Wisdom and Goodness

"The Lord by wisdom hath founded the earth; by understanding hath he established the heavens." (Proverbs 3:19)

It tells us in Proverbs 3:19 and Jeremiah 10:12 that the Lord founded the earth, established and stretched out the heavens by wisdom, understanding and discretion. Those are two of many verses in the Bible that tell us about the wisdom of God.

It is necessary to our humanity that we grant God two things at least: wisdom and goodness. The God who sits on high, who made the heaven and the earth, has got to be wise, or else you and I cannot be sure of anything. He's got to be good, or earth would be a hell and heaven a hell, and hell a heaven. We have to grant goodness and wisdom to God, or we have no place to go, no rock to stand on, no way to do any thinking or reasoning or believing. We must believe in the goodness and in the wisdom of God, or we betray that in us which differentiates us from the beasts - the image of God Himself.

So we begin with the assumption - not a guess, not a hope, but a knowledge - that God is wise.

Lord, I do believe and will place my confidence in the fact that You are both infinitely wise and infinitely good. What need I fear? Amen

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God's Wisdom or Yours

"All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way." (Isaiah 53:6)

The crux of your life lies right there. It doesn't matter whether you know this little wisp of systematic theology or not; that isn't the point. The point is that it's either got to be God's wisdom or yours. It's either God's way or yours. All that you and I have lived for, hoped for and dreamed over in our heart of hearts - life, safety, happiness, heaven, immortality, the presence of God - hinges on whether you're going to accept the ultimate wisdom of the Triune God, as revealed in the Scriptures and in His providential working in mankind. Or are you going to go your own way?

The most perfect definition of sin that I know of is given by Isaiah in 53:6: "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way." Turning to our own way is the essence of sin. I turn to my way because I think it is wiser than God's way.

This is the crux of our life. This is the difference between revival and a dead church. This is the difference between a Spirit-filled life and a self-filled life. Who's running it? Who's the boss? Whose wisdom is prevailing - the wisdom of God or the wisdom of man?

Lord, how foolish I am when I trust in my own limited knowledge instead of Your infinite wisdom. Take over and be the Boss today. Amen

~A. W. Tozer~