The Wisdom of God

Proverbs 8: 1-4, 22-31

Trinity Sunday

Grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ amen.  The sermon text for Trinity Sunday is the Old Testament reading Proverbs 8.  In our reading from Proverbs we are told that wisdom calls on the heights, at the crossroads, and beside the gates.  The wisdom that is referred to in our reading is the Wisdom of God.  Indeed the Lord comes to us in His Word and gives us true wisdom.  He calls us and reveals the truth to us.  The Lord reveals who He is and who we are.  He reveals His will, gives us commands, and gives us His grace.  It is revealed to us that God is one God in three Persons – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is revealed that the Triune God is the creator of all things and that we have been made in the image of God. It is reveled that God’s perfect creation fell into sin when our first parents, Adam and Eve, disobeyed God.  It is reveled that we are conceived and born into sin and that we need a Savior to rescue us from sin.  It is reveled that our Savior is Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who died and rose to redeem us from sin and rescue us from death.  Wisdom calls from the heights, at the crossroads, and beside the gates.  It is the wisdom of God that we hear and believe. 

Yet there are many who refuse to hear the words of wisdom.  There are many who turn away from the Word of God. There are those who reject Jesus Christ. We see an example of that in our Gospel reading for today.  Jesus never committed a sin, did miracles, fulfilled the Old Testament prophesies about the Messiah, and preached the Word of God in truth and purity and yet many of the leaders of Israel refused to believe in Him.  They called Jesus a Samaritan and said that He had a demon. They tried to trap Him in His words. When Jesus confessed that He is God, they attempted to stone Him. 

We see resistance to God’s Word all around us.  In our day there are those who refuse to believe that Jesus is the Savior of the world.  All the other world religions outside of Christianity deny the Triune God.  There are those who believe that God does not judge sin and so they think that the meaning of life is to indulge every whim and desire that you have.  There are others who think that you can win God’s favor based upon your own merit. There are those who believe in false gods and idols.  There are those who believe there is no God at all.  There are people who hold to the theory of evolution that states that creation came into existence because of one big cosmic accident.  There are those who think and believe that this material world is all that there is.  They believe that human beings live and die and that’s it.  In this fallen world there are many people who are slaves to sin and remain in darkness. 

That is why wisdom calls.  Wisdom calls on the heights, at the crossroads, and beside the gates.  Another way of saying it is that God’s Word is going out into the world.  In Proverbs wisdom is often depicted as a virtuous woman with the message that God’s wisdom is true wisdom.  You may have noticed that our reading skips from verse four to verse twenty-two.  Let me read to you some of the verses that were omitted. I want to read them to you because they describe the importance of the wisdom from God.  “To you, O men, I call, and my cry is to the children of man.  O simple ones, learn prudence; Of fools, learn sense.  Hear, for I will speak noble things, and from my lips will come what is right, for my mouth will utter truth; wickedness is an abomination to my lips.  All the words of my mouth are righteous; there is nothing twisted or crooked in them. They are all straight to him who understands, and right to those who find knowledge.  Take my instruction instead of silver, and knowledge rather than choice gold, for wisdom is better than jewels, and all that you desire cannot compare to her.”     

The Wisdom of God is a treasure to receive and believe.  It is the Wisdom of God that speaks to us the truth.  It is the Wisdom of God that brings to us peace, hope, and joy.  As we look at the last part of our reading, we notice that Wisdom begins to speak in the first person.   What is reveled is that the wisdom described in Proverbs is the Son of God.  As we look at our reading what is reveled is that the Son (wisdom) was with God before the creation of all things.  The Son was begotten of the Father before all worlds.  Our reading in Proverbs says it this way.  “Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth.”  What that means is that the Father and the Son were there at the beginning of creation.    John said the same thing at the beginning of his Gospel.  Instead of calling the Son wisdom he calls Him the Word.  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.”  The Word is the Son of God.  Genesis tells us that the Holy Spirit was also there at creation.  What is reveled is what we confessed in the Athanasian Creed, that the one true God is the Triune God. 

As we continue on in our reading, we see that the Triune God is the creator of all things.  What is described in our reading is the creation of the world and what is very clear is that the Son is there with the Father when all things are made.  “When He established the heavens, I was there; when He drew a circle on the face of the deep, when He made firm the skies above, when He established the fountains of the deep, when He assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress His command, when He marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside Him, like a master workman, and I was daily His delight, rejoicing before Him always, rejoicing in His inhabited world and delighting in the children of man.”      

The Lord made everything.  He made the stars, the plants, the animals, and the seas.  He made you.  He gave you your body and all your senses.  He gave you a soul.  But there is more.  Did you notice what was said at the end of our reading.  It has been reveled to us that the Father delights in the Son and that the Son rejoices in the Father.  The Son also rejoices and delights in the children of man.  That means that the Son delights in you.  The Son delights in you so much that He sacrificed Himself to save you from sin and death.  The joy and love of the Father and the Son is fully reveled in the redemption of humanity when the Son came down from heaven and became a man in order to live a perfect life in your place, to die on the cross to atone for all your sins and then rise from the dead to defeat death for you and give the gift of eternal life.

The pinnacle of the wisdom of God is the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  It is the good news that your sins have been forgiven through the death and resurrection of Jesus.  It is the revelation that the righteousness of Christ has been put upon you. It is the message that you are now part of God’s eternal Kingdom.  When God looks at you what He sees is His redeemed child.  And so you turn to the Lord and trust Him.  You believe in the Son of God knowing that He is the wisdom of God. And here is what the wisdom of God reveals to you.  The Father delights in the Son and that the Son rejoices and delights in you.     Amen.