Text: Romans 11:33-11:34
Title: OH THE DEPTH OF GOD’S WISDOM!
Hi, thank you for looking at this sermon. I hope it helps. Please do not say the sermon did not help you just because you did not like the style or could not use the entire message for your own needs. I have discovered a few souls automatically hit the ’did not help me’ button if the message they read was not what they were looking for. Please only hit that button if you think God’s people would not be blessed by the message below. Thank you.
Do you realize what would have happened to our souls if the only way we could receive Salvation was through our own wisdom? There would not be one soul saved in the history of humanity. Paul said, “Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For since in the wisdom of God the world, through its wisdom did not know him…” Here Paul says in the pages of 1st Corinthians (1:20-21) that the world’s wisdom wasn’t able to penetrate that barrier that hinders a relationship with God. The wisest among us are fools when it comes to knowing God and living for His Will. So why is it that the wisdom of this world still appears to grab and sometimes hold the attention of so many, including our own children?
It doesn’t take much for we parents to notice that there are a lot of things going on in this world that are contrary to the Will of God. All of us do our best to teach God’s Word and the love of Jesus to our children. We will see them baptized! We will direct them to Sunday school and beyond. We will attempt to live out God’s Will so that our children see us as not merely speakers of the Word but also doers. But unless we keep our children locked up and isolated from the world, they are bound to be challenged with the world’s version of wisdom.
Do you remember the first time your son or daughter came home and said something to you that you did not teach them to say? Jaden now says “LISTEN TO ME” if he wants my attention while I am talking to someone else. I asked Melissa if she taught him that phrase and she said, “No” but we know he picked it up somewhere. In this instance Jaden picked up a phrase that is helpful. But we all know that kids pick up all kinds of words, phrases or habits that cause parents to shake their heads from time to time. Never did we realize when we told our haunt of a German Shepard to “GO AWAY!” that Jaden would begin to tell Ryan to “GO AWAY” in the same frustrated tone. Our kids are like sponges and there is no telling what they will soak up along the way.
So it’s safe to say that our kids will eventually soak up some worldly wisdom that seeks to challenge what they have been taught in the Christian faith. Yet most parents won’t allow themselves to be too concerned. They trust in the foundation of Christ that has been placed in the heart of their children. Besides it’s good for our children to be challenged, that way their faith truly becomes their faith, instead of just head knowledge passed down by their parents. But once in a while worldly wisdom might approach our kids and confuse the heck out them.
The world can provide us with textbooks and documents offering hands-on factual data that can be corroborated with updated materials. There are so many atheistic opinions out there that just seem to make sense to confused kids. Are we really being closed minded for believing that only those that have Christ will go to heaven? Is Christianity really only a myth that confused parents have passed down from one generation to the next? Should we put aside the old ways and embrace the flow of the times? Of course not, but we are able stand firm in this way only after weathering a couple storms ourselves.
To those trying to make sense of this world; to discover their own identity or how to just fit in, those questions you just heard can really rock a person’s faith. There are just so many people in the world that are prepared to point to one resource after the next as to why Christianity is merely only a children’s tale. And all we have is this book, the Bible, and a whole lot of blind faith. Just by the sheer numbers of resources which stand against Christ, to a kid whose trying to make sense of his faith, it might not appear that the Wisdom of God has much of a fighting chance.
Actually, despite the myriad of worldly resources seeking to debunk the plan of salvation created by Jesus Christ, it’s the world’s wisdom, not God’s, that doesn’t stand a chance. We can ask any confused or challenged Christian, kid or otherwise, just how solid the World’s wisdom really is if it couldn’t even recognize the presence of our Almighty God!
This is where Paul’s words in the bottom half of Romans 11 really becomes more that just an expression of faith. Let me remind you what Paul said, “Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways!” You see, on the surface we have just this one book, the Holy Bible but Paul reminds us that the awesome nature of God has no limit; no depth! If God so decided to write down every font of Wisdom at His disposal, this world could not begin to contain such a weight.
Yet because we are Christ’s we can look within the pages of Holy Scripture and easily see this depth of wisdom and knowledge that God has presented to us all. How many times have you looked upon a particular verse of Scripture repetitively over a course of time only to take in something new, special or personal that you never took in before? When that moment happens you are beginning to experience the depth of God’s Wisdom.
What other book in the world can provide comfort to those that hurt, direction for those who are lost, power for those who are weak, and healing for those burdened by the weight of this world? I would ask such a question to anyone trying to balance the world’s wisdom with God’s. Paul was able to delight in both the depths and the riches of God’s wisdom even though the world at the time seemed hardly convinced.
Our Lord makes His Wisdom constantly available to us. Listen to these words found in James 1:5, “If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault.” Here God promises us access to His unlimited resources and that access is free. Try getting that sort of deal here in this world!
We certainly need access to God’s Wisdom especially when it seems that no one else is looking for it. Since the world is often convinced that its wisdom is superior, there is often little reason for the lost to seek the wisdom of God. And if you’re right in the middle of this blindness that permeates the hearts of friends and family alike, no one would blame for feeling a bit isolated.
When you’re isolated and it seems that you’re also up against the world, it is hard to be faithful to our invisible yet immortal Lord. Paul’s family; his fellow Jews certainly didn’t make things easy for him to stand firm in his faith. I mean how easy could it be to remain faithful to Jesus when it seems almost everyone around you is against you? It would have been so much easier for Paul just to give in and go with the flow. But since Paul and the rest of us have regular access to the Wisdom of God, all of us are able to stand against the world’s wisdom almost in the same way that Jesus did when He came to seek and to save the lost.
Paul still confessed in the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God despite all the rejection and temptation he faced. Why? Maybe Paul just wouldn’t allow what he saw in the world, to interfere with what he saw with his spirit. Paul saw his Savior Jesus Christ within his own heart. Paul rejoiced in the riches and wisdom of God, despite the conditions around him, because God did not horde those riches. He gave them to Paul. God gives them also to us.
Paul could have tried to figure out and subsequently challenge God’s course of action. Why does God allow so many of his chosen people to remain in their unbelief? But we know Paul never bothered to voice such a question because he already knew that God’s judgments were unsearchable and His ways were unfathomable.
Like Paul, we also know that no matter what happens to our flesh, eternity is ours in Christ Jesus. Which of us therefore need to challenge God because we don’t understand why so many people still reject Him? We have salvation and we know that God desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of His truth! And so we continue to move forward in blind yet certain faith! Our Lord has convinced us that our wisdom could not even begin to fully understand the Ways of God and we’re content with leaning on God instead of ourselves anyway. And yet, look how much our Lord has already made clear to us.
There is a lot that the Holy One of Israel has conveyed to us, to the entire world matter-of-factly, but only those with Jesus upon them take in what God has given. What Godly wisdom do you recognize within you? What do you know about the Will and purpose of God that others do not? God’s ways are unfathomable. He tells is in Isaiah 55:8 that ‘His Ways are not our ways, nor are our thoughts His thoughts’ and yet we have been given opportunities to see His Grace work through a life challenge and we have seen God change us to live for Him so that our ways do indeed become more like God’s ways. God’s judgments are indeed unsearchable and yet what he has told us so far makes so much sense.
To us it makes sense that Jesus, Holy and undefiled, had to take upon Himself the world’s sin in order for the world to be redeemed and raised up to heaven. Glory to God! It makes sense that only someone Holy could make us Holy. To us we find perfect clarity in recognizing that Jesus is the Son of God, we see Him prophesied in the pages of the Old Testament and we see those prophecies fulfilled in the pages of the New. None of this understanding could be possible without the Lord providing us His Wisdom by way of the Holy Spirit. So when someone struggles with these forms of clarity, it is God’s Word that can restore one’s vision of faith all over again. It is the power of God’s Wisdom to bring us and keep us into a saving and wise relationship with Jesus Christ.
We haven’t even figured out the nature of man and yet with God we know everything we need to know about Him, in order to have a solid and everlasting relationship with Him. We might not be able to understand everything that God does in this world, but we sure do understand that everything that God does in this world is Holy and Just and Pure. I wish I could count on the actions of my neighbors in the same way I can count on the Holy activity of God. But since I can’t I will simply trust that God will work Good for all those who are in Christ Jesus; He will work good even in times when our own faith struggles.
We understand the battle that comes with being a Christian. If were easy being a saved child of God in a world that seeks to condemn anything connected with Jesus, there would be more of us to spread the Good News. Jesus himself tells us that because of Him, mother will go against daughter and father against son. The wisdom of the world will always fight against the wisdom of God, but it will always lose. For whatever genus points to another way to live or to interact with others, it will never turn out as perfect as God’s Way. In a world that claims that there is no such thing as an absolute, Jesus say’s otherwise and since the world hasn’t offered any promising way to eternal life that is not based upon our own works, I’d say we are doing pretty well sticking by Jesus.
Actually, it is Jesus who sticks by us isn’t it? There is no greater love that has ever been displayed whereby the Son of God would suffer and die and then rise again so that we might also have eternal life. By Grace we have been saved through faith, and this not of ourselves. It is the gift of God not of works so that no one may boast. And God’s gifts are often received more purposefully after we have endured a little faith challenge.
Our children will see their faith become challenged on regular occasions. They will be approached with all sorts of ideas and practices that go way against God’s Way. Yet God’s Wisdom will prevail! His Grace will remain! His Power will overwhelm! And just the mere presence of God and the impossibility of owning what we presently own in Christ will enable our children and ourselves to remain faithful to God.
Again I confess that the Wisdom of God cannot be overcome with the wisdom of this world and we are certainly comforted with that assurance, especially as we look upon the innocent eyes of our children and wonder what is to come as they continue to interact more with the wisdom of this world.
I’ll leave you with these final words, words shared not by the wisdom of man but by the wisdom of God: Jesus said, “no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand.” Now that is the sort of Wisdom that assures us that despite the world’s onslaught of wisdom, God’s Wisdom will still prevail within us! Amen!
Copyright(c) 2005 TOTALLYSAVED@MSN.COM SERMONS
All Rights Reserved
