"THE WISDOM OF GOD"

“THE WISDOM OF GOD”

Proverbs 8:22,23; Proverbs 8:27-31; John 3:12,13; Colossians 1:24-29; Colossians 2:1-3; Ephesians 3:8-10

I want to speak, dear brethren, of the wisdom of God, and to show how it is to come into expression in the assembly. What one has in mind in referring to it is that we might all gain some impression of the greatness of what God has called us to, for if we have been laid hold of by the gospel which has reached us in this day of the Spirit, we have been laid hold of to form part of the assembly, which is the greatest conception that divine love and wisdom could possibly bring into being. I hope I may be able to convey some little impression of that, how it is intended, that in it God’s wisdom should be seen. At the end of the epistle to the Romans, it says, “To God only wise,” the force of the expression being really, ‘To God who alone is wise,’ conveying that wisdom is only with God, not, of course, that He cannot impart it to men, for He can, as it says, “If any one of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all freely and reproaches not, and it shall be given to him,” James 1: 5. It is a great thing to get the sense that God only is wise. Solomon says in Proverbs 21, “There is no wisdom, nor understanding, nor counsel against Jehovah.” That is a very great comfort, that whatever man and Satan may do against God, and against His people, there is no wisdom in it finally. It may appear to have wisdom, and to a certain extent according to man’s reckoning, it may have wisdom, but in the long run it will be all exposed as utter folly. God will expose it. And so in Revelation 12, the dragon appears with seven heads. That has a suggestion of completeness of wisdom, apparently, for the head is the seat of wisdom; and in chapter 13 the first beast appears, and he has seven heads. He is one of Satan’s agents that will shortly appear when the assembly is gone. Satan and the beast both appear to have remarkable wisdom, but where does it end? It ends in the lake of fire. The beast will be taken and cast alive into the lake of fire, and Satan will eventually be cast into the lake of fire, too, and that is the end, you see, of all wisdom against God; that is where it ends, and where its utter folly will be demonstrated.

Now we have in Proverbs 8 the thought of wisdom, which is personified there. It does not literally refer to Christ, because you will notice that all through the chapter it speaks of wisdom in the feminine. It says in chapter 9: “Wisdom hath built her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars,” and so on; so that wisdom is presented, not exactly as a figure of Christ, although there is no doubt whatever that when Christ appeared, the wisdom of God came into expression in Him, as we shall see in a moment; but the idea in Proverbs 8 is of wisdom regarded as a quality, and what God says about it. Wisdom, which is personified in the chapter says, “Jehovah possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. I” (that is wisdom) “was set up from eternity, from the beginning, before the earth was.” Now I understand that to mean, that before God began to work out His thoughts, He committed Himself to wisdom. His way as I understand it, is the means He takes to effectuate the thoughts that His heart has formed. God begins by forming certain thoughts, certain purposes, then the question is, how He is going to work them out; and with a view to working out what thoughts He had formed, He commits Himself to wisdom. It says, “Jehovah possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. I was set up from eternity.” That is to say, God does not do what men do. They get an idea and they begin to work it out, and they find, perhaps, that they have to scrap what they have done and begin again; or they achieve a certain measure of success, but they have to amend their original plan, and someone else comes along with something better; and so there is a continual displacement and supersession of what had gone before, but not so with God. If God forms a purpose, He carefully thinks out, according to wisdom, how He is going to work it out. He commits Himself to wisdom before He begins His operations, and then when He begins His operations. He carries them through in wisdom in relation to the thoughts He has already formed; so that first of all, we get, “Jehovah possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old.”

Then from verse 27 onwards, we read, “When he prepared the heavens, I was there; when he ordained the circle upon the face of the deep; ... when he imposed on the sea his decree that the waters should not pass his commandment, when he appointed the foundations of the earth: then I was by him.” That is, when God began His operations in creation, wisdom was by Him. “By him” it says; using figurative language, “his nursling: and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him; rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth, and my delights were with the sons of men.” It is figurative language, suggestive, I believe, of the pleasure that God had in taking account of the thoughts He had formed in relation to the sons of men, and in the way in which He was going step by step, to bring these thoughts into expression and full completion. One cannot go into all the details. I have no doubt there was a reason in everything.

What God had in mind in relation to the sons of men was to form in that order of creation, men, not angels, but men, those who should be competent to respond to Him perfectly, to be brought into a place of greatest nearness and most holy intimacy, to be able to appreciate His glory and respond to it intelligently. Wonderful things God had in mind, showing unselfish He is; that He, being what He is, desired to have creatures before Him of such a character that they should be able to appreciate what He is with wonderful intelligence, and to respond to Him in wonderful affection. With nothing less than that would God be satisfied, and so I have no doubt that all these things had a meaning. “When he imposed on the sea his decree, that the waters should not pass his commandment.” What a comfort that is! The sea usually represents the workings of lawless men acted upon by Satan, but they are under control. It was in divine wisdom, dear brethren, that we should be here in a world of evil, for it is in having to be here and having to learn how to choose the good and refuse the evil, and having to learn to trust in God in the presence of evil; it is in all these things that we develop morally and spiritually, so that we may fit the position that God has in mind for us. And so He was pleased to allow that evil should come in, and that those who were the subjects of His purpose should find themselves in a world of evil, but what was it for? For our formation and education in the knowledge of Himself. And so He “imposed on the sea his decree, that the waters should not pass his commandment.”

What a comfort that is, when evil arises like a flood, as it does, sometimes, the saints fall back on that, that God has said to the sea, “Hitherto shalt thou come and no further, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed,” Job 38: 11; and we trust in God that when the waves of lawlessness arise, that He will just say to them, “no further.” The whole matter is under His control. We are thankful for that. So the seed of Abraham is likened to the sand of the seashore. God made the sea and provided the sand on the seashore. You may say, how weak is the sand, just little grains; but as held together the sand provides a barrier that the waves of the sea cannot pass over. And that is just what the saints are; they stand as a great bulwark against the forces of evil, so that however much they arise, there is something here that cannot be overcome. It is the seed of Abraham, the true seed of faith, those who know God, and God has set them as the bound of the sea, that it cannot pass over; Jeremiah 5: 22. All these details of creation, I have no doubt, were in divine wisdom because of what God was going to work out in relation to the sons of men. Wisdom’s delights were with the sons of men. Wonderful thing to think of! Long before time, as we know it, was created, God had created angels; when He laid the foundations of the earth, “all the sons of God,” it says, “shouted for joy,” Job 38: 7. They were undoubtedly angels, and angels are creatures of much greater power than men, remarkable power, “angels, mighty in strength,” David says in Psalm 103: 20. One angel was able, without any difficulty, to dispose of the army of Sennacherib, an army of one hundred and eighty-five thousand. Think of the power of one angel, and yet, when it was a question of the purpose of His love, God did not choose angels, but set His delight on the sons of men! It ought to affect us greatly, that God has passed by angels and taken up the sons of men.

Well now, that being so, how is it to be worked out? How was God to secure an order of man that would be great enough morally to satisfy His heart and be able to respond to Him intelligently and appreciatively? Well, the next great step in divine wisdom is the incarnation. The great secret of divine wisdom is the wonderful fact that one of the Persons of the Godhead would become a Man, and so you get the Lord constantly speaking of Himself as the Son of man. Wisdom’s delights were with the sons of men, but now the Son of man comes in. That is a title that the Lord constantly took as referring to Himself as One who had come in to take up all that belonged to man. He had to take up, dear brethren, all that attached to man because of sin, and give His life a ransom for many, if God’s thoughts for man were to be worked out. So we find Him saying, “The Son of man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many,” Matthew 20: 28. Oh, wonderful grace! And yet on the other hand, God had destined man for the highest place. It says in Psalm 8, “What is man that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and splendour. Thou hast made him to rule over the works of thy hands; thou hast put everything under his feet.” That is what God has destined for man, but it was all to be taken up by the Son of man. In the end of chapter 1 of John’s gospel, Nathanael said to the Lord “Thou art the Son of God, thou art the king of Israel,” and the Lord said, “Thou shalt see greater things than these. And he says to him, Verily, verily, I say to you, Henceforth ye shall see the heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of man.” “The Son of God, the king of Israel,” related to Israel, but the Lord said, “Thou shalt see greater things than these ... . Ye shall see the heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of man.” That is, the Son of man would be supreme, and the angels of God would ascend and descend upon Him; ascending, as it were, to receive His instructions, and descending to execute them, so great is the place of man in the Person of Christ.

Now in the verse I read in John 3, the Lord says, “No one has gone up into heaven, save he who came down out of heaven, the Son of man who is in heaven.” The latter is a remarkable expression, involving His deity. Though here as a Man, walking here on this earth, and speaking to Nicodemus, He could yet speak of Himself as “the Son of man who is in heaven.” He does not say, ‘Who was in heaven,’ nor ‘who is going to be in heaven’; but “the Son of man who is in heaven.” It is an expression which necessarily involves His deity, because when you come to a divine Person, you cannot limit Him by any idea of location or anything of that sort. He inhabits eternity. He is everywhere. And when the Lord said, “The Son of man who is in heaven,” I have no doubt He was intending to convey the truth of who it was, that was there. That is the keystone of divine wisdom, that He who is God should become Man, and bring into manhood supreme moral excellence. God has brought in in Christ an order of manhood that is great enough in personal and moral excellence to satisfy His desires, great enough to express God, and to respond to Him in a perfect way.

But then, beloved brethren, that being so, what was in mind in a divine Person becoming Man, was that we might be brought into His life; and so redemption has been accomplished. That was a necessity. We read in the next verse, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, thus must the Son of man be lifted up.” There was a divine must, because of the condition in which men were, they had become the subjects of sin and all its consequences. And therefore, if God was to effectuate His thoughts in relation to the sons of men, that matter must be dealt with according to God, sin must be judged; and as to the man who was sinful, his history must be terminated in judgment, and the Lord Jesus went to the cross in order that all that might be done vicariously for man. If it had been effectuated in us, we should never have emerged from the judgment of God; but the Son of God came and took vicariously, that is on behalf of others, the place that was ours, in order that the judgment might be borne and exhausted, and God be glorified, and the history of sinful man ended judicially in the cross of Christ. What for? In order that God might be free to give us life in Christ, and set us up in life in the heavenly order of manhood, the order of manhood that is according to His original thought, as it says in 1 Corinthians 15: 48: “Such as he made of dust, such also those made of dust; and such as the heavenly one, such also the heavenly ones.” The first man was not God’s original thought; he was simply brought in by way of testimony, and that God might work out His thoughts in wonderful grace; but it is not an earthly order of man who has place in heaven. We have received the spirit of the heavenly One; we live in His life, and are of His order. But what I am seeking to bring before you is that God having conceived His thoughts in relation to the sons of men brought forward wisdom before setting about to carry them out; the first great step in wisdom being the incarnation. Not that it was first in point of time, because the foundation of the world came before that. When we get the expression in Scripture “before the foundation of the world,” I believe it always refers to the purpose of God. God had formed His purposes, and then the foundation of the world comes in with a view to the working of them out. So in John 17 the Lord says to the Father, “Thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world”; it was a question of God’s purpose. When it is a question of the personal glory of Christ as having His part in Deity, in equality with the Father, the Lord does not use the expression “before the foundation of the world.” He uses the expression, “before the world was,” John 17: 5. “Before the world was,” I believe, conveys simply the thought of absolute eternity before time began; but when it is said “before the foundation of the world,” it has in view that God had formed a purpose, and that the world was founded with a view to working out that purpose.

Now when we come to Colossians and Ephesians, we have the thought of the assembly, and the assembly as the body of Christ. If you have followed what I have sought to present, and have some little impression of the greatness of what has come in in a divine Person having become Man, and that there is now such a Man before God in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, a Man in whom, Colossians says, “dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily,” you will understand what an immense conception the thought of His body is; that is, that He should have a vessel in which what He is as Man can be expanded with a view to being expressed; not that it adds anything to Him in one sense, although it does in another. Eve added nothing to Adam, in one sense, because she was wholly derived from him; in that sense she added nothing to him, but on the other hand, she did add something to him, because in her he had a counterpart, a complement, the perfect answer, in feminine features, to himself. That is the thought, as I understand it, in the body of Christ, which is the assembly. And this is what we have been taken up for, the assembly, as Paul says in Colossians 1, “for his body, which is the assembly.” He makes it perfectly clear, that the assembly is Christ’s body. That knowledge, or the light of it, had arrested him years before, it shone upon him from heaven, when the Lord said to him, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” Saul was not persecuting Christ personally; he was persecuting the assembly, ravaging it, as Scripture says; but the Lord says, “Why persecutest thou me?” showing Paul that the assembly here on earth was His own body, inseparably bound up with Him; so that anyone who touched the assembly touched Christ. That is what He meant; and so in that way as the Holy Spirit was received by Saul of Tarsus, the light would shine into his soul and expand as he went on. And now in this day, God is securing this masterpiece of divine wisdom, the assembly, the body of Christ; the vessel that is great enough to express Christ in all His features for the pleasure of God, and also, in the coming day as the city, to express God Himself.

Well now, in connection with that, we get greatly stressed the thought of mystery, and I would urge the youngest to take account of this, that if they are Christians and have received the Holy Spirit, they have their part in something which the wisest men in the earth know nothing of, if they are not Christians. They have their part in what Scripture speaks of as the mystery: something that God has been pleased to hide from the wise and prudent - those who profess to be wise and learned in the world - and which He is working out in the most wonderful way, though the world knows nothing about it. It says in Proverbs 25, “It is the glory of God to conceal a thing; but the glory of kings is to search out a thing.” The kings are the saints, viewed in their kingly dignity, and it is our honour to search out a thing. Now we ought to set ourselves to inquire, What is the mystery? and to look at the Scripture, and see what the mystery means. It was hidden, now it is all out. It was given to Paul to bring it out, to complete the word of God, and that involves his bringing to light the mystery. Now the mystery was this, that God was pleased to work by the gospel in all the nations under the sun, and to attract souls to Christ, and to seal them by the Holy Spirit, and by the Holy Spirit to bind them into one body. So that out of all those different components drawn from different parts of the earth, having different national characteristics and all that kind of thing, the wisdom of God is forming a wonderful vessel, the assembly, which is to be the vessel in which Christ is to find expression. This is no theory, it is an actuality. It is a remarkable testimony to the powerful influence of Christ over millions of people, absolutely diverse in character, that as they are formed under His influence, they are drawn together and held together in holy love. On the one hand it is a testimony to the wonderful influence of Christ, and on the other hand, it is a testimony to the wonderful power of the Holy Spirit, who also is a divine Person.

That is the mystery; and those of us who have been privileged to move about a little in different parts of the earth see it. If you go to England you see the saints bound together in love, loving Christ, they are all drawn from different social positions in life, they have different temperaments, yet they are all drawn together, they move together, they think the same thing, they say the same thing, they praise God together in the same way. And if you come to the other side of the earth, you find exactly the same thing; and you go to another part - to America, perhaps - and you see exactly the same thing. It is the mystery. The world cannot possibly understand it; the world has nothing equal to it. People say, How is it you have friends all over the world? You are going somewhere you have never been before, and you have friends there, and are received into their houses without the least difficulty. How is it? What does it mean? It is a mystery to them, they cannot possibly understand; and yet it is a great reality. It is a wonderful thing, the assembly, the body of Christ; and it is what God is working for, and so the apostle was labouring to present every man perfect in Christ. Nothing of flesh, of course,

can have any part in this living organism. If flesh obtrudes itself, it only spoils. You see how flesh spoiled the assembly at Corinth. It was no part of God’s purpose that the saints should fall into sin. There was no expression of Christ in that; no expression of the power of the Holy Spirit in that; no expression of the wisdom of God in that! It only showed to what a large extent through carelessness and unwatchfulness on the part of the brethren, Satan had gained a foothold. And Paul laboured, mourned and wept, and sent Timothy among them to bring to their remembrance, “my ways as they are in Christ, according as I teach everywhere in every assembly.”

Every assembly is to take on the same pattern, and that pattern can only be learned from Christ, and so Paul says he laboured “to present every man perfect in Christ.” The whole bent of his ministry was that every man was to be built up in the knowledge of Christ and to take character from Christ, the heavenly man, the man of God’s purpose, because every believer is to form his part in the body of Christ. And so he says, “For I would have you know what combat I have for you, and those in Laodicea, and as many as have not seen my face in flesh; to the end that their hearts may be encouraged, being united together in love.” That is essential if Christ is to come into expression in His body, it is essential that the saints should be united together in love. If we are disunited, beloved brethren, what expression is there of Christ in that? You see how it cuts entirely athwart the divine mind, if we are not united together in love! You may say, we are very diverse, and we rub one another up the wrong way, and so on. That may be perfectly true as regards what we are naturally, but what about the influence of Christ, and what about the power of the Spirit? What about the bearing of the cross of Christ? Have we really learned how essential it was that Christ should go to the cross, because of what we are naturally? How essential it was that sin and the flesh should be judged and set aside for ever. Have we taken to heart what the sufferings of Christ really were? He actually went to the cross; He actually died, and He was actually buried, and all that was for us, every bit of it was for us.

And so if I embrace the gospel, I am to understand that what I am as in the flesh has been judged and has been ended in the death of Christ for me. Am I going to be so heartless in regard of the sufferings of Christ in all that He has borne for me, that I am going to continue to allow what He suffered to bring to an end? Is that going to be my attitude? If so, you may well inquire whether I have really embraced the gospel, whether I love Christ, if that is my attitude. No, dear brethren, this cannot be our attitude; our attitude is that in our own minds we are to be brought completely into accord with the cross of Christ, with all its implications, and as we are, we shall find that the personal influence of Christ and the power of the Spirit of God will enable us to move in a way that befits those who are of Christ, and the result is that we can be “knit together in love.” You cannot have the body, a vessel in which Christ is to be seen, unless we are “knit together in love.” There is no disunity in Christ; and so he says, “being united together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the full knowledge of the mystery of God; in which are hid all the treasures of wisdom and of knowledge.” That shows how great the mystery is!

Well, just one word more in Ephesians, and then I have finished; and that is to show how great the assembly is, or is intended to be, at the present time. And when I speak of the assembly, dear brethren,

you will understand that I am not overlooking what we must always bear in mind and feel; that is, that the assembly publicly is in a sad state of brokenness. What was set up publicly by Paul’s ministry is in a condition of ruin, and therefore if one speaks of the assembly, one is not in any way claiming for any company of Christians that it is the assembly; one is recognising fully, and I trust with sorrow, what the actual state of the assembly of God is. On the other hand, it is our privilege to live in a day when the Lord has recovered the truth. It had been entirely lost, as regards any collective expression of it, up to the time when the Lord began to work, early in the last century, and from that day to this, the Lord has been steadily working, step by step recovering the truth that has been lost. And recovery out of the ruin has come about through those that name the name of the Lord withdrawing from iniquity. We must not connect the name of the Lord with iniquity, and so Paul says that we are also to follow “righteousness, faith, love, peace, with those that call upon the Lord out of a pure heart.” Scripture contemplates that as withdrawing from iniquity and following righteousness and these other things, we shall find others doing the same, and calling upon the Lord out of a pure heart, and we are to follow with them. There is to be no independence. Now when we find those with whom we can walk, what is to govern us? Obviously the only truth that is to govern us as moving together, is the truth of the assembly, for that is the truth that governs saints as set together, and we shall not be pursuing righteousness, if we do not allow it to govern us. Hence while we cannot assume to be the assembly, yet the light of it, its privileges, and the features proper to it have all been recovered in this our day, and are known in a measure of power and actuality by those who are going on together in the truth. It is in that sense that one ventures to speak of the assembly.

Now when we come to the third of Ephesians, the apostle says, “To me, less than the least of all saints, has this grace been given, to announce among the nations the glad tidings of the unsearchable riches of the Christ, and to enlighten all with the knowledge of what is the administration of the mystery hidden throughout the ages in God, who has created all things, in order that now” - notice that word now - “to the principalities and authorities in the heavenlies might be made known through the assembly the all-various wisdom of God.” Now what do angels see as they look down on the assembly? They will see a great deal of confusion in the world; a great deal of lawlessness in the world. But what do they see as they look down on the saints of God as moving together? Well, dear brethren, what they should see, and what I have no doubt they do see, is divine order. They see the saints walking in love; they may see perhaps, evil come in amongst the saints, and then they see the saints in wisdom given them of God dealing with it in a way that is according to God, refusing to be identified with evil. Though the world is in a state of confusion and a great deal of evil passes tolerated, they see that there is a spot, in the midst of every evil, where all that is due to God is maintained. They see Satan working to introduce things amongst the saints that would mar the testimony, and see the saints held in living touch with their Head, in whom dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, and having wisdom to discern what is working, however subtly it may be covered up, and to deal with it according to God. That would be some of the ways in which they see the all-various wisdom of God. It would help the brethren in dealing with matters in care, and saints being called upon to deal with matters in assembly, to remember that principalities and powers in the heavenlies are looking on, to see the all-various wisdom of God in the way things are handled. We may also take account of another side of things; there are conditions in recent years resulting from the war, the saints in one part moving out in love to saints whom they have never seen, because of the links in Christ by the Spirit that bind them together. They see all this. “What hath God wrought!” These are only suggestions of some of the ways in which principalities and powers see the all-various wisdom of God.

I trust what I have said has been enough to show that the assembly, the body of Christ is the great expression of divine wisdom, according to purpose formed before the foundation of the world, and working out ever since. May the Lord help us to see that these are the things to be going in for. In the midst of the apostate state of things that we are surrounded by, God is working to open up this wonderful character of things. Our hearts are bowed as we think of the grace that gives us a part in it. May we grow, and be able to fill our part in the assembly which is His body.