Pastor Dan Eddy
Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31
The Wisdom of a complicated yet simple God
5-30-10
I.
Introduction –
Professor Nagel
A theology professor at Concordia Seminary at
The students, eager to impress the Cambridge England educated professor,
began responding: (raise hand like a student): God is “omnipresent,” “all
powerful,” “knows everything.”
The professor shook his head in frustration. Correct answers but not the
ones he was looking for. He wanted them
to think wisely.
So other students responded describing God: “immutable,” “uncreated,” “infinite,” “indivisible.” The professor
shook his head with even greater irritation. Correct answers but they were
missing the point. He wanted them to
think wisely.
Finally some student, probably a little intimidated to speak up at this
point, meekly described God as “A
carpenter?”
Instead of scowling, the professor changed the direction of his head shaking;
now smiling. Others responded with “born as a peasant,” “had fingers, nose,
hair, a mouth.” Other chimed in “could
walk, run, and laugh.” Others explained “He cried, and felt pain, suffered and died on the cross.”
The professor has made his point. The God that we make so complicated and
distance was simple and very much like you and me. That’s God’s Wisdom.
Often when we hear the words “Triune
God,” our Lord sounds very theologically academic, more like a philosophical
concept, a bit impersonal, and little too theoretical, far-fetch to have any
real impact on our lives today. He’s a God who seems quite distant.
But, King Solomon in His Holy Spirit inspired wisdom wanted to present
the Lord as the most powerful, yet personal God. And in our Old Testament text
for this morning, he used Wisdom to drive home the point.
II.
Wisdom – simple
understandings of truth from a complicated God
Wisdom…it’s the thing we desire most. Without it, we live lives of
fools. Without wisdom, our lives have no order. Without it, we are doomed to failure.
But with Wisdom, nothing is
impossible. Wisdom brings us answers, guidance,
comfort, and confidence.
Yet wisdom can an 89 cent term…a belly-button word. A concept that by
itself has no meaning. One that has no certainty or truth if it is not connected
to someone or something much bigger and better than us…an education
institution, a research facility, the Internet, or God, Himself.
So our text from Proverbs 8 presents Wisdom with very specific
attributes. For example, Wisdom has stood and continues to stand. Wisdom is
everywhere. Wisdom is all powerful. Wisdom is true understanding. God possesses
the ultimate Wisdom.
But, at first Wisdom seems distance, impersonal, abstract, and not
really practical until Wisdom speaks
using the very personal word “I”. Verse 4 (all NIV), Wisdom says, “To you, O men, I call out.” Verse 23: “I was appointed from eternity, from the
beginning, before the world began.”
And then it appears that Wisdom has an identity apart from God the
Father. Verse 27: “I was there when he
set the heavens in place.” Verse 30: “Then
I was the craftsman at his side.”
It seems like a bit of a mystery: Wisdom created the world with God the
Father, but Wisdom was developed before creation? Wisdom both worships God and
is worshipped by humans? Wisdom is
intense delights, and passes on those intense delights to the human race.
It’s almost as if Wisdom is an intermediary between us and the Father. A
go-between, taking the complicated inner-workings of God and translating them
into someone personal we can know, trust, and follow. Wisdom speaks God’s Word,
because Wisdom is the Word. The Word spoken, that took nothing and created the
universe by merely speaking.
Why is this all important? Because we live in a world that questions the
existence of God while at the same time wants a relationship with Him.
For example, 15 years ago Joan Osbourne sang the song “What if God was one of us.”
If God had a name, what would it be
And would you call it to his face
If you were faced with him in all his glory
What would you ask if you had just one question
What if God was one of us
Just a slob like one of us
Just a stranger on the bus
Trying to make his way home
God is not distant and He is one of us. Jesus was born as a slob, by the
world’s standards, to a peasant carpenter’s
family. God has fingers, nose, hair,
a mouth, can walk, run, and laugh. He cried, felt pain, and helped people
through theirs. I pray for people like Joan Osbourne and others who don’t see
God in the person of Jesus, as real as God in human flesh.
The Apostle Peter confirmed that God is one of us on that famous
Pentecost sermon some 2000 years ago. Acts 2:36: "Therefore let all
So what may seem a little confusing in Proverbs is made abundantly clear
if we let God’s Word interpret itself. 1 Corinthians 1:30 (ESV): “…you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us
wisdom from God…”
Christ has always been even if Jesus hasn’t. Christ made His way from
His home in heaven to earth and to the home in your heart. Wisdom spoke The
Word and re-created you at your baptism. And only Christ Jesus, in the true
Wisdom of God, can explain how He can be here (point in heart) and up in heaven,
and yet coming back in the flesh some day. How He can be mysteriously Wise and
present in this very personal meal of bread and the fruit of the vine.
The Lord in His Wisdom wanted to be the God we could all hear, know, and
trust…to give you and me answers, comfort, and confidence. He is not a silent
God expecting you to figure things out on your own.
Jesus gives you the intense delights of His love, seen every time you
praise Him for His unending blessings in your life.
Now I can’t completely reason how three persons of the Deity is only one
God. And I can’t completely explain what He meant when Jesus said He and the
Father are the same, and how the Jews understood His claim of being God’s Son as
being equal to God. Then there are other verses where Jesus considers His
Father greater. How does the Holy Spirit play a role in all of that? And yet if
we believed in a superior God as the Creator with His Son and Spirit being
sub-gods, we would be violating the First Commandment which says there is only
one God, period.
And how can God be one in nature but Jesus has two natures…the nature of
God and the nature of man? We lay out all the verses of Scripture….let Wisdom
help us discern it until we are humbled in recognizing that we don’t know all the
inner workings of God.
It’s like asking a five year old child how an internal combustion engine
works: Most know…turn the key, move that stick in the middle, hit the pedal,
and watch the car go. See dad get pulled over by the police officer. My point
is the children only know what they’ve been told and see on the outside. We are
no different as Children of God.
If we happen to figure everything out about our Lord, perhaps we
wouldn’t fear or have faith in Him. Perhaps, we would feel He was something we could
control and manipulate to get what we want. Proverbs 9:10 ESV: “The fear of the Lord
is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.”
Both the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds reflect what Scripture allows us
to reason about God. So anytime you have a question about the nature of three
persons of one God, look at these Creeds to help clarify matters.
III. The theoretical God versus the One who
touches your life
But remember, nobody really wants to believe in an impersonal god unless
he or she wants to control him. The more personal and relatable God is, the more
we see His love, His wrath, His forgiveness, His presence in our lives, the
more you see the difference between the theoretical God versus the One who
touches your life today.
The famous author, intellectual, and scholar C.S. Lewis is a great
example of this. Many of you know Lewis for his famous works like Chronicles of Narnia, which includes the
classic “The Witch, the Lion, and the Wardrobe,” made into a popular movie
about 5 years ago.
Anyway, even though Lewis had produced a great volume of literature on
Christianity, he was not always a believer in Jesus Christ as the Wise Son of
God. His mother died of cancer at age 9. He was wounded fighting for the English
in World War I, and was horrified by the whole experience. His view of God
being good was shattered. He was an avowed atheist.
But as he began teaching Medieval Literature at
One night Lewis and Tolkien were walking through the park and talking
until the early hours of the morning when the conversation turned to mythology.
Lewis felt that myths were imaginative but merely lies, and that included the
myths of the Bible. Tolkien said that the beauty of the myths of the Bible is
that they happen to be true. God wisely planted a hunger inside of Lewis to
know what would seem to be impossible was made real in time and space,
especially in the “myth” that God really did walk the earth, died, and rose again.
That really bothered Lewis to the point that a few days later he believed again
in Christ Jesus as His Lord and Savior.
Lewis, in all his intellectual formations and education, saw a
complicated, perhaps made-up God as real again. That faith grew to write many
volumes of literature still read today like The
Screwtape letters, and Mere
Christianity.
Lewis expressed a very real and personal God in his writings but his
relationship with Christ would be tested as he would fall in love late in life
to Joy. Joy was like his mother. She was
diagnosed with cancer. A former atheist herself, the two wedded, and had four
years of wedded bliss. And even though her cancer went into remission, she would
end up like Lewis’ mother. His wife’s death devastated him, but this time his
faith remained strong. Wisdom prevailed.
This morning….please leave here assured that we don’t believe in a
theoretical, impersonal, intellectually distant God. Yes He is complicated to
comprehend in all of His inner workings, but He is also the same God who is so
simple and wise as to be so personal that He knows the number of hairs on your
head. And that means He loves you enough to give you His ever-saving and
everlasting Wisdom. (Point to the cross).
Wisdom prevails for you. Amen.