Doth not wisdom cry and understanding put forth her voice? She standeth in the top of high places by the way in the places of the paths. She crieth at the gates, at the entry of the city, at the coming in at the doors. And to you, O men, I call, and my voice is to the sons of men. O ye simple, understand wisdom, and ye fools, be ye of an understanding heart. Hear, for I will speak of excellent things, and the opening of my lips shall be right things. For my mouth shall speak truth, and wickedness is an abomination to my lips. All the words of my mouth are in righteousness. There is nothing froward or perverse in them. They are all plain to him that understandeth, and right to them that find knowledge. receive my instruction, and not silver, and knowledge rather than choice gold. For wisdom is better than rubies and all the things that may be desired and not to be compared to it. I, wisdom, dwell with prudence and find out knowledge of witty inventions." Let's pray. Gracious God, we bow before Thee, the God of omniscience, the God of wisdom, the God of holiness. And we ask of Thee to greatly bless this hour that we might learn a great deal about Thy basic yet profound communicable attributes, that our hearts may go open to truth about Thyself and that we might know Thee as wisdom par excellence better and better in our lives. Lord, we need Thee. We need every attribute. Help us to understand, to grasp, as far as the human mind can do in this world, the beauty, the splendor, the glory, the harmony of these wonderful attributes. Bless us then this morning. Keep us from sin. Guide us in every way. We thank Thee that Dr. Miskin could return home from the hospital already and has shown such remarkable improvement. We pray for Reverend Spons even now as he lays unconscious in the hospital, having fallen. Please, Lord, be mindful of him and his wife and family and show him Thy tender mercy and restore him, if it could please Thee, to health. Strengthen the mourning family in our midst and grant, Lord, that the funeral tomorrow may be owned of Thee. Wash us clean from every sin and teach us here that we have no continuing city. We ask all this in Jesus' name. Amen. all right today we are going to look at finish looking at God's knowledge but primarily at his wisdom and perhaps we will get started on looking at God's holiness as well God's wisdom and God's holiness but first we have some material yet to deal with God's knowledge. On the outline or on page four, A1F, the kinds of knowledge, the kinds of knowledge. So we have two subsections to deal with, kinds of knowledge, and then the practical relevance of that knowledge. God knows himself. 1 Corinthians 2.11, Matthew 11.27. Thomas Aquinas introduced a distinction between necessary knowledge, scientia necessaria, necessary knowledge, or natural knowledge, scientia naturalis, and free knowledge, scientia libera. Necessary knowledge, natural knowledge, and free knowledge. The knowledge God has of himself is necessary knowledge. God knows himself to be what he is, and he knows that necessarily. That is to say, God is God, and the knowledge which he has of himself relates to his very existence. to his own immutability, his own attributes. He knows his attributes. So we call that necessary knowledge. So you can't subtract from the attributes of God and still have God. The essence of who God is, is that God knows himself. Hence, this knowledge is necessary. Free knowledge, on the other hand, refers to the knowledge which God has of His creation, of the things He's made. The knowledge that He has, for example, of His providence, of the world, of people, knowledge he has of everything outside of himself. Theologians have called this free knowledge because it is knowledge that is ultimately suspended upon his will. In other words, it's knowledge which he has of his own will which must come to pass according to his own determination, his own decree. Because of this free knowledge, what comes to pass is what God wills to come to pass. And since God wills freely, no one else is twisting his arm to will something, God does this freely, independently. What God wills, therefore, is not determined by his being in itself, but by what he wills from that being, so what he wills freely. Now we'll be talking more about the free will of God when we come to the section on the will of God, but here it's just necessary for me to distinguish for you between the necessary knowledge of God and the free knowledge of God. Now, some theologians, like Charles Hodge, think that this is not really an important distinction, because God knows everything anyway, and that seems to make some sense. But there is some significance to making this distinction. Let's look at it this way. God's exhaustive knowledge of us provides covenantal significance. God's exhaustive knowledge with respect to us provides covenantal significance. We do not simply stand in awe of God's omniscience, being amazed that he knows everything, similar to the way you might stand in awe of the student who gets an A-plus on his examination because he knows so much. But the way in which the Bible brings us the omniscience of God and focuses our attention upon it, among other ways, is this. We can have confidence in the judgment, in the justice of God. For God knows everything and therefore he's the only judge who takes all the facts into account. Now that in itself turns out to be embarrassing, convicting for us, maybe even destructive because we're sinners. But it also means that God takes into account of what his Son has done for sinners like us. And if we trust in that Son, you see, well, God knows what he's given to us in his Son. So nothing is hidden from God. Nothing is hid by way of deception, or by false modesty in our part, or by trying to hide from God. Psalm 94 verses 5 through 10 says that God, well, it says a lot about God. Let me read it to you. They break in pieces thy people, O Lord, and afflict thine inheritance. They slay the widow and the stranger and murder the fatherless. Yet they say the Lord shall not see, neither shall the God of Jacob regard it. Understand, ye brutish among the people, and ye fools, when will you be wise? He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? He that formed the eye, shall he not see? He that chastiseth the heathen, shall he not correct? He that teaches man knowledge, shall he not know? So the Lord knows not only the past, but also the future. Because he knows the future, he can predict the future. So we have in scripture this phenomenon that we call predictive prophecy. We're not overwhelmed by that thought, are we? Because, well, our God is omniscient. It's the prophetic word of God. And it makes sense. So we can also say, that God knows not only what shall come to pass, but He knows all things possible. That means to say that just as God wills one thing and not another in His divine freedom, So also God knows not only what comes to pass, but also what could have come to pass, but what he chose would not come to pass. Now this is another point at which the creator-creature distinction comes into play. Have you ever had a dream where something's happening, and then you replay it in your mind, and it happens in like five different ways. You say, man, this is a five-part scenario to a dream. Those are lots of different possibilities that happen in your dream, and our mind can go that way, but we can't think of, exhaustively, can we, of all the different possibilities that could possibly exist and don't exist? That's the mystery of God. God knows every possibility. So God knows our creation, not only in terms of what he willed and what he did, but also in terms of what he could have willed and could have done. Now this leads us to a scholastic invention that is called middle knowledge. Middle knowledge. I need to talk to you about middle knowledge for a good five minutes, maybe ten, and if at the end of this ten minutes you still don't understand it, that's all right. It's a bit complicated, I assure you, and yet it's something I just want to run by you, but certainly not anything you're going to use in the pulpit. I just want you to be aware enough of it that when you read about it, you have a bit of a grasp of what it is. But I personally don't think it's terribly useful. It's a bad way to start lecturing about something, but terribly useful for practical daily life. So I'm going to be very brief here. You can read chapters on it and I'm going to try to condense it down for you. First of all, I need to say that Reformed theologians as a whole, not everyone, but as a whole, have rejected the whole concept of middle knowledge, because at bottom, middle knowledge is in one way or another trying to justify a kind of semi-Pelagianism. As you would expect, it really is a Roman Catholic notion. It's based on a classical distinction made by Thomas Aquinas between God's natural or necessary knowledge and God's free knowledge. That is to say, some distinction between the knowledge that God has of himself and the knowledge of what God could do and would do outside of himself. Now, in order to resolve the issues of determinism, or at least apparent determinism, that are involved in this view of divine knowledge, that God has determined to do this and therefore nothing else could be done. Louis de Molina published an exposition we might call it a commentary, actually, on Thomas in 1588. The Latin title can be translated, The Concord of Free Will with the Gifts of Grace. Well, the title says a lot, doesn't it? The Concord of Free Will with the Gifts of Grace. It's right there, you've got semi-Pelagianism in the title of this book. And in this book, Molina proposes this third kind of knowledge, which he calls the Scyantia Medea, the middle knowledge. And this middle knowledge essentially involves this principle, that God possesses knowledge of what any possible creature not just creatures that exist, but any possible creature, left to that creature's free will, will do in any possible world, not just in this earth, but any possible world that God might create. In other words, God has total knowledge of all possible worlds and of what all possible beings will do freely in those possible worlds. So God knows that if Mr. A is put into circumstances B, or Creature A, a creature that we don't even identify with, not on this earth, if Creature A is put into circumstances B, then he or she will do C, or if put into circumstances D, he or she will do E, and so on and so on, ad infinitum. billions and trillions and zillions of possibilities God knows all possible knowledge of all possible worlds of all possible beings and what all possible beings will do freely in all possible worlds that's middle knowledge and on the basis of this knowledge of all possible worlds God knows everything God knows everything that will happen in the world that he does make, our world, without, and this is the key here, without minimizing or destroying the freedom of individuals to act in that world. So in actualizing this world or any other world he might possibly create, world X, world Y, in the actualizing of these worlds X and Y, God not only knows what does happen and what could happen, but he knows it without offending the principle of human freedom. So what Melina really wants to say, and this is the bottom line, there's complete divine foreknowledge on the one hand. There's complete divine foreknowledge on the one hand. And at the same time, there's total freedom within that world, on the other hand. Total freedom. You might call it total indeterminism. with respect to God in that world. In other words, you're operating always by way of free will. Now, two of the texts that are most commonly appealed to by Molina and by his followers And by the way, this became the standard Jesuit doctrine. The Jesuits, of course, are the conservative, in some ways conservative, Roman Catholic theologians who become the brains of the Roman Catholic Church, as it were. Our 1 Samuel 23, verse 11, and Matthew 11, verse 21 And this whole debate over middle knowledge, this may be hard for us to believe in our day in which we're just talking about concrete, practical things. But in the day of the highlight of the Jesuit movement, late Middle Ages and into the Reformed period, this was such a big debate that the Jesuits claimed that the Virgin Mary herself appeared on earth to confirm the teaching of mental knowledge. That's the end of the discussion then, right? Barry came in and told you it was true. Now, throughout the ages, this view was held by some notable Christian philosophers. and it even proved attractive to some in evangelicalism. But there are problems, big problems with the Scythian-Medea, the Middle Knowledge. First, it needs to be recognized that the agenda of Scientia Mediae is a theological agenda. It's really a semi-Pelagian agenda. Second, philosophically, it also opens itself to criticism on the very grounds that the whole notion of it has some degree of incoherency. Let me try to use an analogy here and see if this works. Let's say you have, I'm not sure, are you familiar with the game of chess? Chess is pretty much all around the world, I think. If you have a great chess grandmaster, he spent all his life now getting all possible worlds on the chessboard into his mind. Let's say it was conceivable let's exaggerate this here, that this player has total knowledge of every conceivable chess game that could ever be played on a chessboard. Now that would be phenomenal. So when he moves his king's pawn one space forward as he begins a chess game, Although he has access intellectually into all the possible moves and the worlds of the chess game, he actually has no idea which of those possible worlds he is actualizing. So of that possible world, he does not possess actual knowledge until that possible world becomes an actual knowledge. And the philosophers say this, you see, by analogy, for God to know which of these possible worlds he's creating, his knowledge must be logically prior to his decision to create it. But if middle knowledge is to be real, and man has nothing but a free will, if this is to have a real rather than a merely possible object, then the creation of that possible world must already have taken place. And you see, that is incoherent in the philosopher's mind, because obviously it hasn't taken place except with our Earth. So there are many philosophers who actually don't reject the doctrine of free will and do reject Calvinism who still say, who admit that philosophically this is an incoherent system. But theologically there are also serious objections. 1st Samuel 23 and Matthew 11 can scarcely bear the weight that Scientia Media puts upon them. 1st Samuel 23 verse 11 is not an illustration of how the divine mind works but it's an illustration of how God communicates guidance to his people by means of the Urim and the Thummim. Skien Shemideah reads way too much into it. And similarly, in Matthew 11, Jesus' words in Matthew 11, Matthew 11 verse 21, are interestingly set within a broader context. in which Jesus appeals to the absolute divine decision to hide things from the wise and prudent, the wise in the understanding, and to reveal them to babes. So in neither one of these texts are we able to employ the idea of scientia media arising exegetically from the passage. Secondly, theologically there's a problem because middle knowledge rests the divine knowledge on possible but undetermined worlds. By contrast, scripture frequently speaks about the specific activities of even isolated human beings as being the direct consequence of the divine predetermination. So it would be a very curious theology, indeed, that could align what scriptures have to say about the absolute divine determination, for example, that's involved in the crucifixion. God determined beforehand it would be done. And the principle of scientia mediae. And finally, the Middle Knowledge doesn't deliver It's not capable of delivering what it seeks to do. Namely, to deliver divine omniscience from the principle of divine determination. See, this is ultimately what it's seeking to do. To maintain divine omniscience and yet not divine determination so that the free will of man is determinative, even as God remains omniscient. And the reason why it doesn't deliver on that is because those who believe in Middle Knowledge are, by very definition, committed to some kind of divine predetermination. Even if it means God choosing of which of all the possible worlds will be created, will be actualized. So, middle knowledge fails to escape the tension that's created by Romans 9. The tension of, if God has determined all this, why does he still blame me? Who can resist his will? That's the tension middle knowledge wants to escape, but doesn't escape. Because ultimately, we can still say, but I didn't choose this world to be actualized in which I do A or B or C. For example, let's say I do A, I reject the Lord Jesus Christ. So why does God blame me still if in another possible world I might have accepted Christ? For who can resist his will? So ultimately, Despite all of its intellectual prowess, middle knowledge doesn't resolve the very issue it proposes to resolve. Now, if that has left you thoroughly confused, it might be an inward secret confirmation that you really are a Calvinist and not a Roman Catholic. All right, any questions on that? Well, not every Arminian has fully developed this. This was just the Jesuits doing some, mainly Jesuits, doing some calisthenics trying to justify Arminianism with keeping divine determination. The Arminian has a much simpler system. The Arminian says, God has foreknowledge of everything, but it's not a determinative foreknowledge really, ultimately, because God just foreknows that Brother A and Brother B are going to believe. So that's his foreknowledge. So that's more radical in a sense. That's completely free will. Semi-Pelagian tries to do both. It tries to maintain some determinative element in God's foreknowledge. And at the same time to say, but man is still free. So it's trying to do both. It's almost like it's trying to be a little bit Calvinistic on the determinative end of the equation and Arminian on the responsibility end of the equation. Yes? Just a quick comment. I know that's actually, it is making some inroads in Baptist circles. Today? Yeah. Yeah, it's actually resurfacing in some areas, yeah. Because they have a, Arminianism doesn't explain everything. They don't like it completely. Right. So they try and Yeah, yeah, good point. All right, let's move on to practical stuff now. It's relevance, it's relevance. I just want to look as a practical conclusion to this idea of knowledge by looking at three practical areas. First, some practical instruction. When we ask ourselves, what really does divine omniscience teach the saints of God today? First of all, it's a lesson about the excellency of God, the excellency of wisdom. I read about that from Proverbs 8. It's all over Proverbs, of course. The whole idea of excellency is manifest everywhere. The omniscience of God teaches us the value and worth of all God's creatures, the excellency of Christians in particular. The Excellency of the Christian Church and the Christian Ministry, Ephesians 3, verses 8 and 10. If God is this omniscient God, what He makes, what He perfects, and what He saves, in particular on this earth, restored into His image, must be excellent. It teaches us also a lesson, secondly, about the inscrutability of divine providence. Our wisdom doesn't consist in our omniscience to know everything about God, but our wisdom consists in putting our confidence in the inscrutable knowledge and wisdom of God. trusting God's omniscience. Ecclesiastes 8, 16, and 17. Thirdly, we get practical instruction from God's omniscience about the sufficiency of Jesus Christ. As Colossians 3 verses 5 through 8 points out to us, Jesus Christ is the inexhaustible storehouse of knowledge and wisdom. And therefore, we have in Christ all that we need to face our emotional and spiritual and psychological and behavioral problems. So God's omniscience teaches us to value His Word, knowing that if the omniscient God is the writer of Scripture, we have something in the Bible that goes beyond the value of worldly educators, worldly philosophers and psychologists. Jesus Christ, the all-knowing, is therefore the all-sufficient. And finally, omniscience gives us some practical instruction about the absurdity of trying to hide from God. If God knows everything, We can never get away with any sin. As we read to you from Psalm 94, I think it was, if he made the eye, don't you think he can see? If he made the ear, don't you think he can hear? Every iniquity. will be discovered and punished. Therefore, we never get away ultimately with sin. But we and our society are so prone to think of only man protecting our sins from man. We are so adept at pushing away the omniscience of God, as if it didn't even exist, that we think if we can hide sin from the eyes of man, we've succeeded in burying that sin. And that's absolutely absurd. You know, there's a row right now, as the British would say, about David Letterman, because he's exposed himself and said, well, he's admitted he's had some illicit relationships, and that's hitting the newspapers, at least the papers I'm reading, pretty big time right now. Last night there was an editorial in the paper, and it said the reason why he didn't say something about that before was because he was trying to protect his family and other people and the women with which he was involved and so on. Trying to protect everything. The editorialist said something interesting. He said, my dad always told me when I was a boy, the best way to protect yourself is not to commit sin in the first place that needs protection. Now that's true, see, on a human level. But in a more profound way, it's true on a divine level. And this is what modern man misses so much. So, we must not think of sin in relationship just to man. But when you think of it in terms of the omniscience of God, Just the thought, even, of hiding anything from God is absolute stupidity. Psalm 139. Even if I were to go down to hell, you know, Thou art there. Thou knowest my thoughts, my understanding. We can't even hide a dream that we wake up in the morning and we don't remember. We can't even hide a dream from God. Nothing you can hide from God. And so what a blessing to be able to say with Peter that thou knowest all things, thou knowest that I love thee. What a blessing to be able to appeal to God's omniscience in various situations in ministry. There are many times in ministry that you get into situations where you can't tell people everything. And you know that if you could tell them everything, they would no longer be charging you with their criticism. But by telling them everything, you'd be exposing someone else that you're not allowed to, or something of that nature. A variety of things, actually, would be possible here. But then you just simply have to ultimately say, Lord, I appeal to Thee. Thou knowest that in this situation, I'm not guilty. even though I can't clear my name." That can be a great comfort. The Lord knows, and we surrender to Him. At other times, of course, that's also in the ministry, we're at least partially guilty, and we need to say, the Lord knows that I am guilty, and we need to repent rather than go on defending ourselves. Just face it and repent and flee to the Lord Jesus Christ. And thank God that even though he's omniscient, there's a way of forgiveness in his son. And so that too then becomes our refuge. So if we live lives of transparency and penitent humility before God, omniscience then always becomes a comforting doctrine. But if we're going to try to run a ministry in which we're hiding from God, and we're building our own empire, and we're getting away with what we can get away with, omniscience is a very threatening doctrine. All right, second practical conclusions is practical comfort. Comfort. I just kind of hinted at this in a few ways, but God's omniscience consoles believers in their affliction and suffering and sorrow and confusion. You know, my dad used to tell me when I was a boy, he'd say, my dad had a lot of sayings and they all come back to me now that he's gone. But he used to say this quite often, God's people go down into the grave with more unanswered riddles than answered riddles. And what he meant by that, I think, as I reflect back, I never quite understood it at the time, but is that God has many mysterious providences that we don't understand why he's doing what he's doing. John 3, verse 7, thou knowest not. What I do now, thou knowest not. So it becomes a riddle. Why would God do this? A, at this time, B, to that person, and C, in that way? We don't know. But we do know he's omniscient. And being omniscient, we know he makes no mistakes. So whatever, for whatever reason, God is bringing this affliction on me at the moment or this affliction on my wife or my loved one or my dear elder or someone close to me, I just surrender it to him because he's all knowing. And I believe he's also the good God. And so because of his good omniscience, I find comfort in this. that He never forgets us, even though it feels like He does. Isaiah 49, verse 15 and 16. And He has sworn promises to us, Luke 1, verse 72, that He will always remember us. And beside that, His Holy Spirit is always praying for us. even when we don't know what to pray for for ourselves. Romans 8.27. So when I'm so confused, so upset, so overwhelmed, sometimes that I can't even pray, or can scarcely pray, I can find comfort in this. He knows even that. and his spirit is groaning within me, and Christ is praying for me at the right hand of the Father, so I have a heavenly advocate and an internal earthly advocate, even when I cannot advocate for myself." As a pastor, you will meet people that will tell you that. They'll tell you that they're so sick. They can't even pray, can't even focus their minds to think one thought coherently after another. And they're so grateful to you at that point, when you can coherently pray to God on their behalf. I've had people say to me, thank you so much for praying for me, because I just can't even pray for myself. I'm so glad that you're doing it for me. Well, what a comfort for a believer when he's overwhelmed Everything's such confusion and such sorrow and such mystery and so many riddles are welling up within him. All he can do is just groan to God. But in that groaning, there's even that hope. God's omniscient. Don't understand. But he, he understands. He knows everything. He makes sense out of what seems to me to be nonsense. So this is a tremendous comfort. when we are overwhelmed and discouraged. Thou knowest all things. I can't make sense of it, Lord. I did deny Thee. It's just, I don't know. I don't know. I don't understand it myself. But one thing I know, Thou knowest all things. And because Thou knowest all things, Thou knowest that I love Thee. There is strong confirmation that God's people can glean from divine foreknowledge. God's omniscience helps confirm us in our faith. And it makes us realize that all the false gods of this world are just that, false gods. And that our Jehovah is the only living and true God. He's the only one that knows all things. Isaiah 41, verses 21 through 24. And what a comfort that is. Even Satan, doesn't know you completely, doesn't know your circumstances completely, but our God is all-knowing. So this omniscience furnishes abundant provision for God's people because He's all-knowing. He gives me wisdom and knowledge. and encouragements in the midst of discouragement through His Word. And then thirdly, there are some practical exhortations here. God's omniscience exhorts us to seek God, to seek His communion. When we face danger and difficulty, we're so prone, aren't we, to inquire of ourselves. How am I going to solve this? We go to work to solve it. But the Lord says we should inquire of the Lord, 1 Samuel 23, verse 11. From Him we must seek wisdom, Proverbs 3. We must seek it diligently and earnestly. We must fly to God, to His omniscience. Omniscience also exhorts us to praise God, to praise God in all situations. We ought to glorify Him in His omniscience. We praise Him when we do rely on Him in difficulties from which we can't extricate ourselves. We praise Him when we are sincere in worshipping Him in times of need. We praise His omniscience when we faithfully carry out daily devotions in His presence, where no one else can see us. We're really saying we believe in the omniscience of God, so we're coming to Thee, Lord, with our every need. And we praise His omniscience when we appeal to His all-seeing eye in times of challenges and difficulties. So, omniscience is a call, an exhorting call, to appreciate God, to cleave to God, to trust God, to serve God, to honor God, in every situation. All right, so much then for speaking about the knowledge of God. Do we have any final questions on this attribute of knowledge? Okay, we're going to move then to The wisdom of God. The wisdom of God. The wisdom of God is the second of the intellectual attributes of God. God is not only knowing, but He is wise. So we must ask ourselves then, of course, the old classic question, what is wisdom and how does wisdom differ from knowledge? The basic answer to that question in most books is this. Wisdom is the practical application of knowledge. It's the selection of proper ends and of proper means to accomplish those ends. Somebody can be very knowledgeable about a subject but not have the wisdom to put it into practice or to communicate it. I know a number of ministers who, I think in terms of their intellectual knowledge, It's just incredible how much they know, but they don't seem to be able to have the wisdom to put it into practice in their congregation or to accomplish something with it. It just seems to languish. You see, but God isn't that way. God is not only all-knowing, but he designs to do something with his knowledge. He produces things with his knowledge. He's able to use that knowledge. And he uses that knowledge in the best possible way. And that's why we can say that God is infinitely wise. He uses his knowledge in the best possible way. Well, this is true insofar as it goes. But the scriptural idea of wisdom is actually going beyond this. In the scriptural idea of wisdom, wisdom is something more than a practical application of knowledge. It involves the childlike fear of the Lord. We are told that the fear of the Lord is the chief part of wisdom. We are told that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. You can't really begin to have wisdom without the fear of the Lord. Proverbs 9, verse 10. But what is it then to fear the Lord? Proverbs 8, verse 13 says the fear of the Lord is to hate evil. Proverbs 3, verse 7 says, Be thou wise in thine own eyes, fear the Lord, and depart from evil. So the fear of the Lord is not only to hate evil, but to flee evil. and notice Job 28 verse 28 brings these two ideas together and unto man he said behold the fear of the Lord that is wisdom and to depart from evil is understanding we also have it in the Psalms, Psalm 111 verse 10 the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom a good understanding have all they that do his commandments so wisdom has to do with not only understanding, but the fear of the Lord, and then following the precepts of God in the fear of God. So how do you become wise? You become wise, and that's my third point on the outline, by obeying, by studying and obeying God's law. That's why the psalmist says he meditates on the law of God day and night and becomes the wise man. By meditating on the law, and God of course giving him insight, he is able to discern the distinction between good and evil, to lay hold of what is good and to avoid what is evil. So now we have the idea before us that God is wise and in his commandments are the very embodiment of his wisdom. They teach us what is good and what is evil. Those commandments are the embodiment of his wisdom in words. But there's a whole other field of revelation in Scripture about God's wisdom that goes in some ways beyond words. And that is this, that Jesus Christ is the revelation of the wisdom of God in the flesh. So the commandments of God are the embodiment of His wisdom in words, but Jesus Christ is the embodiment of His wisdom in the flesh. And therefore, in Proverbs, wisdom is personified, and it's understood as a prophetic reference to Jesus Christ. That's why I read to you some verses from Proverbs 8. I, wisdom, dwell with prudence, and so on. And we're told later on in the chapter, in verses I didn't read, that the Lord possessed me, wisdom, in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, wherever the earth was, referring to the Lord Jesus Christ. So wisdom goes much more beyond practical knowledge. Wisdom is personified. Wisdom is Jesus Christ with a capital W. Therefore, Paul is saying in 1 Corinthians 1 verse 30, But of God are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom. Jesus becomes for us wisdom from God. It's only in Jesus Christ, therefore. This is why scripture takes us beyond wisdom just being practical applications of knowledge it's in Jesus Christ that we become truly wise men by taking refuge, recourse to Christ in fact this goes beyond the wisdom of the commandments of God for we become wise men in Christ in a way that we did not become wise men through the law under the old covenant. The law under the old covenant instructed us in wisdom, but we were foolish. We didn't have eyes to see. We didn't have ears to hear. We didn't have the heart to understand. But Jesus, by His death and resurrection, applied to our souls by the Spirit makes us new creatures. He gives us eyes to see, ears to hear, a heart to understand. So we learn to die to sin and live to righteousness. And then that law which was written in the Word is inscribed upon the table of our hearts, but in Christ we then obey that law and become wise men through it. So wisdom is not something from a biblical point of view that can be defined in a neutral way simply as the ability to apply knowledge. You can find people out in the world who don't have saving grace Maybe they're pretty wise in business, or they're pretty wise in using some other gifts. We can use that word, and it makes sense. We know what it means. They've taken their knowledge, they've applied it. But to be truly a man of wisdom, a man of wisdom, not just some little area where we apply practical knowledge, we must first of all be in Jesus Christ. Believing in Him, participating in His redemption, So wisdom is the portion of believers as image-bearers of God restored through Jesus Christ. Wisdom is the portion of believers as image-bearers of God restored through Jesus Christ. So when the Bible speaks about wisdom, how to become wise, We see in those very directions something of the wisdom of God and what it means for God to be wise. God is wisdom, and just like knowledge, wisdom is the gift of his grace, which he makes us to know, hence it's communicable, by his revelation. And that revelation reaches its climax in the Word, the living Word, the embodied Word, Jesus Christ. So those who are outside of Jesus Christ, in the deepest sense of the word, can never be wise, and those who are in Jesus Christ have become wise, and outside of Him we are fools. Now, in particular, God shows his wisdom in every area, and I've listed four of them, in creation, providence, salvation, and the church. I'm just going to cover those briefly with you. In the creation itself, God shows his wisdom. Edward Lee, a 16th century Puritan theologian who remained in the Anglican Church, said this, In making of this great world, God shows his wisdom. All things therein are disposed in the best order, place, and time by the wisest architect. How does David in the Psalms admire the wonderful power and wisdom of God in making the world? Much wisdom and art is seen in the sun, the stars, the creeping things. Solomon in all his glory was not comparable to one of the lilies." And so on. God shows his wisdom in creation, even in small things. Nothing in the created order is defective or superfluous. That's amazing. down to the smallest detail. God shows his wisdom in creation. Secondly, God also shows his wisdom in providence. Providence that he works for the good of mankind. Examples of that abound in the scriptures. particularly in the biblical history of God's people. Think of the ordering of the lives of Jacob and Joseph in order to bring about the providential bondage and then deliverance of Israel in Egypt. Think of the wilderness wandering of Israel. It's a time of trial and teaching that God sends our way now in the New Testament era and says, let them be examples for you. This is all part of God's providential wisdom. And then thirdly, God shows his wisdom in a most special way, of course, in the work of salvation. The work of salvation transcends all human wisdom. In fact, it even transcends angelic wisdom. Thomas Ridgely puts it this way, God is so wise inasmuch as the wisdom of God appears yet more eminently in the work of our redemption. This is that which the angels desire to look into and cannot behold without the greatest admiration for herein is God's manifold wisdom displayed. And he quotes 1 Peter 1 verse 12 and Ephesians 3 verse 10. Paul goes on to say that the mysteries of the Christian faith reveal the wisdom of God standing over against the wisdom of this world. In fact, Paul is actually saying that the mystery of redemption in Christ overcomes objections that have been raised to the divine wisdom which is based on an examination of the Old Testament in isolation. Ridgely goes on to say, this solves the difficulty contained in a former dispensation of providence respecting God's suffering of sin. to enter into the world, which he could have prevented and probably would have done had he not designed to overrule it for the bringing about of the work of our redemption by Christ, so that what we lost in our first head should be recovered with great advantage in our second head, the Lord from heaven." So what Richly is actually saying is all these mysteries we have about when sin, why fall, really get solved when we see the wisdom of God in overruling our fault and sin in redemption, by which God magnifies His attributes in a way He never could have if we had not fallen. And then, fourthly, the wisdom of God is manifest in the church, in the church and particularly through the scriptures being unveiled in the church. Edward Lee again says, The wisdom of God is manifest in the Church in the oracles of Scripture, exceeding all sharpness of human wit. In the original progress, change, and migration of the Church and other mysteries of the Gospel, the profound and immense wisdom of God's counsel shines forth. The margin he again has, Ephesians 3 verse 10 and Matthew 11 verse 25. So the preparation and the trials of the Church in the centuries before Christ, and the coming of Christ at a time of the deepest decline of religion, the darkest period of history for some time, and the preservation of the Church since the time of Christ until today. all manifest the great wisdom of God. Now, since so much of what we said about knowledge applies to wisdom, we don't need to spend a long time on this attribute of wisdom because in a sense it's a subshoot of knowledge. But let me just conclude our time about the wisdom of God by giving you a couple practical uses here as well. The doctrine of God's wisdom has a very practical side. Anyone who wants to be wise should go to God for it. He's the fountain of wisdom. And if we want God to be our teacher, to teach us how to be wise, we need to go to Him and say to Him, Lord, give me wisdom. Give me some of that wisdom that is communicable from Thee. James 1 verse 5, if any of you lack wisdom, let him ask it of God, who gives to all men liberally and abrades not, and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering, and so on. So you can go to God for wisdom by faith, and he promises to give it. And as he gives it, we learn to cultivate a life in the fear of God. We learn to cultivate a life in the fear of God, which is based on God's wisdom. Trusting God and His will and mistrusting ourselves and our own will. Romans 16 verse 27. Now the result of that, if we really learn to live that way, is that we learn that God is wiser, far wiser than we are. And since He is all-wise and makes no mistakes, And He knows what is best and most fitting. That's a common Reformation Puritan word, especially Jonathan Edwards. God always does what's most fitting for us. And knows when best to do what is most fitting for us. His timing is perfect as well. This is all part of His wisdom. Because of all this, because all this is true. We ought to trust God more than ourselves and lean on His wisdom rather than on our own. Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thy own understanding. Proverbs 3. And the net result of that, if we do that in our own life and we then magnify that exponentially, we learn then to hold in admiration all the works of God and all the wisdom of God displayed in the entire church and by extension even in the earth. And we learn to cry out. with Paul and with David, that this is unsearchable wisdom. This wisdom goes beyond us, so that when we don't understand it, and certain things, you have to shake your head and say, why would God allow that? You quickly have to put your hand upon your mouth and say, who art thou, O man? That replies against God. It's not a lack of wisdom on God's part, it's a lack of wisdom on our part in discerning the wisdom of God. And since our knowledge and wisdom is so confined, we often don't understand why God is doing what He's doing. But God knows. His ways are far above our ways, and He knows how to bring good out of evil. Now another practical lesson out of this is that if we really want to be wise, and we want to grow in wisdom, we ought to be constant and diligent in reading and pondering upon the scriptures this is after all God's book of wisdom this is his revelation of his wisdom so if we want to be wise we need to be in the word and thirdly There's a lot of practical benefit here in reading God's book of wisdom, praying to God for wisdom, in that when we cultivate that spirit, that attitude, that we want to walk in the fear of God, we want to obey His commandments, we want to find wisdom in Jesus Christ, we're searching the book that has it, prayerfully, the end result will be inevitably that God will work in us a spirit of humble piety, which itself is inseparable from wisdom. Because it's when we're godly or truly pious, humbly recognizing our insufficiencies and God's all-sufficiency, that we ourselves grow the most in wisdom. Finally, a fourth practical lesson is that divine wisdom is sufficient to help us handle the whole problem of temptation to sin. I read to you James 1 verse 5 a moment ago, if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, and so on. And generally speaking, we think of this text to confirm the idea that we can go to God for wisdom for any practical endeavor. And there's an element of truth in that. But the context is actually speaking about temptation to sin. And James's point is that when we are confronted with temptation, if we don't know how to handle it so as not to fall into sin, God will grant such wisdom if we really don't desire to sin. We really want to stay as far away from sin as possible. When temptation comes, we can go to God with that temptation and seek wisdom. Just as He gives us wisdom for other tasks, so He can give us wisdom in how to avoid this sin. We need to remember we're not the first person on the face of the earth, the first child of God to face this particular temptation. How well I remember my own life, a certain time when I was going through a very severe temptation, very severe temptation. And I didn't know of any believers around me that was going through that temptation. And I was prone to feel sorry for myself. It was heavy. And I remember saying to God in prayer, Who else has experienced this trial? I thought I was the only one. And then God directed me to 1 Corinthians 10 verse 13. I really believe that was God's hand of direction. No temptation which has taken hold of you is unique. It's common to men. But God His sovereign will has allowed that temptation to happen will provide a way of escape And you may be able to bear it That's God's wisdom And so God is able to find a way of escape from every trial every temptation so that when temptation comes either he will take away the temptation altogether or he'll give me wisdom how to cope with the temptation so that I don't fall into sin if I really desire that let him ask of God so there's a storehouse of wisdom available for you dear brother and every believer you know if you will only use it if you will only use it that can cover us in really every need of our lives. I've given you four applications. You could probably draw out applications for wisdom for every area of life, I should think. Proverbs 2 says it so beautifully, I think, Proverbs 2, 6 and 7, that God lays up wisdom for the righteous. Don't you love that expression? It's like he's got this huge storehouse and he lays it up for the righteous. And he hands you the keys to his storehouse and he says, come and take what you will. If you really desire wisdom, I will teach you how to walk in the fear of God. If you really want to walk in the fear of God, I will teach you humble piety. If you really want to walk in humble piety, I will teach you how to obey my commandments. If you really want to obey my commandments, I will teach you how to find wisdom in Jesus Christ. If you really want to find wisdom in Jesus Christ, ask it of me. I've got a storehouse of it laid up for you. Come to me for wisdom. So the psalmist says, we are to count our days. and apply our hearts unto wisdom. Apply our hearts unto wisdom. Wisdom par excellence, Jesus Christ, but also the storehouse of wisdom he has laid up in store So our Heavenly Father not only knows everything there is to know, but He knows what to do with everything He knows for our eternal gain and our best, and that is His wisdom. And He does that in Jesus Christ, wisdom personified. And because it's a communicable attribute, we then are to follow in His footsteps and appeal to Jesus Christ, apply it to Him who is wisdom, And through Him, go to our Heavenly Father, knowing that He knows everything there is to know, and knowing that He knows what to do with it in our lives, and knowing that He's willing, yes, more than willing, to share what He knows with us, as far as we need to know it, so that we too can cultivate wisdom. Okay, that's what I wanted to say about wisdom. Do we have any questions about the attribute of God's wisdom? Yes? As you know, wisdom is God's attribution. The what? Wisdom is God's attribution. Wisdom. Can you understand in relation to divine counsel and divine decree, wisdom relation? Yes, yes. What we do is we say this, you see that all of God's divine decree, all of God's divine counsel flows out of his inherent wisdom. Everything he's decided is wise. And we then, when we look at that divine counsel working itself out in daily life, and we can't make sense of it, we don't then say, well, God has made a mistake, or if I had been God, I would have done this. No. We say, this divine counsel that we see being fulfilled flows out of divine wisdom. So if we don't understand it, the fault lies with us. Not with God. And that's why I mentioned in prayer that Dr. Miskin came home yesterday, which is actually a miracle, by the way, for which we praise God. But four days ago, he was in the hospital facing imminent death. And his wife was weeping on the phone to me and saying, I don't understand why God is doing what he's doing. He trained, he got trained here for four years. They both gave up their doctoral professions in South Africa. He came all the way over here trained for four years, they lost all the money they had, of course, for those four years of training, they had to finance as much as they could. They went back empty-handed financially. He's been there just a few years, and now it seems he's going to die. Does that make any sense at all? Well, if he had died, God would have made sense out of it from God's perspective. We wouldn't have understood it. But she said, I don't understand. And I said to her, I know you don't understand. I understand that you don't understand and I can see why you don't understand and I don't understand either. But before you make a conclusion about God's wisdom here, how do you know that God won't restore him in the next few days? How do you know that God won't lay his hand of blessing on him? bring him back to health, teach him lessons through his sickness that he never could have learned in prosperity, and he could go on and be a better teacher for the rest of his life than he ever could before. And that's exactly what she wrote yesterday when she said he's home, and he's had spiritual lessons from all this, and we're hoping now that God will use this for the rest of his life. You see, God has ways of turning around these mysterious consoles that we can't imagine. I went through trials in my life that, well, quite frankly, I thought nobody would ever come to me again for advice. I just thought I was shipwrecked. I was done. And through the very trials I went through, today I have people from all over the world calling me and saying, I hear you went through this trial, and I'm going through a similar thing. You don't know me, and I don't know you, but can I ask your advice? It's amazing. It's amazing. God's wisdom. We often can't see. We're like walking in the dark or semi-darkness. We can't see very far ahead of us, can we? Maybe a couple feet. But God sees the end from the beginning. He's so wise. He knows exactly what to lay upon us. And I'm convinced, when we look back in our lives, that we needed, for ways we don't even understand, we needed every trial that ever came our way. because God wants us to be exactly the person he's forming us to be, so we can praise him not only, but so we can also be a pastor to the people he's entrusted to us, exactly the way he wants us to be. So just as he raised up Peter, so that Peter would be the exact personality he wanted to write 1 and 2 Peter, although Peter did it infallibly, of course, and we're never infallible, but so God raises us up. You, man, to be the pastors he wants to be in the churches he wants you to be in. Designing you and all your experiences in his wisdom so that you can minister to the people of God. Of the wisdom, Jesus Christ. So this connection between wisdom and divine counsel is a very intimate one. Very intimate one. And once we realize that, you see, then we trust the divine counsel. The problem is when we get in big trouble and we feel like we're drowning, then to cling by faith to what we believe is a great thing. That's when our faith is tested, you see. Are we gonna walk by sight because we don't see the wisdom? Are we gonna say, oh no. God is not being wise or are we going to trust him? Unconditionally, that's the question And God brings enough trials in your life and enough trials in my life and we get tested frequently enough But that question keeps on being an exercise and we do grow we do grow over time and trusting God more In fact, I've had times I mean, I'm still embarrassed how little I trust God. I've had times where I've actually taken my fist and crashed it in righteous anger against myself on my study desk and said, after a trial went past, you stupid fool! God has been faithful to you 10,000 times and why didn't you trust Him again? How could you be so stupid not to trust this wise God? Whose turn is it to pray?