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There are many things in life that baffle and trouble us. If God is almighty and all loving, why does he allow pain and suffering, evil and injustice to run riot through the world? From the wildfires in Los Angeles to conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, why does God allow us as individuals to go through so many of the things we do?
If we are to understand the trauma and trials of life, we need more than human wisdom and understanding. Abraham Lincoln once remarked: I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom, and that of all about me, seemed insufficient for the day.
Wisdom. When the Bible speaks of wisdom it speaks of the complex matrix of intelligence, knowledge and power within a moral framework working together towards a good outcome.
Wisdom is the practical side of moral goodness. Because God alone is good, and because he alone has the power always to achieve his goals, his ways are always wise. Wisdom is an essential part of God’s character.
Isaiah chapter 42, verse 21 through chapter 43, verse 7 provides us with two scenes of God’s wisdom. The first speaks of tough times and God’s justice. The second speaks of peace and contains some of the most tender words of God’s love.
Tough times and God’s justice. The first scene portrays God’s people in exile in Babylon. Like refugees today, they were rootless, homeless, and friendless in a foreign land. But far greater than their personal loss was their sense that God had deserted them. They hadn’t believed prophets like Jeremiah; rather, they had preferred to listen to the popular preachers in Jerusalem who had told them that all would be well.
But it wasn’t. In 586BC their city had been destroyed, the temple demolished, and they had been deported. In Isaiah chapter 42, verse 24 we read: Who gave up Jacob to the spoiler, and Israel to the robbers? Was it not the Lord, against whom we have sinned, in whose ways they would not walk, and whose law they would not obey? Where was this only wise God?
Yet against all the odds, God’s ancient people survived. Indeed, no passage of the Bible expresses the renaissance of these people more clearly than Isaiah chapter 43, verses 1 through 7.
Which brings us to a second scene – a picture of God’s wisdom and love. It opens a window on God’s infinite wisdom and power at work.
In Isaiah chapter 43, verse 1 we read: This is what the Lord said, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.
Isaiah tells us that God took the growing embryo of our life and shaped it according to his good and wise purposes. But more than that, he redeemed us. For even though we have denied him and sought our independence from him, he bought us and brought us back to himself, even at great cost to himself.
We find this picture emerging in the Old Testament when he rescued the slaves in Egypt and shaped them into a nation. And when he returned the exiles in Babylon to Jerusalem and re-instated them as a people. But we see the greatest picture of God’s redemption when we turn to the New Testament. There we read that he has not only created us but has also redeemed us through the death of his one and only Son.
As Paul puts it in First Corinthians chapter 1, verse 18 and especially verses 24b and 25: Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser that human wisdom, and God’s weakness stronger than human strength. Jesus’ crucifixion seems foolish to world, but God in his infinite wisdom planned it.
Presence. God has not just redeemed his people. He promises to be personally present with us. Back in Isaiah chapter 43 we read in verse 2: When you pass through the waters I will be with you;… God doesn’t promise that his people will be immune from tough times. He says when, not if. Furthermore, he speaks of his people passing through the waters not over them.
For the people of Isaiah’s day, it meant that God would be with them in the land of exile. For us who live on the other side of Jesus’ cross and resurrection, it’s an even richer statement, for we find that God has come amongst us in our pain and has participated in it.
This is the meaning of the manger in Bethlehem, and the cross outside Jerusalem. Christianity is not about a God who emails us sympathy notes. Rather he bore our sin and carried our sorrow. He descended to the lowest parts of the earth to rescue us. Immanuel: God is with us.
No other religion comes near this – a God who comes into a suffering world and suffers with us; a God who comes into the world and dies for us; a God who comes into the world and becomes a curse on our behalf. No other religion has even dreamed of this, let alone actioned it.
God wasn’t just satisfying some passing whim when he created and redeemed us. His plan and purpose, which he has been working out through history, is to establish a people who love him and glorify him.
Prayer. Lord our God, fountain of all wisdom, you know our necessities before we ask and our ignorance in asking: have compassion on our infirmities; and those things which for our unworthiness we dare not and for our blindness we cannot ask, graciously give us for the worthiness of your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
© John G. Mason
