The One Who Guides

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After Thomas Jefferson acquired the Louisiana Purchase, which includes the place where we’re standing right now, back in the early 1800s, he commissioned a group of explorers led by William Clark and Meriwether Lewis to go and explore parts of that area. And so they were going into uncharted territory, basically, someplace they’d never been. And the idea was for them to write back to President Jefferson with an account of what they saw, what they learned, what they experienced.

We know that from history as the Lewis and Clark expedition. As they were traveling, what they found was the terrain was unfamiliar, the people were unfamiliar, sometimes hostile. And so what they did was eventually, partway through the journey, they hired a guide named Sacagawea.

That’s what I grew up knowing her name being pronounced as. Now I’m told there are like 34 ways to pronounce it. But I’m going to stick with Sacagawea.

They hired a Shoshone Indian woman named Sacagawea to lead them, to guide them through the unfamiliar terrain, to shepherd them sometimes through their interactions with some of the other tribes, and to help them make it back safely. She proved to be an invaluable guide for them that enabled their expedition to do what it set out to do, which was to chart parts of the upper Missouri River and report back to President Jefferson and make it back more or less in one piece, some of them. Her guidance allowed that to happen.

You need a guide when you’re going into uncharted territory. Even more recently, when Edmund Hillary was trying to be the first person, certainly the first European, I guess he was a New Zealander, but they considered themselves to be British at that point, I think, wanted to be the first to climb Mount Everest, to get to the summit. He hired a local man, a Sherpa named Tenzing Norgay, to lead him, to guide him through the Himalayas so he could even get to Everest, not to mention get up Everest. He needed somebody who knew the terrain, who knew the area, who knew what to do and what not to do.

He needed a guide to get where he wanted to go. It used to be that years ago you needed a guide. You needed to hire somebody in a lot of cases, somebody to go with you who had been before where you are trying to go.

We don’t need that so much now because we have GPS and all that. A couple weeks ago I was going to meet my parents at an attorney’s office in Norman, and I’m pretty familiar with Norman. I went to college there.

I lived there for a while. There are still parts of the city that are unfamiliar. I knew the general area where they were going to be I knew it was this large office and commercial complex but I had no idea where it’s one of these places where you have the address and then it’s suite 58000 K4 I don’t know how you find these places, it doesn’t show up on Google and so I had Google get me to the right area or Siri, one of the two, get me to the right area still had no idea where I was going.

And then I realized my parents and I have find my friends set up. If you have an iPhone, you know what that is. It tracks their phone.

And it’s not creepy because we all know we’re being tracked by one another. So we’ve all given our permission for this. And I just pushed a button in the truck and said, find my mother.

And once I got done arguing with Siri about, no, not my brother, my mother, I don’t have a brother. And Siri always asked me, What is your brother’s name? I don’t have one.

Once I finally got Siri to understand the concept of mother, found my mother, and I said, okay, take me there. And sure enough, I get around where I need to go, and I turn the corner, and there’s my mom and dad standing in the parking lot so I could meet them at the attorney’s office and talk about their will, which was not my idea of a fun day, but it still got me where I needed to go. So I didn’t hire somebody to go with me, but I still needed a guide.

Whether we use an electronic guide or whether we use a human guide, we need a guide to get us where we need to go if we’ve never been there before. And it’s no different with our spiritual life. We need a guide to get us to where we need to go because we haven’t been there before.

By definition, we haven’t been to maturity in Jesus Christ because no matter how mature you are in Jesus Christ, no matter how long you’ve been a Christian, no matter how long God’s been working on you, No matter how much progress you’ve made in your spiritual walk, there is always further to go. Until we are exactly like Jesus Christ, there is further to go. And so I think we’d all admit we haven’t arrived there yet.

We haven’t been to the final destination. We need a guide in order to lead us in that direction. And Jesus said we have a guide, which is his Holy Spirit.

In one of the passages that we’ve looked at as we’ve been discussing the Holy Spirit the last few weeks, One of the things that Jesus said was that when this spirit of truth is come, he will guide us into all truth. He will lead us into an understanding of the truth. Now, does that mean he’ll give us every answer we want to know?

The Holy Spirit has not yet answered my questions about what boxes to check on my tax return, that sort of thing. For that, I need to call Kathy. But when it comes to any of God’s truth that we need to know for salvation or for spiritual growth, The Holy Spirit will guide us into all truth, and he will never lead us astray.

And we’re going to look this morning at this concept of the Holy Spirit being our guide. Not in the passage where Jesus said that, that he would guide us into all truth in the book of John, but we’re going to look at what the Apostle Paul said about this in 1 Corinthians chapter 2. If you haven’t turned there with me this morning already, I’d invite you to turn with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 2.

And we’re going to look at this concept of the Holy Spirit being our guide. And we need a guide into God’s truth, and we need a guide into spiritual maturity, because we’re not just born innately knowing these things, right? It’s just like with any of the other really important things.

It seems like we’re not born knowing these things. We need somebody to show us. You know, my children were not born knowing how to read.

We’re having to work with their teachers and us and others here, I think, in Sunday school. We’re all working on that together to get them where they need to go and how to read. My children, and I don’t want to single my children out, your children also were not born knowing how to go to the bathroom the correct way.

We had to teach them. They were not born knowing how to feed themselves with a spoon and a fork and a knife. We have to teach them.

It seems like the only things we’re really born knowing is how to sin. I mean, I never sat my children down and taught them how to scream at each other and throw things. They just kind of picked up on that from the sin nature that they inherited from me.

Sorry. It’s just a fact. But when it comes to the really important stuff, we’re not just born knowing it.

And there are lots of people who think they can figure out God’s truth on their own. And what they end up is very confused. That’s the way they end up is very confused.

We hear statements all the time. Well, the God I pray to wouldn’t do this. My God wouldn’t do this.

And a lot of times it’s exactly what the Bible says God would do or how God would react. And so I’m left quoting my mother and saying, I don’t know what God you pray to, but she told somebody that once. I don’t know what God you pray to, but, you know, the God I pray to wouldn’t let anybody go to hell.

I’m sorry, my Bible tells us that God allows us a free choice, and there is either heaven, or there is hell, and he has made a way to heaven. That’s another one we hear. Well, I just don’t feel like God would only make one way.

Folks, we’re lucky God even made one way, because we didn’t even deserve that one way. And so to say, well, it’s wrong for God to only make one way to heaven. I don’t want to stand in judgment of God.

It’s not fair that he made one way, let alone the idea that we would say, oh, there should be multiple ways to heaven. He’s God. He gets to make the rules.

My point being, left to our own devices, we’re going to go by our feelings and what we think should be this way. And our feelings, I say this all the time, if you’ve ever been a teenager, you know your feelings will lie to you. Your feelings will confuse you.

Your feelings will plow your judgment. That’s not confined to teenagers, by the way. We do that as adults sometimes, too.

We allow our feelings to get in the way. We’re left with following our feelings and what we think should be in a very cloudy, fuzzy idea of what God’s truth is. It’s what I call the Oprah syndrome.

And really, it has no connection to what God has said about himself. And when you’re led by feelings and when you’re led by your thoughts and what you think ought to be, the problem is we all come to very different ideas of what God’s truth is. And if we get away from the objective standard of God’s word as taught and as revealed by the Holy Spirit, who’s to say which one is right and which one’s wrong?

There’s a basic law in logic called the law of non-contradiction that says if I say A is true and somebody says not A is true, they can’t both be correct. Does that make sense? If I say Julie is alive, you’re dead.

If I say Julie is alive and Julie says I’m not alive, we can’t both be right. You see how that works? And just by virtue of the fact that she says I’m not alive, she has to be alive to say she’s not alive.

So it’s self-refuting. There’s a law of non-contradiction. And a lot of times these ideas that don’t come from God’s Word, don’t come from the Holy Spirit.

They say, well, I feel like God is this. Well, somebody over here feels like God is not this. Who’s right?

They can’t both be right. We have to have some kind of objective standard, and we have to have some kind of guide, because left to our own human imaginations, we’re going to go in completely the wrong direction. And so Jesus has left us the Holy Spirit to teach us and to guide us into all truth.

Because the things of God are a mystery to man. We’re going to look at 2 Corinthians 2, starting in verse 6. Paul says, Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect.

That word perfect means complete. Many times when you see it in the scriptures, if it’s not referring to God, it means complete or mature. It doesn’t mean that I’m sinless.

Okay. Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect, yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world that come to naught. But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory, which none of the princes of this world knew, for if they had known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

What he’s saying here is that they speak wisdom to the believers, they teach with wisdom to those who are mature, but he says it’s not the same as the wisdom of the world. He says it’s not the, what we’re teaching is God’s wisdom, and it’s not the wisdom of the world because he talks about the wisdom of the world or the princes of the world, all the leaders, all the really smart people, all the really elite people, he says it comes to nothing. Come to not means comes to nothing.

In God’s economy, all the wisdom that you and I have collectively, all the things that we think are true and all the things we think should be true, don’t really amount to anything if they contradict what God says is. So he says we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory. And there is a sense where people will say, well, it’s foolish to believe Christianity.

It’s foolish to believe these things. And we tend to get a little riled up when somebody calls us foolish. We tend to get a little riled up when somebody says Christianity is stupid.

Christianity is for the weak-minded. Christianity is this and that. I understand why we get riled up.

I don’t think I’m weak-minded. I’m pretty skeptical, and I like to look at evidence and all this, and I like to reason things out. But at the same time, God’s word even admits that he uses the foolish things of this world to confound the wise.

That God doesn’t draw us through the wisdom of men, but through the foolishness of preaching. And he says the cross is foolishness and a stumbling block to those who don’t believe. So it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that the world looks at us and says that’s a stupid thing to believe.

God said they would think that. Jesus said they would think that. Because the world likes complicated solutions.

The world likes complex things where we can feel like we’ve been in charge and we’ve done our part and we have come up with the solution. The cross is the opposite of that. Because there’s nothing for us to do.

The message of the cross is that we have messed everything up through our sin. We have defied God. We have disobeyed Him.

We have brought about the fall. We have brought about sin and death and suffering. And no matter what we do to try to alleviate the symptoms, we cannot cure the root disease, which is sin.

There’s nothing for us to do to get back in God’s graces. Jesus Christ had to come and pay for all of our sin in order for us to be redeemed and be forgiven. And so to a world that says we like to come up with the wise solutions and we want to think things through and we want to do this, we want to plan and we want to come up with the complex things so we can say, look what we did.

The cross seems like foolishness. It seems like the easy way out. Because surely it couldn’t be that easy.

It is very simple that Jesus Christ died to pay for our sins. It’s not always easy for people to believe, but it’s a very simple teaching. We speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world to our glory, which none of the princes of this world knew.

For had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. He says that if they really understood the things of God, talking about in Jesus’ day, if the leaders, the religious leaders, the political leaders, the elite, the wealthy, if they really understood the truth of God, if they really understood what the Old Testament, what the scriptures at that time had said throughout all the ages, if they really understood how Jesus was the fulfillment of all those things, if they really understood what God’s mission was here on earth, they wouldn’t have crucified Jesus because they would have known that he was the son of God and exactly who he claimed. He said, if they understood God’s wisdom, they wouldn’t have crucified God’s son.

And so he says, there’s proof right there that they don’t understand God’s wisdom. And by the way, let me, let me pause right here to say, as we talk about the mystery of God’s truth, as we talk about the world out there, not getting it, don’t ever let this become an elitist thought in your mind that we know more than they do. They just don’t get it.

They’re not as good as us because we get it. No, we get it because God finally drilled it into our heads. There was a time when each of us did not understand the truth of God’s word.

And by the way, we still don’t understand the truth of everything. We understand what he believes we can handle at this point and has revealed to us. That’s why we can turn to the scriptures every time we can look at something that we’ve read a hundred times and the Holy Spirit will reveal something new to us that we’ve never seen before.

Or better said, illuminate something to us that we’ve never seen before. It’s been in there all along. We just didn’t get it.

How many times have I, as your pastor, come to you and said, I was rereading this passage to preach on it again this week. I’ve preached this passage for 15 years and look at what I just found. Look at what I just saw.

That’s why we can go back every time because the Holy Spirit can show us new things. So don’t ever think, oh, we’re just smarter than them out there. We’re better than them.

No, we were as they are now, and they can be as we are through the Holy Spirit. So in verse 9, through those verses, we can see that the things of God are a mystery to man. They’re a mystery to us.

They would be a mystery to us today if we did not have the Holy Spirit, first of all, revealing those things through the inspired writers of God’s word, and now being our teacher as we look at the things that are written. He teaches us. But for that, it would be a mystery.

You know, I think innately we have some knowledge that there is a God. We have some knowledge that there’s something out there beyond us. That’s why people throughout every culture, throughout history, have always found something to worship.

Because we know that there’s something out there beyond us. We know that instinctively. But as far as who He is and what He wants and what His expectations are for us, we really don’t know that until He tells us.

because his ways are higher than our ways, and his thoughts are higher than our thoughts, as Isaiah says. So the things of God are a mystery to us, but we see also that the Holy Spirit is intimately familiar with God’s truth, and he makes it known to us. Look here at verse 9.

But as it is written, I have not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that loved him. He goes on to say, we don’t even fully understand. We as believers do not fully understand what God’s plans are for us.

We do not understand the wondrous nature of God’s plans, not only for us, but his overall plan for the world and the part that we are privileged to play in it. We cannot possibly fathom all the things that God has going on. But, verse 10, God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit.

For the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. It says the Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. Even the deep truths, the hidden things of God’s Word, the hidden things of God’s truth, the Holy Spirit searches those out and knows them.

Now, don’t take that word search and misinterpret it to mean that the Holy Spirit doesn’t know unless He goes and looks and finds out. The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity. The Holy Spirit is God the Spirit.

So anything God knows, the Spirit knows. Let’s be very clear about that. Anything God knows, the Spirit knows.

That word search is used a little bit differently than we would use it now in 2018. And for him to search it out, it’s the same as when in the Old Testament, David prayed for God to search me and know me. It’s not as though the Father didn’t know David until he got out his binoculars and went on a little search of David’s heart.

He already knew because God was constantly searching out. God was constantly looking. When he says he searches these things out, he’s saying, just like of the Father, that the Holy Spirit knows all these things because he’s constantly looking, he’s constantly involved, and there’s nothing in the heart that the Father doesn’t already know.

There’s nothing in our hearts that the Father doesn’t already know before it’s there. And there’s none of God’s truth that the Holy Spirit hasn’t already seen. So that’s what he means when he says searching it out.

You know, if you come and ask me a question, I may have to go do some research and look it up. That’s why we do stump the preacher, I have you write it down, and then I may come back to it weeks later, because it may take me weeks to find an answer, and it still may not be a good answer. It may be just, this is the best answer I can come up with at this point.

I have to go search, meaning I don’t know, and I have to go look and find out. That’s not what it means for the Holy Spirit to search. For the Holy Spirit to search means He has exhaustive knowledge of all the things of God.

He knows everything. He knows everything, all of God’s truth, and it says he reveals those things to us by his spirit who has that deep knowledge, who knows everything, even the deep things of God. He has exhaustive, intimate knowledge of the things of God, and he makes them known unto us.

That’s incredible. By the way, it doesn’t mean that he tells us everything he knows, because then we’d know everything God knows. I’m not there.

I’m guessing you’re not there, because we’re not God. We’re not capable of comprehending everything that God knows. But the things that we need to know in order to have a relationship with him and for that relationship to grow, the Holy Spirit knows it all.

He knows everything, and he will tell us what we need to know. It’s written in God’s Word, and he will teach us from God’s Word. By the way, here’s one reason I think we as Baptists might have shied away from the Holy Spirit a little bit, because we’ll hear people say, I’ve heard people say, well, the Holy Spirit told me it was okay to do this.

I’m going, okay, let me take you to this verse right here. Because the Holy Spirit isn’t going to tell you something is okay when God has already revealed in his word that it’s not okay. Had a man sit in my office and tell me that God showed him it was okay for him to divorce his wife and marry another woman half his age.

And it was one of those I don’t know what God you’re praying to moments. I was saying, let me show you where that’s not okay. Let me show you where God says that’s going to hurt her, that’s going to hurt you, that’s going to hurt the new wife.

Let me show you. Can I just show you what God’s already said? And the Holy Spirit, Jesus said that he’ll testify of the things that he’s heard from the Father.

He’ll testify of the things that pertain to Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit is God the Spirit, and he works in conjunction with the other two. He doesn’t go make it up as he goes along to whatever’s going to suit our needs at the moment. The Holy Spirit is a team.

He’s part of the team. I hope that’s not a heretical phrase to use. It’s very difficult to describe the Godhead.

But he works together with the Father and Son. And so he’s not going to tell us anything different than what the Father has already revealed and what the Son taught. And I think too many times we’ve heard things like that.

Oh, the Holy Spirit led me to believe that the Holy Spirit is leading me in this direction, and it’s against God’s word. And so I think we’ve gotten to the point as Baptists where somebody says, well, I feel like the Holy Spirit said, oh, danger, danger, red flag, look at that. This is uncomfortable.

This is heresy territory. It’s really not. I believe the Holy Spirit does tell us things.

I believe the Holy Spirit teaches us things. And I’ve told some of you, I think the Holy Spirit has spoken to me. I think the Holy Spirit speaks to my wife all the time.

because she knows things the kids are doing that she would have no way of knowing. The kids ask her, how did you know? She says, God told me.

And I honestly believe it. Maybe that’s a mom thing that the Holy Spirit just lets you know what you need to know. But the Holy Spirit can talk to us.

The Holy Spirit can lead us and speak to us and guide us. He won’t ever tell us anything that contradicts the truth God has already revealed, though. And that’s a very important distinction to understand.

So the Holy Spirit guides us. There are four things that the Holy Spirit guides us to that I want to talk about this morning in just the few remaining moments that we have here. Again, starting at verse 9, But as it is written, I have not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.

But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit, for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? Even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.

So he’s saying here that we wouldn’t have human understanding if we didn’t have a human spirit. My dog doesn’t understand what it means to be human. My dog understands a few English words.

My dog understands how to spell a few English words like treat. We can’t even spell it anymore. He’ll hear it and want one.

My dog understands a few parts of our routine and a few mannerisms and things like that. My dog has no idea what taxes are. My dog has no idea that I’m a pastor.

My dog has no idea that I’m a Baptist. My dog has no idea that I’m a Christian. My dog has no idea that I’m above the kids. He has no idea.

Any of the things that we understand instinctively as a human being, he has no idea because he doesn’t have a human spirit and a human understanding. And it’s sort of the same thing with us and God. We wouldn’t have an understanding at all of the things of God if it weren’t for the spirit of God.

But he says in verse 12, now we have received not the spirit of this world, but the spirit which is of God, that we may know the things that are freely given to us of God. He says, we’ve received the Spirit of God, and so now we can receive God’s truth, the things that are freely given. Verse 13, which things also we speak not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. He said, we’re not stuck with just knowing human wisdom.

We can understand a little bit of God’s perspective on the questions that we have as the Holy Spirit teaches, and we can compare spiritual things with spiritual. We can take God’s truth up and we can hold it up against our circumstances and we can discern things spiritually and figure out what we ought to do in a given situation because we have access to God’s truth through the Spirit. Verse 14, but the natural man receiveth not the Spirit of God, the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him. And for many of you, unless you came to Christ at a very early age, there was probably a time in your life where you thought the things of God were foolish.

Or at least, at least, even if you had a respect for believers, for the things of God, maybe you believed in God, maybe you believed in Jesus and just weren’t a believer that he was your Savior yet, you might have had respect for those things, but thought it was foolish for us to put so much effort and so much time into the things of God. And so on some level, there’s the idea that this is foolishness. The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him, neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned.

The world thinks it’s foolish because they don’t understand. And think back to a time where you didn’t understand. And there was, I love this story and I doubt she’ll mind me telling it.

There was a kid at, I think it was Madeline’s school, earlier in the year. Actually, now I don’t remember which of my children it was that this story happened with. There was a child at their and I was dropping one of them off one day and they said, Daddy, that little girl doesn’t talk right.

Okay, that’s not polite. Some people, okay, that was you. Some people say, we don’t talk right either.

Have you been to Chicago with me? They can’t understand me up there. I said, what do you mean they don’t talk right?

Well, they say nonsense words. They say made-up words. I said, what kind of made-up words?

And then just the imitating gibberish. Benjamin said, well, it’s like blah, Okay, so he thinks she’s just making up gibberish words. I said, well, why does she do that?

He said, I don’t know, but her daddy does it too. I’m like, okay, which kid is it? So he shows me, and as we’re walking in, I’m listening to the daddy and the daughter, and I said, that’s not nonsense words.

That’s Portuguese. That’s Portuguese. First, I thought it was Spanish, but I don’t speak Portuguese, but I can tell a little difference in the sounds of the languages.

I said, that’s Portuguese. That’s not nonsense. Okay, that’s a different language.

But if you don’t understand Portuguese, and by the way, they’ll ask me words in French. They’ll sit at the dinner table. They’ll say, how do you say this in French?

And I’ll tell them, they just think, they’ll giggle, they’ll think it’s hilarious. If you don’t understand another language, or you don’t even understand the concept that there are other languages, it just sounds like nonsense, right? Sounds like foolishness.

It’s the same thing with spiritual things. If you don’t understand, it sounds like nonsense. If you’ve not been given the understanding, if God’s Spirit is not in there speaking to you about these things and guiding you in that direction, it sounds like nonsense.

Seriously, if the Holy Spirit of God, I think we are well past the days where church does anything for you socially as far as your social standing in the community. 50 years, I know people used to go to church to get on in business and make business connections, and you wanted to be at First Baptist because not necessarily just here, but any town. You wanted to be at First Baptist because that’s where the bankers were and the lawyers were.

That’s where everybody was. We are well past those days. And now I think there’s, unless the Holy Spirit is telling you that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and we gather to worship Him together.

We should be worshiping Him every day, but we gather to worship Him together on Sundays, and we come together for the spiritual training and the fellowship and the encouragement, and we come together for these things, for the worship and service of our Lord, it’s really foolish to take a big chunk of your Sunday morning and get dressed and come and be here, isn’t it? Some of you don’t want to say yes. If this is not all true and the Holy Spirit isn’t leading me to this, it’s kind of a waste of time.

I could be out gardening. Some of you could be playing golf. Some of you could be watching football on TV.

I mean, how many of you, if there weren’t church today, there’s other things you could be doing? anybody? A few honest people in here.

There are other things you could be doing and it’s the same with everybody else out there. If the Holy Spirit isn’t telling them you need to go worship, it doesn’t make sense for them to go worship. It doesn’t make sense for us to give up big chunks of our time.

It doesn’t make