Knowing God - Chapter Ten (10) - God's Wisdom and Ours

Reading - Knowing God - Chapter Ten (10) - God's Wisdom and Ours

God has incommunicable qualities - characteristic of God alone; man does not share any of them.

• independence - self-existent and self-sufficient
• immutability - entire freedom from change, leading to entire consistency in action
• infinity - freedom from all limits of time and space
• simplicity - there are in him no elements that can conflict, so he cannot have divergent thoughts and desires

When God made man, though, he communicated to him certain qualities such as goodness, truth, holiness, righteousness, etc. 

• Genesis 1:26-27 - Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness;...God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

At the Fall, man lapsed into ungodliness. Yet, God is at work in Christian believers to repair this ruined image. 

• By being renewed in the image of Christ - 2 Corinthians 3:18 - But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.
• By being renewed in the image of God - Colossians 3:10 - and have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him. 

One of the qualities of God - all-wise - he wants to impart wisdom on his creatures.  

• Seek wisdom - Proverbs 4:7 - The beginning of wisdom is: Acquire wisdom; 4:13 - Take hold of instruction; do not let go. Guard her, for she is your life.
• Wisdom is personified - Proverbs 8:34-36 - “Blessed is the man who listens to me (wisdom),
  watching daily at my gates, waiting at my doorposts. For he who finds me finds life and obtains favor from the Lord. But he who sins against me injures himself; all those who hate me love death.”
• God is ready to provide wisdom - Proverbs 9:4-5 - “Whoever is naive, let him turn in here!”
  To him who lacks understanding she (wisdom) says, “Come, eat of my food."
• Ask God for wisdom - James 1:5 - "But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him."

Two prerequisites: 

1. We must learn to reverence God -  The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. - Psalm 111:10, Proverbs 9:10, 1:7, 15:33, Job 28:28. We must be humble, teachable, stand in awe of God's holiness, sovereignty, see our own littleness, distrust our own thoughts, and willing to have our minds turned upside down.  
2. We must learn to receive God's word - Colossians 3:16 - "Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you." Psalm 119:98-99 - "Your commandments make me wiser than my enemies, for they are ever mine. I have more insight than all my teachers, for Your testimonies are my meditation."  I am to soak myself in the Scriptures. When Paul gave those words he was simply speaking of the Old Testament. It is through scripture that we are "equipped for every good work (2 Timothy 3:17)." Read the Book!

What does it mean for God to give us wisdom?

It is Not

Packer gives an illustration - standing on a train platform and seeing the train movements - provides you a very rough idea of the workings on a train. But if you were taken back to the control room and there saw signal-box and diagrams of how everything works individually and yet together - you will better understand the reason each train operates individually the way it does. 

     People make the mistake that this is what it means when we acquire the wisdom of God - in turn giving us the reason why all things work together for good. This is futile inquiry. It is true God will teach us principles through His providence but this is different from trying to render God's purpose about every detail of our lives. 

It is

Packer gives an illustration - driving a car and learning how to navigate the car through the many different situations that are present -- a parked car on the side of the road, the turning roads, stoplights, other cars - thus wisdom is being clear-sighted and realistic in looking at life as it is. It is learning to navigate myself through life as life changes, curves, as events suddenly present themselves, as things break.

Ecclesiastes Teaches us a mystery
Packer turns to Ecclesiastes to see what it teaches us on wisdom. Solomon's conclusion is wisdom is a frank acknowledgement that this world's course is enigmatic (mysterious), that much of what happens is unable to be explained to us and that most occurrences under the sun bear no outward sign of a rational, moral God ordering them at all. The writer (preacher) is stating that we must be careful to not equate book knowledge with gaining wisdom (Eccl 12:12).

Look at life:

• Aimlessly recurring cycles in nature (1:4-7)
• Life is fixed by times and circumstances over which we have no control (3:1-8, 9:11-12)
• Death comes, haphazardly, bears no relation to whether it is deserved (7:15, 8:8)
• Humans die like beasts (3:19-20), good ones die like bad ones, wise ones die like fools (3:16, 4:1, 5:8, 8:11, 9:3)
• Wicked prosper, good don't (8:14)

Thus, then there is a temptation to conclude that life really is as pointless as it looks. Thus, we then think that wisdom is figuring out what makes God tick and why he does what he does; Christians can at times think they have the inside scoop on this. (Note: It is hard answering questions from skeptics with "I don't know" because we don't like the way this possibly makes us look as faith followers.) God wants us to walk by faith (yet growing up we did not like hearing from our father - "because I said so" and we don't like hearing that from our Father today). There seems to be a certain danger in feeling like the Christian must be able to answer any question that is asked. [Today the response among Christians is simply to retort, "God is sovereign" which really is another way of saying, "God works things out the way he wants and I realize it doesn't make sense, but that is okay because I am fine with God being in control."] The moment the Christian thinks he knows all the answers the Christian will be confronted with an experience in life that he didn't.

"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 lives." As thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child: even so thou knowest not the works of God who maketh all.. - Ecclesiastes 11:5

Ecclesiastes Teaches Wisdom

• Fear God and keep His commandments (12:13)
• Trust and obey him, reverence him, worship him, be humble before him, and never say more than you mean and will stand to when you pray to him (5:1-7)
• Do good (3:12)
• Remember that God will some day take account of you (11:9, 12:14)
• So eschew, even in secret, things of which you will be ashamed when they come to light at God's assizes (12:14)
• Live in the present and enjoy it thoroughly (7:14, 9:7-10, 11:9-10)
• Seek grace to work hard at whatever life calls you to do (9:10)
• Enjoy your work as you do it  (2:24; 3:12-13; 5:18-20; 8:15)
• Leave to God its issues; let him measure its ultimate worth; your part is to use all the good sense and enterprise at your command in exploiting the opportunities that lie before you (11:1-6)