The following message by Alistair Begg is made
available by Truth For Life.
For more information, visit us online at truthforlife
.org.
We continue our studies in James as we
turn to James, page 855 in the Church
Bibles, James chapter 3 and verse 13.
James 3, 13, Who is wise and understanding
among you?
Let him show it by his good life,
by good deeds, done in the humility that
comes from wisdom.
But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish
ambition in your hearts, do not boast about
it or deny the truth.
Such wisdom does not come down from heaven,
but is earthly, unspiritual, of the devil.
For where you have envy and selfish ambition,
there you find disorder and every evil practice.
But the wisdom that comes from heaven is
first of all pure, then peace-loving, considerate,
submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial
and sincere.
Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest
of righteousness.
Now, Father, with our Bibles open before us,
please come and help us so that we
might speak and listen in a way that
is honoring to you and life-transforming for
us.
For Jesus' sake.
Amen.
Those of you who have been studying along
with us in James know that this third
chapter has begun with James addressing the would
-be teachers.
Let not many of you, he says, presume
to be teachers, because there are implications.
It's a dangerous task to be involved with.
And not least of all, because it means
using your tongue, and our tongues are often
the vehicle for disappointment and deceit and disgrace.
And then from verse 3 through verse 12,
he has a discourse that is all about
the tongue.
And it may well be that this discourse
is in some sense a digression, a meaningful
digression.
He's on the tongue and he just reinforces
it, but that he hasn't, in verse 13,
changed his focus in terms of those he
is addressing at the beginning of the chapter.
In other words, he still has in mind
the would-be teachers.
Those who, by dint of their background or
interest or involvement, are suggesting that they are
the individuals who have the requisite gifts and
calling to become teachers in the church.
And so to them, and to others, obviously,
but to them perhaps in particular, he issues
this particular challenge.
Who is wise and understanding among you?
We're getting a group of wise and understanding
individuals together, and we would like all of
you to assemble over here by the tree,
if you would.
And as people begin to scurry for their
diplomas and for their briefcases and for their
files, full of information and for their heads
full of knowledge, in order to come over
and display themselves to be amongst the wise
and the understanding, James says, hey, hang on
just a minute.
You'll be able to tell whether you should
be over by the tree, not by your
degrees, but by your lifestyle.
Who is wise and understanding among you?
Let him show it by his good life,
by deeds done in the humility that comes
from wisdom.
In other words, the issue here, says James,
is not one of professional competence, but it
is that of practical godliness.
And the challenge that he is laying down
is akin to what has already happened in
chapter 2 as it relates to faith.
Remember, here comes somebody who says, I am
a man of faith, or I am a
woman of faith.
And James says, okay then, show me your
faith.
Show me your faith.
And now in chapter 3, here I am,
I am someone of wisdom and understanding.
He says, well then, let's just apply the
same test.
Why don't you show me how wise and
understanding you are?
Why?
Because true wisdom, like true faith, is vital,
it is practical, and it is observable.
Because the wisdom that James is addressing here
is the endowment of heart and mind from
God, giving us all that is necessary for
right conduct as a result of right thinking.
That's what you have in Romans 12.
Be transformed by the renewing of our minds.
How will we know that our minds are
renewed?
How will we know the nature of our
creed in our conduct?
How will we know the nature of our
faith in our function?
How will we know the nature of our
wisdom in our practical living out of such
a life?
Now, this is very Old Testament in its
orientation, and we've said already that James is
a very proverbial New Testament book.
There are many echoes of proverbs in this
book.
And so it is not surprising that the
Old Testament concept of wisdom is uppermost in
the mind of James.
Wisdom is to be seen in the living
of life.
We are completely on the wrong track if
we're thinking simply in terms of SAT scores,
of intellect, or of grey matter, of capacity,
mental capacity.
That's not what James is addressing here.
It's not really what the Bible addresses at
all when it comes to the subject of
wisdom.
Wisdom has feet, wisdom has action, wisdom goes
places.
So, for example, in Psalm 1, the book
of Psalms opens up with a description of
a wise man.
How do we know that he is wise?
Because he does not walk in the counsel
of the ungodly.
He does not stand in the way of
sinners.
He does not sit in the seat of
mockers.
So people look at him and see him
go, see him sit, watch where he stands,
and then conclude he is a wise man.
His wisdom is deduced from his life as
lived, not from his lips as proclaimed.
There is a huge distinction between education and
wisdom.
Our culture is preoccupied with education.
Justifiably so, we don't want dumb children.
Parents are concerned, schools are concerned, politicians are
concerned.
But as I'll show you later on, many
of those concerns are completely divorced from that
which James is addressing here.
Now, the wisdom that he's referencing is the
wisdom that gives insight into the will of
God, his purposes, and gives the ability to
fulfill his purposes.
And what I'd like to do is to
isolate one wisdom from the other.
You will notice if you have an NIV
that it describes, it says here that there
are two kinds of wisdom.
One is heavenly, one is earthly, one is
proud, one is humble, one is from heaven,
one is from hell, and so on.
We're only going to deal with it in
terms of heavenly wisdom or true wisdom to
begin with.
And we won't deal with all of it
even this morning in this first instance.
But to give you some idea of what
we're trying to do, we will first of
all look at the source of this true
wisdom.
And then in verse 17, at the nature
of this wisdom.
And then coming back to verse 13 again,
at the evidence of this wisdom.
But we won't get beyond source, so you
needn't really worry very much about it at
all.
James has already introduced the subject and has
answered his own question.
And in the fifth verse of chapter one,
if you remember, he said, If any of
you lacks wisdom, he should ask God who
gives to all generously.
In other words, James knew his Bible.
He knew that this was exactly what Solomon
had written in his Proverbs.
And particularly in Proverbs chapter two, where he
says, For the Lord gives wisdom, and from
his mouth come knowledge and understanding.
The Bible is unequivocal concerning this.
If you want to be a wise person,
you need to know God.
If you want to be a wise person,
you need a Bible.
If you want to be those who display
understanding, then it starts with your own humility
before the majesty and might of the God
who has made you.
And if you don't start there, then everything
else will be deducted in a way that
is flawed.
So he says, the wisdom back in James
1 verse 17 is the wisdom that comes
down from heaven.
It comes down from heaven.
And this is simply another way of saying
that it comes from God.
The wisdom that comes from heaven.
Remember that the Jews, and Orthodox Jews to
this day, are concerned about the irreverent use
of the name of God.
And so they will, in every instance that
they can, use a substitute for God.
So you have it, for example, in the
parable of the prodigal son.
When he comes to his senses, he says,
I have sinned against heaven and in your
sight, and I'm no longer worthy to be
called your son.
What does it mean he sinned against heaven?
It's simply a way of him avoiding the
use of God's name.
I've sinned against God.
God is in heaven.
So when James says, this wisdom comes down
from heaven, he's simply saying what he's referenced
in verse 5 of chapter 1.
This wisdom is from God.
And it is this wisdom which Solomon requested
of God.
Remember?
How God comes to him and it's recorded
for us in 1 Kings 3.
It's a wonderful story.
And God says, what would you like, Solomon?
And Solomon says, well, I would like to
be wise.
I'd like to be able to discriminate between
error and truth.
I'd like to be able to discern between
right and wrong.
I'd like to be a wise person.
And 1 Kings 3.10 records the fact
that the Lord was pleased that Solomon asked
him for this.
Good man, Solomon.
That was a good answer.
Where did you come up with that answer,
Solomon?
Well, the answer to that question, Solomon tells
us in Proverbs chapter 4.
Listen to what he says.
When I was a boy in my father's
house, still tender and an only child of
my mother, he taught me and said, lay
hold of my words with all your heart.
Keep my commandments and you will live.
Get wisdom.
Get understanding.
Don't forget my words or swear from them.
So, from his very infancy, Solomon was nurtured
in the awareness of what he later writes.
That the fear of the Lord is the
beginning of wisdom.
That the entry into the school of understanding
is an entryway that comes in an encounter
with God who has made us.
And the God who has made us has
revealed himself to us externally in creation and
internally by means of our conscience.
And so we have within us a sense
of oughtness that speaks to the fact of
his handiwork and his control.
And we have above us and beyond us
the vastness of the world that he has
made which speaks to his power and to
his majesty.
Now, I'll leave you to read some of
Solomon on your own.
Chapter 4 is particularly powerful as he calls
out to his children to make sure that
they don't neglect wisdom.
Whatever else you do, he says, make sure
that you are wise.
Make sure that you discern between right and
wrong.
Make sure you make straight paths for your
feet.
Don't go from the right and don't go
to the left.
Is this just a sort of elaborate cry
from an intelligent dad who is a pragmatist
and knows the benefits of putting your best
foot forward?
No.
Because he goes from chapter 4 into chapter
5.
And what's chapter 5 about?
Adultery.
He doesn't want his boy to go down
there.
He doesn't want his boy to stop off
at that house.
What does he need?
He needs to be wise.
He doesn't need to be educated.
If education was the answer to helping people
to stop smoking, the information is so undeniable
that there wouldn't be a person smoked in
the entire world.
Education is not capable to do it.
If education could deal with teenage pregnancy, it
would be over with.
It can't do it.
It's wisdom that is lacking.
We're getting a group of wise and understanding
people.
They're going to stand over here by the
tree, who are the wise and the understanding
ones.
You see, what Solomon does is provide, if
you like, the example par excellence of Christian
parenting.
Because what he does in his day and
generation is what every Christian parent must at
least attempt to do in their generation.
And interestingly, when you move from generation to
generation, and after you've lived a little while,
you can speak about generations, and you can
read history books, and then you know a
little more about generations.
But it is an observable fact to me
that the older people grow, the more they
pontificate about the nature of the predicament of
the culture in which they're living.
So grandparents are, oh, this is the worst
I've ever seen in my entire life.
I don't think my grandchildren are going to
be able to cope.
I think the whole world is over, you
know.
And there may be justifiable reasons for making
those deductions, but you only need to read
history to know you're just singing an old
song.
You know, this was up the charts many,
many times before.
You can go to any century and find
people bemoaning the same thing.
What do you think Augustine's mother thought in
the fourth century?
What do you think she was saying with
her boy, complete bedlam in his life, going
all over the place?
Listen to this.
Sound familiar?
Our young people are growing up at a
period when the foundations of the earth are
out of course, and when subtle and restless
efforts are made to poison their hearts and
pervert their ways.
Nothing, therefore, can be more important than to
fortify them with sound principles that when withdrawn
from the parental wing into a world of
temptation, they may be under a divine cover
as the children of a special providence.
This is the introduction to a book on
Proverbs.
October 7th, 1846.
So 160 years ago, the fellow's writing the
introduction to Proverbs and he goes, this is
terrible.
Our young people are just in dreadful predicaments.
I can't believe the kind of things that
are going on in the books that are
out there.
They haven't even reached the silent movies yet.
Can you imagine what if somebody was dropped
down from 1846 just to watch MTV?
Could they conceive of such a world?
1846, that decade is interesting.
Because it's in that decade that Jonathan Edwards,
whose name you may know, and some of
his colleagues started to call for what he
referred to as a great awakening.
Started to ask God to come and visit
North America with a dramatic display of his
power and of his wisdom.
What most of us don't know is that
what motivated this call from the heart of
Edwards and his friends was the secular thinking
being taught at Harvard and Yale.
And they were so disappointed as graduates of
Yale at how things had gone and what
they had been taught that they asked God
to come and speak wisdom again into our
land.
Now, if you think about this, it is
quite fascinating because Harvard was founded in the
17th century.
Glasgow University in the 14th century.
But anyway, we needed to produce the scholars
to bring them over here so you could
have a university.
But anyway, sorry for that dreadful jingoistic burst,
couldn't resist it.
But anyway, 1636, Harvard is founded.
1642, the student handbook is published in which
every student at Harvard is called to be,
quotes, plainly instructed and earnestly pressed to consider
well that the main end of his life
and studies is to know God and Jesus
Christ, which is eternal life, and therefore to
lay hold of Christ as the only foundation
of all sound knowledge and learning.
That's 1642 Harvard student handbook.
So if you sent your son off to
Harvard in the 17th century and he came
home with a handbook and you were washing
his laundry and you had a little look
into the handbook, you would discover that your
boy was in a good spot or your
girl was in a good spot.
There they're going to be compelled to consider
the fact that the only found of genuine
knowledge and understanding is there in a foundation
which can be laid by no one other
than Jesus Christ himself.
Yale was founded in 1701.
And the reason for the founding of Yale
was because congregational believers, that is, believers in
the congregational church, were disappointed by the growing
apostasy at Harvard.
So that in the second half of the
17th century, despite the handbook in 1642, things
had already begun to go south.
So they established Yale.
And Edwards' mom and dad sent him to
Yale for a good education, not like he
would get at Harvard.
And Edwards and his colleagues emerged from Yale
and said, we better try another place.
And they founded Princeton University as a reaction
to Harvard and to Yale.
What is the point of declension at every
point?
It is the departure from wisdom and the
embracing of earthly perspectives.
Simplistic analysis?
Undoubtedly.
Faithfully true?
Yes.
In other words, such cries are far removed
from the contemporary president of Harvard, who said
just recently, things divine have been central neither
to my professional nor to my private life.
Issues of divinity, he says, do not influence
me in my professional capacity, nor do they
play any part of significance in my private
life.
I admire his honesty.
At least it's true.
But it is a long way removed, isn't
it?
Now let me pause purposefully with you here
and just tease this out a little bit.
Are you all right with this?
Are you with me?
All right?
This is a little bit of a digression,
but it is a purposeful digression.
It's not because I've run out of material.
Let's just pause and acknowledge something that is
patently obvious.
Ideas have consequences.
And people know that ideas have consequences, and
that's why advertising is as profoundly impactful as
it is.
Because it is essentially the packaging of ideas,
of concepts, of notions.
Some of them very subtle, some of them
almost deceitful.
It's amazing the way in which somebody sells
their product to us by making us feel
good about a funny little golden retriever that
is running through the grass.
But it's got nothing at all to do
with the exorbitant fees that the bank is
going to charge you for leaving your money
in their establishment.
But somehow or another, the retriever did it,
you know.
We got caught up by the retriever.
They sold us an idea.
They packaged it.
David Myers wrote a book called The American
Paradox.
Spiritual Hunger in an Age of Plenty was
the subtitle.
It was published, actually, by Yale University Press.
And this paradox he described as follows.
We're better fed, better paid, better housed, better
educated, and healthier than ever before, and with
more human rights, faster communication, and more convenient
transportation than we have ever known.
Alongside all this large yes, however, are the
signs of life in pain and travail.
Since 1960, the divorce rate has doubled.
Teen suicide has tripled.
Violent crime quadrupled.
The number in prison has quintupled.
Illegitimate children six times sextupled.
And the number of those cohabiting has increased
sevenfold.
Now, these are facts.
Ideas have consequences.
The idea that there is a God to
whom men and women are accountable has an
impact, when believed, on the lives and lifestyles
of those who believe.
The idea that we are simply a random
collection of molecules held in suspension with no
particular significance at all, also has implications.
Not least of all, in how we spend
our time, our money, and with whom we
spend our time and money.
And it may be with whomsoever we choose,
and on whatsoever we desire, depending on the
source of wisdom.
I give kudos to Scotland.
I take some of it back now in
relationship to the Enlightenment.
Because Scottish philosophers can't wiggle out of that
one.
They had a large part to play in
doing what?
In taking the notion of revelation, that God
has spoken in his world, and putting it
over in a corner, and replacing revelation with
rationality.
So that instead of our route to God
being a route which comes as a result
of his revelation and his initiative, any lingering
route to God would be a route that
would come through our own intellect.
Therefore, having set aside the notion of revelation,
and having embraced rationalism, we then follow that
track down, and it leads us to nowhere
in the end.
And no surprise, because God has made foolish
the wisdom of this world.
So that man by his wisdom cannot know
God.
That there is ultimately no intellectual road to
God.
As good as apologetics are, they cannot argue
to God.
If you're an atheist, it won't be apologetics
that brings you to Jesus.
It will be the fact that God reveals
himself to you.
And maybe in the strangest person.
Maybe in somebody that you think is a
nut.
Maybe in somebody that couldn't even stand with
you in intellectual discourse.
And maybe it is in a child.
Maybe it is in looking into the eyes
of someone and seeing the compassion of Christ
there.
It will be by means of revelation.
But the Enlightenment shifts revelation, replaces it with
rationalism.
The ensuing years follow.
You fast forward up to the 21st century,
and where are we now?
You don't have many scientific rationalists really left
at all.
There used to be a lot of them
all over the place.
Case Western Reserve, there are some.
The Cleveland Clinic, University Hospital, a few of
the bright people.
The derivatives of Alan Bradley and all of
those kind of people.
But not many.
It's fascinating.
Talk with them.
They may have crystals hanging from their mirrors.
They may be asking you about angels.
They may be wanting to talk to you
about the healing power of prayer.
Although they don't believe that prayer means anything
or goes anywhere or does anything.
But if it can possibly make them feel
good, then they'll be happy to think about
it.
But of course, if you have a view
on it, don't hold it in any sense
vociferously.
Because they will know immediately that you must
be wrong.
Because rationalism argued for the goalposts being in
place and the lines being drawn and the
referee with a whistle.
By the 21st century, there are no goalposts.
There are no lines.
There is no referee.
There is no need for a whistle.
Because there is no, in the minds of
contemporary philosophy, there is no objective basis whereby
we can deduce right from wrong.
And jurisprudence is full of it.
How can you have the Menendez brothers' trial
to which they confessed and in a hung
jury?
First time around.
And we can go through a whole host
of these things.
What's the problem?
The problem is that the jurors who sit
aren't wise.
Or they might be intelligent.
But they're not wise.
Because they don't have the wisdom that comes
from heaven.
The wisdom that comes from heaven, which is
moral before it's intellectual.
Which is ethical and practical before it is
simply intellectually absorbable.
Hence the teaching in our schools.
Much of it is very effective, but it
is not wise.
The decisions that are made in the schools
are not wise decisions.
Why?
Because in order to make a wise decision,
you have to become a wise man or
a wise woman.
How do you become a wise woman or
a wise man?
By bowing down before God and acknowledging that
He is the Creator.
That we are accountable to Him as Creator.
That we depend upon Him for our life
and our breath and our existence and our
minds and everything else besides.
And contemporary man is unprepared for such an
admission.
I'm not going to bow down before someone
I can't see.
So what are we?
Well, we're just a culture in crisis.
And the reason we're a culture in crisis
or western civilizations in crisis is because we're
individuals in crisis.
Because the average person can't answer the question,
who are you?
Who are you?
Oh, we maybe joke about, what's her name,
Tricky Woo, Paris Hilton or whatever.
And the coming in and going out and
what she's doing or Brittany or who knows.
Any of them.
I see them when I ever stop and
I try and help my wife about once
a month and go to the grocery store.
And there, when you're getting cartons of milk,
you just get a whole civilization there.
You only have to be there about a
minute and a half, you get the whole
deal.
Who's leaving who, who's getting back together, who's
married, who's divorced, whatever else it is.
And you can look at it and you
can disdain it or you can just burst
into tears when you think about it.
Because they don't have an answer to the
who question.
Who am I?
You see, if a person can't ask the
who question, who am I, and answer it
properly.
And say, well, I am a moral being
made in the image of a God to
whom I am accountable and before whom one
day I will stand.
Then they're going to have to come up
with something else.
Who am I?
I am my genes.
The great search, you know, the great genetic
search.
We understand it from a medical perspective.
But what's the big deal?
Are you really that fascinated by your chromosomes?
Who are you?
I'm my genes.
I am my sexual orientation.
I am my past.
I am my self-image.
I am my personality.
I am my experiences.
I am what I possess.
I am what I eat.
I am what I don't eat.
I am what I do.
I am what I know.
I don't know what I am.
Okay, now you're being honest.
Ideas of consequences.
Children cannot be taught at school that they
were born without reason, that they prolong themselves
by chance and they die and they go
into oblivion.
Without it will make an impact on their
lives and on their tiny minds.
There's all the difference in the world between
putting your head on the pillow at night
as a teenage boy trying to make sense
of your existence, knowing that God is in
heaven and he will care for you if
you call out to him, and being told
that there is no possible explanation for your
existence.
So whether you awake or whether you die,
whether you live or whether you're significant is
entirely irrelevant.
Ideas of consequences.
Now let's have the wise and the understanding
stand over by the tree.
He says, James, let me give you one
long quote and then a short quote and
then we're done.
This is from Walter Lippmann in a book
called A Preface to Morals, in which he
describes the experience of what he refers to
as man in the 21st century.
Listen carefully to this.
Moments of blank misgiving in which he finds
that the civilization of which he is a
part leaves a dusty taste in his mouth.
He may be very busy with many things,
but he discovers one day that he's no
longer sure that they are worth doing.
He has been much preoccupied, but he's no
longer sure he knows why.
He has become involved in an elaborate routine
of pleasures, and they do not seem to
amuse him very much.
He finds it hard to believe that doing
any one thing is better than any other
thing, or in fact is better than doing
nothing at all.
It occurs to him that it is a
great deal of trouble to live, and that
even in the best of lives, the thrills
are few and far between.
He begins more or less to seek satisfaction
because he is no longer satisfied, and all
the while he realizes that the pursuit of
happiness was always a most unhappy quest.
You say, well, okay, fine.
No, no, no, no, not so fast.
Are you going to sign a living will
and have a physician who fits that description
make a decision about the end of your
life?
Clever enough to become a doctor, but not
a wise man.
Clever enough to put the machinery in place
and to understand the chemistry, but not a
wise woman.
Someone who when she awakened in the morning
and got in her car and drove it
to the garage said, I don't know whether
it is significant for me to be a
doctor or not.
I don't know whether it is significant for
me to live or not.
I don't know whether I have any reason
for existence whatsoever, but let me go in
now and make sure I take care of
the rest of the universe when they're all
presented to me in my surgery.
Ideas and consequences.
And the old pictures of the doctor with
a stethoscope hanging around his neck and the
black bag and everything else are all regarded
as a charming past.
You know, haha, that's the old days of
whoever that painter was that everybody had or
has that you get in garage sales with
the doctor and the dentist and everybody else.
What's he called?
Who?
Yeah, that's in Rockwell.
Plates.
He has plates.
I remember that.
But there is a nostalgia in that because
you can't imagine a Norman Rockwell plate, can
you?
For euthanasia.
The Norman Rockwell plate with the tube being
removed from your grandmother's wrist.
Ideas and consequences, loved ones.
Don't miss this.
And don't think for a moment that this
is what happens when you read books and
sit in the library all day.
This is down at the popular level.
This is down at the grassroots.
1953, Samuel Beckett's play, Waiting for Godot, or
Godot, as it's said here.
I don't know where the emphasis should be
in the syllable, but you know the play.
It opened in Paris in 1953.
I missed the opening.
I was only one.
And it's amazing to me that that play
is still out there.
Have you ever seen it?
Have you ever read it?
There's no plot.
There's actually no play.
No movement.
Nothing happens.
No one goes anywhere.
No conclusions are reached.
No issues are resolved.
And then the curtain closes.
Everybody goes, man, that was fantastic.
What did you make of that?
I just wasted 27 bucks.
That's what I made of that.
That's unbelievable.
I can do that to myself.
I can pull my shower curtain over and
sit in front of it.
How can we do stuff like that?
Because we're not wise.
It's an expression of foolishness.
It's an expression of nihilism.
It is an expression of emptiness.
It is an expression of lostness.
It is the wisdom that is earthly and
sensual and irredeemable.
And just in case you say, well, you
know, so what?
I don't know who Beckett was, and I
frankly don't care.
You don't need to go there.
You just need to turn your TV on.
Watch the reruns.
Because Waiting for Godot has reincarnated itself a
number of times, and best of all, in
a show about nothing.
Oh, there couldn't be a show about nothing,
was there?
Who would write a show about nothing?
Seinfeld?
Everybody said, hey, it's going to be terrific.
Wednesday night, there's a show about nothing.
Can you believe that?
No, I can't.
Well, you wait and see.
It'll be terrific.
Thomas Hibbs says, A show about the comical
consequences of a life and a world void
of ultimate significance or fundamental meaning.
The comical consequences of life and a world
void of ultimate significance or fundamental meaning.
That's what it's all about.
And that's why, you see, in that show,
it always goes back to the bass guitar,
doesn't it?
Now we're off, and George is having a
cup of tea with somebody.
And now Elaine is over here, trying to
get Kramer out of wherever else it is.
You say, well, how do we get from
here to there?
Doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter.
There is no from here to there.
They're all disjointed random events in a random
world full of random people going nowhere at
all.
It's fool's wisdom.
And the fear of the Lord is the
beginning of wisdom.
Socrates, my final quote.
All of the wisdom of this world is
but a tiny raft upon which we must
set sail when we leave this earth.
If only there was a firmer foundation upon
which to sail, perhaps some divine word, tiny
raft, hanging all of our hopes on a
fool's wisdom.
If only there was some foundation.
If only there was a lifeboat coming from
somewhere.
And there is.
The foolishness of the cross is the wisdom
of God.
And the wisdom of God is powerful in
its impact.
We used to sing about it when we
were small.
We made it easy living on the Clyde
in Glasgow because these huge ocean-going liners
came up, Navy liners and commercial liners.
But they couldn't navigate the Clyde until the
pilot went out from down by Guruk or
Greenuk.
And as a boy, I would always watch
as the tiny tugboat went out, as the
huge liner got so far and stopped, and
then the fellow would climb up the steps
and he would get on, and then the
thing would reconvene and then it would be
taken safely into the harbour.
The guy got it so far but couldn't
get it to his destination and then the
pilot came.
And at Sunday school we taught a little
song, Do you want a pilot?
Signal then to Jesus.
Do you want a pilot?
Then bid him come on board and he
will safely guide across the ocean wide until
at last you reach the heavenly harbour.
There is only one person in the whole
world that can make it possible for any
one of us to safely reach the harbour
of heaven and that is Jesus Christ himself.
A notion which is regarded as abject total
foolishness but which is, says scripture, the very
wisdom.
I commend you to Jesus as your only
saviour and as our only hope in life
and in death.
Let us pray together.
O God, our Father, part us now with
your blessing.
May those of us who are wrestlers on
the sea of life cry out to you
as a pilot to come and take control
of our zigzagging lives, of our threatening upheavals,
to meet with us in our storms and
in our frantic attempts to get who knows
where.
Forgive us for thinking we can do it
on our own, figure it out.
We put our hands over our mouths and
we say, O God, come and take control
today.
Fill me with the Lord Jesus Christ in
all of his wisdom and his righteousness and
his truth.
And may grace and mercy and peace from
the Father and the Son and the Holy
Spirit be the abiding portion of all who
believe today and forevermore.
Amen.
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