What a joy it is to gather in the name of our Lord. And I want to make sure that every time I have the opportunity to do this, I told the first service, I hope you get tired of me saying this. That's— and then I was like, oh, that's not right. I hope you never get tired of me saying this. Never get tired of me encouraging you in your singing.
Your singing matters to God and it matters to me. It matters to us. It's a gift that the Lord has given for the edification of the body. And to be able to look around as we're singing these great truths about our strong and kind Savior Jesus, about the reason we don't have any reason to fear because of Christ. It is a gift and a joy, so keep doing a great job in that.
So with that encouragement, we're going to continue our series in 1 Corinthians by looking at wisdom. If you don't have a Bible, as you're turning there, if you have a Bible, turn to 1 Corinthians. If you don't have a Bible, I'd invite you to go to the back corner right there where it says community groups, and there are hardback black ones right there. If you don't own a Bible, that is our gift to you. And if I might just give you an encouragement for a moment, there's nothing wrong with reading your Bible on a device.
There's nothing wrong with it. It's still the word of God. But may I encourage you to incorporate the paper word of God in your life. Regularly. In a world full of distraction, in a world full of technology trying to draw your attention into other things, spend time away from the screen and get into this word.
If I can just give you an encouragement from a parent that I was speaking to this week.
This parent, read her Bible on the phone a lot. And it was— there's nothing wrong with that. She's reading the Bible every day and it was great. But she thought, "I'm gonna start reading the Bible, my, like, paper copy of the Bible in the kitchen in the mornings and keep track of it on my phone." And her kids started to notice. And one of the kids said, "Hey, can we read that shepherd's story again?" And she was like, "What shepherd's story?" And she was like, "The one from the book." It was the Bible.
Her kids started to notice. What a great opportunity. Our kids just notice when we read that stuff. How often do we see our kids— do our kids see us like this? Whether we're reading the Bible or not, how much better would it be if our kids could see us like this?
So just an encouragement for you today. And if you don't have a Bible, seriously, take one. It's our gift. It's free, no strings attached.
Let me invite you into the world of John and Ashley in 2012.
We came to El Paso on a 2-year commitment. That was a hard 2-year, like a hard line. 2 years, we can do 2 years in Texas, then we're moving back to Buffalo and Rochester. We're going back to Western New York. It was a non-negotiable.
When we got married in 2011, we were pulling out of my wife Ashley's parents' driveway And through tears she said, "As soon as you graduate from UTEP, our car is packed, we're driving back to New York. As soon as you graduate." I was like, "Okay." I had already fallen in love with the city of El Paso, and I was like, "Well, just give it a month and see what happens." And I'm not lying to you, within 2 weeks she said, "How long can we stay?" It was just a joy. Not only did we fall in love with the city and people of El Paso, we found ourselves growing deeply in our relationship with the Lord. Graduation came and we had a decision to make. Go home to Western New York or stay in El Paso.
I'm gonna wait, make you wait to find out the end of that story.
Maybe you have a big decision coming up. Maybe you have a couple of options in front of you. Maybe you don't have a decision now, but you will soon. My question is this: when big decisions come, who do you listen to?
The wisdom of the world? Or the wisdom of the Lord.
Let's turn in our Bibles to 1 Corinthians chapter 2. We're going to look at verses 6 through 16. My hope is that, like last week we saw that true power comes through the Holy Spirit, through the cross of Christ, today we're going to see that true wisdom only comes through the Holy Spirit by way of the cross.
6 · Full public reading of 1 Corinthians 2:6-16, establishing the biblical text that will govern the entire sermon's argument about the nature of true wisdom
Hear the word of the Lord.
Yet among the mature We do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or the rulers of this age who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But as it is written, what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him, These things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.
For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit. Interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.
The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things but is himself to be judged by no one. For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.
7 · Opening prayer asking for spiritual receptivity and divine assistance in understanding the text
Would you pray with me?
Lord, over the next few minutes, would you open our ears to hear your voice? Open our eyes to see your truth. Rid us of distractions. Convict where necessary. Remind us of your great love and grace often.
In Jesus' name, amen.
8 · Vogan establishes hermeneutical continuity between the ancient Corinthian context and contemporary El Paso, arguing that the same cultural pressures and spiritual problems persist across time
One of the common things that we'll start to see as we study 1 Corinthians is that the Corinthian church has a lot of the same habits that we in our world have today. The world of Corinth is a lot like the world of El Paso today. It's a lot like the world we live in today.
While the church itself is ancient and the story is ancient, the problems they deal with are largely the same as we have in the world today.
9 · Vogan acknowledges the passage's complexity while identifying the Corinthian pursuit of wisdom and knowledge as the central pastoral issue Paul is addressing
Paul goes really hard on wisdom. This is a really dense passage. The first couple times I read it, I got lost and a little distracted, 'cause it's a lot of stuff in here. The Corinthian church is clearly pursuing wisdom and knowledge.
10 · Vogan narrates his own exegetical process, revealing how he wrestled with the biblical distinction between wisdom and knowledge through conversation with his cousin, setting up the illustration to follow
Now, I got on this little rabbit trail. I was thinking about the difference between wisdom and knowledge, and I called my cousin. He lives in New Hampshire, and I said, "Bro, what's the difference between wisdom and knowledge for you?"
11 · The cousin's memorable analogy distinguishes knowledge (factual information) from wisdom (appropriate application of knowledge), providing a accessible entry point into the theological distinction
And he said this: "Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing that a tomato doesn't belong in a fruit salad."
12 · Vogan reflects on how the analogy illuminated Paul's treatment of wisdom versus knowledge, transitioning from the illustration back to the biblical text
It's a funny little sentence, but it got me thinking this week about wisdom and knowledge. It got me thinking particularly how Paul is describing these things.
13 · Vogan establishes the cultural-philosophical continuity between ancient Corinth and contemporary culture, showing how Stoic philosophy dominated both contexts and continues to shape modern self-help and leadership discourse, exemplified by Warren Buffett podcasts
The church in Corinth was drawn to the pursuit of worldly strength and wisdom. Our world is drawn to the pursuit of worldly strength and wisdom. Literally this week I opened up my phone, I listen to a lot of podcasts, I open it up and one of the first podcasts I saw was an interview between a popular podcaster and some other dude about the wisdom of Warren Buffett. Who cares about the wisdom of Warren Buffett? Everybody does because he's wealthy and successful in the eyes of the world.
It makes total sense why that would be there. A few years ago, the theme in a lot of the self-help and lifestyle and leadership spaces was the study of Stoic philosophy or Stoicism. This kind of Roman system of thought, think Marcus Aurelius, This system of thought seeks to deal with the morality and government of the world and life and knowledge in the pursuit of all those things. But look at this, Corinth was a Roman colony and would have likely have been influenced not only by Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, but also by the Stoics and Stoicism. So when Paul is writing to the Corinthians, he's fully aware of Stoic philosophy and thought.
What I'm telling you is that 3 years ago in 2020, I was listening to people explore the same philosophy that the people of Corinth were exploring in the first century. And this is the same philosophical framework that our world is pursuing today in a lot of cases.
14 · Vogan identifies the core error of Corinth—not the pursuit of wisdom itself, but the confusion of worldly wisdom accumulation with spiritual maturity—and establishes Paul's emphatic correction that worldly wisdom is categorically distinct from and subordinate to godly wisdom
They're trying to figure out how does one become wise? That's our question in a lot of our life. How does one become wise? The problem of the Corinthian church isn't that they are pursuing wisdom and knowledge. It's that they think by pursuing and gaining all this worldly wisdom, they're actually becoming more spiritual, that they're actually spiritually mature.
And Paul is saying emphatically, without a doubt, no, you're not. He's saying that this, through this passage, that worldly wisdom is always subordinate to godly wisdom. In fact, they're not even in the same category.
15 · Gordon Fee's commentary captures the ironic paradox of the Corinthian situation—believers who possess the Spirit but act like those without the Spirit by pursuing worldly wisdom instead of recognizing the cross as God's wisdom
Listen to what Gordon Fee says, and we have— you can read along here about where the Corinthian church is. True wisdom is indeed for those who are spiritual, meaning for those who have the Spirit, who has revealed what God has really accomplished in Christ. Because they do have the Spirit and thus the mind of Christ, they should have seen the cross for what it is: God's wisdom. And thereby have been able to make true judgments. But by pursuing Sophia, or worldly wisdom, they are acting just like those without the Spirit, who are likewise pursuing wisdom but see the cross as foolishness. The net result, and the irony, is that they are spiritual yet unspiritual. They are pursuing wisdom yet missing the very wisdom of God.
16 · Vogan signals a structural pivot from the problem to Paul's characterization of his audience, preparing to apply the Corinthian mirror to the contemporary congregation
So before we continue looking at the nature of wisdom as Paul describes it, let's look about what he says about his audience.
17 · David Garland's commentary reveals Paul's rhetorical strategy—he does not explicitly identify who is mature, forcing each reader to self-assess whether their behavior reveals spiritual maturity or worldly wisdom
Listen to what he says about Corinth. The Corinthian church is full of division. It's full of pursuing worldly strength and wisdom. David Garland describes Paul's disposition towards the church this way: He's still remonstrating with them about their divisions, and he's making— he, Paul, is making the case that they disclose a spiritual immaturity that fails to grasp the deep things of God embodied in the cross. Their behavior reveals that they are influenced more by a human wisdom than by God's wisdom. Since Paul does not divulge who among them is mature, the readers must decide for themselves whether they qualify or not.
18 · Vogan issues a direct challenge to the congregation to use 1 Corinthians 2 as a mirror for self-examination, just as Paul expected the Corinthians to do, testing their own spiritual maturity
So I want to offer you a challenge this week. This is the same challenge I offered myself as I was studying the text this week. Let's, like the Corinthian church, use this text as a mirror.
As we look at 1 Corinthians chapter 2, Paul is expecting the Corinthian church to see themselves, to judge themselves in this. So let's do the same thing. Let's use this text this morning as a mirror to wrestle with what the Lord is trying to teach us this morning. Let's see if we are mature, truly, or immature. Like the Corinthians in this area of wisdom.
19 · Vogan identifies Paul's declaration that worldly wisdom is passing away and extracts from the text that true wisdom is exclusive, God-given, secret, hidden, and revealed only through the Holy Spirit—not accessible through any human philosophical system
After Paul comments on the maturity of his audience, he's quick to say that wisdom and the rulers of the world are passing away. Right away, he declares that worldly wisdom is finite and decaying. So what then is the nature of true wisdom? If we look at the text, we see some things. We see that true wisdom is exclusive.
True wisdom is God-given. True wisdom is a secret and hidden wisdom only revealed by God through his Holy Spirit. This wisdom can't be found through Plato or Aristotle or Socrates or Marcus Aurelius or anyone else the rulers of the day may have been influenced by.
20 · Vogan traces Paul's logic that the crucifixion itself proves the rulers' lack of godly wisdom, and that verse 9 establishes the absolute exclusivity of divine revelation—no human capacity can access this wisdom apart from God's self-disclosure
Paul goes so far to say that if the rulers of the day had been influenced by godly wisdom, they wouldn't have crucified our Lord. If we look at verse 9, we see that no one has seen, heard, or imagined any wisdom or understanding apart from what God has revealed to those he loves.
21 · Vogan critiques the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake as ultimately selfish and challenges the popular axiom "knowledge is power," arguing instead that knowledge without wisdom is absurd (tomatoes in fruit salad) and that worldly wisdom apart from the Spirit leads to death
The rulers of the day had a ton of worldly wisdom. They loved to learn for learning's sake. But I would argue that learning for learning's sake, while not necessarily bad, is ultimately a selfish pursuit. Have you heard the phrase knowledge is power? Yes, we've heard the phrase knowledge is power.
I don't think that's true. I think this, it's a misnomer. Knowledge apart from wisdom looks like tomatoes in a fruit salad. A better way to think about this might be that wisdom is knowledge correctly applied. But an even better understanding is that simply seeking worldly wisdom apart from the Holy Spirit ultimately leads to death.
22 · Vogan makes the existential claim that death and eternity are inevitable realities that no amount of worldly wisdom can alter, forcing the listener to confront the futility of worldly wisdom in the face of ultimate realities
I'm going to die one day.
No matter what worldly wisdom I ingest, I have to reckon with eternity. There's nothing I can do in and of myself to make my life shorter or longer than God's plan for my life.
23 · Vogan uses Dante's Inferno, specifically the treatment of virtuous pagans in Canto 4, to illustrate the theological reality that worldly wisdom and moral goodness—even that of Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates—cannot reconcile anyone to God or address eternal consequences
So, let's look at Dante for a second. In college, I read two really— I read a lot of books in college, but two that were really, really influential, and I remember them vividly from my time in college, which is getting longer and longer away. Some of you can maybe relate to that.
One was Augustine's Confessions, super life-changing for me. If you're in college right now, look at me in my face for a second. Read that book. Read Augustine's Confessions. It was one of the most helpful things to help me, like, see how God viewed me, but also how I should view my sin.
Really helpful. Then there's another guy, Dante. Dante Alighieri, he was a— in the 1300s, he was a poet, and he wrote a poem called "The Inferno." In Canto 4, for the literature people among us, he explores the reality of what he calls virtuous pagans, people who had great worldly wisdom, whom Dante looked up to and put himself in the category of intellectually. Dante, in the 1300s, rightly comes to the conclusion that The good works of Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, this long list, and their generally good morality aren't enough to make them right with the Mighty One, who is God.
Now look, Dante's Inferno is not Scripture, but he's wrestling with what is eternity? What are eternal consequences? How do we look at God's word and wrestle with what eternity might look like.
24 · Vogan establishes that Holy Spirit-revealed wisdom is inseparable from the gospel events and utterly independent of human achievement, and that factual knowledge of the gospel without the Spirit's illumination produces unbelief, not faith
The pivotal thing to understand here is that the wisdom revealed by the Holy Spirit is directly tied to the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. It's not about what we do.
It's not about how good we are or how smart we are. There are those in Paul's audience, and indeed today, that know of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus and still don't believe. They know all the facts but still don't believe.
The Spirit has not opened their eyes to the truth of the gospel.
25 · D
Listen to what D.A. Carson says, "If we should express unqualified gratitude to God for the gift of his Son, we should express no less gratitude to God for the gift of the Spirit who enables us to grasp the gift of the Son, grasp the gospel of his Son."
26 · Vogan synthesizes the previous exposition into a summary statement about true wisdom's nature before pivoting to the next major movement of the argument
So, what then is the nature of true wisdom? True wisdom is not of this world. It's secret and hidden apart from God.
It's revealed by God through the Holy Spirit, and it's completely shaped by the cross.
27 · Vogan expounds the dual reality of wisdom—incomprehensible without the Spirit yet freely given—and diagnoses fallen humanity's bent toward self-centered wisdom, establishing that without divine intervention the human trajectory is hopeless futility
This revealed wisdom is incomprehensible apart from God, apart from the Holy Spirit. But this imparted wisdom is also freely given. We'll hear more on this later, but we need to acknowledge the bent of humanity without the Spirit of God. Humanity is running headlong away from God into self-centeredness, into self-centered wisdom. Instead of running to God, our natural disposition as humans is to run to ourselves and the spirit and the wisdom of our age.
It's to see what can we do to make our lives better and easier. Outside of divine intervention, this is our plight and path. This is the plight and path of the world. Outside of intervention by the God of the universe, there's only hopelessness, a futile chasing of ourselves.
28 · Vogan centers the sermon on Romans 5:8, emphasizing Christ's death for sinners as the demonstration of God's love, urging the congregation to dwell in this truth daily, and connecting Christ's death and resurrection to the Spirit's present work enabling believers to grasp the gospel
But God showed his love for us in this. That while we were still sinners, what? Christ died for us. Let's say that again because I don't want to miss it. If you hear nothing else today, hear this: that God showed his love for us in this, that while we were still sinners, live in that truth.
Dig into that truth. Speak that truth every day. What grace, what mercy of our Lord.
But not only did he die for us, he was raised for us. Not only was he raised, his Holy Spirit is with us even now to cause us to grasp the gravity and grace of the gospel.
29 · Vogan contrasts the possessive orientation of worldly wisdom ("mine") with the Christian orientation enabled by the Spirit ("his"), citing Abraham Kuyper to establish Christ's total sovereignty over all creation
This is something the world can't grasp. When the world is chasing wisdom, it's saying it's all about us. Mine, mine, mine.
And what we as Christians who have the Holy Spirit through Christ must shout, it's all about him. His, his, his. Abraham Kuyper once said this, there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry mine.
It's all his.
30 · Vogan draws out implications for gospel proclamation—rejecting flowery, self-affirming presentations as worthless and calling for proclamation that matches the cross's humility, acknowledging salvation as entirely the Spirit's work, not human volition
So this has implications about how we talk as Christians. If the way that we present the gospel is flowery and empty and making people just feel good about who they are apart from Christ, then we present a completely saccharine and worthless gospel. It's not good news.
Paul calls the people to teach and preach the gospel in the way he's modeling in this letter. With humility and language that matches the message of the cross, knowing that it was not of our own volition that we have been saved. It was completely the work of the Holy Spirit.
31 · Gordon Fee's exposition clarifies the epistemological structure of the passage—just as human thoughts are knowable only through self-revelation, God's thoughts are knowable only through the Spirit who, as God, knows God's mind and communicates God's saving plan to believers
Listen to what Gordon Fee says: At the human level, I alone know what I am thinking and no one else, unless I choose to reveal my thoughts in the form of words. So also, only God knows what God is about. God's Spirit, therefore, who, as God, knows the mind of God, becomes the link to our knowing God also. Because, as the next sentence goes on to affirm, what Paul says, we have received the Spirit of God. With this sentence and the next, we come to the heart of things, the central issue in this entire paragraph. The argument began with the assertion that Paul does indeed speak wisdom among the grown-ups of God's people, that wisdom, in fact, is not esoteric knowledge of deeper truths about God, Rather, it is simply God's own plan for saving his people.
32 · Vogan asserts that the Spirit-imparted wisdom has a specific cross-shaped purpose, connecting back to Paul's earlier declaration of his ministry focus
This imparted wisdom has a particular cross-shaped purpose. It's not random. It's not out of the blue. Just a couple of paragraphs before, this is exactly what Paul said he's all about.
33 · Vogan signals the transition to the final major section, framing it as an exploration of the character of Christ-shaped, Spirit-filled wisdom
As we approach our final section of text today, we want to see what is wisdom as Christ-shaped and Spirit-filled.
34 · Vogan contrasts the world's performance-based message ("do better") with the gospel's accomplishment-based message ("look at what Christ has done"), establishing that the Spirit's illumination is what enables believers to be affected by this truth
So true wisdom is a Christ-shaped and Spirit-filled wisdom. We've seen pretty strongly that true wisdom is actually not accepted by the world. It's also not what we think. The message of the cross— the message of the world is do better.
Keep doing better. Do these things to do better, to be better. That's the message of the world. The message of true wisdom is look at what Christ has done.
We are deeply affected by that if the Spirit opens our eyes to the glory and truth of this fact.
35 · Vogan connects 1 Corinthians 1:18 to 2:14, showing Paul's consistent teaching that the cross appears as foolishness to those without the Spirit but as God's power to those being saved
Paul said only a few verses later— earlier that the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to those of us who are being saved, it is the power of God. Paul reiterates this again in our text today in verse 14. Saying that the things of the Spirit of God are folly to the natural person.
36 · Vogan anticipates the congregation's practical question, acknowledging that assent to the Spirit's superiority is easier than understanding the mechanism of Spirit-imparted wisdom
So here's a question that might come up at this point. One might say that they get the wisdom imparted by the Spirit is better than the world's wisdom. I get that. Got it. One might also say that they agree with that. But the how is a challenge.
How does the Spirit impart his wisdom to us? How does the Holy Spirit shape our minds like Christ's?
37 · Vogan narrates a conversation with fellow pastor Alec about Henry Blackaby's Experiencing God, building anticipation for a quotation that powerfully affected both pastors
Alec and I were talking this week in the office, And he was like, "Bro, I just read something in Experiencing God. You gotta check it out." I remember Experiencing God from when I was a little kid. There was like a blackish-bluish cover with like some flames on the front. How many of you have read this Experiencing God book, right? Awesome. I don't mean to make you show your age, I'm sorry. But it's coming around again, and I think that's a good thing. It's gotten re-upped and republished.
It's a great book. But Alec came and he's like, "Bro, I got goosebumps when I read this." I was like, let me read it, and then I got goosebumps too.
38 · Henry Blackaby's quotation establishes that the Spirit uses Scripture to reveal God's character and ways, that unaided human reason sees biblical truth as foolishness, and that Spirit-aided reading of Scripture is the concrete means of spiritual formation—not mysticism
The Spirit uses— Henry Blackaby says this: The Spirit uses God's word to reveal God's character and his purpose. The Spirit uses the Bible to instruct us in God's ways. We cannot understand God's truths on our own. Unaided by the Spirit of God, it will appear to be foolishness to us. Aided by the Spirit, we can understand everything that God has for us. This helps us see that spending time in God's word is the way we are shaped by the Spirit. It's not an esoteric thing or a super mystical thing.
39 · Blackaby's climactic statement—that Bible reading is not preparatory to encountering God but is the encounter itself—becomes the emotional and theological high point, which Vogan emphasizes with congregational participation and repetition
Here's the goosebumps part. Here, ready? Henry Blackaby goes on to say that spending time in God's word, spending time understanding the spiritual truth does not lead you to an encounter with God. It is an encounter with God. Can somebody say amen to that? Come on.
Let's not let that go over us. When you spend time here, It's not like leading us to an encounter of God. It is the encounter with God. This is God's holy and authoritative word.
40 · Vogan issues concrete application about Bible reading practices—open Scripture expectantly, prioritize quality over quantity, take time to hear God's voice, and reject rushed reading in favor of genuine encounter with God's word
You want God to speak to you? Open his book. Open his word. Seek after it. Abide in Christ. Let the word of the Lord shape your mind, shape your heart.
When you open this word, open it expectant. Don't open it— look, my challenge growing up, and even if I'm to be honest now, is I wanna read as much as I can in a sitting. I was sitting in a, we were talking about the importance of discipleship. I was sitting in my discipleship group the other day, and we were talking about just struggles with reading the word. And Todd Peterson, one of our pastors, said, man, I have taken to, when I open the word, sometimes I only get through half a chapter.
Because I don't want to miss what God is saying to me in that chapter. I don't want to— sometimes there's a couple chapters, awesome. But when you open God's word, he has something to say to you. It's right here. Take your time.
Don't feel like you got to rush. Spend time with the God of the universe. It's okay if it takes you 4 years to get through the Bible in a year. Great. It's worth it.
41 · Vogan returns to doxological affirmation that Scripture reading is encountering the living God and the means by which the Spirit conforms believers to Christ's image
I'm getting goosebumps again. It is the— we encounter the living God when we spend time in his word. It's the way that his Holy Spirit actively shapes and molds us to conform us to the image of Christ.
42 · Vogan draws out the ethical implication of having the mind of Christ—it requires sacrificial obedience, putting others first, laying down selfish ambition, and humbling oneself in imitation of Christ's pattern
But this also means that true wisdom as revealed by the Holy Spirit is sacrifice. It is a sacrificial thing. If we are to have the mind of Christ, As verse 16 says, then we must obey like Christ obeyed. As Christians, we model the mind of Christ by putting others first, by laying down our selfish ambitions, by humbling ourselves.
43 · A theologian quoted by Garland defines spirituality as cruciform existence—life transformed into the cross's image through self-sacrificing love and power manifested in weakness
David Garland quotes another theologian saying that to be spiritual is to have apprehended the word of the cross in such a way that it has transformed the entire existence of the believer into its image, to a cruciform life, a life characterized by self-sacrificing love and where power is manifest through weakness.
44 · Vogan exposes the countercultural nature of cruciform wisdom by cataloging contemporary self-optimization culture—from cold plunges to leadership books to health protocols—admitting his own attraction to these things while noting their absurd promises
This is so good, but it's also super countercultural. What do I mean? All you have to do is open your favorite social media app, podcast app, TV channel, and you'll see post after post, content after content about any number of things claiming to make your life better or easier. Look, I'm not immune. I love that stuff. Give me a cold plunge and sun through the eyes every morning. I love it.
Come up to my offices and see all the John Maxwell books on leadership. I love that stuff.
How many times— we're going to see who's like me for a second. How many times have you seen a poster or an article about the 10 things that the world's wealthiest people do every day, and you're like, let's see what they have to say? Right, man, that's like catnip for me, right? These people say, these experts say, if you just buy these products, if you just do this particular protocol, if you just do this, if you just buy these things, If you just don't do this, do this, you'll live a long, healthy, productive life of complete and utter ease. I've seen some things this week that literally are saying, this thing will cure any disease, will prevent cancer, will heal— I'm like, does it heal my broken bones?
Will it grow me a third leg? I don't know. This is what the content says, so I must believe it.
45 · Vogan crystallizes the fundamental contrast—worldly wisdom points to self, true wisdom points to God, and worldly wisdom is decaying while eternity remains an inescapable reality requiring Christ
Do you see the difference? Everything in the world's wisdom points to ourselves. True wisdom points to who? God. True wisdom points to Christ.
Understanding that the world, that the wisdom of the world is decaying. It's passing away. As Dante rightly understood, we all die and we have eternity to reckon with.
46 · Vogan offers a crucial pastoral qualification—he is not condemning stewardship, health, or leadership development, but insisting these must be subordinate to the cross, warning against allowing immediate benefits to eclipse eternal realities
Don't hear what I'm not saying. I'm still gonna listen to a lot of that stuff. I'm gonna seek to make wise stewardship decisions. I'm gonna try to take care of my body. I'm gonna try to work out, I like to work out. I wanna serve my family the best that I can.
But those things have to take a far back seat to the cross and mind of Christ. They must be subordinate to the wisdom of Christ. It's easy to let the temporal things, the things that we feel right away, rise to the area of first importance. But the Spirit gives us an eternal and cross-shaped perspective.
47 · Vogan recalls the earlier mirror metaphor, inviting the congregation to return to self-examination now that the theological framework has been established
So as we kind of look, we turn, we've kind of turned away from the mirror, but you remember that mirror I asked you to hold up for a second ago? Let's pick that mirror back up for a minute and see, are there areas as we've walked through the text that we need to mature, areas that maybe we've held tightly to.
48 · Vogan poses the first diagnostic question—are you seeking wisdom in the wrong places?—clarifying that the issue is not the pursuit of wisdom but the source, and identifying the Corinthian error as prioritizing the spirit of the age over the Holy Spirit
Here's a question. Are you looking for wisdom in the wrong place? Let me be very clear. These are questions that I asked my first two, asked first two. Am I looking for wisdom in the wrong places? So we ask, are you looking for wisdom in the wrong places? The problem with the Corinthian church wasn't that it was seeking wisdom. Not at all. It was seeking wisdom in the wrong places.
Paul was trying to get them to see that their functional source of wisdom was the wrong place. They were over here looking at the word, and Paul's saying, "No, come over here. Look at what God is saying." The functional source of the wisdom of the Corinthian church's wisdom needed to be the Holy Spirit, but it was the spirit of the age.
49 · Vogan applies the diagnostic question to contemporary sources—professors, coaches, gurus, commentators—acknowledging their worldly wisdom while warning against elevating them to deity-status and reminding the congregation that all human sources are fallible sinners who cannot be right 100% of the time
Look at today's resources. We have more resources than ever. There are some really great professors. There's great nutrition coaches. There's great financial gurus. There's great political commentators. They're extremely wise when it comes to the world.
They have so much knowledge and they apply it, they seek to apply it effectively. But there are many of these who are not being guided by the Holy Spirit. The whole purpose of their work is to help you thrive in your life now. You only have one life to live, so live it up or live it well or live it healthy or live it wealthy or live it fighting for whatever cause you seem is most important. And worth fighting for.
Listen, don't hear what I'm not saying. I'm not saying to not listen to people who are smart. What I am saying is don't elevate them to the point of effective deity.
Remember, it is so easy to be so compelled by an argument from somebody that you listen to that you forget that they are sinful, fallible, not God-humans that can make mistakes and see things wrongly sometimes. There's no one on the planet who will be right 100% of the time. Sometimes their right might be not as right as somebody else's right.
50 · Vogan exposes the Corinthian pattern of placing culture above Scripture by relegating biblical wisdom to "spiritual" matters while trusting worldly wisdom for practical life, then poses the stream metaphor—what stream are you swimming in, content creators or the Creator?
Just like the Corinthian church, it's so easy to place culture above Scripture, to see the wisdom in in Scripture as primarily spiritual, but not for our everyday life, not practical here. And Paul's saying, no, flip that. Scripture is the lens by which we view everything else. So a helpful guiding question here might be, what stream of wisdom are you swimming in? Where are you spending your time in the stream?
Are you swimming primarily in the world of media or news sources? Are you spending your time primarily swimming in the stream of TikTok and Reels? Are you swimming in the stream of self-help literature? 10 Ways to a Better You.
That's just a book title I made up, by the way. I'm sure it's out there somewhere. The stream of wisdom we are swimming in is the one that our hearts and minds will be most affected by.
So, are you swimming in the stream of content creators, or are you swimming in the stream of the Creator?
51 · Vogan poses the second diagnostic question—what do you do when worldly wisdom contradicts godly wisdom?—acknowledging the social cost of choosing Scripture over respected voices, and exposing the gap between easy verbal allegiance ("say Jesus") and costly lived obedience
Along those lines, what do you do when your worldly wisdom is contradicted by godly wisdom? There's a warning in this question. And remember, I turned this warning on myself this week. So, this is just coming out of the Word. What do you do when your worldly wisdom is contradicted by godly wisdom?
There are public figures in this world whose opinions I tend to trust. I trust that what they say is as right as it can be with the facts that are presented. Yet, I regularly find myself looking at people like this and looking at God's Word and saying, "Something's not right. There's a difference here." When you see the difference between the people that you follow and God's word, what do you do? What is your response?
Look, the easy answer is what? Go with who? Go with Jesus, go with God's word, say God's word. We can all say it, right? That's the easy answer to say.
But what if the person that I respect and see is maybe wrong according to God's word is also supported by a bunch of other people I respect, and going against what these people all say this makes me lose their respect?
What if I have rejection, face rejection by people that I'm living life with because of what God says? You see how, like, it's easy to say Jesus, but it's harder to live it out? It's harder to be, like, confronted by God's word in that sense?
52 · Vogan acknowledges the difficulty of prioritizing God's word over self-interest and group affiliation, recalling a preaching seminar's instruction that the posture toward Scripture is submission ("under the word"), then asks whether the congregation has submitted to Scripture "at any cost
Man, this is— it's so hard. To actually go through that? Am I willing to put God's word, God's wisdom, the mind of Christ, self-sacrificial wisdom ahead of my own self-interest and over the interests of other groups of people? I went to a preaching seminar once and the guy started like this. There's a bunch of like pastors and people training to be pastors and he went like this.
This is where, this is our posture. Whenever we open the word of God, we are under the word of God. So my question is, have we placed ourselves under the word of God at any cost? Something to think about. It's just a mirror.
53 · Vogan pivots from the diagnostic questions back to the narrative frame established in the introduction, preparing to resolve the story and apply it
Let's go back to a minute and just look at some practical things. Let's go back to 2012 to young John and Ashley.
54 · Vogan narrates the full decision-making context—the powerful pull of family, the logic of returning to New York, everyone's advice to leave, the lack of employment—against the deeper spiritual realities of relational depth and sense of divine calling to stay in El Paso
Young John and Ashley have a decision to make. We have to decide, we, we miss our families. We lived away from Western New York and the Buffalo Bills, painful. We lived, sorry, I'm a Bills fan in cowboy country. It's painful. We visited, especially 'cause y'all have Super Bowls and I don't yet. We lived far away from family and that brought a significant challenge. We were thinking about having kids.
I knew 6 of my 8 great-grandparents. Like knew them, knew them. Have vivid memories of them. I knew all of my grandparents. We spent time, we were, at my grandparents' house every Sunday for dinner.
We had the whole family together all the time. Family mattered. Ashley was the same thing. She had— her family was super, super close, hanging out together all the time. And we were thinking, if we raise kids here, they're not going to have that.
What do I— what do we do? It's so challenging. The most logical thing when we put on paper, go back, stay here, the most logical thing to do Everybody told us, "Go back." It's logical. Then we thought about the depths of the relationships we were developing, the friends that the Lord had put in our place, in our lives, the way that the Lord had been working in each of our lives, in our marriage so significantly. We thought of leaving this church and couldn't imagine it.
I didn't have a job at this time. We just were like, there's, we gotta go, the world's telling us we gotta go back. But I didn't have a job. We made the decision to stay because we didn't feel like the Lord was calling us to leave El Paso. We decided to stay not knowing what the future looked like, but we trusted the Lord.
55 · The narrative resolves with divine provision—immediately after deciding to stay in faith, a resume review meeting becomes a job offer, and 12 years later the Vogans remain in El Paso as evidence of God's faithfulness
So what seemed like the next day, but was probably the next week, I got a phone call from somebody I'd given them my resume and said, can you go over this and can we meet about it? Just give me some feedback. She called me and she said, "Yeah, come on in. Let's go over your resume." And I walked out of that meeting with a job.
Okay, Lord. 12 years later, if it's not clear yet, we're still here.
56 · Vogan interprets the narrative theologically—what appeared foolish by worldly standards was Spirit-directed wisdom, and their ongoing posture is submission to wherever the Lord leads, having learned that attempted departures were divinely blocked
A decision that seemed silly or unwise in the eyes of the world was a decision that was directed and orchestrated by the Holy Spirit. Sometimes life looks that way. It doesn't make sense over here, but with the Holy Spirit, It makes complete sense. When I tell you now what we say is, people ask us, how long are you going to stay in El Paso? As long as the Lord keeps us here.
We've tried to leave twice and he didn't let that happen. And so we have to hold it like this. Lord, take us where you want us. And right now this is where he wants us.
57 · Vogan interrupts the narrative to offer crucial pastoral correction—this is not a triumphalist story of easy faith but an ongoing costly obedience involving real pain, real loss, and real longing for family and friends
I want to be careful for a moment because what I don't want you to hear is look how Ashley and John trusted God. When I tell you this decision was hard, that's an understatement. It continues to be hard. When I tell you that we painfully miss our family, I'm not lying to you. When I tell you that we desperately miss some of our closest friends from back home that we never get to see— I haven't seen the best man in my wedding in years. We talked yesterday and I was like, bro, I just— I was sending him like pictures of us in college.
It's like, bro, I miss you. And And he's like, move back to New York. I was like, well, when the Lord keeps— we're here as long as the Lord keeps us here. So it's so hard.
58 · Vogan extracts the theological principle from the narrative—believers are not the protagonists of their own stories; the Holy Spirit is, and Spirit-led living, while not easy, is the best place to be, with the Spirit guiding despite human weakness
But what I want you to hear is this: we are not the main characters in our story. The Holy Spirit, though trusting the Lord might not be the easiest thing to do, when you follow the steps of the Holy Spirit and the guide of the Holy Spirit, it's the best place to be.
The Spirit guided and directed every step of ours despite us.
59 · Vogan poses the climactic application questions—when worldly wisdom conflicts with the Spirit's leading, who do you trust? Do you see yourself as self-sufficient like the Corinthians, or utterly dependent on the Spirit? Do you trust the self-centered world or the self-sacrificing Christ?
When all worldly wisdom points you in one direction, but the Holy Spirit points you in another, who do you trust? Who do you go to as your default? Do you see yourself as wise and spiritual like the Corinthian church? We're so mature. Or do you see yourself as in complete and utter need of the Holy Spirit, completely helpless without the guiding and directing of the Holy Spirit.
Do you trust the world, who points only to themselves, or do you trust the one who gave all of himself to the point of death on a cross for those he loves?
60 · Vogan concludes with two summary exhortations framed as a never and an always—never confuse first and second importance (gospel is first, all else second and passing), and always remember the gospel exceeds our comprehension and self-generated solutions
As we end today, I want to remind us of one of our nevers and one of our alwayses. First, let us never confuse what is of first importance and what is second. At the end of the day, of first importance is the gospel. All other wisdom, as Paul says, is folly.
All other wisdom will pass away. Everything else is second.
So second, let us always remember that the gospel is always better news than we think. The gospel is always better news than we could ask or imagine.
The gospel is always better news than anything we have for ourselves.
61 · Vogan synthesizes the sermon's argument into four summary propositions about true wisdom—it's given not found, enables understanding Christ's mind, aligns with God's saving plan, and orients believers toward the new creation rather than the passing world
True wisdom isn't found, it's given. True wisdom is given by the Spirit of God that you and I might be able to understand the mind of Christ. True wisdom is living in light of God's plan for saving his people. True wisdom is understanding that the whole of this world will pass away and God will make all things new, and we live in light of that eternity.
62 · Closing prayer asking for perseverance in grace-centered living, strengthening of doubters through remembrance of Christ's love, the Spirit's upward orientation away from worldly wisdom, and God's complete ownership and rule over believers' hearts
Would you stand? And let's pray together.
Lord, let us not grow tired of what you have done. Let us not grow tired of proclaiming and living life as one saved by grace alone. Because of your great love with which you loved us, you died for us.
Lord, for those here who are struggling to believe, who would call themselves Christians, but doubt seems to be creeping in more and more, Lord, would you remind them of your great love, the self-sacrificial love of Christ that he showed on the cross? Holy Spirit, would you strengthen the doubter this morning? Remind them that when the world looks one way, You're calling them to look upwards, to look at you. So we pray, oh great God of highest heaven, occupy our lowly hearts. Own our hearts, reign supreme, conquer every rebel power.
Let no worldly vice or sin remain that resists your holy war.
You have loved and purchased us. Lord, make us yours forevermore. In Jesus' name, amen.