You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know
Matthew 17:1-12; 1 Cor. 2:1-12 following last week’s Matt. 5:13-20
Transfiguration Sunday comes to us on this last Sunday of Epiphany
It reinforces what we talked about last week, in case you missed it. Matthew 5:13–20 reveals:
- Who Jesus is — the fulfillment of Scripture – the law with Moses, the prophets with Elijah
- What Jesus does — forms a people who reflect God’s character
- How Jesus works — by transforming hearts, not tweaking behavior – as we will see with the disciples
Jesus is as the Father proclaims: The Beloved, The Divine Son who shares the Father’s glory.
Jesus’ divinity, His glory is not borrowed, He is God incarnate, flesh and blood. He does not reflect glory like Moses or wears it as a suntan, He radiates it. Jesus is the Glory of God. This is a revelation of His eternal identity.
The Transfiguration is a glimpse the Resurrection – I think about what we know of the resurrection account with Peter and John finding burial clothes where they lay, deflated but the head shroud in a different place. The most talked about remaining piece of an event, after almost 2000 years, that has never been disproven. The shroud has the image of what most see as a face and even though they have the most technologically advanced methods of tracing and archaeological time stamping, they have no other information than the image burned into the cloth. What say that “glory”, that shadowing on the Shroud of Turin, is the engraved image of the radiance of Jesus revealed as further proof of Jesus true identity.
It is a preview of the glorified Christ, showing that the cross is not defeat but the path to glory.
In our reading of Matthew 17:1-12 in the thrill of seeing Moses and Elijah, hearing the Father speak of His son, and experiencing the shear weight of the glory on them. What/Who Jesus is they really could not explain – yet – because they were filled with the world. But Jesus ordered (entellomai) them to tell no one – until he was raised from the dead!
Raised from the dead??? Anybody? Absolutely NO pushback on Jesus’ remark. Perhaps they were easily distracted by the commotion at the bottom 0f the hill?
We check back to last week, the world does not need more religious performance. It needs people whose lives shine as witnesses for Jesus. “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” The Pharisees were the gold standard of religious performance.
How could anyone exceed them? Their righteousness was external it focused on them being seen: rules, stringent boundaries, constricting compliance, and public performances – praying to pray not in thanksgiving or praise.
In the mean time, Jesus doesn’t call us to try harder. He calls us to be made new, in Him.
You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know – That’s what Paul is starting to understand about himself.
Paul’s arrival in Corinth is described in Acts 18. He met a Christian couple named Aquila and Priscilla, who were tentmakers by trade, like Paul. He ministered in Corinth for more than a year and a half, supporting himself by tent making. As time passed he learned some things in order to earn the right to be heard and in doing so the people of Corinth were the beneficiaries.
You don’t know what you don’t know
1 Cor. 2:1 And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. 2 For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling.
Paul didn’t come as a philosopher or a salesman; he came as a witness (declaring to you the testimony of God).
Paul was certainly a man who could reason and debate persuasively, but he didn’t use that approach in preaching the gospel. He made a conscious decision (I resolved) to put the emphasis on Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Paul was an ambassador, not a salesman.
If anybody had insight on the testimony of God through superior speech or wisdom – it was Paul. He was a Pharisee of the Pharisees – expert in law and that prosecutorial understanding that comes with in depth study of God’s law. But Paul also knew that if he went to these people speaking with “by the book stats and truth”, that would take out the heart of his appeal. Besides, he’s in Corinth Greece the home of Philosophy.
Philosophers, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle. Statesmen Pericles, Cleisthenes, Themistocles. Playwrights Sophocles, Euripides.
These are big heads, he’s 13-1400 miles away from home and in reality, wherever Paul went he was a trader. Their hearts were hardened by their own knowledge, they knew too much! And thought too much about what didn’t matter.
But you don’t know what you don’t know. And they did not know the heart of God… and in fact very few did, that is why Jesus came, to testify to the truth and so they would know God’s heart through Jesus.
1 Cor.2:4 My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, 5 so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.
They don’t care what you know, they want to know that you care.
Paul’s saying “It’s not about me! But it’s not about them either, it’s about Jesus. Paul knew not to cater to what his audience wanted. He already knew the Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom (ch 1), but He will preach Christ crucified who conquered death.
Paul was a humble witness not brimming with self-confidence, but the power of God’s spirit. He knew their need because it was once his own. Confessing his vulnerability kept him from the poison of self-reliance, and let God’s strength flow. His language of knowledge was about the law, but God’s spirit in him testified to the truth. When he first came, they recognized his lack of ethos, pathos, logos – ethics, passion, logic – the formula of rhetoric.
The truth is what we do know – which are you bold enough to brag about ? What we draw them to or Who?
Paul knew the witness is to testify, the Holy Spirit will demonstrate. Paul’s preaching may not have been impressive or persuasive on a human level, but on a spiritual level it had power. Our faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. Many people use slick, entertaining, or even deceptive means to “lure” people into the church, you can probably name them and justify it by saying, “we’re drawing them in and then winning them to Jesus.”
But the principle stands: what you draw them with is what you draw them to, if someone can be persuaded into the kingdom by human wisdom, they can also be persuaded out of the kingdom by human wisdom.
V6-7 “However, we speak wisdom among those who are mature, yet not the wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory, which none of the rulers of this age knew; for had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.”
It doesn’t matter what I know, it matters that you know. It can’t be about me.
Paul would not cater to the Corinthian love of human wisdom… that does not mean that his message had no wisdom. In fact, there is a vast wealth of wisdom sealed off to everyone except those who trusted in God’s salvation through Jesus.
Whether human or demonic powers, none knew Jesus’ true identity, or at least not the authority he possessed, otherwise they would have known they were sealing their own doom by inciting the crucifixion, they would not have done it.
Paul lets the church know what they didn’t know, especially God’s wisdom and why. Because it came in a mystery; a “sacred secret” that could only be known by revelation. It is the hidden wisdom that is now revealed by the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which Paul preaches.
So who knows??? God’s wisdom is known only by the Holy Spirit and revealed by the Holy Spirit.
9 However, as it is written: What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived”— the things God has prepared for those who love him— 10 these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. 11 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.
You don’t know what you don’t know, but God does, He will reveal His power and wisdom in due time.
These aren’t the unimaginable glory and riches of what’s waiting for us in heaven. Paul is paraphrasing Isaiah 64:4 to remind us that God’s wisdom and plan is beyond our finding out on our own.
Because v10 tells us God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. This glorious thing has been revealed by God through the life and ministry of Jesus. Regardless of the power they had seen, they only had a vague understanding of the glory of His work and what it would do for His people. But they really did not and could not fully understand it ahead of time. Only God through His Holy Spirit can tell us about God and His wisdom. This knowledge is unattainable by human wisdom or investigation and only known by revelation. Glorious!
V 11 Paul argues from the Greek philosophic premise that like is known only by like. (it takes one to know one)
You can guess what your dog is thinking, but you really can’t know unless he was to tell you. Even so, we could guess what God is thinking, and about His wisdom, but we would never know unless He told us. Thankfully, he does
v12) Relays how we can receive this wisdom. How? Holy Huddle – revelation of Love – For God so loved
12 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.
You don’t know what you don’t know – but please know that God is full of compassion and grace, slow to anger and abounding in love. Don’t assume he’s not.
This wisdom comes by the Spirit who is from God, not from the spirit of this world.
We know the spirit of the world, but God reveals what is given us in Christ. In Christ we become of Christ.
In this Jesus has promised the Advocate, the helper to tell and teach everything – Paul is a witness of that truth and so are we. The knowledge we need to preach the Gospel is what Jesus, through His Holy Spirit does in our heart. We learn Jesus’ intention on the cross, to be for us what we would surely die because of, sin. While we, would become what we never could be unless he became our sin, His righteousness. He became our wrong and we became His right, but only when we trust that in Him there is forgiveness of sin and that is when we confess Him as Savior and Lord.
Valentine’s love symbol is a heart, Jesus symbol is his heart shaped in the sign of the Cross
You don’t know what you don’t know, but God does and he sent his Son to prove it.
