TUESDAY May 7th
1 Corinthians 1:20–21
‘Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 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.’
There is a cross-reference from verse 20 in the ESV that takes you to Isaiah 19:12 which reads ‘Where then are your wise men? Let them tell you that they might know what the LORD of hosts has purposed against Egypt.’
It is a challenge from God to those who consider themselves to be the wise men of the day to reveal that which God is going to do, remember back in Elijah’s day, he challenged the prophets of Baal to a test to see whose God would answer and prove to be the true and living God, and in a similar way God is challenging the wise to see which of them, that is the wise men or God himself is the wiser, the one who knows and can reveal that which was to yet happen. In the previous verses in Isaiah (19:11) God says this about those who considered themselves to be wise in the days of the Egyptian Pharoah, ‘the wisest counsellors of Pharaoh give stupid counsel’. We will recall the time when Nebuchadnezzar had had his dream and he called all the wise men together and demanded of them that they not only told him what his dream was, but also what it meant, and we read in Daniel 2, that they had to admit that with all their wisdom, they could not reveal what the dream was all about, and therefore they had no chance of revealing its meaning. Later in Daniel 4, Neb’ has another dream, this time he makes it easier for the wise men by telling them what the dream was, all they had to do was to give its meaning, but they could not give the interpretation. We see on both occasions it took a man called Daniel who was not wise in his own eyes, but had wisdom that came from above, wisdom given to him by God, who showed him what the king needed to know.
Very clearly we see that the wise men of this world, the wisdom of this world is not a match for the wisdom of almighty God, he knows all things, he is as I mentioned in one of last weeks devotions, the omniscient God, he knows all things, therefore in knowing all things he knows exactly how best to deal with any and every given situation, and when it came to fallen humanity, whereas the wise men in this world would have tried a 1001 ways to try to deal with the problem of sin, every single one of the 1001 options would have failed, it was only possible because the wisdom of God decided, the only wise God knew that it would take as it says in a song a lamb, and the Lamb needed to be the spotless, sinless Son of God who would give his life as an atoning sacrifice. ‘Foolishness’, says the world, not at all says the wise God, it is my power at work, and as a result through the cross, redemption has become available.
We need to learn from this as those who seek to excel in their own wisdom and think that they can overturn the Christian heritage of our nation, the biblical standards that have been the bedrock of our society, the morality that is taught through the counsel of God’s word, that their best wisdom falls short when it comes to wisdom that is from above. Repeating the words God spoke through the prophet Isaiah, the wisest counsellors give stupid wisdom, we need to stay firmly grounded on that which God’s word teaches us, allowing his wisdom as revealed in the Holy Scriptures to trump anything and everything else, so that our lives and the steps we take each day, and the standards we live by each day are ordered by the Lord.