We continue in our preaching series on discovering our destiny, discovering your destiny. Across our group of churches, we have been spending a few weeks preaching on how setting high standards in our lives is important as disciples of Jesus.
On this Father’s Day, we are going to spend some time considering the impeccably high standard of the wisdom of our Heavenly Father.
According to the Oxford Dictionary, Wisdom is defined in this way: The quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgement; the quality of being wise. The fact of being based on sensible or wise thinking.
Our Heavenly Father is the all-knowing God. He knows everything about everything, everywhere in every when.
Our Heavenly Father knows what is good and what is bad, what is wrong and what is right in His sight.
Our Heavenly Father knows both the actual and possible.
Our Heavenly Father knows what was and what might have been, what is and what will be.
How can God know all that? How can He be so wise?
The simple answer is God is God and God is eternal. The word eternal means “everlasting, having no beginning and no end.” Psalm 90:2 speaks of God’s eternal existence: “Before the mountains were born, before you gave birth to the earth and the world, from beginning to end, you are God.”
If we are honest, it’s hard for our minds to grasp the concept of eternity. As humans, we are born, we live for a while, we die. Seconds, minutes, hours, days, years, centuries, we measure human existence based on time. God is different, no beginning, no end, He has always been and He will continue to be forever.
Right at the start of the Bible, Genesis 1:1 begins with a statement of truth, “In the beginning God”. At the beginning of recorded time, as we understand time, God was already there. The Bible does not begin by trying to prove the existence of God or by examining His eternal nature, it simply begins with “In the beginning God”.
If we looked back from the moment we call “the beginning” eternity is there and God was there.
If we looked forward from the moment we call “the beginning” eternity is there and God is there.
Revelation 1:8, “I am the Alpha and the Omega—the beginning and the end,” says the Lord God. “I am the one who is, who always was, and who is still to come—the Almighty One.” The apostle John also stated this truth about the nature of Christ: “In the beginning the Word already existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1).
The Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, co-equal, co-eternal, God has always existed. God was, and is, and will be, forever.
God’s eternal nature and His eternal power are revealed to us through His creation. Romans 1:20 tells us “For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see His invisible qualities—His eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.”
We can see the eternal nature and eternal power of God in what He has created. The sun and the planets in their specific orbits century after century. The seasons, Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, come at their appointed time. The fields produce their crops at the right time. The trees produce leaves in spring and lose them in the Autumn. These things continue year after year. God in His wisdom has set these things and others in place. Nothing will stop them until the day when God Himself will create a new heaven and new earth that will continue into eternity. And the promise for those who belong to Christ through faith is eternity with God.
The wisdom of our Heavenly father is unequalled. The Bible teaches us many things about the wisdom of God. The Bible records God’s wisdom for us, our Heavenly Father has clearly spoken on many things, He has given us His divine direction for every aspect of life.
God’s wisdom is freely available to all who seek it. The Bible, the Word of God, it provides insight, it provides guidance, it tells us of our Father’s perfect precepts. The Bible provides us with an understanding of the world, of nature, of people, of events, of the Heavenly Realm and the future.
God’s Word provides us with a framework for understanding the issues we will face and guides us to make choices that will bring glory and honour to God. The wisdom of our Heavenly Father gives us a godly perspective on our choices. God has already given us the clear direction of His wisdom in His Word we also have the presence of the Holy Spirit in our daily lives.
The Holy Spirit can give us insight, direction, truth, encouragement and wisdom. God The Holy Spirit speaks to our heart and to our mind.
How do we know what we are hearing, what we are feeling is a prompting of the Holy Spirit? How do we know if it is God speaking or our own thoughts? A message from God will never contradict the Bible.
When we hear the Holy Spirit, we must evaluate it, test it, against the Word of God.
Friends, God expects us to be filled with spiritual wisdom and make wise choices. I want us to look at what the Apostle Paul wrote about the Wisdom of God in 1 Corinthians 1 verses 18-25 and verse 30. There is a lot to unpack in these verses, so I have split the passage into three parts for us to consider.
First part 1 Corinthians 1:18-20; The message of the cross is foolish to those who are headed for destruction! But we who are being saved know it is the very power of God. As the Scriptures say, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and discard the intelligence of the intelligent.”So where does this leave the philosophers, the scholars, and the world’s brilliant debaters? God has made the wisdom of this world look foolish.
Paul makes it clear that there are two categories of people: the “foolish” and the “saved.” Every person in the world is in one of these categories, there are no other categories, people are either saved through faith in Jesus or they are not.
Paul is clear The message of the cross is foolish to those who are headed for destruction! But we who are being saved know it is the very power of God. Five times in eight verses, Paul uses a form of the word “foolishness.” The basic Greek word is moria. In 1:25 it appears as an adjective, moros. The root of the English word “moron” is this Greek word. Literally, what Paul is saying is, there are people who consider the cross to be moronic! The cross does not make sense to them.
The message of the cross is salvation is given to all who repent and turn to Jesus. It is the message of salvation by grace through faith. God’s plan of salvation, God’s wisdom, not human merit or wisdom.
Salvation is extended to all people. Yet so many reject Christ, so many reject His sacrifice. So many reject the gift of salvation.
Maybe it seems too simple.
Maybe it is a problem with pride.
Maybe it is an unwillingness to accepts that there is an Almighty God.
Maybe it’s a matter of rebellion against God.
Maybe it’s an unwillingness to accept the fact that we are sinners in need of a saviour.
The only way to God, the only way of forgiveness, the only way of salvation is the message of the cross.
The unbeliever, the unsaved, considers the cross nonsense; the Christian, the disciple of Jesus, knows the truth, the cross is the power of God for salvation.
The message of the cross is not just helpful information or good advice it is the wisdom and power of God.
Our salvation, our eternal life, our destiny is through the cross of Christ.
The preacher and author John Stott said this: “I could never myself believe in God if it were not for the cross. In the real world of pain, how could I worship a God who was immune to it? I turn to that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn-pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in God-forsaken darkness. That is the God for me. He set aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death.”
That friends is the message of the Cross.
In verse 19 Paul quotes from Isaiah 29:14-15, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and discard the intelligence of the intelligent.” Isaiah was specifically referring to a political shrewdness, Paul widens the application to cover all human wisdom that exalts its own cleverness. The point Paul is making is all human plans that ignore God will ultimately mean nothing.
God is the Creator, we are His creation. God is far wiser than we could ever appear to be. God does not need human help. God sets aside the cleverness of the wise.
In verse 20, Paul asks some rhetorical questions. Where is the philosopher? Where is the scholar? Where is the debater? Paul is asking, what is the wisdom of the professional experts of this world compared to the wisdom of God?
God has made the wisdom of this world look foolish. The wisest human mind would never have created God’s plan of salvation. God’s plan of salvation is simple: Romans 10:9, "If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved".
I think human wisdom would have come up with something more complex, something more confusing, something more difficult to achieve. In Father God’s wisdom, salvation is available to all who trust in Jesus. In Father God’s wisdom, He sent Jesus, His Son, to die for our sins.
The death of Christ on the cross displays Father God’s wisdom. It is a plan of salvation where God remains both just and the justifier. Romans 3:26, "God did this to demonstrate his righteousness, for He himself is fair and just, and He makes sinners right in His sight when they believe in Jesus".
In the cross, we see the wisdom of God revealed. In His infinite wisdom, God the Father designed a plan that did not compromise His holiness or leave His righteousness unfulfilled. The debt for our sin has been paid. The wrath of God has been satisfied. Now we are free to enter into His holy presence.
God has made the wisdom of this world look foolish. It is important we realise, God is not against us gaining knowledge. God created us to be inquisitive, to investigate, to think. The problem isn’t knowledge, the problem is how we interpret and apply knowledge. God knows everything that can be known or could be known. We need to trust Him and recognise that our understanding is limited.
Second part: 1 Corinthians 1:21-23; Since God in His wisdom saw to it that the world would never know Him through human wisdom, He has used our foolish preaching to save those who believe. It is foolish to the Jews, who ask for signs from heaven. And it is foolish to the Greeks, who seek human wisdom. So when we preach that Christ was crucified, the Jews are offended and the Gentiles say it’s all nonsense.
Paul states how God humbled the world by keeping those who were wise in their own eyes from knowing God. Then Paul explains further; the Jews ask for signs, the Greeks search for human wisdom, the disciples of Jesus preach Christ crucified.
The Jews were looking for signs of power. They wanted God to prove Himself to them. Paul is describing people who don’t want to obey and serve God; they want God to serve them. It is as if they expected God to submit to them before they would consider submitting to Him.
When Jesus was on earth, the Jewish leaders repeatedly asked Him to perform a sign from heaven, but He refused. The Jews of the time were looking for a political leader who could deliver them from the Roman Empire. The idea of a crucified Messiah was against everything they understood the Messiah would be.
Perhaps it is difficult for us to understand what crucifixion meant to the Jews. The cross was a symbol of death, of shame, of punishment. In the modern world, the horror of the symbol of the cross has become almost non-existent.
People wear a cross around their necks as jewellery, the cross can be seen worn around the necks of the deeply religious, the superstitious, and those who think it just looks nice. Crosses are placed on church walls and church roofs, some build churches in the shape of the cross. All that would have been unthinkable to the Jews of the first century. Crucifixion was seen as something so terrible that even the word was avoided in conversation.
Let me give you a modern day equivalent. Imagine a piece of jewellery in the shape of an electric chair or hangman’s noose. Not a nice thought to our modern minds. That is what the Jews thought of the cross.
The Jews were looking for power, for might, for strength, for glory, and to them the cross was none of those things.
The Jews emphasis on miraculous signs meant they were looking for a Messiah who would come like a mighty conqueror and defeat all their enemies. A Messiah who would set up His earthly kingdom and return glory to Israel. The Jewish idea of Messiah was never an unemployed carpenter from Nazareth who died the shameful death of a common criminal on a cross. Yet in Father God’s wisdom, that was exactly who Jesus the Messiah was.
So, that was the Jews, what about the Greeks?
The Greeks didn’t practice crucifixion, they didn’t have the problem the Jews did. The Greeks looked to philosophy as the answer to the problems of life. The modern parallel is the people who might submit to God if they can work Him out. People who want God to fit into their minds before they will let Him fit into their lives.
Yet to the Greeks, and many in the modern world, the idea of a man hanging on a cross to save the world was nonsense. The Greeks emphasised wisdom, people still study the writings of the Greek philosophers today.
Yet, they saw no wisdom in the cross, they looked at the cross from a human perspective. If the Greeks had seen the cross from God’s viewpoint, they would have discerned the wisdom of Father God’s perfect plan, His plan of salvation.
Third part: 1 Corinthians 1:24-25 & 30; But to those called by God to salvation, both Jews and Gentiles, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. This foolish plan of God is wiser than the wisest of human plans, and God’s weakness is stronger than the greatest of human strength.
God has united you with Christ Jesus. For our benefit God made Him to be wisdom itself. Christ made us right with God; He made us pure and holy, and He freed us from sin.
Praise God, there are those who believe, there are those who experience the power and the wisdom of God.
Paul preached Christ crucified. The message of the cross may seem foolish to some, but it is the power of God for those who will receive it. Friends, we are those who are called, we are those who believe, we are those who are being saved, we are those who have responded to the call of God, and our Heavenly Father has granted us His wisdom and His power.
This foolish plan of God is wiser than the wisest of human plans, and God’s weakness is stronger than the greatest of human strength. This verse needs explanation, this verse is simply Paul suggesting that IF, emphasis on IF, if it was possible for God, our creator, to be foolish and weak, even then He would still be wiser and stronger than humans, His creation, could ever be.
God has united you with Christ Jesus. For our benefit God made Him to be wisdom itself. Christ made us right with God; He made us pure and holy, and He freed us from sin.
The wisdom of our Heavenly Father, His plan, is here: those who trust in Jesus are united together. When we repent, when we trust in Christ as Messiah, as Lord, as Saviour, we are born-again. Born into the family of God, bonded around our love for the One who died to pay the penalty for our sins.
This is the central truth of the Christian faith, Christ was incarnated, He lived a perfect life, He willingly went to the Cross in your place, in my place.
Christ’s death on the cross, His sacrifice on the cross, was the only thing that could ever pay the price for our sin.
Then on the third day His triumphant resurrection, the proof that He was who He said He was. This is the way of wisdom, For our benefit God made Jesus to be wisdom itself.
Jesus is the only way of salvation, the only way of truth, the only way for forgiveness of our sins, the only way to eternal life. Christ HAS made us right with God; Jesus HAS made us pure and holy, and Jesus HAS freed us from sin.
This is the wisdom of Father God. The wisdom of the cross is our message, our hope, our confidence.
The world may despise the message of the cross, are to preach the cross of Christ, stand firm by the cross, never be ashamed of the wisdom of the cross. In His wisdom, our Heavenly Father has given us hope, he has given us a destiny. In Christ, we are forgiven, we are lifted out of our sin. We are released from condemnation, we are given new life, and our destiny is heaven. In His wisdom, our Heavenly Father has given us the way of our salvation.
Finally, I will close with this, our Heavenly Father promises counsel, direction, wisdom, insight and understanding to all of His children. My encouragement to you and to myself this evening is trust the wisdom of Father God.
By God’s grace and mercy, and by the power of The Holy Spirit, may each and every one of us experience the wisdom of God as we discover our destiny.
May God bless you. Let’s pray.
