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Exploring God’s Wisdom

Exploring God’s Wisdom

Exploring God’s Wisdom.

“O the depth of the riches and the wisdom and knowledge of God! What a deep wealth of wisdom and knowledge He has! How incomprehensible are His decisions, how unsearchable His judgments! How undiscoverable are His paths, how mysterious His ways, beyond finding out! Who has understood the mind of Yahweh? Who knows how the LORD thinks, or what His thoughts are? Can anyone discern the LORD’s intentions, His motivations? Who knows enough to give Him advice? Is there anyone qualified to be His counselor? Who has given Him so much that He needs to pay it back? Who could ever have a claim against Him? For everything was created by Him, everything lives through Him, and everything exists for Him; So to Him must be given the glory forever! Amen!” (Romans 11:33-36, also Isaiah 40:12-14).

WANTED: Adventurers who want to explore creation’s Final Frontier, the greatest Wonder of the World; must be extremely curious about the nature of God’s Being; motivated to know more about God than you know presently; inspired by the thrill of discovery;  need to be challenged and changed in the process of exploration; have the courage to step into a safe unknown; able to invest considerable mental energy to pursue life inside God with a mustard seed of trust in Him; be comfortable with the certainty of endless exploring; have the patience to pursue the quest one step at a time for as long as it takes; must explore with the vision of C. S. Lewis in his Narnia tales, “Further Up and Further In!”

Contemporary Frontiers. What are the most compelling frontiers in our world that we could explore… Outer space with its 100 billion galaxies, each of them having 100 billion stars? Inner space where protons and electrons and all the subatomic particles seeming to be dancing in joy? The ocean floors across the earth, 80% of which are unexplored? Or perhaps land areas such as remote mountain ranges, untraveled deserts, impenetrable jungles and rainforests, the frozen tundra of the Arctic, isolated islands in the middle of nowhere, or virgin caverns and caves that are largely hidden from humanity? These are all worthy frontiers, but there is a final frontier that tops them all… God. And whatever might be discovered about the Person of God, it’s only the tip of the eternal iceberg. 

Exploring God’s Wisdom:

“It is of the mysterious wisdom of God that we talk, the wisdom that was hidden, that goes deep into the interiors of His purposes. This wisdom of God was once hidden from human understanding and now revealed to us by God. This is God’s secret wisdom hidden before now in a mystery which God predetermined before the ages for our glorification, to lift us into the glory of His Presence. This is the wisdom that God destined for our glory before time began.” (a weaving of 1 Corinthians 2:7 using several Bible translations).

ASPECTS OF GOD’S MYSTERIOUS WISDOM:

  1. God’s wisdom cannot be reached by human wisdom, since… “My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts, says the Lord; And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways, and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9);
  2. God’s wisdom is not acquired through human effort, and so does not depend on philosophical speculation, or verbal eloquence, or logical argument, or persuasive speech;
  3. God alone is wise… “To the only wise God be glory forever and ever in Christ Jesus! Amen!” (Romans 16:27); “Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, to God who alone is wise, be honor and glory forever and ever! Amen!” (1 Timothy 1:17);
  4. God’s wisdom appears to be utterly foolish to the unbelieving world and highly improbable to the skeptical world;
  5. God’s wisdom includes the Cross, which is absurd to unbelievers… the Son of God in glory comes in the flesh, is a humble servant, poor and rejected, is weak and powerless, and submits to a sacrificial death? Nonsense!
  6. God’s wisdom inspired the unexpected plan of salvation, which makes very little sense to doubters and fools;
  7. God’s wisdom contains all the knowledge of the heavens and earth, as well as the perfect ways to apply that knowledge;
  8. God’s wisdom was fleshed out in Jesus Christ, who carried out God’s wise plans to perfection, always doing “the right thing, in the right way, at the right time.” (Don Stewart);
  9. Believers are those who have been given the mind of Christ, and thus can begin to understand the outer boundaries of God’s wisdom;
  10. God’s wisdom is generally not fashionable or popular, and is often misunderstood and then rejected;
  11. God’s wisdom is unexpectedly upside-down from man’s wisdom: the poor are blessed not cursed; the meek are due a rich inheritance; the persecuted are honored; those who are running on empty are actually full of God.
  12. Creation has long been considered a proof of God’s wisdom: “O Lord, what a variety of things you have made! In wisdom you have made them all!” (Psalm 104:24); “By wisdom the Lord founded the earth; by understanding He created the heavens. By His knowledge the deep fountains of the earth burst forth.” (Proverbs 3:19-20); “The Lord made the earth by His power, and He preserves it by His wisdom. With His own understanding He stretched out the heavens.” (Jer. 10:12);
  13. God’s wisdom devised His secret plan of salvation before time began, and only waited to reveal it at the appointed time through the Incarnation;
  14. God’s deep secrets can only be revealed to us and demonstrated through His Holy Spirit;
  15. God’s wisdom planned the scheme of salvation to center on simple faith, not on skill, status, achievement or intelligence. That doesn’t make sense to the prideful human heart that wants to earn it, deserve it, presume it, or claim it;
  16. God’s wisdom is drenched in irony, appearing to be weak and foolish but in spiritual reality is powerful and true;
  17. In His secret wisdom, God is transcendently humble;
  18. A key component of faith is learning to trust God’s wisdom, that He knows what He is doing, even though there is much mystery involved;
  19. God’s wisdom has unlimited depth, height, width;
  20. Almighty God is the one and only source of whatever wisdom is found in this world or the next, and so any wisdom we can acquire is a gracious gift of God’s;
  21. Christ Himself is God’s wisdom: “In Christ all the treasures of divine wisdom, of comprehensive insight into the ways and purposes of God, and all the riches of spiritual knowledge and enlightenment, are stored up and lie hidden.” (Colossians 2:3, Amplified Bible).

Wisdom in the Flesh.  The infinite wisdom of God cannot be imagined by any human being, therefore it can’t be adequately described or accurately defined. We get direct revelations of God’s wisdom, though, as we read the gospels and the life and ministry of Jesus. His amazing intellect was always on full display, even at twelve years old in the Temple with the Torah scholars. We see in all His interactions with others that Jesus had perfect insight, unerring common sense, and a deep understanding of whatever needed to be understood. “God’s understanding is infinite.” (Ps. 147:5). He cleverly practiced the truth in His daily life and thus bore witness to truth at every turn in His ministry. Jesus always had sound reason and logic on His side, made shrewd decisions, and had unlimited discernment. He consistently demonstrated righteous street smarts as He inevitably outthought whoever tried to outthink Him. His unconditional love was never naïve or gullible. His creative imagination was boundless as He told stories, offered object lessons, and used nature as visual aids, showing Himself to be a Master Teacher. There is an impenetrable depth of wisdom to Lord Yahweh that only His Son can reveal.

“Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:24). Jesus demonstrated all these attributes of wisdom, because He Himself is all these attributes in the flesh. Christ is embodied wisdom. Christ is wisdom incarnate, and gave wisdom a face. Christ isn’t merely full of wisdom, He is not merely a source of wisdom for us, He literally is Wisdom with skin in real, concrete life. “Christ is the Wisdom of God.” He is God’s Wisdom made manifest. He was a Personal version of an abstract quality. He makes God’s wisdom clearly seen, visible, experiential, obvious to the senses. God wanted everyone to see what His wisdom looked like, so He sent us His Son Jesus. Christian wisdom is not acquired through human effort, but through uniting ourselves with Wisdom, Jesus Christ; through acquiring the very mind of Christ; through union with Christ, the Wisdom of God. “It is by Him that you exist in Christ Jesus, who for us was made wisdom from God.” (1 Cor. 1:30). By gaining the mind of Christ, we are also acquiring the very wisdom of the Almighty God.

The King of the Mountain. “But do people know where to find wisdom? Where can they find understanding? It is hidden from the eyes of all humanity.  God alone understands the way  to wisdom; He knows where it can be found. He set wisdom in place and examined it thoroughly. And this is what He says to all humanity: The fear of the Lord is true wisdom; to forsake evil is real understanding.” (Job 28). Wise man Job knows wisdom when he sees it. He says wisdom is like a secret treasure buried by God. Wisdom is a sublime mystery, says Job, and only God knows where it dwells. In Job 28, he offers fascinating thoughts in praise of wisdom. He details man’s valiant efforts to mine for silver and gold, digging deep in the mountains for precious jewels. Then he asks a question… We spend all that energy and time and ingenuity to find so-called precious materials, but what about wisdom and understanding, which are far more valuable and the most precious of all? Despite our grandest efforts, Job says, we look for wisdom in vain, unless we start with the source of wisdom, with God. The prudent miner for wisdom starts by approaching the King of the Mountain in reverence, devotion, and trust. Holy fear of the Lord opens the door to wisdom. We honor and adore the King, His presence transforms us, and we grow in wisdom as a result. We find that wisdom is taking root in the fertile ground of our worshipful relationship with God. And in our pursuit of wisdom, much after Job’s time, we find the Father pointing us to the Son Jesus Christ. You can’t be wise, says the King of Wisdom, without My wise Prince.

 

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