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But without the Spirit there would not be a Christian in the world.
But as we read, we get more and more puzzled. Though fascinated, we are not being fed. Our reading is not helping us; it leaves us bewildered and, if the truth be told, somewhat depressed. We find ourselves wondering whether Bible reading is worth going on with.
What is our trouble? Well, basically it is this. Our Bible reading takes us into what, for us, is quite a new world—namely, the Near Eastern world as it was thousands of years ago,
The sense of remoteness is an illusion which springs from seeking the link between our situation and that of the various Bible characters in the wrong place.
The link is God himself.
The character of God is today, and always will be, exactly what it was in Bible times.
In Exodus 34, however, we read how God “proclaimed his name, the LORD” to Moses by listing the various facets of his holy character.
It is true that there is a group of texts (Gen 6:6-7; 1 Sam 15:11; 2 Sam 24:16; Jon 3:10; Joel 2:13-14) which speak of God as repenting. The reference in each case is to a reversal of God’s previous treatment of particular people, consequent upon their reaction to that treatment. But there is no suggestion that this reaction was not foreseen, or that it took God by surprise and was not provided for in his eternal plan. No change in his eternal purpose is implied when he begins to deal with a person in a new way.
If our God is the same as the God of New Testament believers, how can we justify ourselves in resting content with an experience of communion with him, and a level of Christian conduct, that falls so far below theirs?
Like us, he is personal; but unlike us, he is great. In all its constant stress on the reality of God’s personal concern for his people, and on the gentleness, tenderness, sympathy, patience and yearning compassion that he shows toward them, the Bible never lets us lose sight of his majesty and his unlimited dominion over all his creatures.
he overthrows Sodom and Gomorrah by (apparently) a volcanic eruption
Just as I am never left alone, so I never go unnoticed.
The world dwarfs us all, but God dwarfs the world. The world is his footstool, above which he sits secure.
Do you suppose that it is really these top men who determine which way the world shall go? Think again, for God is greater than the world’s great men.
Such are his power and his majesty. Behold your God!
Because we ourselves are limited and weak, we imagine that at some points God is too, and find it hard to believe that he is not. We think of God as too much like what we are. Put this mistake right,
God has not abandoned us any more than he abandoned Job. He never abandons anyone on whom he has set his love; nor does Christ, the good shepherd, ever lose track of his sheep. It is as false as it is irreverent to accuse God of forgetting, or overlooking, or losing interest in, the state and needs of his own people.
Wisdom is the power to see, and the inclination to choose, the best and highest goal, together with the surest means of attaining it.
Omniscience governing omnipotence, infinite power ruled by infinite wisdom, is a basic biblical description of the divine character.
but in God boundless wisdom and endless power are united, and this makes him utterly worthy of our fullest trust.
God’s wisdom is not, and never was, pledged to keep a fallen world happy, or to make ungodliness comfortable.
We see him at the end so utterly devoted to God’s will, and so confident that God knows what he is doing, that he is willing at God’s command to kill his own son, the heir for whose birth he waited so long
The consequences of Jacob’s cleverness were themselves God’s curse upon it. When
never again dare he trust himself to look after himself and to carve out his destiny. Never again dare he try to live by his wits.
a perpetual reminder in his flesh of his own spiritual weakness,
“Let me go,” said the One with whom he wrestled; it seemed as though God meant to abandon him.
And now at last God spoke the word of blessing. For Jacob was now weak and despairing, and humble and dependent enough to be blessed.
Once again, we are confronted with the wisdom of God ordering the events of a human life for a double purpose: the individual’s own personal sanctification, and the fulfilling of his appointed ministry and service in the life of the people of God.
What do they mean? Simply that God in his wisdom means to make something of us which we have not attained yet,
that fellowship with the Father and the Son is most vivid and sweet, and Christian joy is greatest, when the cross is heaviest.
we ought not to hesitate to trust his wisdom, even when he leaves us in the dark.
We must learn to receive God’s word.
to suppose, in other words, that the gift of wisdom consists in a deepened insight into the providential meaning and purpose of events going on around us, an ability to see why God has done what he has done in a particular case, and what he is going to do next.
We ask again: What does it mean for God to give us wisdom? What kind of a gift is it? If another transportation illustration may be permitted, it is like being taught to drive. What matters in driving is the speed and appropriateness of your reactions to things and the soundness of your judgment as to what scope a situation gives you. You do not ask yourself why the road should narrow or screw itself into a dogleg wiggle just where it does, nor why that van should be parked where it is, nor why the driver in front should hug the crown of the road so lovingly; you simply try to see and do the
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As the sermon itself shows, the text is intended as a warning against the misconceived quest for understanding, for it states the despairing conclusion to which this quest, if honestly and realistically pursued, must at length lead.
Like job
The harder you try to understand the divine purpose in the ordinary providential course of events, the more obsessed and oppressed you grow
For the world we live in is in fact the sort of place that he has described. The God who rules it hides himself. Rarely does this world look as if a beneficent Providence were running it. Rarely does it appear that there is a rational power behind it at all.
And then something very painful and quite inexplicable comes along, and our cheerful illusion of being in God’s secret councils is shattered.
Among the seven deadly sins of medieval lore was sloth (acedia)—a state of hard-bitten, joyless apathy of spirit. There is a lot of it around today in Christian circles;
Behind this morbid and deadening condition often lies the wounded pride of one who thought he knew all about the ways of God in providence and then was made to learn by bitter and bewildering experience that he didn’t. This
Seek grace to work hard at whatever life calls you to do (9:10), and 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;
We can be sure that the God who made this marvelously complex world order, and who compassed the great redemption from Egypt, and who later compassed the even greater redemption from sin and Satan, knows what he is doing, and “doeth all things well,” even if for the moment he hides his hand.
For what is this wisdom that he gives? As we have seen, it is not a sharing in all his knowledge, but a disposition to confess that he is wise, and to cleave to him and live for him in the light of his Word through thick and thin.
Fear ofthe Lord (not trying to know his ways but trusting anyways) knowledg of God (bible) is wisdom
The New Testament tells us that the fruit of wisdom is Christlikeness—peace,
Thus, the kind of wisdom that God waits to give to those who ask him is a wisdom that will bind us to himself, a wisdom that will find expression in a spirit of faith and a life of faithfulness.
Torah from God the king has a threefold character: some of it is law (in the narrow sense of commands, or prohibitions, with sanctions attached); some of it is promise (favorable or unfavorable, conditional or unconditional); some of it is testimony (information given by God about himself and people—their respective acts, purposes, natures and prospects).
The word which God addresses directly to us is (like a royal speech, only more so) an instrument, not only of government, but also of fellowship.
How could a man with no official position, whose only job was to talk, be described as the God-appointed ruler of the nations? Why, simply because he had the words of the Lord in his mouth (v. 9): and any word that God gave him to speak about the destiny of nations would certainly be fulfilled.
It means stability, reliability, firmness, trustworthiness, the quality of a person who is entirely self-consistent, sincere, realistic, undeceived. God is such a person: truth, in this sense, is his nature, and he has not got it in him to be anything else.
For this is part of the purpose of God’s law: it gives us a working definition of true humanity. It shows us what we were made to be, and teaches us how to be truly human, and warns us against moral self-destruction.
