[0:00] Welcome to the New Testament, to the first official of Timothy.
[0:16] The first official of Timothy, chapter 1, and part of this 17.
[0:38] We shall be devoid, now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, the honor and the glory forever and ever. Amen.
[1:07] The words I want to take for my text are these words, the only wise God.
[1:21] And I want to speak a little to you about the wisdom of God.
[1:32] One of the reasons for which I have taken this sermon is that some weeks ago I preached a sermon on the sin of complaining, which if I understand the scriptures correctly, is one of the greatest of all sins. Now the reason for which we should not complain is that God is all wise. And the reason for which complaining or murmuring is such a great sin, is that God is all wise. So when we complain, we complain against the wisdom of God. Now wisdom among men includes among other things, foresight and tact to achieve goodness by the best means. We talk among ourselves of men who are wise. Whatever we mean by that, it does not all mean the same thing. But we do talk that we have to say, because we are wise. If we are wise, the wise men who are wise.
[2:59] We are wise. We are wise. Wise in the Bible of wise men, especially Ptolemon, who was wise as an all other men of his generation. Wise in the Bible say, Son Ethan, the Ezahite, or Ema or Chalcol, or Darda, the or Heman, or Chalcol, or Dada, the sons of mine.
[3:22] There was no one so wise as Paul. Now, this wisdom is quite different to the stupidness with which people achieve their own ends.
[3:41] People are wise in that sense. We talk of them to be wise. If they have shrewdness and foresight to see the ends which they want to achieve, and they have the power to achieve them.
[4:02] Now, that is the wisdom that God will bring to naught. That is the wisdom of the world that is foolishness with God.
[4:13] The foolishness, but it is in conflict with the wisdom which God has. Wisdom, in its true sense, implies knowledge.
[4:27] There can be no wisdom where there isn't knowledge. There can be a lot of knowledge without wisdom.
[4:39] Clever men are not always wise. In fact, you can meet sometimes very clever men.
[4:52] The best educated men are not so that can be said about them. They are the biggest fools that you could possibly meet.
[5:02] But they are very well educated. I remember once in a West-Camply parish in a student day, talking to somebody, to one of the natives, who knew the sea from above the coast very well.
[5:22] And we were talking about an English man who had been drowned shortly before then. And this man said to me, the man that was talking to me, was a very wise man.
[5:39] And he said to me, before he went away with the boat, I told him where not to go and what not to do. But he said he was a genius and a cat.
[5:54] He was a wise man and he was a big fool. And he said because he was a fool, he drowned.
[6:06] Now this happens very often. I remember in my own experience of one man who was really a genius and yet he was the most tactless person that ever tied shoes on.
[6:24] So wisdom doesn't always go with knowledge. But there can be no wisdom without knowledge. Now then, talking about the wisdom of God, we can't fully express it any more than we can express anything else, but it is God.
[6:49] The wisdom of God is the essence of God. It is what God is. There are other perfections or aptitudes indeed.
[7:01] But wisdom is one of them. Until wisdom was taken away, then God would not be God.
[7:13] God is all wise. And that means that God alone is wise. No one else is wise in this respect, but God.
[7:29] If priests are wise, they are wise comparatively with other priests. But God alone is wise.
[7:40] God only is wise. And it is an attitude that is often attributed to him in the past. For example, by Daniel, who states in his adoration of him, great and holy and wise are the Lord God.
[8:00] The angels, in their adoring songs, who read in the Revelation, attribute wisdom, wisdom, as well as other things, unto God.
[8:11] Now, this is often attributed to God in a Bible. Now, the foreordination of God, and consequently all his works in the world, are not the mere acts of his will.
[8:32] All these things are guided by his wisdom. There is no arbitrariness, no lack of foresight.
[8:45] There is nothing wrong with anything God does, because he is the only one, God. Now, this, as I may find out to you more later on, this is for the great beheldness of the sin of complaining, or murmuring, or even worrying, to transcend.
[9:12] When we complain about anything, in our providence, then we are trying to reduce God to our own level.
[9:23] We cannot do it, of course, God is unattested by our complaints or by our worries, but this is actually what we are trying to do. We try to place them on our own level, or else try to place ourselves on his level.
[9:39] And this is for the great sin of this complaining and murmuring and worrying comes in. All the works of God are the fruit of his wisdom.
[9:53] and there can be no flaws therefore in everything that he does. Now, briefly, let me quote to you some of the properties of this week.
[10:05] It is said that God is the only wise God. Now, this means, in the third place, and very briefly, it means that God is infinitely wise.
[10:17] Now, I cannot tell what the word infinite means. Nobody knows what that means. We can only have our main idea of the meaning.
[10:33] But the word is used, it is used in the Bible concerning the wisdom of God. It's understanding it's infinite. And what is infinite knows no limit, no balance.
[10:48] And there is nothing without balance but God alone. Not even this vast universe that does not yet been explored or never will be explored.
[11:02] It has a limit, it has a limit. But God has no limit. God has no aim. Like that. And this is what we mean by the infinity of God.
[11:19] And particularly today of the infinity of the wisdom of God. There can be no balance. And if we were to put all the wisdom of the angels together and make it one wisdom, if we could sum it all up and put it into one creature and all the wisdom of glorified state, all the wisdom of Paul in a glorified state and to Abraham and to Isaac and Jacob and all other glorified states, if you put all that wisdom together, there would be a limit to it.
[12:04] It is our wisdom that could be measured. However incomprehensible it might be to us, still it could be measured. But the wisdom of God cannot be measured.
[12:18] There is no measure to it. It is an infinite wisdom and therefore there is no measure to it. Now, we can't believe in God in any sense unless we believe that he is the only wise God.
[12:36] God. This is our essential of every Christian creed. You can't get frustrated with your soul as the Savior unless you believe that he is the only wise God and he is infinitely wise God.
[12:55] You must believe that. it is our foundation truth of Christianity and embrace the foundation of everything else that we believe concerns God.
[13:09] You must believe in his powers and trust in his powers unless you believe that he is the infinitely one God. Then secondly, God is eternally wise.
[13:24] there is no beginning in this wisdom. Every other wisdom is secondary. Every other wisdom is communicated by you.
[13:40] The wisdom that the ancients have is communicated with. They didn't have it until God gave it to them. The wisdom that we may have in this world is communicated with.
[13:56] If any man is wiser than a fellow it is because God made him wiser than himself. It's not, it doesn't give any merit or any glory to the man that is wiser than us or that someone.
[14:13] It gives the glory to God alone. Now God is the fountain of all wisdom. His wisdom never had a beginning anymore that he had his sin.
[14:27] He is eternally wise. As his being is eternal, so it is wisdom eternal. Men of our will get wise as they grow old.
[14:40] We naturally think that a adult has more wisdom than a child. Men of our will get wisdom by experience.
[14:52] But that is not the way with God. There can be no increasing as there can be no decreasing of the wisdom of God because it is an eternal thing.
[15:06] the third thing I would mention about it is that it is perfect and transparent. The angels are not perfect in wisdom.
[15:21] They are perfect in the sense that there is no sin in them. But they are perfect in the sense of being infinite in wisdom.
[15:31] the angels have not perfect knowledge. They don't know everything. And if they don't know everything then they can't be all wise.
[15:44] You can't be wise but according to the measure of your knowledge. And the angels don't know everything. For example Jesus says regarding the day of church no man knows of that day not even the angels in heaven.
[16:03] But my father only. There are things that they don't know. And they can't be wise concerning the thing that they don't know. But God is perfectly wise as well as entirely wise.
[16:20] There is nothing that he doesn't know. And some people are being perplexed with what this is meant in the book of Job by the expression that God charges his angels with coffee.
[16:35] This is what it means. Not that God accuses the angels of being foolish. He doesn't do that. But what it means is that in comparison with himself the angels are foolish.
[16:50] A comparative way of speaking. He is so infinitely aburting wise. That they are not wise comparatively speaking. He alone is wise.
[17:04] And therefore it is a possibility if he is trepably wise and wisdomly wise, it is impossible that he should do anything wrong. He cannot do anything wrong.
[17:16] It is a moral impossibility that God should do anything wrong. He cannot do anything wrong. all that he does is done in infinite and in paraphic and perfect wisdom.
[17:33] Holy he is in all words. And this now is where we go wrong and shall pass on. This is where we insert the majesty of heaven when we fight forth with God for anything that he does.
[17:49] And we all do and we often do. God gives you success and promotion and riches and excellence and ease and joy in the world.
[18:04] God is acting in perfect and mentality wisdom. When God gives you sorrow and disappointment and losses and grief, God is acting with his same perfect and intolerable wisdom.
[18:22] there is no difference in his wisdom. Whatever difference there may be in his dealing, his wisdom is always the same. His wisdom is always perfect, always happy, always worried.
[18:40] And you see then the sin of worrying. You see the sin of complaining. Why do we worry? We worry because we don't believe God is all wise.
[18:52] That's why we worry. Why do we complain? Because something happens to us that we don't like? Because we don't believe that God is all wise. Always believe it in a thing.
[19:07] But we don't act upon our belief. If I am worrying about what may happen in my space and years from now, why am I worrying if I believe that God is all wise and that nothing can be wrong concerning what happens to me?
[19:21] It can't be wrong. It's bound to be right. Whatever it may feel like, it's bound to be right. It's bound to be right.
[19:32] It's bound to be the best thing because God does it in infinite wisdom and in perfect wisdom. So then, there is no termination of it.
[19:45] wisdom and wisdom and wisdom and wisdom and wisdom and wisdom and wisdom and there is never a moment in which anything else can be true but that God is perfectly wise.
[19:57] He is impalately wise. As I said, it is impossible that he should do anything but what is perfectly wise. And then, God is incomprehensibly wise.
[20:11] we can't understand the wisdom of God. None can understand it, none can explain it. We are not asked to explain it.
[20:21] God, we thank you for that. We are asked to proclaim it but we can't explain it. All created things are possible of exploration.
[20:36] But the wisdom of God is not possible of exploration. you see, there we have the vast universe in which we live. And people know that we have hardly begun exploring it.
[20:50] People go to the moon. They can send satellites to man if they like. But there is yet vast territory, much, much, much more that they haven't even touched.
[21:05] But the reason for which they haven't touched it, the reason for which we don't know everything about the universe, is that we haven't the possibility to know it.
[21:16] We haven't got the knowledge to know it. We haven't got the means to get to know it. But all these things are possible of knowing. But the wisdom of God is not possible of knowing.
[21:29] This is a comprehension. He demanded how much we know it. We cannot know, we cannot comprehend the wisdom of God.
[21:41] See, the wisdom of God is significantly above all other wisdom, as I tried to point out to you before. And there would be always an infinite distance between his wisdom and the wisdom of all created beings.
[21:57] When God takes the saints to heaven, they would be perfect in heaven. And the angels would be in heaven with them, and the angels, the number of them cannot be numbered.
[22:08] But God would always be infinitely wise above them all. There would be an infinite distance between the wisdom of God and the wisdom of these glorified saints and the wisdom of the holy saints.
[22:24] There is an infinite distance between God and the teachers and all and God the wisdom of these and all.
[22:37] Just a word of that. Some men are wise in some respects, but not in others. I mentioned this at the beginning. Some people are very wise for certain things.
[22:51] They seem to have ungenious for certain things. And as I said earlier on, they can be dead of the proofs in the ministry.
[23:01] But God is really definitely wise. God is wise concerning everything. I shall point this out to you later on. And God is perpetuating wise.
[23:14] And I shall be with his life and life. He's not only alone wise, but he will be forever wise.
[23:26] All you see wise men in this world, men who have gone on for years and years, carrying on their affairs to the admiration of everybody. And then all at once they would make us slip.
[23:40] And then they'd pull some of us. They did something which they thought would benefit themselves, and it brought down crashing everything that they had ever done.
[23:51] There is no fear of this with God. God is perpetually wise. I told you that man acquired wisdom with the coming of the year. But then there comes a stage in the life of man when the coming of the year brings decay of wisdom.
[24:12] As utter truth brings wisdom. All the age brings sedility and brain decay. And man becomes a second child, goes into a second child.
[24:24] The wise man becomes like a child. He loses wisdom with the youth. He said of the Duke of Wellington that when he was a great and old man, they used to entertain him by reading to him the exploits of his own military genius.
[24:47] And he was a military genius. And one would read and read and read about the way he commanded his army. And now and again they would say, they say that he would say, my word, who was the commander?
[25:05] He didn't know he had become a second child. He had gone into a second child. Now then, God is perfect to anyone.
[25:17] God is not only charred and wise in the sense that there was no beginning to his wisdom, but he did charred and wise in the sense that he never be foolish in any way.
[25:27] He never do anything. Yes, wisdom adds enough to his protection. You see, justice without wisdom would be cruelty.
[25:42] Oppression could be tactically just, but if he's not wise, he could be very cruel. power without wisdom is oppression.
[25:54] Some people are vast powering hands, like Stalin and Lenin, and they do see it. They do say power, but they have no wisdom or their religion, and their power became an oppression.
[26:10] Some people are love without wisdom, and love without wisdom becomes indulgence. And we would go on, 20 of these days, how the wisdom of God acts lustre to his holiness, and to all his works, and to all his properties.
[26:31] But I want to speak a little more about the manifestations of this wisdom. How do we see the wisdom of God? Now there are three distinct seers in which we see.
[26:45] How do not that nature but just dimension one tooth. And that is the truth. First of all there is creation. This wisdom of seed in creation.
[26:59] We find this in the words used in the Old Testament and sometimes used in the New regarding the work of God, the creative work of God in the world.
[27:13] God made all things in the world. Now there are two ways in which a person could make a thing. A person can make a thing by sheer power. And a person can make a thing who has no power, but who has tremendous skill.
[27:30] Now the word used of the creation of God is the word used of skill, of wisdom, not of power. Isn't that a person?
[27:41] God made all the things. But you see, all these units, the word used concerning God in the making of them, is not always the word power, but the word skill, the word wisdom.
[28:00] It is by wisdom we have to do all the words. And we can see this by the variety of them, something of which I am not going to stop, at this first time.
[28:10] He never made any, except wisely. He made the sun, and he made it wisely. He put it at the right distance from the earth, else it would burn the earth.
[28:25] If it had been further away, then it would do no good to the world. He does the proper heat, the proper distance for the wealth of the world.
[28:35] He made the earth, and he made the seas, and he made the things that that has therein. He made the seasons. Vegetation. Birds, without which we couldn't live.
[28:50] Insects that we don't see, that preserve our lives. The dairy warrants that burrow in the ground. Everything is made in absolute and perfect wisdom in the creation of God.
[29:04] The second way in which we can see this is government, in the government of God. You can see it in the Morado, which was given for the happiness of man, and is suited to the happiness of man.
[29:19] You can see it in the gifts of God to the church. I have no time to dwell on these things particularly. When you think of the gifts of God to the church, he gave to some evangelists, he gave to other ministers, and so on.
[29:36] But the gifts of God to the church are always given in fellowship. You see this? Even if you want to take a people's court, or a session, or a presbytery, or an assembly.
[29:50] Some people in an assembly of Christian people, whether it's a session or a tender assembly, some people are wise in one thing. Other people are wise in another thing.
[30:02] And in the montages of counsel, as they are listening, God gave to you that he didn't give to another, and to another that he didn't give to you. But in the distribution of God manifests his manifold wisdom.
[30:19] He manifests his infinite and perfect wisdom. He manifests in a bounding of sin in his governance of the world.
[30:30] God will not see us sin, but God forordates him. God is not the order of sin, but he forordated for his own glory.
[30:47] That in the incarnation of Christ, and in his suffering, and in his atoning death, he must display his glory, as it could not be displayed. If there were no sin.
[31:01] And God bound sin. God keeps sin, in a sense, and is controlled. Even now, in our age, and in the century, he's keeping it under control.
[31:14] Britain is not as bad as it could be. Britain is not nearly as bad as it could be. Our young people are not nearly as wicked as they could be.
[31:24] Why? Because God sets limits in his wisdom to what they can do. He bounds, puts limits to sin.
[31:35] He saves him of it, as he says, of the deep hitherto, shod he can and no purpose. And then he makes use of sinfulness, in his infinite wisdom.
[31:51] And this is one of the things in which we see God's infinite wisdom, God's perfect wisdom, displayed in our mouth. I don't believe for a moment that Satan knew that the death of Christ would work the atonement of the elect.
[32:10] I don't believe that. I don't believe that Satan would have hastened the death of Christ. If he knew that the death of Christ was to be the means by which the world was to be saved.
[32:25] Satan has defeated Judas' scandard, to betray him, to get him to the cross, to get him out of the way, to get him slain.
[32:37] How could he have done that if he knew that this was the very thing that was going to crush his own head irrelevably and finally? No, Satan didn't know.
[32:50] He couldn't have known. If he wouldn't have done it, he wouldn't have hasted the death of Christ. But God made use of Satan.
[33:01] God made use of Judas, in his infinite wisdom. And it's far more amazing that God should make use of devil to carry out his purposes and to display his wisdom than that he should make use of angels.
[33:17] Holy angels. How may have it be? I am far more amazed that he should have made use of the devil. And that he should have made use of Judas Iscariot, in whom there was a devil and who was a devil.
[33:32] That he should have made use of them. I am far more amazed at this than that he should have made use of Gabriel to announce to Mary the birth of the child Jesus.
[33:44] Or of Michael to defend the body of Moses. I am far more amazed that he is made use of devil than that he is made use of angels.
[33:55] It's like this phrase. How would a man make use of child to carry out a house? This is it. If you saw a man building a house in which he was going to live, and he began building a house with fire.
[34:14] Tile that distracted him. Tile destroyed him. And the man wants to build the house with fire. What would he say? Would he not say that he was fully dead?
[34:25] And yet, if you look at the Bible, God in his infinite wisdom has built the church with the very things that tended to destroy it.
[34:37] He has used the fire whose evidence is destructive. In his infinite wisdom, he has used it to build it up. There is the death of Christ himself.
[34:48] There is the fire of Calvary. Today, the thing that you would think would have destroyed forever and ever all the plans of God. They established the plans of God.
[35:00] They displayed the plans of God after everything else was ever done. And again, God has instantly realized. In leading to sin, in regenerating soul.
[35:13] I am still talking about the government of God, of the world. Is it just an astonishing thing that he should leave the realm of sin in the souls of his elect, who are regenerated and sanctified?
[35:31] It certainly is. We would not have thought of it like that. We would have thought that sanctification would be a test of sanctification in the very day that sanctification took place.
[35:46] But God in his infinite wisdom did not make it so. But why is that? Because he wants his people to be careful, to be watchful, to be coming closer and closer to Christ.
[36:00] And they can come closer and closer to Christ only by knowing their own innate tendency to sin. They can make use of Christ as a Savior and as a nationality only by knowing the remnants of sin within.
[36:19] And sin which meritoriously fixes for heaven. And my friends, every sin meritoriously fixes for heaven, whether we be Christians or not.
[36:30] But they may seem that meritoriously fixes for heaven. God makes provision according to his infinite wisdom to treat us for heaven by that day.
[36:45] David was never made more treat for heaven than when he came with a complex spirit and a broken heart before God. I'm afraid that the spirit would not depart from it.
[36:57] And yet what he did meritoriously deserved heaven. But he didn't go to heaven. Because God used to see that he served him to work for his good.
[37:11] Take Peter. Denying the Lord with all the pleasures. And meritoriously, that is her that Peter should go to hell for what he did.
[37:24] But instead of that, God used it in his infinite wisdom to make Peter one of the greatest men that ever lived in this world for the good and the progress of the kingdom of God.
[37:37] And one other thing that I would mention with regard to the government of God. Just one other thing. God is infinitely wise in sending afflictions upon his people.
[37:52] God is infinitely wise in sending crosses to his people. Our friends, repute it your own wisdom. Don't ever say you are a Christian, whatever you say.
[38:03] Don't ever say, I wish that had not happened. That is a message to see. But if God sends you anything, don't say, I wish he had sent it to me.
[38:15] I wish I had been successful. I wish I hadn't got saved. Don't say that. God is infinitely wise when he does all this. He will be a hero.
[38:26] And he sends afflictions to you, as he sends to his old son, that you may learn obedience in the school of suffering. It is in his infinite wisdom, he does.
[38:37] It is to write for you for glory, that he does. He's infinitely wise, but not until the room is silent, and the shuttle ceased to fly. Shall God withdraw the candles and explain the reason why the dark and reds were as needful in the wheel of skillful hands as the threads of gold and silver in the past he has blacked.
[39:03] It is only then what I do now he know not, but he shall know in the last. Now the most interesting part of all, and the part of which I did not leave myself and redeem, that God's wisdom has been relieved in redemption, in the redemptive work of Christ.
[39:26] And in this respect, the wisdom of God is called the manifold wisdom of God. And I know what the word manifold is.
[39:36] He has been, I think he's got an infinite length of cloth that began preaching, and preaching, and preaching, and then in the ravening, and there will be no end to the ravening of it, to the ending of the preaching.
[39:52] This is a manifold wisdom of God. A wisdom that cannot be mentioned. No wonder this man who used to turn the manifold wisdom of God said in another place.
[40:06] He said, Oh, the depths of the wisdom of God. And if you can say this regarding creation and regarding government, you can say much more so, reverently speaking, with regard to the work of the atonement, to the redemptive work of Jesus Christ.
[40:28] You see, the creature is utterly incapable of comprehension, the manifold wisdom of God. What was meant by it is finished. What wisdom was displayed in the incarnation of Christ?
[40:42] In the virgin bearing this child, carrying this child in her womb, bringing him into the world, Christ growing up, suffering like a human being, and he was a human being, then dying up on the cross.
[40:56] It is incomprehensible to this how God should have chosen this way to redeem the world. And he is taking the operation regeneration in the half of us.
[41:13] God working in the half of us. Our friends, don't worry if you can't explain your regeneration. If you can't explain how you will convert, it doesn't matter how well a man can explain it.
[41:27] John Banyan wrote grace about him, and he traced step by step the ways of God towards himself. See, at Spurgeon, the whole thing was as clear to him as day.
[41:39] And yet there was a wisdom display in their free generation that they would not comprehend. They only understood a little of it. It is only the surface part of it that they told me.
[41:52] So don't you be worried. There is far more that nobody knows. That nobody doesn't know about the salvation than another one. Sanctification.
[42:04] Look at this. Look at the mystery of God, the wisdom of God in every one of the nations. And that's it, there's no idea about trust. Very often we are sanctified by admission and by trust to the world.
[42:17] This is the way. Who are these who are unable to find those? These are they who came out of great tribulations. Not of tribulations, but of great tribulations.
[42:30] Why? Because in the wisdom of God they were put into the furnace to be purged like gold and relieved of all the truth.
[42:41] And then there is a complete overthrow of the kingdom of Satan. There is not a company in the work of the dish. Oh, my friends, Satan seems to have a door his own way nowadays.
[42:54] Britain has gone to the dogs, spiritually and morally. It has gone to the dogs. We have become practically a pagan nation. And it's true of a lot of the world.
[43:07] But don't worry. Don't worry, in the least, my friends. Don't worry. Satan is not going to have the victory. Satan has had his head crushed on Calvary's cross.
[43:19] And there is a day coming when Satan shall be burned with everlasting chains and cast into eternal life. That is his future.
[43:30] That is what God said he will do to him. But in infinite wisdom he allows us for our wife to have his own way. But it is in order that he might display his wisdom in his honest what he told the church.
[43:45] And told the establishing of the kingdom of grace and the history of the kingdom of glory. Now, what shall I say? There is no time left to say very much more anything.
[43:56] But I'm just going to end with this word. Do you believe in what I've been saying? Do you believe that God is alone wise? Do you think you're wise?
[44:09] Well, if any man is wise in his own estimation, the Bible says he's a fool. That's what the Bible says. If you think you're wise, you're a fool.
[44:21] Do you think you're wise? Well, there is a wisdom that you may have to carry out here. But hey, if you've got it from him, and do not pride yourself about it.
[44:33] If you're wiser than yourself, he gave it to you. If you're brazier than yourself, oh God, give it to you. Don't be proud of him. But my friends, when it comes to peace with God, beauty is your own wisdom.
[44:47] You believe in the wisdom and the everlasting and the eternal, infinite, perfect, and power from the will of God? Yes, you do. And yet, you just will give way to get here of this, what God didn't mean to you.
[45:02] You just will give way to get that, something that God didn't mean to you. You complain, you don't get it. I just do say that you believe in the wisdom of God. No, my friends, prove that you believe in the infinite wisdom of God.
[45:17] Thy asking upon you, commit thy way and he recruits me. Thank you.