, that's true. So maybe the word destroy is not... And I'm not quite sure why, you know, and actually there's other verses, I had that one verse, there's other verses in there that, and it's translated a few different ways, corrupt, destroy, a few other occasions. All right, so let's look at the last part of the verse.

For the temple of God is holy, and that is what you are. In the context, we see that the body of believers in Corinth, who are God's temple, this was Bob's point, and they were holy or set apart. That is why what the Corinthians were doing was so serious. Because they are set apart, somebody that comes in and tries to disrupt that and corrupt that, that's a serious, serious issue. Here's what I referred to before. The other part of this is that individual believers are also referred to as a temple.

And we're going to cover that down the road here in 1 Corinthians 6.19. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? So what we've learned so far is that the collective local body at Corinth is a temple. And then we're going to learn down the road that we're a temple. And we're going to learn that God is concerned.

And obviously, Paul is concerned about the fact that the Corinthians were corrupting that. So as to divide it and have divisions and factions. And that was a serious issue. Three chapters worth talking about that. Randy, you have something you wanted to? I'm still stuck on the previous section. How are they going to destroy it? Here's the thing, there's two pieces to this. Paul was a destroyer. At one point in his life, he was a destroyer, right? Saul, he was a destroyer.

And so there is grace and mercy to those who repent. But otherwise, there is an eternal instruction coming. It doesn't have to be justice as we would see it immediately. Sometimes God will use that pressure of oppression and political power and whatever else for the body's growth and development is there. But the destruction, if there's not repentance, there's an eternal destruction that's coming and God does not look lightly at it.

Right. Now of course, in this context we're talking about believers. If believers are involved, if believers are incorrectly having partisan spirits, holding up certain men as being one's better than the other or whatever they feel, they're saved, but their effectiveness in their ministry is going to be impacted. It would have been better if it said you all again. I kind of look through different But people said, and I didn't come away with anybody really nailing that down. Most people referred to the fact of Paul's conversion and the fact that, just like most commentators would say, they referred to Paul's conversion.

He was bringing the church down. Of course, he wasn't a believer at that time. And then he was converted. So they use that as a parallel verse. I said, well, it's not exactly the same thing, because this is talking about believers. And Paul wasn't a believer at that time. OK, so let's go on. So that's kind of the first, we kind of got packages of verses. The first two verses kind of address this issue.

Now we're going to go on to the issue of deception, or deceiving yourself. Let no man deceive himself. Let's just look at that first part. Deceive is the idea to deceive completely, beguile, seduce, and to lead out of the right way into error. I have a couple of verses that talk about that. In Romans 7, verse 11, For sin taking up an opportunity through the commandment deceived me, and through it killed me. Right. Kind of a short verse. So remember, in Romans there, when you see sin, and there's usually a definite article there, most likely. So that's probably the sin nature. So Paul's saying that the sin nature deceived me and killed me. He's talking about his struggle with his sin nature there. And then in the Corinthians passage, 2 Corinthians, St. Quentin's 11.3, did someone read that?

But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his civility, so your mind should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. Right, so it's translated in your version, beguiled is a word, deceived. Okay, so actually what the verse is saying here, I try to use the tense of the verbs here and stuff.

So, Weiss kind of renders it, let no one continue to be deceiving you. But I thought, because the imperative there, you can make it even stronger than that. So he's actually saying, stop continuing to deceive oneself. Don't do that. Don't deceive yourself. So I think that's the thrust. It's present tense, continuous action, and it's imperative is the command. Stop, continue to deceive oneself.

And deception, Macaulay had kind of a working definition he used, which I kind of like. Deception is the creation of a belief that is contrary to fact. And if you think, in today's world, people will create these things, ideas. I was trying to think of an example to use here. And I like what Macaulay said before I think of an example.

All men are deceived to the extent that their mind is devoid of the word of God. Without the word of God, you can go down all kinds of different rabbit trails. It's just incredible. We have so much information out there. And it's so easy to get, you know, if you go out and just off search the internet and find out what's true.

Good luck on that. I mean, you're going to get, you know, I would say that evolution is a fantastic example. Good. Okay. Where you have a, a rejection of God is your starting point, right? And since you have rejected God, what do you fill that void with? Well, you fill it with this theoretical hypothesis that extrapolates from the impossible to the improbable. And it's okay, because since we've already decided God isn't there, then it must be true.

Right. And we have millions of years, and millions of years takes care of everything. take a messy room and make it straight. Or it can write books. Just give it enough time and we can write literature or whatever. But a simple bottom line to evolution is one of two things. Either isotopic dating and the estimation of the length of earth and creatures is faulty, number one.

The scientists would claim no. But secondly, God created the universe with aging built into it. take a reductionist view of this argument. Not that we need to go tangential here, but I think your point about evolution is the place to start in terms of God being denied. Of course we have fellow believers who believe in evolution, who also believe That's not universal, you're right. That's not universal agreement, I would agree on that. But still we're challenged with the fact that if we take literally what Genesis says, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, pretty straightforward that God is the creator and that he did it in his timing.

Now you might argue like, well what's the timing? Do we really understand the timing? It's a day, really a day. And we go through that and I tend to fall to the side that it seems like a day is a day, He'd go through and trace it out. Anyway, our goal as believers is to understand what God's Word says. That's our goal, so we get to know Him.

We start there, but like Randy says, if you don't start there, all bets are off. You can have black as white and white as black pretty easily. You can go down the slippery slope. So this is one, let no man deceive himself. Then he's going to expand upon that. If any man among you thinks that he is wise in this age, he must become foolish so that he may become wise. Like an oxymoron here. The last part. So he must become foolish so that he may become wise. And it kind of goes back to the first part.

Man looks at what God has said and he says, that's foolishness. You know, someone dying on a cross, what does it have to do with anything about me? I'm so smart and the center of the universe is me. And so man outside of God and outside of Christ is all self-focused. And God says, that's foolishness. Man calls what God has said foolish. And God turns right back around and says, no, you're really the foolish one.

So actually, this is a case where it's assumed to be true. And if, first class, as is the case, any man among you thinks that he is wise in this age." So, Paul, he's really hammering this. He thinks, he's coming back and says, if you think, you know, by your actions, and we go back to that partying spirit, if you think you're wise, you know, you've got a problem. In this age, so basically, notice, among you, if you look carefully, Assume to be true, if any man among you, among the Corinthians, any man among you, so you have your body of believers here, and we're assuming for this case they're all believers, thinks he is wise in this age or the world system of that time, he's got a problem. So let's look at a couple of verses here.

Could someone read 1 Corinthians 8.2?

If anyone supposes that he knows anything, he has not yet known as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by him. Right. OK. So notice the differences. Knowing God is where it should be. So. So that's the focus is knowing God. OK. The other one is Galatians 6 3. Or if anyone thinks he is something, but he is nothing, he deceives himself. Right. So that's pretty straightforward. I know.

Well, then there's a verse that we're not to think. We're not to think more. How does it go? Hire ourselves to think, have sound judgment. So God wants us. Basically, don't focus on yourself. Don't think that your intellect is what's going to carry you through. It's knowing God and knowing Him. That's the focus of our life.

In the second part of the verse, he must become foolish. And it seems like he's foolish. He's certainly not foolish in God's eyes. He's foolish by the world's standard. The world will label him foolish. So I think with a little paren there, he's foolish in man's eyes. That's the deal there, by the world's standard. So that when the world says we're foolish, that we may become wise. Just the reverse of that. I think this is a little bit totally off the wall here. I think that's why it's probably almost impossible.

We're in the political season now and we have people saying, I believe this, I believe that, I'm a believer. Everybody says they're a believer, not everybody. Almost everybody says they're a believer, at least on one side. So you scratch your head and people are testifying, well this brother, he did this and that.

So anyway, I personally, it seems like, I don't know how a person, I don't know, it doesn't sound like it can work out. Sorry to say that you can have a believer that maybe, maybe you can. I, you know, it'd be wonderful if we could, but I don't know. It seems pretty amazing that, uh, cause just, just because of that, this, you know, by the world standard, he's going to be foolish. He's going to be put down and they're going to think he's foolish. chapter three, for we ourselves also were sometimes foolish.

So the concept of the world system and disobedient, diverse lusts and everything, a list of everything else is part of the flesh in the world system. We were also there. And I think when you interact in a world system on a day-to-day basis, you really put things into perspective. And then McCullough had a little paragraph I like.

He says, this world does not embrace God's wisdom and views. Those are fools who do. The believer must be willing to bear the onus if he is to be freed by the truth. So we're going to be branded, and Bob's been subjected to that, and others. I think we all have at some level.

Well, you believe in that? How could you believe in that? No scientist could believe in that. You're an engineer and you believe that? I kind of scornfully look at you. You're a man of science. It's sad. It really is sad. Science reveals the wonders of God. If anything, it should be the reverse of that. Scientists should be the greatest number of believers out there. If you think about it.

We had to go to the eye doctor. Couple of days. Well, actually, yesterday, when I had a little problem with her eyes. And the doctor was describing that the eye and it's just his description was just, you know, vitreous humor and all these things attaching. You have like an attached retina. That's what we're concerned about. It turned out it's probably not. But so anyway, but he's describing the eye and I'm thinking myself. Doesn't he? I don't think he's a believer. He just described it and to me it was just amazing.

Now there's this glue in the back of your eye and I'm thinking, glue? That's God's glue. That's really pretty cool stuff. And it lasts your whole lifetime. I guess that's what can happen if you get a separation. A vitreous separation. Exactly. So here's the verse about self-deception.

Now we're going to change a little bit. We're going to start in the section about wisdom again. It's going to be kind of a rehash, if you will, of where we've been before, but a good one. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness before God. So actually, before, it's kind of cool if you kind of render that literally. For the wisdom of this world system is foolishness as God looks at it. And I kind of go back to chapter one again. In chapter one, in verse 20, I'll just read it this time. 1 Corinthians chapter one, verse 20.

Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? So the question is, what is this foolishness? And it's really denying the existence of God. It's nothing more than that. Because the facts of this world system are still the facts of this world system, right? Right. It's just to whom gets the credit, right? Man wants to get the credit. Man wants to say that my intellect, I'm the center of everything. And what man has accumulated, that's That stands above anything that this God that's out there might have.

We've figured it all out. We can fix all the problems. We don't need anything like God because we're so smart. We can do it. But what you see is just the opposite. We're all a mess. We're left to man's ingenuity. You got something, Randy? Actually, I didn't. You just had that kind of look, I wasn't sure. My brain is thinking still, but I don't know. Well, I'm glad it's thinking. And what's interesting, in the last part of this verse, God is not passive about false wisdom. He is the one who catches the wise in their craftiness. And I actually had a verse which I didn't have on here. Actually, it's just the verse before. back in 1 Corinthians chapter 1. Could someone read verse 19? 1 Corinthians chapter 1 verse 19. And it sounds very much like this verse.

I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Right. Or actually, in my head, it's clever. So that's what we said. God looks at man and says, you're so clever? Right. Okay. And then actually, this is actually a quotation from Job, and in Job it reads, he captures the wise by their own shrewdness, and the advice of the cunning is quickly thwarted. So that's actually, you know, not an exact quote, but it's close.

Okay, so let's go on to the next to verse 20 now. So, and again, the Lord knows the reasoning of the wise, that they are useless. And what's kind of cool here, he knows, and this is kind of a neat thing, that word gnosko is the idea of, in this case, I think it's complete understanding of situations. Let's look at a verse, and this really helped me to kind of see the context here. Let's look at Luke 16, and I'll read this one, Luke 16. So God knows completely what's going on. He understands what's happening.

Luke 16 and verses 14 and 15. And it says, Now the Pharisees, who were lovers of money, were listening to all these things, and they were scoffing at him. And he said to them, You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of men. But God knows, that's where we're going to go, your hearts. for that which is highly esteemed among you is detestable in the sight of God."

So God knows, he understands, he understands the whys. He completely understands it. And he knows that their reasoning, and that's human reasoning, is useless. Reasoning here is the idea of thought, And I have some verses for that, which I think we'll just skip over for right now. The reasons why we're useless are void of results. So I have a verse for that.

Could someone read 1 Peter 1.18? Knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your feudal way of life, The word futile there is this word for useless. So it's translated futile there.

And then once again, this is a quotation from Psalm 94.11.

The Lord knows the thoughts of a man and that they are mere breath. So something that their thoughts, like, oops, they're gone. A thought of a man is not gonna last. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my word will not pass away. So his thoughts are gonna last. Our thoughts, if they're God's thoughts, are gonna be hanging around, but otherwise they're a mere breath. Okay, so now we're gonna come down to the, on the next section. This is the section that is going to have this wonderful list. It starts off in an interesting way.

So then, let no one boast in men. So then, in conclusion, let no one boast in men. Once again, if you bring across the present imperative, stop continuing to boast. So you can see once again, Paul is driving it, don't Don't be pushing your man. Push the Lord Jesus Christ. Focus on Him. Boast in Him. So let's just read one of those. Let's read the Galatians passage. Galatians 6, 13 and 14.

For neither they themselves who are circumcised keep the law, but desire to have you circumcised, that they may glory in your flesh. But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world. Now my translation, they have it boast, but glory is the same idea.

OK, for all things belong to you. So this is a start in the B part of this verse. He's going to start, for all things belong to you. So this word are is this word amy. It's a verb of status quo. And what that means is it's the state in which something continuously exists. So he's going to say here, For all things are yours continuously. This is what you have. This is your possession. You continuously have these things I'm going to list here.

And he calls them the all things. So what does Scripture say about the all things of the saved? And one of the verses that I kind of came across was this one in Romans. Romans 8.32. He who did not spare his own son, but delivered him over for all of us, how will he not also really give us all things. And if you think in Ephesians, we have every spiritual blessing. So God has given us this list of wonderful blessings that we have and that's a permanent possession of ours.

It's really a positional view of how our citizenship is portrayed in our day-to-day existence here. You know, again, the facts of this world system, the wisdom of the world is to give credit to one other than the Lord for these things. And so we still exist within the same database, this global database we have, whether it be science or medicine or whatever else, engineering, astronomy, whatever. These facts are real, but where does the credit go? Right, exactly. And that's the wisdom of the world.

So what he's going to do here is he's going to tell us about these all things. And these are a couple of verses that maybe give the big picture. He also freely gives us all things and that we have every spiritual blessing. But then he's going to enumerate. He's going to enumerate these one by one. And each one, you know, I didn't go through. I mean, we could probably spend a lot of time going through each one. I didn't do that. I just listed them. But a couple of things I wanted to say about them.

But don't you think, too, that some of these churches They're like, how big is your bank account? The Lord's going to give you this health and wealth kind of ministry. And that's not what he's talking about here. But that's what so many people think. That's true.

So we're going to see our spiritual possessions or our spiritual bank account following here. So actually what I just did, I took the B part of the verse and put it there. For all things are are permanently yours. I kind of added some comments in here.

Whether Paul's teaching, or Apollos' teaching, which we don't have recorded, or Cephas' teaching, or the existing order of the material world, or material things, which in our version calls it world, or life, or death. It's interesting. It's good that we have life and death. But that's good because death to us is not the end of things. Death is the beginning of things. So the fact that we are going to die is a thing to be thankful for. Just like with Paul Giles. His family is elated that he's gone to be with the Lord. So that's a wonderful blessing that we have.

Think about it here. Do you want to stay in this and see another election? I mean, I'm sorry. I mean, I can already, we haven't even got the election yet and I can already stand it now. I know. Wouldn't it be nice to just be gone and say, I don't have to worry about that crazy election, right?

Or all the other things that are going on in the world. Present things or things to come. All things belong to you. And then the last two parts are really cool. And you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to you. And I just couldn't leave that alone.

There's a couple of verses, and I'll read them to you here that I thought were cool, that kind of enumerate that a little bit more. First Corinthians 15, if you turn to that, kind of talks about the fact that You belong to Christ. And we know that from just a multitude of verses, but it never hurts to add another one to the list of verses that tell us about the fact that we belong to Christ. So 1 Corinthians 15 and verse 23. I'll read that. 1 Corinthians 15 verse 23. We're going to get to this eventually, down the road here.

But each in its order. Christ the firstfruits, after those, those who are Christ at his coming. And that's us. Those who are Christ at his coming. And then the other one is Christ belongs to God. And that one's just a little farther down. There's actually one in 1528. And when all things are subjected to him, and the Son himself also will be subjected to the one, who subjected all things to himself, that God may be all in all. It may be a little bit hard to see in there, but the Son will be subjected to the One, the Father, who subjects all things to himself. And then there's actually another one, if you just turn back to 1 Corinthians 11. Let's go back a couple of chapters. 1 Corinthians 11, and then verse 3. 1 Corinthians 11, 3.

But I want you to understand And this kind of gives the order of things. I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and man is the head of woman, and God is the head of Christ. So God has an order. You belong to Christ, Christ belongs to God. God has an order in things. He has an order in the family, an order in marriage, and we're not to be upset about that. We're to say, Lord, if Christ subjected himself to the Father, why are we complaining about where we fall in the order.

We accept that that was his design, his plan. And that's freeing. He wants that to be freeing. So this is another list of our spiritual... Actually, I had a little... I couldn't leave it alone. But we should all glory in our spiritual possessions. All things are ours in Christ. And here is where our delight should be. Pretty neat stuff. So interesting.

None of a, almost like a little, you know, a little bit of this, a little bit of that to kind of finish up this chapter. So actually I looked at the schedule. So I get to, I get three weeks to play while I watch Bob and Randy work. No, they're going to cover chapter four. The next three weeks we'll cover chapter four. And then after chapter four, we kind of shift gears and, We're going to go into some of the heavy problems they had. Worse than these. This is bad. Morality issues. So let's close.

We thank you so much, Father. We thank you for this day, Lord. Thank you for the wonderful possessions we have in our Savior, Lord. The wonderful enumeration that you've shown us here in this last verse, Father. Thank you for that. Thank you for this class. In Christ's name, Amen.