God’s Wisdom Puts Human Wisdom to Shame

God’s Wisdom Puts Human Wisdom to Shame

I.                    In the way he chose to have the Son of God become the Son of Man

II.                 In the way he chooses to have sons of men become sons of God

 

One of the greatest earthly gifts our Creator has given us is our mind.  Although there are plenty of people who tell us that the mind developed pretty much by chance, the Bible tells us that it is by design that you and I have our minds.  You see, God wanted to share some of his secrets with us—secrets about who we are and who he is and what his plans for us are.  He couldn’t very well have done that if you and I had been blocks of granite or puppy dogs or rain clouds.  Our mind is the God-given vessel into which God can place his truth and by which we can take hold of the secrets God has seen fit to share with us.

 

God has, however, not given us our mind to decide whether to listen to him or not, or to decide if what he says is true or not.  As we consider the next “Angelic Announcement of Advent,” we see that God’s Wisdom Puts Human Wisdom to Shame.  God asked a man to believe something that sounds wrong to the mind, something that doesn’t make sense.  The incident involved two Jewish people who were pledged to be married.  “Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph.”  This means that in the presence of witnesses they had publicly pledged their loyalty to each other for life.  It’s a stronger relationship than our engagements today.  It was closer to our actual marriage; they called each other husband and wife already, and a legal divorce was needed to call it off.  According to Jewish custom, however, a period of time—maybe months—elapsed between the day when the bride and groom publicly made those vows and the day when they would live together in the same home and consummate the relationship.  One can guess the happiness that flooded Joseph’s heart as he looked forward to the day when he and his friends would go to Mary’s home to escort her to her new home.

 

And then one day the very bottom must have fallen out of Joseph’s life when “she was found to be with child.”  We don’t know how Joseph became aware of Mary’s condition; one can guess news like that got around quickly in a village as small as Nazareth.

 

It may at first be difficult for us to appreciate Joseph’s predicament, because you and I know all the facts; we’re used to confessing the truth of Christ’s Virgin Birth in the Creed every Sunday.  Joseph didn’t know that.  What was he to think?  All he knew is what he could see.  Mary came home from visiting her cousin Elizabeth for three months, and she was pregnant.  What would any guy have concluded in his mind?

 

“Joseph…was a righteous man.”  That means he wanted to do the right thing.  He wanted to live in accordance with the will of God, the God who takes very seriously the breaking of the marriage vow.  Joseph could not and would not live in marriage with her who was pregnant without him.  So it seemed to him that he had two options.  Jewish law gave him the right to announce Mary’s sin and to humiliate her publicly, but he loved her too much to do that.  His other option was to make use of the rather generous Jewish divorce laws.  He could simply hand Mary a certificate of divorce, dismissing her quietly without taking the matter to court.  This is what he decided to do.  His mind told him this was the right thing to do.

 

That’s when God intervened and showed how his wisdom puts human wisdom to shame.  He sent Joseph an angelic announcement.  “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.”  Joseph was asked to believe that his fiancée/wife was carrying a child that had no human father.  Far from divorcing her, Joseph was to go through with the final step of marriage and “take Mary home.”  Mary was especially vulnerable just at this time and needed protection.  Joseph would now be her provider and protector, defending her honor against rumors and slander.  And Joseph did just that.  He believed.

 

It is the nature of human reason to judge only by what it sees.  Joseph could understand that his beloved was soon to give birth to a human child; he could see that.  But the understanding of who this child was could only come by divine revelation.  This child is: “Immanuel—which means ‘God with us.’”  Joseph was asked to rely not on his mind, but only on the Word.  This angelic announcement required Joseph and us to believe two miracles.  One is the miracle of the Virgin Birth: that a child could be conceived and born without the agency of a human father.  But the even greater miracle is that the eternal God, whom the heavens cannot contain, became a human being, God with us.  This is what Christmas is about.  What God’s angel says about how the Son of God became the Son of Man is true even if my brain says: “That doesn’t make sense.”  The Word is always true, even when it’s all we have to go on, even when it’s contrary to what people call common sense.  Faith is giving the Holy Spirit credit for being more intelligent than we are.  Joseph did that.  So do we.

 

 

There are many who couldn’t care less whether the Son of God became Son of Man or not.  That’s not important to them; they’re going to celebrate Christmas anyway.  But the Bible says this is important because it determined how sons of men become sons of God.  Here again God put human wisdom to shame.

 

The angelic Advent announcement was not only a startling announcement for Joseph.  It was also an announcement filled with comfort.  “She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”  Sins.  That word reminds us that God has set a goal for the life of every one of his human creatures: to seek God’s glory always and in everything.  In an age which has an easy conscience about sin it goes against our grain to admit that we have missed the purpose for which our Creator gave us life.  Our sinful reason finds it terribly difficult to believe the judgment of God’s law.  And right here is the reason why the Christmas celebrations of so many will fall flat again this year.   Our minds try to tell us that we aren’t opposed to God, that we’re actually likeable if we try to be good.  When we read the words of the psalmist: “You are not a God who takes pleasure in evil…You hate all who do wrong” (5:4f), we cringe at the thought that God hates sinners.  We try frantically to reinterpret the passage to say that God hates sin, not the sinner.  No, God hates the sinner.

 

But Christmas happened.  The Son of God became the Son of Man, coming down into the thing that he hates so much—sin.  The Son of God became man so that the God of infinite justice and revenge could show himself also as the God of infinite love and mercy.  Christ became a human being—a real human being.  As a human he too was under the demands of God’s law.  He lived as your substitute, providing perfect obedience all the time.  As a human, he was also able to die.  And he did.  After providing the obedience we had not given, he died to undo the disobedience we had given. 

 

And yet he was still true God the whole time, so that his life and death were enough to cover a whole world of sinners.  Which means it was enough to cover your sins.  As Adam’s sin became the sin of all people, so Christ’s obedience is now the obedience of all people.  Including you.

 

Many Christmas celebrations will fall flat again this year as so many treat the announcement of Jesus’ birth the same way the treat the announcement that Prince William and Duchess Kate are expecting.  It’s cute or interesting.  But this birth is so much more than just interesting history.  This is the way God chose to have us, the sinful children of men, become holy children of God.  The infinite God came to us and became a human.  Immanuel.  God with us.  The reason he did this is found in his name.  Jesus.  Savior.  Jesus is God’s saving presence, and he came to save us.

 

 

This is not human wisdom; this is God’s wisdom.  We can understand why Martin Luther could, on the one hand, say that our brain is a delightful gift of God and at another time describe it as the devil’s bride that wants to seduce us.  As we approach Christmas we can be sure that, like Joseph, we are going to be considered a fool by somebody.  There may have been those of Joseph’s friends who felt he was acting unwisely in following a message he received in a dream.  God, however, felt otherwise.  There are plenty who feel that we are fools for following a message received in the Word and believing that Jesus is Immanuel.  God, however, feels otherwise.  Whose fool are you going to be?  Since God’s wisdom puts human wisdom to shame, we take every thought of our minds and make them captive to Christ, because he is the wisdom of God.  We thank God for the wonderful gift of the mind, but then subordinate that mind to the Word of God.  This Christmas let us use our minds to carefully hear and believe the wisdom of God, who sent the Son of God to become the son of Man in order to make us, the sons of men, sons of God.