All the World's Wisdom Is Not Enough

Have you ever met anyone who, by all that makes sense, should be dead? Several of us know people who are still living, walking, breathing, talking after having survived a near-fatal ordeal, or some of us are those people ourselves. 

Last evening, we had a get-together with two of my dad's brothers and their spouses, along with one of my cousins, and we spent most of the evening in the backyard playing cornhole or horseshoes, eating pizza, and playing guitar. 

My uncle has quite a medical history: multiple heart-attacks, multiple open-heart surgeries, a pacemaker, etc, the list is long. At one point, a doctor walked into the examination room to meet with him and started paging through his chart. After a moment, he glanced up at him and told him, "According to everything I'm seeing here, you should be dead."

My uncle shrugged it off. "Nothing on those charts matters, really. The only time I'm leaving this earth is when the good Lord decides it's my time to go."

I love a witness like that! 

My dad's health is another mystery that has doctors scratching their heads. He was diagnosed a little over a year ago with multiple myeloma -- what is considered "incurable" cancer -- and at the point he was diagnosed, he was days -- or weeks, at most -- from death. However, over a year later, my dad is still with us, and at his last oncologist meeting, was told that -- where zero means that cancer is not present, the presence of the disease in his blood is .1%. I'll write that out for more emphasis: POINT ONE PERCENT!

Nobody understands how that happened. 

Except that I pray with my children every night before they go to bed, and each night, I hear their voices run through the day with the simplicity and innocent faith of the young: "Dear God, thank you for the day, please let Daddad's cancer go away..."

And I understand what's happening.

Does cancer always go away when we pray? No. Does God sometimes lead us into the fire instead of around it? Yes. 

You guys, Mercy Me's song: Even If is so poignant here! Look at these lyrics:

"It's easy to sing
When there's nothing to bring me down.
But what will I say
When I'm held to the flame
Like I am right now?

I know You're able and I know You can
Save through the fire with Your mighty hand,
But even if You don't,
My hope is You alone!"

Like Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael, who stood before the great Nebuchadnezzar and called over the roar of the fire into which they were preparing to be tossed: "Oh Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and He will rescue us from your hand, oh king. But even if He does not, we want you to know, oh king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up."

Their testimony holds so much power! All that they are... is God's. It doesn't matter what happens to their bodies; their souls belong only to the Lord. 

Anyway, I'm getting off-track -- but I love that story. Over in 1 Corinthians 1:18-31, Paul gives us a little treatise on "wisdom" and "foolishness," and in this section, he holds up two lenses -- one lens that allows us to see through the viewpoints according to Scripture and the Holy Spirit, and the other lens through the viewpoints according to the world.

One of my favorite movies is National Treasure with Nicholas Cage. The movie is essentially a major treasure hunt, and you get cool clues like... invisible writing on the back of the Declaration of Independence, and Benjamin Franklin's glasses hidden in Liberty Hall in Philadelphia, etc. Super cool. But anyway, when Nick Cage's character takes out Benjamin Franklin's glasses from their hiding place and holds them up, he looks at a parchment through the lenses, and he can see a hidden message. When he flips down another lens to look through both, the message changes again, and he gets the next clue.

This is Paul's description. The world sees through a lens and declares things to be what they see, but they don't flip down the last lens, that is, the lens of Christ, of the cross, of the Holy Spirit, of a heart sanctified and justified by grace. If they would, they would see the message -- but as it is, they are blind to it, and so -- since they don't see, they declare it to be foolishness.

Anyway, here are Paul's words themselves: "For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God!" (1 Corinthians 1:18).

Romans 1:16 says: "I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes, first for the Jew, then for the Gentile." 

"For it is written: 'I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.' Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know Him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe." (1 Corinthians 1:19-21).

Looking back at Daniel again, this time in chapter 2, King Nebuchadnezzar has a strange dream, and he wants it interpreted, so he calls for all the wisest men of his counsel, all the ones he's kept near him and whom he trusts to tell him things he doesn't know that are from "his gods." So when he tells his wise men his dream, they can't interpret it. They tell the king in Daniel 2:10-11: "There is not a man on earth who can do what the king asks! No king, however great and mighty, has ever asked such a thing of any magician or enchanter or astrologer. What the king asks is too difficult. No one can reveal it to the king except the gods, and they do not live among men."

Nebuchadnezzar is so furious, he "orders the execution of all the wise men of Babylon. So the decree was issued to put the wise men to death, and men were sent to look for Daniel and his friends to put them to death." (Daniel 2:13). Daniel and friends were wise men. Because back in Daniel 1:20, it says: "In every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king questioned them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters in his whole kingdom."

Notice the difference between the response of the king's other wise men... and that of Daniel.

The original wise men say: "There is not a man on earth who can do what the king asks!"

And Daniel, when he is ushered in before the king, says: "No wise man, enchanter, magician, or diviner can explain to the king the mystery he has asked about..." (You can almost see Neb getting red in the face again, pulling in his breath to release it on Daniel's head: Kill him, too! But Daniel cuts him off with this:)

"But there is a God in heaven Who reveals mysteries."

Bringing it back to 1 Corinthians, Paul says: "Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength" (1 Corinthians 1:18-25).

Can we raise a collective Hallelujah!!!

What a testimony! What a witness!

Isaiah 29:14-16 says: "Therefore once more I will astound these people with wonder upon wonder; the wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish. Woe to those who go to great depths to hide their plans from the Lord, who do their work in darkness and think, 'Who sees us? Who will know?' You turn things upside down, as if the potter were thought to be like the clay! Shall what is formed say to Him Who formed it, 'He did not make me'? Can the pot say of the Potter, 'He knows nothing'?"

Oh Lord, forgive us where we've set up our knowledge and called it wise. Here we are, Lord, Your vessels. Forgive us for our backtalk, our lack of faith, our presumption and arrogance that we've wrapped ourselves in.

Fill up these leaky vessels to overflowing once again, Father, so that when we spill out the message of the cross to those around us, the chips and smudges don't get in the way of the all-surpassing power of the treasure inside of us.