New Age Wisdom

Sermon Summary:

This powerful message invites us to consider what it truly means to live as citizens of two kingdoms—the present age and the age to come. Drawing from 1 Corinthians 2:6-16, we’re challenged to understand that human wisdom alone will never be enough to navigate the Christian life. The sermon explores the fascinating theological landscape of first-century Israel, where Jewish eschatology and Greek philosophy collided, creating a rich context for understanding what Paul meant when he spoke of God’s hidden wisdom. We’re reminded that the waves of God’s new kingdom have crashed onto the shore of human history through Christ’s resurrection, yet the undertow of this present evil age constantly tries to pull us back. The central revelation is this: we cannot rely on what our eyes see, our ears hear, or our minds conceive. Instead, we need the Spirit of God to reveal the deep things of God to us. This isn’t about outward behavior modification—it’s about inner character transformation that flows from having the mind of Christ. When we truly grasp that we’ve been rescued from this present evil age and equipped to live in the reality of the age to come, everything changes. Our character is formed not by sheer willpower or philosophical principles, but by the wisdom of God working within us through His Spirit and His Word.

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Sermon Points:

INAUGURATED ESCHATOLOGY: We live in the intersection of This Present Evil Age and The Age to Come.

WISDOM OF THIS AGE: The wisdom of this age is earth-bound, limited in its horizon, and leads to a rejection of God’s revelation of Himself in Jesus Christ.

NEW AGE WISDOM: We need the wisdom of God to enable us to live fully into this new age as redeemed, restored spiritual people. God’s Spirit reveals His wisdom to us through the Word of God!

CHARACTER AND VIRTUE: As God reveals His wisdom to us, our lives are shaped, our character is formed, and we are enabled to live virtuous lives.

Key Takeaways:

• Christians live at the intersection of two ages: the present evil age and the age to come, which was inaugurated by Jesus Christ
• Human wisdom is insufficient for understanding God’s purposes and living the Christian life; we need divine wisdom revealed by the Holy Spirit
• True character formation must happen from the inside out, not merely through external behavior modification
• The “undertow” of the present age constantly pulls believers back toward worldly patterns, requiring intentional resistance
• God’s wisdom is revealed through three sources: Jesus Christ (the incarnate Word), Scripture (the written Word), and the Holy Spirit’s illumination
• The goal of Christian maturity is to be “complete” or “whole” (telios), reflecting God’s character
• Virtue and righteous behavior flow from inner character transformation, not vice versa
• First-century Israel was influenced by both Jewish eschatological theology and Greek philosophical pursuit of happiness through virtue
• Jesus condemned religious hypocrisy that focused on external compliance while neglecting internal transformation
• Believers have been given “the mind of Christ” through the Holy Spirit, enabling them to live according to God’s wisdom

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Scripture References:

• 1 Corinthians 2:6-16 (primary passage)
• Matthew 5:48
• Galatians 1:3-5
• Philippians 2 (referenced regarding the mind of Christ)
• Various wisdom literature: Proverbs, Psalms, Ecclesiastes (referenced in context)

Stories:

• Personal anecdote about growing up in Alabama and preferring Florida beaches over Hawaii, used to illustrate the concept of undertow
• Reference to the movie “Life of Brian” scene where revolutionaries list Rome’s contributions (aqueducts, sanitation, roads, etc.) to illustrate the advancement of Roman civilization despite their spiritual blindness
• Illustration of ocean undertow pulling swimmers back out to sea, used as a metaphor for how the present evil age pulls believers away from kingdom living
• Jesus’s teaching about whitewashed tombs (Matthew 23) used to illustrate the danger of external righteousness without internal transformation
• N.T. Wright’s metaphor of waves crashing on the shore (the new kingdom) while the undertow (present evil age) pulls back

Sermon Transcript

Thank you, Michael and worship ministry for leading us today in worship. Well, if you’ve been with us at all this year and 2025, you know that our theme this year is Flourishing Together, rooted in Christ. And we are on this journey learning more about human flourishing in general and also in particular, what it means for us to flourish as Christians.

This is a multi year journey that our church is on and looking forward to our continued exploration of this topic. We have taken each season of the year and isolated a theme that feeds into the overall theme. And so we’re doing that again for the spring. We just finished the Easter season, and our theme for the spring is Walk This Way and the spring of course, for us as a church is a time where there are so many things that unfold in front of us that are celebratory in nature.

We will celebrate our college graduates next Sunday. We will. We will then celebrate Mother’s Day and have some parental dedication where our parents will dedicate themselves and their babies to the Lord. These babies that have been born in this last year. We also will celebrate our high school grads. The next week and then that will lead us into our camp season.

So, as we spend this time together, we’re going to learn more about what it means to walk this way. And I’ve chosen a passage of scripture, this kind of at the heart of that. And it’s Matthew 5:48 where Jesus says, be there. Be perfect. Therefore, as your heavenly father is perfect. And that sounds like what we would say back in Alabama to be a tall order.

Be perfect. I don’t know how many of y’all would use that word to describe yourself if I were to ask you. So one word synopsis of just who you are and where you are in your spiritual life. I’m not sure how many of you would say perfect. Pretty much sums it up. That’s kind of where I am. It’s not a word we usually use to describe ourselves, but that’s the English translation of the Greek word underneath.

The Greek word is helios, which really means mature or whole, actually, or complete. And so Jesus was saying, be, be complete, be. Behold, just like your father is. And so that’s really the goal for us as believers. And that’s what we’re after in this series, walk this way. Now, with that said, we’re going to be addressing one of the domains that’s being researched right now in the global flourishing study.

That’s been led by these scholars from Baylor and Harvard. So with regard to human flourishing, one of the domains they’re currently researching in the global flourishing study is character and virtue. And we’re going to spend these next five weeks exploring character and virtue. What does that really mean? And, at the end of this week, on April 30th, the, the middle of this week, I guess the, global flourishing team is hosting a press conference in Washington, D.C., at the national headquarters of Gallup, and they’re going to be presenting their very first set of research papers that have been produced after a little over a year of this study of some 220,000

people in the world in 22 different countries. And I’m really looking forward to what this research is, is revealing. But one of the domains they’re studying is character and virtue. This inner quality of character, and then the virtuous life that flows from that, Kurt Grice, I asked Kurt when we began the journey to help us think theologically about flourishing.

And so Curt has been writing a series of articles, that I hope you’ve been reading them. If you haven’t, you can find them on our website. If you just go to escort org, you can click on the tab that’s drop down tab that says blogs. And there’s a series of blogs that Kurt has written about flourishing, the one this weeks about character and virtue.

And he, he opens the his article this week with a quote from John Wooden, the, famous basketball coach from UCLA back in the day. And Coach Wooden said this be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are. And the title of Kurt’s article is Who Are You really?

That’s about character. That’s really what character is. It is who we are. And then the virtuous life that we live is connected to our character. It flows out of who we are. So we’re going to spend these next five weeks just learning together about character and virtue. So let’s build a foundation today with this passage from First Corinthians five entitled The Message New Age Wisdom.

First Corinthians two. We’ll begin in verse six. This passage of Scripture is actually the core passage for the entire year. I chose it back in July, a year ago to be underneath everything we do this year, because this particular passage of Scripture sets out some deep truths by the Apostle Paul about us being spiritual people, and we are shaped by our life together in Christ.

And this particular text helps us understand that. So look with me in first Corinthians two. We kind of pick up the conversation midstream and I’ll kind of set that for us here in just a minute. But if you look at verse six of chapter two, the Bible says, we do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age who are coming to nothing.

No, we declare God’s wisdom a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time begin. None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. However, as it is written, what Noah has seen, what no ear is heard, and what no human mind has conceived, the things God has prepared for those who love him.

These are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit. And the spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them. In the same way, no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us.

This is what we speak not in words taught us by human wisdom, but in words taught by the spirit, explaining spiritual realities with spirit words. The person without the spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, but considers them foolishness and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the spirit. The person with the spirit makes judgments about all things, but a person is not subject to merely human judgment.

For who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him. But we have the mind of Christ. This is a very powerful, insightful testimony from the Apostle Paul. And so what I would like to do is use it as a foundation for our conversation about character and virtue. So what I want to do this morning is have a little bit of a heady theological conversation with y’all instead.

Okay? Okay. It’s really what I’m going to do. So when it’s what I’m playing. So so here’s what I want to do. Let me start with the context of what was taking place when Paul wrote this letter. It’s first century Israel. So the context, the theological context of first century Israel was influenced by both Jewish theology and Greek and Roman philosophy.

I don’t think it’s important for us to give consideration to that as we think about what is being taught to us about character and virtue. So let’s talk about first century Israel. First century Israel is an era in time that scholars refer to as Second Temple Judaism. What that means is this is the era in the life of Israel after the construction of the Second Temple, the first temple was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon.

It was rebuilt some 400 years or so before Jesus, and it was then refurbished by King Herod right before the life of Jesus, and it was being refurbished during the first part of the first century, when the New Testament is actually being written for the most part. And in Second Temple Judaism, it was a season of rich theological conversation.

That’s one of the reasons it’s so interesting to theologians today. It was just a very complex time in their history. You had this milieu of interpretation of ideas and the interpretation of reality itself, actually. So for the most part, when you studied Jewish theology, particularly what was taught in the first century, underneath all Jewish theology in the Second Temple era are overarching overall, depending on the image you want to use is an S scatological message.

Eschatology refers to the end of time, and basically there is a narrative that’s woven throughout Jewish theology, and that is that God created everything that is. And he now has a hand in this story of redemption, and he is moving this broken world toward a certain day of restoration. Typically, the Jews referred to that as shalom. There is a day coming that would just simply be known as shalom.

It’s associated with the messianic, messianic era that the Messiah is the one who will bring this, if you will. And so their entire understanding of ethics, a virtue, if you will, all of it is connected to that particular eschatological perspective. And that biblical narrative. And so when you look at the wisdom literature of the Second Temple era, they looked at the Book of Proverbs, the Psalms, Ecclesiastes, this wisdom material that gave practical advice to the Jews, here’s how to live, here’s how young men are supposed to act, here’s how young women are supposed to act.

Here’s how you’re supposed to manage your business. All of those things are written in from a perspective of you are being prepared for shalom. And so that the the content content, the center of Jewish ethic was rooted in the character of God. In other words, you should be reflecting who God is, because one day in shalom, God’s character will be on full display.

So there’s this eschatological journey, if you will. What’s fascinating, though, is you had so many variations of it during this era. It’s what makes it so interesting to theologians and historians, because you had people like the Pharisees who had one interpretation of reality. You had the Sadducees, primarily the priests. They had a little different take on reality. You had the zealots who were more militaristic in their understanding of eschatology.

They felt like they had a hand in bringing it about. You had the scenes who remove themselves from the culture because they basically said, God’s going to accomplish all this without any help from us, and we’ll just stand by and watch it all unfold. You had the Herodians to be honest with the Herodians are mentioned in ancient history.

We don’t really know what they were or what they believed. They must have been tied somehow to Herod’s family. You had these scribes and rabbis, and they were debating theology and in everyday life. That’s why Jesus, when he’s in his earthly ministry, he has so many theological conversations with so many people because there were so many competing views about how this eschatology was going to be woven into history.

And so Jesus steps into that moment. And you also had, however, in the first century of Israel, you had the influence of Greek and Roman philosophy, which was more prevalent than we probably have given credence to in the past. And if you study Greek philosophy, which many of you have, the core question to every Greek philosopher was the same no matter which one you read.

Greek philosophy is about one question how do you achieve ultimate happiness? That’s what Greek philosophy is all about. How do you become happy? How do you experience the happiness? That’s the human ideal, to be happy. And what does that mean? Aristotle was probably the one who gave it the most thought, in my opinion, of the way he wrote.

And Aristotle basically said this here’s how you find ultimate happiness. Live a virtuous life, do what’s good for you, and what’s also good for the society he refer to that is eudaimonia. It’s a Greek word that means to flourish means to be happy. And he said, you can experience that if you will. Just live virtuously. Now. He outlined what he believed the virtues were.

He never really talked about any kind of inner transformation. It was just all about what you did. And so there was really no connection to something that happened on the inside of a person. It was all outward manifestation, and it could be accomplished through the sheer force of human will. So when he talked about virtues, about character, he talked about the outward manifestation of it.

When the Jews talked about virtue, they talked about God’s character. Okay, are y’all still with me? Okay, so with all that said, Paul, Jesus, these New Testament writers, they step into that very moment. And so if we’re going to have a conversation about it to understand better for us today, what about character and virtue, then we at least need to embrace a core truth that I believe is taught throughout the New Testament.

It’s what many of us refer to as inaugurated eschatology, which means we live at the intersection of this present evil age and the age to come, the present evil age and the age to come. It’s our conviction that Jesus established the age to come, and it now has intersected this present evil age. And they overlap. And as Christians, we live in both of them.

We are citizens of two kingdoms, if you will. We’re born on this earth. As human beings. We live in a present evil age, but we’re born again into the kingdom of God. And they connect. Let me just let me share with you how Paul puts it in Galatians. Galatians one verse three. Here’s what Paul the apostle said grace and peace to you from God our father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be glory forever and ever.

Amen. So do you hear what Paul said? Jesus came to rescue us from this present evil age. He didn’t say to eradicate the present evil age that’s going to take place in the future. We’re still living with the reality of it, but we’ve been redeemed from it. And so now there’s this intersection. Because Jesus has established the kingdom of God on this earth.

In fact, Jesus said, here’s how I want you to pray. You ask God for his will to be done on earth, just as it is in heaven. In other words, this kingdom of heaven has now been launched on earth, and we live in the intersection between the earthly kingdom and the heavenly one, between the this present evil age and the age to come.

Here’s why it’s important for us as Christians regarding how we behave and what happens to us on the inside. God has designed you and me uniquely to live in this age, but he’s ultimately designed us to live in the age to come forever. And so as Christians, we’re already supposed to acknowledge the reality of the age to come, and it should already be on display through us even in this present evil age.

So let me let me put it down in a little, maybe a little better way. In fact, I’ll get into. Right. Do it into some of my favorite New Testament theologians. Here’s what he says about this inaugurated eschatology. Let’s look at this quote from his book. After you believe what is the aim or the final goal of the whole Christian life?

Though many Christians in the Western world have imagined that the aim or goal of being a Christian is simply to go to heaven when you die, the New Testament holds out something much richer and more interesting. Yes, those who belong to Jesus in this life go to be with him once they die. That’s a promise made in various places in the New Testament.

But that’s only the start of it. God has promised to give the entire world the whole created order, a complete makeover. We will be given new bodies in which to live with delight and power in God’s new world. The transformation we are promised at the end of time has already begun. In Jesus. When God raised him from the dead, he lost his entire project of new creation and called people of all sorts to be part of that project.

Already here and now. I completely agree with that theological perspective. Are we created for eternity? Yes. Is there life after death? Yes. But as N.T. Wright likes to, says likes to say there’s life after life after death. Because one day there’s going to be a new heaven and a new earth. They’re going to be collapsed into one reality.

And we’re uniquely designed, equipped, outfitted, created for, designed for by God to live in that reality. And it’s already started. We don’t have to wait until we die. Once we’re redeemed, we now begin to live in the reality of the age to come. It already has bearing. There are already glimpses of it in our lives. Jesus gave us glimpses of it in his life when he established the kingdom of God on this earth.

So let me read you another quote from N.T. right in this same book that puts it, I think, very clearly, force when he talks about the age to come. He says, In Jesus Christ, the long awaited age to come has already begun. And that is where Christians must consciously choose to live. Yes, the present age continues on its weary way as well, so that the two overlap like waves on the ocean shore.

God’s new age has come thundering in through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. But the present age acts as a powerful undertow, preventing the incoming waves from having their full force. The undertow of the continuing present age does its best to persuade those who, through faith in baptism, are already a part of the age to come that, in fact, nothing much has changed and that they should simply continue as they were living the same life that everyone else is living.

The way the world is is a powerful, insidious force, and it takes all the energy of new creation, not least of faith and hope, to remind oneself that the age to come really is already here, with all its new possibilities and prospects. That’s probably one of the best explanations I’ve ever read about what I believe about in all great eschatology.

You know, I grew up in Alabama, and when I think of vacation, if you look up the word vacation in the dictionary, it has a picture of the beach. To me, that’s vacation. You go to the beach and you don’t go to any beach. You just go to Florida. That’s what we do, okay? The panhandle of Florida, the beaches are white.

Water is beautiful. My, my, my brothers live in Hawaii. I’ve been to white several times to visit him. And he would say, man, can you believe I’m living in this Paradise? I’d always say, what’s okay, Lake Florida I mean, it’s okay, you know? I mean, I happen to like Florida hits. I you’re the only person on earth that would say that.

No, I’m not. I said a bunch of people. I said, you ever been to Florida? You ever been to Florida? You would go, look at this point in Florida. Well, but here’s what I know. Have y’all ever felt undertow?

Have you? Well, you go out and you’re swimming in the ocean. All of a sudden this force begins to pull you out. In fact, you have to learn. You can’t fight it. If you do, you lose. You just swim down the beach and get out of it in t, right. Says the waves of the New Kingdom have crashed on the shore, and the undertow of the present evil age is on to pull you right back out of it.

What a great image. That’s what happens to us. We just get pulled down because it feels natural to us. We just we just know what this world is like. And yet when we’ve been redeemed, we now have got to swim against that. We’ve got to fight against that because something new has been birth. It’s the kingdom of God and it’s within you.

And now you and I have got to learn how to live a different way. But here’s the problem we need help because we can’t do it on our own. It’s just too hard. The Christian life is just too hard. You just can’t do it on your own. If you could, you would. But you are just not equipped naturally for it.

You’re equipped naturally for this present evil age and you fit in it. Look at the world. But guess what? We need help. So here’s what I want to do next. Couple of minutes real quickly. Here’s the good news God has brought help to us. Okay, y’all stay with me. All right? Let’s talk about it. Here’s what Paul says about it.

We need wisdom if we’re going to do this. Okay. So in this text, Paul contrasts the two different kinds of wisdom. First of all, there’s the wisdom of this age. The wisdom of this age is earthbound. It’s limited in its horizon, and it leads to rejection of God’s revelation of himself in Jesus Christ. Okay, so if you have your Bibles open, look with me at first Corinthians two.

Here’s what Paul says about the wisdom of this age. Human wisdom, verse one of chapter two, he says, when I came to you, I didn’t come with the eloquence of human wisdom. Verse six of chapter two, he says, we’re not speaking a message of wisdom. We do speak a message of wisdom rather among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age, he says, verse 12, he refers to the spirit of this world.

Verse 13, he mentions human wisdom, human wisdom, by definition, is limited to a human perspective. It is the human understanding of reality. It’s always limited, and it can lead to incredibly false conclusions because it’s earthbound, it’s incomplete. As a matter of fact, look at verse eight of chapter two. None of the rulers of this age Paul’s talking about when he lived understood God’s wisdom.

They completely relied on human wisdom. So what Paul is saying, the rulers of his day. Now think about when Paul lived. Paul lived in the Roman Empire, one of the most advanced empires and cultures that ever existed. And Paul’s referring to them, the rulers of this particular age, this, this Greco-Roman world. I don’t know if y’all ever saw, I’m not recommending this, the movie Life of Brian, but in that movie, you got this revolutionary rage, and he’s got this meeting with all these fellow revolutionaries, and they’re going to rebel against Rome.

And he says, What’s Rome ever done for us? All they do is take, take, take. And he’s got this group of guys in front of me. He said, after all, what has Rome ever done for us? And one of the guys says, well, aqueducts. Another one says, well, sanitation. Another one said, well, roads, irrigation, education, one public health, public order.

Medicine, peace. And finally Rich says, well, besides all that, what is Rome ever done for us? That’s Paul’s era. All of that, Paul says, rooted in human wisdom. And he says, guess what? None of them understood it. Look at it. Verse eight. If they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

Because human wisdom did not add up to what God was doing. And so as brilliant as many of those folks were, they missed out on the most significant moment in all of history.

And so it’s a powerful word to me that we can’t rely just on human wisdom. So what do we need? We need what I would call new Age wisdom. We need the wisdom of God to enable us to live fully in this new age as redeemed, restored spiritual people. God’s spirit reveals his wisdom to us through the Word of God.

We need help, y’all. We need to be transformed. That inner character needs to change and it’ll be reflected in virtuous living. But if you don’t touch this inner character and start transforming us on the inside, you’re never going to truly change a person. You’re not going to be the person you need to be. Now, I want y’all to hear me carefully, because I know some people freak out when they hear me using the phrase New Age.

So I want you to know I’m not talking about the new age invented by the 20th century. This Western world, not this eclectic assortment of mystical religious practices, this hodgepodge of eastern mysticism that’s a false religion at its finest. And it is the elevation of human reasoning. It’s a complete misunderstanding. A spiritual life is rooted in faulty aspirations.

I’m talking about the real new age that is the age to come. We need that kind of wisdom because Jesus inaugurated that age, and one day he’s going to consummate it on his return. Hallelujah. Now, here’s the problem with that, though. You just can’t get it on your own. So stay with me for a couple more minutes and we’ll be done.

Let me show you what I mean. Look at verse nine. Paul says, if you want this kind of wisdom, you cannot rely on yourself, because I want you to notice what he says. You’re not going to get it through empirical sources. Your eyes are never going to see it. You’re not going to get it from traditional knowledge passed down through community.

Your ear is never going to hear it. You’re not going to get it through intuitive insight. Your mind’s never going to conceive it. This is something vastly different than anything. You as a human being are going to come up with on your own, Paul says. This is this is not just human opinion. That’s not enough. Paul says, what we need is real wisdom.

Look at chapter two. Look at verse two. Paul says, I resolve to know nothing when I was with you. Accept Jesus Christ and Him crucified. He says in verse four, my message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith will not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.

He says. Look back at chapter one, look at verse, verse 21. Since then, the wisdom of God, the world, through its wisdom, didn’t know him. In other words, your wisdom is never going to allow you to find him. God was pleased with the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand signs. Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified.

A stumbling block to Jews. The word there in Greek is scandal. Scandal on foolishness to Gentiles. That word is moronic and we get our word moron from it. But to those whom God has called both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of God for the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom. In other words, we’ve got to have an outside influence if we’re going to really understand the things of God.

Human wisdom is not enough. We need God’s wisdom, and God’s wisdom is given to us through his revelation of himself in His Son, the divine Word of God, who the Spirit of God reveals to us, and through the Word of God that has been proclaimed through the apostolic witness that we have in our New Testament and Old Testament through the Scripture.

In other words, when we’re redeemed, this passage is teaching us the Spirit of God takes up residence in us and imparts to us the wisdom of God that we receive through the Word of God, the incarnate Word of God. And then the spirit breathed Word of God. And the Spirit of God doesn’t just search human nature. The Spirit of God searches the very nature of God, the very character of God.

He reveals the deep things of God, which is what you and I need if we’re going to live this Christian life. And so the Spirit’s at work in us, connecting us to his truth through the revealed Word of God, and that’s our only hope, the only way you and I are going to truly understand what God is doing is if God’s wisdom is imparted to us, and the only way to receive God’s wisdom is to be redeemed through Christ, the crucified Christ.

Receive him in your life as your Lord, receive the gift of His Holy Spirit, and commit yourself in humility and total surrender to follow him the rest of your life. He will give you the wisdom that you need. You don’t rely on your own wisdom. That is what’s underneath. I believe the New Testament is teaching about character and virtue.

So let me just sum it up real quickly as God reveals his wisdom to us. Our lives are then shaped, our character is formed, and we’re enabled to live virtuous lives. And that’s what God is after. Because that life is a glimpse of the age to come. One day already being transformed, already living into the new reality that will be ours forever.

You and I are equipped already to begin that journey. In fact, Paul says, we have the mind of Christ. What does that mean? Well, that means that God is making available to us this gift through His Spirit to understand how we’re supposed to live. Paul will say in Philippians two, let this mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.

And what is that? It’s a lifetime of obedience and surrender. That’s what Philippians two is about. And so that means you and I are equipped to be humble and surrender to the Lord so that we can live this life. He’s called us to live. You know, when Jesus was on this earth, he had a strong word for hypocrites.

I remember that he would tell the Pharisees, woe to you, you hypocrites! He meant something different than what we mean. We use the word hypocrite to mean this. People say they believe something, but we’re watching how they live and how they live doesn’t add up to how they talk. That’s not what Jesus condemned. Jesus condemned this. He looked at the Pharisees and he said, you do all the right things, but you’re dead on the inside.

You have no character formation. Nothing has changed you. Jesus said, you know what you remind me of? He said, I’m on the road walking by these tombs where people are buried, and you and you clean the outside of the tomb and it looks really good. It’s whitewashed on the outside. It’s dead on the inside, he said. So you tithe, you offer up all your sacrifices.

You do all the stuff that you think is, well, I want you to do, and you’re dead on the inside. He said, you hypocrites! You’re imprisoning people, forcing behavior out of them without any kind of inner character transformation. The whole gospel is about the whole person. So y’all, we we need to be transformed on the inside by the power of God at work within us.

And then the virtuous life will follow it. And when that starts to happen, then people begin to see something real and authentic and they’re drawn to it. And if there’s ever been a day and this society where we need some wisdom from God, live down in the lives of real human beings, my goodness, is this not the day for it?

I’ve never seen so much foolishness in all my adult life. And I’ll say that respectfully we need some wisdom. We need God’s people to be wise and for that virtuous life to be connected to an inner transformation. Because in my walk with Jesus, that’s what I want to talk about over this next month or so. And I pray it to be so in your life, in man.

Let’s pray together.

Well, Lord, we love you. We thank you for your word. We thank you, Lord, that you’ve made it possible for us to live this life that you’ve called us to, that you haven’t just dangled something in front of us. This is not possible, but it’s real. But yet it’s only real. With your help. So right now, Lord, there may be.

Those are just struggling with it. They’re. They’re living their lives in their own wisdom, the light of their own understanding. Without the benefit of your wisdom. Lord, I pray right now that you’ll bring them to you and open up their hearts and their minds to you and to what you offer God. I just pray that we will live in the reality of what Paul says.

No, I have seen this. No ears heard it. No, no, mine has conjured it up. But it’s your wisdom and it’s rooted in a real story. Christ crucified, raised from the dead, ascended to the father. And one day he’ll gloriously return. And this new kingdom will be such an incredible reality. We will live in it forever. And so, Lord, we pray that will live our lives today underneath that truth.

And I pray that in Jesus name, Amen.