The Wisdom of God
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So What?
So What?
Good morning! As always it is a joy and pleasure to be here this morning. If you have a Bible with you, go ahead and open it up to Romans chapter 11. That is where we will find ourselves today as we explore the scripture.
But, first, how many of you a couple days ago to yesterday started to prepare and embrace for the storms that we were supposed to be having last night and this morning?
Or even better yet, anytime we here of a snow storms coming through, and it might possibly hit our city, what is the first thing that everyone seems to do? They go to the grocery store, and they buy milk and bread.
I honestly cannot figure out why people buy up milk and bread when a snow storm is coming through? I’m sure we’ve all heard it said, but are people trying to make milk sandwiches? or bread cereal? If I’m honest, neither of those sound appealing, or really the right things to be buying if the power goes out or your stuck inside for a long period of time.
I think if I was preparing for the next Snowmageddon I would be buying cases of water, and imperishable food—like Twinkies or something. But I guess to each his or her own, right?
No matter what though, we often allow the weather to determine the decision we make going forward. Whether is is as simple as the Sun is out and it will be a nice 70 degrees, to a full on blizzard that could keep us in the house for days at a time.
And that decision making process is what we would all wisdom. Wisdom can simply be defined as “the power to see, and the inclination to choose, the best and highest goal, together with the surest means of attaining it.”
In practical terms from our example, it would be knowing that certain weather conditions would force us to make decisions about how we dress, what we buy, and how we respond in order to be the most safe and most comfortable.
And we all use wisdom everyday in order to make decisions about our lives based on the information and knowledge that we have in order to achieve certain goals and outcomes that we think would be best for ourselves.
So, if you have been with us the last couple of weeks, then you would know that we have been in our latest series “Going Deep,” where we have been exploring the deeper character and attributes of God, in order that we might know God better for our own lives and our relationship with him.
And as a we continue that series today, we have explored what it means and why we should know this God to whom we belong. And then we explored God incarnate: how he became man in the person of Jesus. We need to know that our God in not just one, but that He is three in one that in his fullness he is a relational God as Father, Son, and Spirit. As Father, Son, and Spirit, they have a perfect relationship with one another. And we have been called into that relationship to know and be known by Him.
Finally, last week, we spoke to the immutability of God, that is that God is unchanging. He has always been and always will be and in all that time God has not and never will change in His being, and in his character, in his actions. He can never change because he is perfect, and that which is perfect has no need to change and cannot change from its perfection.
Today, we move from God’s immutability to his wisdom. As I have already mentioned, wisdom is something each of us use everyday, but we are completely limited in our scope of wisdom. God, however, utilizes wisdom to its utmost perfection in every way. You cannot separate God from His wisdom, and his wisdom with his power (just read or or or ).
All of these passages affirms the almighty wisdom of God. And I say almighty because his wisdom separated from his power is no real wisdom at all. Meaning, if God is only wise, but is not all powerful, then his wisdom is useless in that he could never bring about the outcomes of his wisdom. And if he is all powerful, without wisdom, then he could never use his power to the best possible outcome.
Therefore, God in His wisdom, cannot be separated from his power. And today, I want us to turn to a specific passage in the Bible that is eternally relevant to all os us as it applies to God’s wisdom and His power in its ultimate revelation to us.
Scripture
Scripture
Lets read from : you can follow along in your Bible or on the screen:
33 Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!
34 “For who has known the mind of the Lord,
or who has been his counselor?”
35 “Or who has given a gift to him
that he might be repaid?”
36 For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.
The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.
Before we get to far into today’s message, [let us pray]
As we read today’s passage, and explore what it has to say about our God. I want us to first put it into context. Up to this point, Paul has been writing this letter to the Romans, that is the church in Rome, with pin point theology. This has been called Paul’s greatest theological work, a proto-systematic theology laid out for us all.
But what’s even more, that in every chapter and verse previous, Paul lays out the most beautiful, expanded, and detailed account of the Gospel. From verse one he exclaims that he is an apostle “set apart for the gospel of God” and then every verse forward he proclaims that very Gospel.
He leaves out no detail from the fall of man, the gift of grace, the justification through faith, the wages of sin, the salvation of the elect, the glory of Christ, a love everlasting, and the perfect sovereignty of God.
And at the very end of this explanation of the gospel is where we find ourselves today
What makes God Wise to us?
What makes God Wise to us?
Wayne Grudem says about this passage,
Paul knows that what we now think of as the “simple” gospel message, understandable to the very young, reflects an amazing plan of God, which in its depths of wisdom surpasses anything man could ever have imagined. At the end of eleven chapters of reflection of God’s plan of redemption, Paul bursts forth into spontaneous praise: “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgements and how inscrutable his ways!”
Here is what we must see in this passage: There is immeasurable amounts of depth to the wisdom and knowledge of our God. This series we have been in is called, “Going Deep,” and even as we go deep with one another and go deep into our knowledge of God, there is still one thing we must always continue to grasp and remember: the depths of God go far deeper than we could ever imagine or fathom.
Paul in this instance, even after laying out this one of a kind explanation of the gospel must turn to God and declare “O God, the depth of your wisdom is still even to great for me to understand!”
But even still, it is not TOO great to not be recognized and to be worshipped and praised.
So what is this wisdom that Paul is speaks of: after all, the reason we are all here is because we want to know the depths of God. At least, we want to start getting some where. The depths of God’s wisdom is particularly tied to the outcome of the Gospel.
The depths of God’s wisdom is particularly tied to the
At the beginning we gave the definition of wisdom as “the power to see, and the inclination to choose, the best and highest goal, together with the surest means of attaining it.” And according to this definition, there is no greater wisdom found except that which is found in God.
You see, in God’s omniscience, that is the infinite depths of his knowledge, God knows all things. And a part of having perfect wisdom, it is to have perfect sight. Sight into all things that possibly are and all things that could possibly be. And then in response to having the perfect knowledge of all things, then God acts within His wisdom to bring about the perfect outcome in the perfect means of attaining that outcome.
And so, throughout Scripture, we see the workings of God’s wisdom played out in Exodus, as he sees and carries out the release of the Hebrews from Egypt, to their wondering in the wilderness for a generation, to the perfect timing of their entering the promised land, through the time of the judges and the kings, all leading to the time of Roman occupation, when at the perfect time in history, One should appear that alters all of history.
From the beginning, we as humans could never have understood the depths and the lengths to which God would go in order to begin salvation to the world. This is his ultimate act of wisdom!
At the time of the fall, when God cursed the snake he said in : I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.
I will put enmity between you and the woman,
When God spoke those words, it would not become clear what He meant until the cross. It would not see its fulfillment until Jesus hung on the cross at Golgotha, that is the place of the skull, where the cross was drove into the ground, where Jesus would face a wound, but a wound that would not bring ultimate death, but ultimate life through the defeat of the ancient serpent. Though Jesus was bruised, he was not beaten, as God had planned in , we see the fulfillment in , , , and .
But we could not see it! We could not comprehend it! In Paul writes, “
and between your offspring and her offspring;
18 For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
he shall bruise your head,
He knows that the Cross doesn’t make sense! He knows that it is folly, it is foolish, it is incomprehensible to those for whom it has not been revealed! Sometimes the ways of God seem foolish to us because we cannot see as God sees and cannot know as God knows.
The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.
and you shall bruise his heel.
The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.
But I will say this, I am thankful for the third day! I am thankful for God’s plan in Jesus, for without it, I would still be dead in my sin with no hope for a future. I would feel free, but be captive to that which I could never hope to escape on my own. That is the power of God’s wisdom and might!
I said from the beginning, God’s wisdom cannot be separated from his power. You cannot have a weak God that is all wise, or an all powerful God that is foolish. God’s plan, from the beginning of creation was Jesus! He foresaw the outcome of his creation in giving Adam and Eve free will in the garden. But even in his foreknowledge he set in motion his plan of redemption. Not because he needed to, but because he wanted to!
What is our Wisdom with God?
What is our Wisdom with God?
And so, we look to the cross, to Jesus as the ultimate fulfillment of God’s wisdom in each of our lives, we look to the cross as the hope for our futures.
I began this message by asking about how we make our decisions about the weather. We utilize what little, and I do mean little, wisdom we have and leverage it to out best outcomes.
And here is where we shift from God’s wisdom for himself, and us being made in the image of God and what it means to be made in His likeness.
Because we cannot talk about the wisdom of God, without also touching on what that wisdom means not only for us in the salvific work of the cross, but in our day to day lives.
We call the attributes of God that have been passed to us communicable attributes, that is the things that we have that God also has, unlike the incommunicable attributes of God, like his immutability, that he does not change. We change, whether it is in the simple fact that we age, or that our personalities change, our abilities and skills grow, etc.
Wisdom is one of the communicable attributes. Of course we know that some have been given more wisdom than others, I’m looking at all our milk sandwich people. But how as Christians do we see wisdom in our own lives and as a part of our knowledge and communion with God? Because that is the only wisdom that matters for us.
I think this becomes clear in our passage today when Paul writes,
34 “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?”
or who has been his counselor?”
The correct answer to this question is nobody. Nobody can stand to God and tell Him and better way to do things than what He is doing and what he already knows. Though, i would venture to guess that many of us have tried?
I know that I have. Just think back to the last difficult, trying, and insufferable circumstance you were in, or maybe you are going through right now. And how many of you have turned to God in prayer and tried to tell Him how he should do his job and fix this, make it better.
Back in January I was reading from one of my favorite, and most practical books of the Bible, James. And in , James is exhorting Christians to be joyous in their times of trial. But here is the kicker, when James says that each of us in struggling with joy in the trial, he does not tell us to pray for peace, or for comfort, or even for joy.
No, instead he says this in , “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.” Of all the things that we could possible be praying for in the midst of our trial, James says we should ask for wisdom!
When I was reflecting on this very passage, I asked this question to myself, and subsequently everyone that follows me on instagram, “as faithful followers of Christ Jesus, when we face trials of various kinds, why do keep asking of God, “Why are you doing this to me?, instead of asking, “Why are you doing this for me?”
The simplest answer, somehow, though redeemed and justified, yet still being sanctified, we think that God is not all wise and does not know what is truly best for us. We have believed the same lie that Eve and Adam believed in the garden, God is holding something back from me, and so I have to tell him that he does not know what is best for me, so I am going to have to tell him how he should do it.
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, I want to tell you right here, right now, that you are not more wise that God. You cannot see as God see, nor know as God knows. But in his grace, he is calling you to ask for wisdom in your trial.
And as J.I. Packer has made abundantly clear, when we ask for wisdom from God, it is not about us knowing as he knows and being able to see as he sees as to why we are experiencing what we are experiencing, but it is an invitation to KNOW GOD as he is and to better obey and follow his ways.
says it best “The fear of the lord is the beginning of Wisdom.” Do you hear the call to KNOW GOD in receiving of wisdom? It is a call to know him through reverence. To know the God is the ultimate One, and to reverence him as such is a wise thing to do.
Further, to follow in his ways is also wisdom: “ Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies, for it is ever with me...” To be obedient to all that God has commanded is also what is means to be wise. So when you lack wisdom and ask for wisdom, you are asking that God would allow you to better follow in what he has said in his Word.
Conclusion
Conclusion
Let me leave you with this good word of wisdom found also in Romans; , “And we know that for those who love God all things work together or good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” Today, be wise in knowing that the God of all creation. The One True God, who from the foundation of the world knew you by name, who had a plan of redemption for us all, is all WISE in every way.
98 Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies, for it is ever with me”
This same God, came down from heaven, took on flesh in the person of Jesus Christ, to secure your salvation by death on a cross. And on the third day, he rose from the dead, putting sin and death in the grave, that we might have life everlasting. In his infinite wisdom, he knew exactly how to accomplish this goal for all those whom he has called.
for it is ever with me
The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.
And know today, brothers and sisters, that he is still calling those whom he has chosen, hoping they too may become wise, though it seems foolish to the world, by placing their hope in that which they cannot see through faith in his Son.
And so as Paul closed, I too close
36 For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.
The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.
[Let’s Pray]