The Real God - The Wisdom Of God, Part 1

What is the biggest challenge that you're facing in your life right now.

What relationship, what circumstance, what is so confusing and so difficult that you just need God's wisdom to know what to do well today will teach you about how to get that wisdom stay with welcome to this Edition of Living on the Edge Chip Ingram trips are vital to this international discipleship program and I Winship series the real God talking about seven key characteristics that describe who God really is. The first three characteristics we studied were God's goodness. His sovereignty and his holdings of US them can catch up anytime in this program we dig into God's wisdom I can tell you were clearly going to scratch the surface, which appears about God's wisdom is guaranteed to change the way you think about your circumstances forever. So let's get going here.

Strip with this message from the book of Romans chapter 11 to ask you to go to a little bit different place with me. I put your pencil down what you lean back.

I want you to in your mind. Think of the most difficult, stressful area of your life.

Okay I want you to think of of an area of your life that not only is difficult and hard and maybe it's a relationship.

Or maybe it's worker you know maybe it's a health issue that you can't get resolved or maybe it's the aging parent or maybe it's something with one your kids but I but I want you to think about something that is not only difficult for you but it's difficult to understand me something that in your heart of hearts you wouldn't want to say this but if you could reverently say it to God you would say God I'm walking with you the best that I can and I know your will is good and I know you'll never give me more than I can take but these circumstances sure don't feel like you're a good God. These feelings and these struggles in this barrier, whatever it is it I don't understand why a good loving God. I know I don't have to, but I just don't understand why a good and loving God. I would have this situation in my life.

Okay so just reflect for a minute. Let me give you just a minute to bring the picture into your mind. For some it will come very quickly. What is it. Put another way, that if God could remove it in an instant. That's what you would want him to remove if you got it.

Feel free to keep your eyes closed in, lean back and think of this perplexing difficult maybe even very stressful issue that you can't get unraveled. And as you do, I'd like you to listen to some words to believe actively that our heavenly father constantly spreads around us providential circumstances that work for our present good and our everlasting well-being brings to the soul of veritable benediction.

Most of us go through life praying a little planning a little jockeying for position, hoping, but never being quite certain of anything and always secretly afraid that we will miss the way this is a tragic waste of truth and it never gives rest to your heart. There is a better way is to repudiate our own wisdom and to take instead the infinite wisdom of God. Our insistence upon seeing ahead is natural enough, but it is a real hindrance to our spiritual progress.

God has charged himself with full responsibility for our eternal happiness and he stands ready to take over the management of our lives the moment we turn in faith to him before you open your eyes. Let me repeat that I want you to think of the situation want you to think of that you can understand why Scott allowed it and I want you to listen one more time. God has charged himself with the full responsibility for our eternal happiness and he stands ready. That means this moment, he stands ready to take over the management of our lives the moment we turn in faith to him. That's a quote by a W toaster on the wisdom of God and I will never forget the circumstances that led to me learning what the wisdom of God is all about the classical definition of the wisdom of God is a God brings about the best possible results for the most possible people in the best possible way me that that's the idea is to bring the best results by the best means for the most people. For the longest time and it sounds like a nice theological definition and right wisdom of God share experience were that truth saved my life.

I was in seminary at the time and I had a conviction that my wife, I had two small kids that were twins that were about six years old and that I had a 18 month old little boy so we had three kids and my conviction was my wife should be home and build and nurture children and so I was going to seminary full time and I was working full-time straight commission job. It's the only thing I could do to make enough money just to make it through and I went three years straight through and so I was up about 430 or five every day and went to a donut shop and studied Greek for about two or three hours that went to a carpool went and went to his classes and every moment I wasn't in a class I was reading a book or studying or doing something got the carpool came home played with my family for an hour and 1/2 went to work about 630 till 11 at night got up for 430 did the same thing for three years and on the side.

We did little ministry because he had to have an outlet in the good news was the ministry started just multiplied and flourish. The bad news it was just more and more stress that I was a straight commission job in the company was working for went through some major problems and so my income disappeared. I've been going on about four hours to five hours sleep for three years straight. I'm working full time I'm going to school full time.

My wife has two small children and a toddler I am dead broke. I do not have money to pay my bills. The stress is over the level that I've ever experienced in my life, I'm discouraged, depressed, completely out of it and I'm sitting in a seminary class thinking okay I almost went King James in my mind is this how they'll treat us like servants. I mean I was a I was a schoolteacher as a basketball coach. I like what I did.

God said he wanted me to go to seminary and with the seminary event for three years at taking all this Greek and all the sea Bruin. I'm working full time and now I don't have any money. I got my rent due. We haven't bought meet or groceries in 15 days we taken the seven dollars that we put with the little co-op we been eating fruits and vegetables for 15 days. My wife is been baking bread from the whole-wheat flour that she has left. I can't pay my bills and I and I'm just where I'm thinking this is what it looks like to get rewarded when you quote sellout for God. I want to be in your service. I want to learn your word and and and I'm ready to cash in at least Christian service. I thought you know I know I know enough now I can never leave the Lord. But this being a pastor prepared for ministry and I was sitting in a classroom theology class and just sort of staring and and it was a class at one of those a room much like this with a couple hundred students and is a big class and and was a very famous professor and I don't if you ever been in like one of those zones were and I looked up and someone tapped me on the shoulder and it was a professor in the class was empty night, and hear anybody leave and I wasn't asleep. It was just I was just so numb and I was sitting there thinking I think on the quit seminary I can do this in the seminary professor was one in theology was a very thin man and had wire-rimmed glasses and tapped me on the shoulder and he gave me a little comment. He just very discerning said ship. Whatever you do don't make any major decisions in the next 48 hours go home and get a good night sleep. Take a day off. Eat a good meal and I'll see you Monday and I just remember. Often he would say things in class and I would even write them down, but he set them in such a way that I just remembered them and I sat there in the stupor trying to decide whether to quit school cash at all in and out of the blue comes this definition of God's wisdom, God brings about the best possible ends by the best possible means. For the most possible people for the longest possible time and that definition was rattling my brain and I just thought to myself okay. What if I believe anyone if I just hypothetically got I'm not saying I do but just hypothetically, I don't really want to give up my anger and my resentment and my depression and my pity party but in case I wanted to what what what if I believe that, just for a couple seconds. What if I believe that you do bring about the best possible ends in the way you do it is by the best possible means and people I I'm telling you, I'm sure there was sin in my life. I just didn't know of any man getting up and meet with God in reading the Bible and studying the languages involved in ministry and love in my will.

I mean, you know. As far as I know there's nothing between me and God.

So it's not a sin issue and then I began to think will if I believe that unless I had but if I believed it would mean that if you are good and gracious and sovereign.

It would mean that these present circumstances were allowed by a good God who's in absolute control of the universe and that if there was an easier or kinder, gentler way to produce in me and through me what you wanted to produce it would be different circumstances.

But if you if I believe, hypothetically, of course, that you were all wise than the fact that the company shut down. I don't have a job I don't have any money. I'm absolutely exhausted. I'm discouraged, depressed, and I don't see how I'm gonna make it through tomorrow Ludlum today that this actually could be from the hand of a good sovereign God that knows all things actual and possible and therefore what needs to happen in me from your eternal all wise, loving, and good perspective is exactly the circumstances that I'm living with. But here's the problem. It's hard to trust in the wisdom of God.

If you don't know what it is. If someone would've said. What's the wisdom of God to me probably before I went to seminary I would say it means he's real smart. I mean, it must be the smartest guy right.

But wisdom is not smartness.

Wisdom is not IQ. Wisdom is something quite different than what we think is so in our time is what I wanted to I want to define what the wisdom of God is, I want to reveal how God is shown as is wisdom and I want to look at how do we respond to that wisdom so that here's the goal you can rest and you can trust in the wisdom of God in the very area you are thinking about. So that's the game plan.

Let's define the wisdom of God.

It is a attribute of God whereby he produces the best possible results by the best possible means. That's by Burkle. He's a German theologian that's just the classical theological definition of the wisdom of God.

Webster says, is the quality of being wise it's a power judging rightly it's following the soundest course of action based on knowledge, experience and understanding. Now this is interesting. Catch this.

The root words to wisdom at the idea of the ability to see and to know you needed see in other words, wisdom is, life. Sadly it's not IQ is not intelligence is not what you do on a test.

Wisdom is understanding how life works and then living your life in a way that cooperates with how God is designed life to work to bring about the best possible results in relationships and in decisions and in parenting and marriage, and in singleness and all that God has for us, but it involves the people that you go to for wise counsel. They have two abilities one they can see, either by experience or knowledge of the Scriptures or or insider giftedness. They can kinda see some things you can't see, and second, they have knowledge and they take that knowledge and they take what they can see and they help you make good decisions.

That's what wisdom is all about.

So the wisest person on the face of the earth is someone who can. What see everything from beginning to and who knows everything, who has all power. In fact, Dr. Riley Dallas seminary. I love his his definition of the omniscience of God.

God knows all things actual and possible short brief and unbelievably accurate.

God not not only knows all things. He knows all things actual and all things are even possible and say where'd you get that.

Don't you remember the passage when the Jesus was being attacked by the Pharisees and people rejecting him and he said I'm telling you if Sodom and Gomorrah would've heard the message that you just heard they would have repented one second you mean you know how people would've responded. Hypothetically in another timeframe hundreds of years earlier. Yes, he's got God knows all things actual and all things possible. He sees all things. He has all power. He is eternal. These outside of time. He lives in the current now he knows the beginning from the end and the end from the beginning.

And so since he sees all things and knows all things. He's all wise and can give us the greatest and best direction. In fact the Scripture says in first Timothy 117 now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. Or or my favorite passage on the wisdom of God is Romans 1133.

Oh the depths of the wisdom riches of the wisdom and the knowledge of God, how unsearchable are his judgments, and his past me on tracing or finding out God's wisdom what he orchestrates. Here's what you got understand how things appear so often in your life how things so often appear in history, God has a silver thread he's doing things we can't see and you don't see God's wisdom until you see over here so much of life is like that so much of what he's doing in your life. It just me, Joseph is thinking this doesn't look good. This doesn't look good. This doesn't look good. This doesn't look good. This doesn't look good and you turn it over and what he is woven a man into a position of the second-highest power in the known world to accomplish a goal and a task, but he didn't see the wisdom of God. All he saw was that the knots and the strings on the back of the tapestry as God was weaving his life through a series of circumstances, none of which he would've chosen, all of which he needed not only personally, but for the purposes God would fulfill notice.

I like to. It says in the holy Scriptures. Wisdom when used of God and good men always carries a strong moral connotation. It's conceived as being pure, loving, and good wisdom, among other things, is the ability to devise perfect ends and to achieve those ends by the most perfect beat means I'm back to quoting Koser. Can you tell, wisdom is the ability to devise not good perfect ends and to achieve those ends. How by perfect means one of God is perfectly orchestrating a perfect and for your life and what if even in this not yet the circumstances that seem so unbearable. They are actually his perfect means to accomplish his perfect end and you would that change your perspective and how you deal with life. He goes on to say it sees the end from the beginning so they can be no need to guess or conjecture. Wisdom sees everything in focus. Each improper relationship to all and is thus able to work toward predestined goals with flawless precision. Let me give you an illustration that is help me so much. This is a picture in them will look at how God is revealed is with you ready for this picture is a dramatic picture trying really let the that the color of your mind and the cinema scope just begin to really gravitate into this picture. I want you to imagine there's a railroad tracks coming right across tear and there's a nice little hill that goes up and honored as a small house where the railroad track man lives and you come across the tracks and there's some gravel and you go up another some steps and over here is a little booth in the railroad track man's job is. He has a a a lever and the trains come in his job is to push the lever at the right time so that the tracks slide over so the trains some trains go off to the north and some trains will go off to the south, and as they come through, he gets radio wires.

Any here's what's going to happen, but it's an old-fashioned time so he must flick the switch to change the tracks. That's his job. And so he lives on a little hill and he is a cute little life and have a beautiful little 4 1/2-year-old and so he is overdoing his job and his little boy is running down the hill pop pop pop daddy daddy I can you visualizing he's coming down the hill and he sees his daddy doing his job and often he would bring daddy's luncheon. They would have good times together and as he runs and comes across.

He trips on the track as he tripped on the track is little tiny foot gets wedged underneath track and as you and I would look down about 500 yards. There is a train coming at a very high speed, there's not enough time for daddy to come down from his post and pool his little boy off that track.

He now has a decision to make about what is wisest.

What is best. What should he do and he has option number one is that as the train is coming down the track he could switch it, but if you switch it because the track that it's on, it would jolt that track and probably 400 to 500 people would go to their death is coming very high speed, or you could leave it as it is and as it is, he will watch a freight train filled with passengers right over the top of his. If he ask you, what's the wisest thing to do but would you tell I didn't say the moral thing to do.

I didn't say what he wanted to do I say the sacrificial thing to do. What's the wisest thing to do in the situation and I would suggest that we as Christians, most of us would come up with an answer like this.

If we were given this in a small group and we would discuss it together and come up with the noble and righteous answer but the wisest thing to do, though painful, sacrificial of this father will get to experience something like God the father must've experienced and he should not kill the 450 or 500 people, but he should watch his son die. Now that may be the most loving and sacrificial and noble thing to do. I can say that I said what's the wisest thing to do. The difference does wisdom have to do with what the best possible results for the most possible people for the longest possible time right and you say yourself will help you. This is it.

500 people versus one let the kid die. Wait a second. What if the kid is the next Billy Graham if he's the next Billy Graham would be better for 500 people to die in a train wreck and possibly millions of people to spend eternity in heaven which would be the wisest, which be the greatest benefit long-term or what if this little boy has in his DNA. He will find a cure to HIV would be better for 500 live, or to have a million people or millions of people or to stop a plague it's going worldwide will stop stop stop.

Maybe that's not right.

What if what if there's a person on the train and they have the cure for cancer and they will discover two years from now for what if the next Billy Graham is on that tray you see how complicated it gets till the sun wasn't were not talking about a train 500 or 1 inch unless you know all things actual and possible unless you can see the beginning from the and every one of our lives is like a huge boulder that's dropped into a pond and there are ripples and you make a decision today and it affects children and grandchildren and friends, and workers had everyone's making all these decisions and their happening with all these people all over the world and in colliding these ripples of your decisions on my decisions, and corporations of the military decisions.

Who in the world can know all things actual. The only person that can make a wise decision about what should happen in the situation is someone who knows everything. Someone who sees everything, both now and onto the future and in eternity and only that person can see and know to make a wise decision and my suggestion is we don't have a clue what the wisest thing is to do nothing. Think of that. Think of the logic you've just gone through and now think of some things where we say how could God let that plane go down. How could God let that seven-year-old boy died of cancer at his age. I don't understand how God could see God is a good God, there is limited evil. He does work all things according to his will for the good of those who are called and who love him and he knows the beginning from the end and he knows the implications of every decision of every relationship of every human being for all eternity in an omnipresent present now with all the implications and he is all wise and his decisions and his decrees and his will is orchestrated for people not just in view of his sovereignty, not just in view of his power not just in view of his love is good and compassion were in his goodness and desire to bless, but it's filtered through his wisdom, which means he brings about the best possible ends by the best possible means.

For the most possible people for the longest possible time closer summarizes by saying this all God's acts are done in perfect wisdom, first for his own glory and then for the highest good of the greatest number for the longest time and all his acts are as pure as they are wise and a great and they are as good as they are pure. Not only could his acts not be done better.

A better way to do them could not be imagined. Can I suggest something that's true in your life. I mean if you're in blatant sin.

And I certainly had times where I have been so this consequences to our sin. We often blame God for them, but if you're not in blatant sin. And as far as you know your walking with God you trying to be the man. The woman they want you to be and you have certain things in your life that you're saying God I don't understand this isn't fair. This is hard to please take away. I'm praying I'm praying on Frank and nothing changes could be could be that the all wise God of the universe is actually drawing you toward a perfect and by means of perfect methodology to produce in you and through you, beyond, and better which you could ever dream. See that's how you rest in the wisdom of God.

But when you come to understand that this isn't something. This is not a concept. This is God the God that you pray to this is what he's like, let's talk about how has he revealed his wisdom. I mean, if this is true, this could change your life. How is God revealed his wisdom to us one through creation. Psalm 19 verses one through seven. Listen to how God is revealed. These wise the heavens declare the glory of God. The skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech night after night they display knowledge there is no speech or language where their voices heard. Their voice goes out to all the earth, their words to the ends of the world and the heavens. He's pitched a tent for the sun, which, like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion like a champion rejoicing to run its course. It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other. Nothing is hidden from its heat, the creation, the echo system honey taken electron microscope and look at the smallest things you can find and you'll see an amazing order and wisdom and balance in and take a scout telescope and and and blasted into all of the universe and we see what these planets that are in these amazing orders and gravitational pull and balance one another. You could take our earth and just tilted 1° or a portion of a degree and some people freeze to death and the other people burned to death the oxygen of the plants, the carbon dioxide of the people you we as humans we mess with the environment just a little bit and bandit just start going crazy God in his wisdom, bringing the best possible result. Why do birds fly certain places certain times.

Why do they make the way they make.

Why do they have certain boundaries.

Why is there this balance of certain animals eat other animals and others don't eat other animals and so much grass and how God orchestrates whether in patterns and animal his creation listening to the first part of Chip's message of God's series the real God will be back with his application, but before he is. Let me give you a quick sketch of the series overall in the real God chip looks at seven key attributes of God's character and explains that none of them is ever diminished or overshadowed by the others which means that God is 100% love 100% just and 100% merciful kind of mindbending when you think about it that way and why it becomes a lifelong adventure to get to know him for who he really is a great way to learn how these attributes of God work together is to do this study with a small group of friends. So for a limited time, small group resources for the real God are discounted because we want to do everything we can to help you get a clear accurate view of God to place your order or to get more information on the real God.

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When we started today's program I ask you a question I ask you, what's the biggest challenge that you're facing right now. Let's go back to that. What is difference in teaching on wisdom that I mean what is bugging you what gives pressure. Where is there stress is a relationship is your marriage when your kids.

Is it the fact that you don't have a relationship in your single is it finances is the world situation is that the stock market.

I don't know.

But here's what I do know the toughest challenges that you face or I face can be revolutionized when we look at them through the lens of God's wisdom, the wisdom of God. Simply put, is this God is orchestrating events and circumstances and people in your life to produce the best possible anions by the best possible means. For the most possible people.

Have you got that he's working. He's wise he knows what he's doing. I want to share with you. Understanding God's wisdom. This concept that life isn't just haphazard. Not only is he sovereign, but if there was a better way to help you learn if there was a better way for God's will to be worked out in your life. He went he would do that.

Okay you not getting overall deal you not getting got second best. He knows you.

He loves you. He's working for your good and the plan that you're experiencing right now is the wisdom of God.

This has brought more comfort and more peace in the midst of my most difficult challenges than probably any other aspect of God's character.

Now the question is how it happened that wisdom you get it that will be our next program. Hope you be there in a great way to get more out of every message is to use chips message notes while you listen you will get his outline all of the Scripture references.

Lots of fillings to help you remember what you're learning. Use them personally, or even with your small group chips message notes are a quick download@livingontheedge.org under the broadcasts.

Hapless nurse tapped fill-in notes in your set will be sure to join us next time. Until then, this is Dave really saying thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge