The Wisdom of God Given to Us, Pt. 2

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The world has never had a shortage of smart, hardworking people. It’s also never had a shortage of people who are smart, hardworking, and deeply unhappy. If intelligence and effort aren’t enough, what are we missing? Pastor Nick Gatzke shares practical, biblical guidance about true wisdom and how we live.

Amy and I had the opportunity to live in London, England for some time. And during our time there, in one square mile of central London, more money passed through in the midst of commerce and trade in that square mile than any other city in the world every single day. I’ve walked the libraries of Oxford University. I’ve been in the shadows of the Towers of Cambridge, where for eight to ten centuries, people have been trained for success in the wisdom of the world. And when you think about the acquisition and the application of knowledge and what happens there and who has gone before us and what they’ve done, you’re forced to stop and to wonder, what kind of wisdom do we have compared to that? But all of this worldly wisdom is not the same as God’s wisdom.

1 Corinthians 1:21 says, For since in the wisdom of God the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. The wisdom of the world leads to a certain type of skill and benefit, but it does not lead to the wisdom of God, which gives us the greatest skill for living right now and for eternity. And when we think about that, and we think about Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 1 .21 and the wisdom of the world, we ask ourselves the question, well, what are… elements of the wisdom of the world. We could probably list a number of axioms that describe it. Things like more knowledge equals more power or strength leads to success or success is defined by what you have and more money equals a higher standing and working harder equals higher achievement and show me a sign or some evidence and I might believe what you’re saying or be a generally good person and God will be pleased. with you and bless your life. Or recognize that sometimes even though you’re trying to be a good person you have to step over some other good people to get where you want to go in this world or possibly if it agrees with my philosophy and my approach then i might follow what you’re saying and the list goes on and on and on we could list axiom after axiom of the wisdom of the world and of course we recognize that there are some truths in many of these things but in the end these things will not help you to know the author of all wisdom, nor attain the ultimate wisdom that he has for you in this life.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians that Jesus is the wisdom of God who confounds the wisdom of the world. He does so because the wisdom of the world honors strength, and yet he was lowly. He was not high. He displayed physical weakness in his beating and ultimate crucifixion. He didn’t display strength by conquering his enemies. And in this godly wisdom, those who recognize that they too are weak due to their sin will experience strength that comes when they are ultimately forgiven by him. But if you perceive yourself to be strong, ignoring your sin and your need for a savior, according to the wisdom of the world, then you will ultimately experience nothing but weakness when it comes to the most important things as it relates to life here and now and life for eternity. The wisdom of God is that you need a savior. Jesus is that savior. And through your weakness and dependence upon him, you will become strong. That is wisdom.

Jesus is the wisdom of God. And it brings you farther than the human wisdom of this world will ever bring you. 1 Corinthians 1:30 says, “Because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption.” 1 Corinthians 2:7: “We impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory.”

And so what we see in this thread of the Bible is that wisdom begins with God. That God gives us the ability to attain wisdom. That Jesus is the ultimate expression of God’s wisdom to us. And now where it hits home for you and for me right now is that you and I can have wisdom today. And it begins with the appropriate posture toward God. And it results in a surrender to this Lord Jesus. And then and only then will you be able to be good at life in the way that God defines being good at life.

Let me just highlight three short verses for you that illustrate this point. Proverbs 1:7 says, The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, and fools despise wisdom and destruction. It begins with a posture of reverence and honor to God, to fear the Lord. Only after we recognize that God is God, his stature and his attributes as being supreme over mine and my thoughts and my feelings and my experience, then you begin to gain true wisdom and true knowledge. But if you are the center of your universe, wisdom will be elusive to you.

In the book of Ecclesiastes, Solomon is seeking the meaning of life. He explores all the enjoyments of the earth. He observes earthly success. He implores to what is just and true versus what is unjust and what is falsehood. And after experiencing all of these things, he concludes to himself and to us, Ecclesiastes 12:13-14: “The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.”

In Matthew 7, Jesus tells us what it means to be wise, to be skilled in this life. He says you can’t be wise without a very specific foundation. And that foundation is the words of Jesus himself. And so he tells the story that we’ve heard and sung many times, even as children. “Everyone who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”

And so when you take fearing the Lord in Proverbs 1 and fearing the Lord and obeying his commands in Ecclesiastes 12 and building your house upon the rock in Matthew chapter 7, how do you gain wisdom today? You might say that wisdom is gained by those who fear the Father and follow the Son. Wisdom is gained, skillful living is gained by those who fear the Father and follow the Son.

Because everybody wants to be skilled at life. Everybody wants to be good at living. And here are five implications of that idea, that wisdom is gained by those who fear the Father and those who follow the Son. Implication number one is that if this is true, if this is how skillful living happens, then daily surrender to the Lord Jesus to forgive you leads you to seeing things more clearly. Sin has such an incredibly blinding effect on us. And when you embrace sin in your life, your reality becomes distorted. Your desires become distorted and your actions become wayward, at least as it relates to skillful living according to God. It’s like seeing through your sunglasses when they’re fogged up. You see shapes, you can get a general direction, but your vision is skewed. And if wisdom, and part of wisdom, is to perceive reality, correctly, then don’t we need the cleansing of Jesus every day to cure our distortion and help us to see?

That’s implication number one. Implication number two is pretty simple, but it’s hard to do every day. And that is obedience leads to wise living. If it’s true that wisdom is gained by fearing the Father and following the Son, then your ongoing obedience leads to wise living. It helps inform what happens, and it gives you… a foundation to continue to build on so many of us go through life and we do what we want to do and we see other people around us doing the same and we find comfort in the fact that well everybody’s doing it so it must be okay. I think of the story that Bob Russell once wrote and he said, my wife and I were visiting our son Rusty and his family. And one day, Rusty was testing, test driving a foreign-made car, and he was frustrated because he couldn’t figure out how to change the speedometer from kilometers to miles. And that evening, he suggested that we take all the kids out for ice cream. He said, we’ll need to take two cars. So you and Mom just follow me. And so I followed him. And I was surprised. as a policeman whizzed up behind us with his lights flashing. I couldn’t imagine he was after me. I didn’t feel like I was speeding. And besides, I was only going as fast as the guy who was right in front of me. The officer came to my window and he said, Sir, you are going 58 miles an hour in a 45 mile an hour zone. But wait right here. I’m going to go deal with the car in front of you. And as the officer went to the car in front, he went and rusty quivered. Officer, I know this is going to sound like a line, but this is my first day driving this car, and I can’t figure out how to change the speedometer from kilometers to miles, and so I had no idea how fast I was going. And the guy behind me, well, he’s my dad, and he doesn’t know what he’s doing either.

Following what others are doing doesn’t mean that what you are doing is wise. God defines wisdom, and he gives wisdom according to his perfect standard. And as a result, when you look at the Bible and you see that God commands us to do certain things and you think to yourself, well, I don’t really know if I want to do that thing. You no longer have to look at God as a divine killjoy that is somehow out to rob you of pleasure in this life. Yes, God calls you to holiness, to be more and more like himself, but when God gives you divine commands, he’s also displaying to you what wisdom really looks like in practice. Wisdom is gained by those who fear the Father and those who follow the Son. And of course, you know, right, when we say fear the Father, we are not talking about being afraid of the Father. We’re talking about the use of fear that is honor and reverence. and respect.

⚠ REVIEW FLAG: Name — “George Muller” (or George Müller). Verify spelling against audio.

Implication number three means, if this is true, this means that character building and moral resolve is more important for the acquisition of wisdom than other types of skill and knowledge. This is so important. If wisdom originates with God, then the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, And if Jesus is wisdom personified, then pursuing him is the greatest of all pursuits for you to gain skill in living. And yet, the world around us says, Spend years continuing to learn knowledge in school, which of course is highly beneficial. We spend thousands and thousands of dollars on advanced degrees. We continue to better ourselves through ongoing training in our area of our field, but we often neglect at the very same time the type of efforts that will help us grow in true… and divine wisdom. And so the implication, of course, is that character building and moral resolve is even more important for skilled living than these types of skills and knowledge. George Muller once said, “I saw more clearly than ever that the first and great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was to have my soul happy in the Lord.”

Implication number four, if this is true, that wisdom is gained by those who fear the Father and follow the Son, then implication is that we train our children to be wise by God’s standards, not just the world’s standards. I have three young children, as many of you know, and so I understand the pressure right now more than ever. Get them into the right sport. Devote the right amount of time, because if you don’t do it soon enough, they will be blocked out. Get them into the right camps. Send them to the right schools. Make sure you give them every opportunity to find themselves, to succeed, to be happy, even at all costs. Even at the cost of family time. Even at the cost of church participation. Even at the cost of intentional character development that happens between parents and children around the dinner table. This is the wisdom of the world. But this reality, that wisdom is gained by fearing the father and following the son, means that the greatest thing that you can do for your children to prepare them to live a skilled life is to make sure, first and foremost, that they understand who God is and to fear him. And that they understand who Jesus is and to trust him. And to understand what is more important in life than the sport that they’re playing or the class that they are having or the instrument and the concert that is coming up. What is most important in this life and the next life, not by the standard of the world, but by the standard of God.

And if this is true, implication number five, and here’s another piece of good news, is that success for this life in God’s paradigm is not success in the eyes of the world. Friends, if you gain the wisdom that God gives you and you move skillfully through this life the way that God would define it, then you need not be intimidated by the wisdom of the world. You need not think that you’re a second-class citizen because you are mocked for doing things God’s way. You need not feel like you are lacking because you don’t make more money or have a bigger house or drive a nicer car. Those things are nice in and of themselves, and they can often be signs of the wisdom of the world. But God’s paradigm for wisdom is a pure and contrite heart, a sturdy and robust faith, an ongoing pursuit of righteousness. And if you have those things, then you will grow in the wisdom that God alone can give.

Everyone wants to be good at life. Everyone wants to be skilled. The message of the Bible, from old, to new to you is that wisdom is gained by those who fear the Father and follow the Son. Let’s pray and ask God to help us do just that.

Father, we recognize that the wisdom of the world has many positive benefits to us in the short term and that the wisdom of the world has many trappings in it as well. Help us today. as we reprioritize in our mind what wisdom actually is. God, give us perceptive wisdom as we fear you and trust you. Give us action-related wisdom as we follow our Lord Jesus. God, help us to share wisdom with others as we grow in obedience. God, help us to raise our children in wisdom that is from heaven rather than wisdom that is from below. We ask these things together for the sake of our good because we believe that it is for our good that you give us wisdom and for your glory as we live it out. Amen.

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This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy, but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording.