CHAPTER TEN
THE WISDOM OF GOD
Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! --- Ro 11:33
Few attributes of God are more basic and fundamental to the Christian life than that of wisdom. This is because, as Christians, we are called to live by faith and not by sight. What is faith? Faith is essentially trust in God’s infallible Word, which is to say trust in God’s wisdom. On the surface, this sounds relatively easy and straightforward. However, frequently our “wisdom” and God’s wisdom clash—sometimes violently so. We need to be honest with ourselves and admit that, at times, trusting God can prove to be quite challenging. Yielding to God’s wisdom entails a deliberate and painful rejection of our own so-called wisdom.
King Solomon instructs God’s people: “Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD, and turn away from evil” (Pro. 3:5-7). Many of us have memorized these verses. Some of us may even have them engraved on a plaque on our wall or a magnet on our refrigerator. But they’re deserving of further meditation. These verses are an implicit mandate to confess that God—and God alone—is infinitely wise. This passage calls us to acknowledge that God knows what is best, and we do not!
Thus, we should orient every aspect of our lives to align harmoniously with the Scriptures. This includes our marriages, families, jobs, finances, hobbies, entertainment, education, politics, church involvement, etc. To paraphrase Cornelius Van Til, “God’s Word is authoritative in everything it addresses, and it addresses everything.” We need to submit ourselves without reservation to every word that comes from God’s mouth. We should not do this only in our morning devotional time or family worship; we need to do this 24/7.
The author of Hebrews is forthright in stating that a life of faith is the only option available to us if we are to please God. “And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him” (Heb. 11:6). Our faith is especially precious to God when we are blind to his purposes but persevere nonetheless with undaunted and unwavering trust, with full confidence in his character. There is a saying that goes: When you can’t see where God’s hand is leading, trust his heart.
One time a newly married couple brought great joy to our congregation when they announced that they were going to have a child. After a doctor’s visit, their joy, and ours, was doubled when they learned they were expecting twins. However, a few months later, our joy quickly turned to sorrow when the twins died in the womb. I met with this couple shortly after the “delivery” of the deceased infants. The husband told me, “We’re leaning on Deuteronomy 29:29,” which he then quoted from memory: “The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.” Even though they were not privy to the secret council chambers of the godhead, they were going to continue to trust God and lean not on their own understanding.
BOWING BEFORE A FROWNING PROVIDENCE
In William Cowper’s classic poem/hymn God Moves in a Mysterious Way, we’re advised to be careful how we interpret God’s “frowning providence”:
Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
But trust him for his grace;
Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.
J. I. Packer comments on the concealed providence of God and some of the reasons behind it: “For the truth is that God in His wisdom, to make and keep us humble and to teach us to walk by faith, has hidden from us almost everything that we should like to know about the providential purposes which He is working out in the churches and in our own lives.”
Sooner or later we all have to humbly bow before the transcendent wisdom and will of God, and we will have to do this by faith and not by sight. If you think about it, how could it be any other way, since, as the prophet Isaiah reveals: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isa. 55:8-9). As we continue to meditate upon the nature of God and his ways, we must never fail to acknowledge the gulf—the infinite gulf—that separates the Almighty Creator from the tiny creature. Like Job, we often speak prematurely and ignorantly of things we don’t understand, only to later repent in dust and ashes. A better course of action would be to put our hands over our mouths and be silent, as we strive to trust God’s infallible wisdom that is infinitely higher and holier than our own.
After outlining God’s glorious redemption in Christ for eleven chapters, Paul can no longer contain his composure; he explodes with a doxology: “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” (Rom. 11:33). Webster defines inscrutable as something “that cannot be easily understood; completely obscure or mysterious; unfathomable; enigmatic.” But Paul is not suggesting that God’s wise ways are utterly unsearchable or totally inscrutable. Enough has been revealed about God’s wisdom to give a satisfying answer, even if it’s not an exhaustive one.
Wayne Grudem writes, “God’s wisdom means that God always chooses the best goals and the best means to those goals. This definition goes beyond the idea of God knowing all things and specifies that God’s decisions about what he will do are always wise decisions: that is, they always will bring about the best results (from God’s ultimate perspective), and they will bring about those results through the best possible means.” And we should stress that the best results are God’s glory and his people’s everlasting joy; in Jesus Christ those two results are one. Grudem underscores the means as well as the ends of God’s wisdom. Practically, where the rubber meets the pavement, we need to trust that God knows where he is taking us, and that he also knows the best way to get us there, even if that way sometimes takes us through some rough terrain. With this kind of faith, we can say with Job, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him” (Job 13:15, KJV).
The Bible states without equivocation that God is wise. In Romans 16:27 he is “the only wise God.” Job says that God “is wise in heart” (Job 9:4); “With God are wisdom and might; he has counsel and understanding” (Job 12:13). However, we don’t have to depend solely upon bare declarations about God’s wisdom. Creation itself stands as a monument to a wise Creator. Proverbs 3:19 says, “The LORD by wisdom founded the earth; by understanding he established the heavens.” The psalmist stated, “O LORD, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all; the earth is full of your creatures” (Ps. 104:24). Specifically, the psalmist connects God’s wisdom with his creatures.
In an intriguing video series, Incredible Creatures That Defy Evolution, Dr. Jobe Martin, a former evolutionist, describes how animals could not have possibly evolved over time without becoming extinct. For example, the giraffe with its long neck requires a powerful heart to pump blood all the way up to its brain. However, the sheer force of this powerfully pumping heart would literally blow out the brains of the giraffe when it bent down to drink water, if it were not for a delicate series of spigots and a sponge that dissipate and absorb the rush of blood. “How could that evolve?” muses Martin. “He needs all these parts there all the time, or he is dead.” The giraffe manifests the wisdom of God described by the psalmist.
“Then there’s the woodpecker, whose rat-a-tat hunt for tree grubs should send it home each night with a mighty migraine. Instead it is studied by surgeons who want to learn more about head trauma in humans. The bird has a piece of cartilage that acts as a shock absorber and an extra-long tongue that can reach into the tree to pluck out its meal. It also has a glue factory that makes the bug stick until it is in the woodpecker’s throat and produces another secretion to dissolve the glue on swallowing.” With equal fascination, the series also examines the ostrich, the butterfly, the penguin, the bombardier beetle, the platypus, the gecko, and others. Each animal is a masterpiece of our Creator’s genius.
God’s wisdom is also evident in rain. Yes, that’s right, rain. John Piper helps us to see God’s wisdom in the complexity and beauty of rain. Piper writes:
Picture yourself as a farmer in the Near East, far from any lake or stream. A few wells keep the family and animals supplied with water. But if the crops are to grow and the family is to be fed from month to month, water has to come from another source on the fields. From where?
Well, the sky. The sky? Water will come out of the clear blue sky? Well, not exactly. Water will have to be carried in the sky from the Mediterranean Sea over several hundred miles, and then be poured out on the fields from the sky. Carried? How much does it weigh? Well, if one inch of rain falls on one square mile of farmland during the night, that would be 2,323,200 cubic feet of water, which is 17,377,536 gallons, which is 144,735,360 pounds of water.
That’s heavy. So how does it get up in the sky and stay up there if it’s so heavy? Well, it gets up there by evaporation. Really? That’s a nice word. What’s it mean? It means that the water sort of stops being water for a while so it can go up and not down. I see. Then how does it get down? Well, condensation happens. What’s that? The water starts becoming water again by gathering around little dust particles between .00001 and .0001 centimeters wide. That’s small.
What about the salt? Salt? Yes, the Mediterranean Sea is salt water. That would kill the crops. What about the salt? Well, the salt has to be taken out. Oh. So the sky picks up millions of pounds of water from the sea, takes out the salt, carries the water (or whatever it is, when it is not water) for three hundred miles, and then dumps it (now turned into water again) on the farm?
Well it doesn’t dump it. If it dumped millions of pounds of water on the farm, the wheat would be crushed. So the sky dribbles the millions of pounds of water down in little drops. And they have to be big enough to fall for one mile or so without evaporating, and small enough to keep from crushing the wheat stalks.
How do all these microscopic specks of water that weigh millions of pounds get heavy enough to fall (if that’s the way to ask the question)? Well, it’s called coalescence. What’s that? It means the specks of water start bumping into each other and join up and get bigger, and when they are big enough, they fall. Just like that? Well, not exactly, because they would just bounce off each other instead of joining up, if there were no electric field present. What? Never mind….”
We could continue on and note that God’s wisdom is also evident in our solar system. We could talk about the sun, moon, stars, gravity, earth’s axis, oxygen, H2O, dirt, etc., which all demonstrate the manifold wisdom of God. One of the problems with science in the government schools is that it is divorced from worship. Scientific discoveries should be followed by the exclamation: “‘Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created’” (Rev. 4:11). God’s wisdom is stamped upon every single facet of creation from the smallest insect to the largest galaxy—if we only have eyes to see.
The pinnacle of God’s wisdom is found on a small hill outside the city limits of Jerusalem called Golgotha, where God’s only Son was crucified. It was there that “he was pierced for our iniquities” as “the LORD … laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isa. 53:5, 6). It was there that “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree’” (Gal. 3:13). It was there that Jesus was “canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross” (Col. 2:14). It was there that “Christ … suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God …” (1 Pet. 3:18). It was there that “for our sake [God] made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21). It was there that Jesus “disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it” (Col. 2:15, NKJV). It was there that Jesus fulfilled the main purpose for which he came, because “the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mk. 10:45). Due to the mighty achievements of the cross (we could multiply this list) it’s small wonder that when the apostle Paul came to Corinth he “decided to know nothing among [them] except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2). We refer to this as the Good News; but in reality, it is the best news.
God’s wisdom is so high that from the vantage point of the unregenerate, this epic event, this divine display of wisdom, is utter foolishness. “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing” (1 Cor. 1:18). To get an idea of just how foolish a crucified Messiah was in the ancient world, consider a graffito depiction from around 200 AD that now hangs in the Palatine Museum. The drawing depicts a man standing beside a cross on which a man is being crucified; the man being crucified has the head of a donkey. Beneath the image is an inscription in Greek that reads: “Alexamenos worships his god.” Clearly it is intended to mock a Christian named Alexamenos, as well as his crucified Lord. This is the historical context in which Paul says, “[W]e preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles” (1 Cor. 1:23). Of course, it is. What a tragic irony that the most magnificent manifestation of God’s wisdom is ridiculed as foolishness. However, as Paul went on to say, “[B]ut to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ [is] the power of God and the wisdom of God” (v. 24). What the world scorns as foolishness, God’s people celebrate as wisdom.
How are we to respond to God’s wisdom? Proverbs chapter one is powerfully illustrative at this junction. We observe first of all that wisdom is eager to be heard. “Wisdom cries aloud in the street, in the markets she raises her voice; at the head of the noisy streets she cries out; at the entrance of the city gates she speaks” (vv. 20-21). Wisdom is personified as a woman crying out to be heard. It’s interesting that the author, Solomon, doesn’t just present wisdom as a precept or a principle to be followed, but also as a person to be obeyed. Who is this person? This person finds fulfillment in Christ, “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:3). Christ is the wisdom of God, as Proverbs 8 makes clear. (As a side note, wisdom is personified as a woman because the Hebrew word for wisdom, chokmoth, is a feminine noun.)
I’m emphasizing this personal aspect of wisdom, so we understand that to ignore or reject the voice of wisdom is to ignore or reject God himself. Moreover, if we politely dismiss God’s wisdom, we should be fully aware of the grave consequences that may await us. Wisdom says, “‘Because I have called and you refused to listen, have stretched out my hand and no one has heeded, because you have ignored all my counsel and would have none of my reproof, I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when terror strikes you, when terror strikes you like a storm and your calamity comes like a whirlwind, when distress and anguish come upon you’” (Pro. 1:24-27).
Imagine that the calamity has come. And it can come in a thousand different ways—a hurricane, a disease, a fire, a lost job. Wisdom says solemnly, “‘Then they will call upon me, but I will not answer; they will seek me diligently but will not find me. Because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the LORD, would have none of my counsel and despised all my reproof, therefore they shall eat the fruit of their way, and have their fill of their own devices’” (Pro. 1:28-31). At last, these scoffers are ready to seek wisdom, but it’s too late. God may be gracious and answer positively, but we must never presume that he is obligated to do so. Many a Christian has unfortunately experienced the deafening silence of God.
On the flip side, Wisdom promises, ‘“If you turn at my reproof, behold, I will pour out my spirit to you; I will make my words known to you”’ (Pro. 1:23). This is nothing less than a promise for personal revival. If you respond to reproof with repentance, God will pour out his Spirit and make his words known to you. I believe “spirit” should be spelled with a capital “S,” because it refers to the Holy Spirit. How is God’s Word made known to us? Obviously, it’s through his Spirit. As I said, this is a reference to revival, which is seen in God promising not just to give us a little trickle of his Spirit, but to pour out his Spirit. This reminds us of the day of Pentecost in Acts 2, where Joel’s prophecy was fulfilled and God poured out his Spirit. This is what is being promised in Proverbs. Corresponding to this is the promise of God to make his Word known to us. God’s Spirit and God’s Word work in tandem. Following the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost was an incredible response to Peter’s sermon: “So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls” (Acts 2:41).
Our hearts should leap when we hear Wisdom say, “I will make my words known to you.” I fear that too many of God’s people aren’t excited by this statement, because they fail to see how crucial the Word of God is to their lives. It’s simple: When God wants to bless a people, he reveals his Word to them. Conversely, when he wants to curse a people or judge them, there is a famine of hearing the words of God (Amos 8:11-12). Wisdom and truth are essential to the Christian life. If we want to experience freedom, that comes by the truth. Jesus said, ‘“If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free”’ (Jn. 8:31-32). Do you want to grow in sanctification and Christ-likeness? Jesus prayed for us, “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth” (Jn. 17:17). Martin Luther stated it well, “Let us then consider it certain and conclusively established that the soul can do without all things except the Word of God, and that where this is not, there is no help for the soul in anything else whatever. But if it has the Word it is rich and lacks nothing, since the Word is the Word of life, of truth, of light, of peace, of righteousness, of salvation, of joy, of liberty, of wisdom, of power, of grace, of glory, and of every blessing beyond our power to estimate. Responding to God’s wisdom is a matter of life and death, of revival and judgment.
The $64,000 question is: Can the wisdom of God be obtained by his people? We can answer with an emphatic Yes, for we are promised: “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him” (Jam. 1:5). Is there any area of struggle in your life that requires wisdom and insight? Perhaps you need guidance in your marriage or in rearing your children or with your finances or your job. If we would all pause for a moment, I believe we could easily think of several complicated matters that necessitate a wisdom that is beyond us. I love to begin counseling sessions by reminding those I’m meeting with that while we may not know the best course of action to take in this situation, God does. He’s not stumped. Christ is our Wonderful Counselor who can solve any dilemma. All we need to do is ask for wisdom. We don’t need to flog ourselves or crawl over broken glass. Yet, the tragedy is, as James says, “You do not have, because you do not ask” (Jam. 4:2). After all, why should I ask for wisdom, when I can whine and complain to God and anybody else who will listen? Perhaps, I can encourage you by confessing that I have at times caught myself complaining, when I should have been praying. During those self-imposed pity parties, it’s as though God interrupts and says, “Are you finished? Would you now like to ask how you can move forward?” I’ll pose the same question to you: Are you now ready to ask for God’s wisdom? As you do so, remember that God promises to give generously.
God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants his footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm.
Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never-failing skill,
He treasures up his bright designs
And works his sovereign will.
Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take,
The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy, and shall break
In blessings on your head.
Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
But trust him for his grace;
Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.
His purposes will ripen fast,
Unfolding every hour;
The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower.
Blind unbelief is sure to err,
And scan his work in vain:
God is his own interpreter,
And He will make it plain.
William Cowper
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