God Is Wise⤒🔗

God is wise. God is incomprehensible. And we begin with some words. There are a couple of words in Greek (sophia, phronimos), and there is one particular word in Hebrew (hokmah). Romans 16:27: “the only wise God.” We have just sung a hymn:

Immortal, invisible, God only wise,
In light inaccessible, hid from our eyes.

God is wise. Colossians 2:3 (speaking now about Christ): “in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden.” And there you see a little bit of a distinction between wisdom and knowledge. The Bible makes a distinction between what it means to be wise and what it means to know something. To have knowledge, to have an intellectual grasp of something, does not actually necessarily make you wise. So we have looked previously at the doctrine of God’s omniscience—that God knows everything. He knows all facts and he knows all potential facts. He knows everything that is and everything that could possibly be. But in addition to God’s omniscience—that God knows everything, everything that has been and everything that is and everything that will be, both actual and potential—God is also wise.

Omniscience and Wisdom←↰⤒🔗

Now, I was trying to reach for a definition of wisdom, and I am going to do it along several attempts here. What do we mean when we speak about wisdom? So first of all, wisdom is more than knowing all facts or potential facts. It is more than knowledge. It is more than the acquisition of information. Wisdom (this is an attempt at a definition here) is the power to see and the inclination to choose the best and highest goal, together with the surest means of attaining it. There is something about wisdom that is inherently goal-orientated. There is something about wisdom that is practical. God is naturally and invariably, entirely, wise. He defines what it means to be wise. So you can think of some of the greatest intellects in the world, but they are not necessarily the wisest people in the world. Scripture distinguishes then between knowledge and wisdom.

We have already seen that in Colossians 2:3. But let us look at a couple of texts here. First of all, a text that distinguishes knowledge and wisdom in God Himself: the peroration of Romans 11. Remember that Paul has been expounding on revelation and justification and sanctification and glorification. And then in chapters 9, 10 and 11 he has talked about the eternal purpose of God in gathering together Jews and Gentiles. “He is the potter; we are the clay.” He has reached that tremendous climax in Romans 11:26 that “all Israel will be saved.” And then at the end of the chapter, he says, “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways.” Wisdom and knowledge—He is extolling God’s wisdom and knowledge. And there is a distinction between wisdom and knowledge. Then in 1 Corinthians 12:8 you see it again, this time in gifting of human beings, of men. “To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit.” 1 Corinthians 12 is talking about the diversity of gifts. There is one body, but there are many gifts. We are gifted differently. The Spirit gifts us in different ways. One is given the gift of wisdom; another is given the gift of knowledge—distinguishing between wisdom and knowledge.

A lengthy quotation now from Herman Bavinck, the Dutch theologian. His works have been translated into English only in fairly recent years.

Knowledge and wisdom are rooted in different human capacities. We acquire knowledge by study, wisdom by insight. The former is achieved discursively; the latter intuitively. Knowledge is theoretical; wisdom is practical and goal-oriented. Knowledge is a matter of the mind apart from the will; wisdom, though a matter of the mind, is made subservient to the will. Knowledge, accordingly, is often totally unrelated to life, but wisdom is oriented to, and closely tied with, life. It is ethical in nature; it is “the art of living well”; it characterizes the conduct of those who make the right use of their greater store of knowledge and match the best means to the best ends. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2004

Now, you may have some quarrel with Bavinck’s faculty psychology here and the relationship of mind and will to knowledge and wisdom and so on, but that is beside the point. But he is making here an important distinction here between wisdom and knowledge, that wisdom is something that is more than just something of the brain. It is more than just something intellectual. It is something that is goal-oriented. It knows the goal, and it knows how to achieve that goal in a way that brings greatest glory to God. An interesting point that Bavinck makes that I think is worth thinking about: that knowledge is achieved discursively (you ask questions, you interrogate, you get it piecemeal), but there is something about wisdom that is intuitive. You might even say, “You either have it or you don’t.” If you don’t have knowledge, you can acquire knowledge. You can read a book, you can ask questions, you can listen to a lecture, and so on. It is not so easy to get wisdom. Wisdom is intuitive. You either have it or you don’t. It is a gift of wisdom. That is something that you might want to ponder. Who is it that you would think of as wise? They may not be the most intellectual people in the world, and vice versa.

Now, Scripture also (and this is fascinating) associates God’s wisdom with power. A couple of verses from Job here: “He is wise in heart and mighty in strength” (wise and strength; wisdom and power) “who has hardened himself against him, and succeeded?” Or Job 12:13: “With God are wisdom and might; he has counsel and understanding.” Wisdom and might, counsel and understanding. Now, if wisdom involves not only knowing the right goal, knowing the right end, but also being able to achieve that end, you can see why wisdom and power are associated together. God’s wisdom is not only that he knows the right end (that which most glorifies him), but he is also able to achieve that. He is also able to bring that about. So wisdom and the power to bring that about are often associated in Scripture. Romans 16:25-27: “To him who is able to strengthen you” (there is the power aspect) “according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ…to the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ!” Again, associating strengthening (power; God can empower you) with wisdom. He is the only wise God. So God not only has the knowledge of what needs to be done, He also has the power to accomplish it and to ensure that it is done exactly as he intends.

Definitions←↰⤒🔗

So, let’s go back and try again at a definition of wisdom. I have a few of them here, and the best one is not my own. “God’s wisdom is his ability to achieve his own purposes in the best possible way.” Or “God’s wisdom is his employment of all his attributes, all that he is in every facet of his being, to achieve his end and purpose in a manner that is truly ‘good.’” Well, I did not like that one either. Romans 8:28 came to mind: “God’s wisdom is his knowledge of what is best for us, what brings him ultimate glory, and his ability to achieve it in a way that ensures that ‘all things work together for the good of those that love him.’” In order for Romans 8:28 to be true (that all things work together for good), God has to be wise. And not just wise, but powerful. It involves both wisdom (knowing what the good is) and the power to make sure that that good is actually achieved on behalf of his people. So let’s get back to Jim Packer, which is where we should have started at the beginning: “Wisdom is the power to see and the inclination to choose the best and highest goal, together with the surest means of attaining it.” That is a nice definition of wisdom, and I should have stuck with J.I. Packer all along.

The Simplicity of God←↰⤒🔗

Now, do you remember we talked about the simplicity of God? Do you remember what the simplicity of God stood for? What do we mean when we talk about the simplicity of God? And by the simplicity of God we mean that God is without parts. The Westminster Confession says that God is “without body, parts or passions”, and the simplicity was the “without parts” aspect. The general idea of divine simplicity can be stated this way: the being of God (who God is in Himself) is identical to the attributes of God. In other words, the attributes of God are not to be considered as sort of facets of God. Like you might draw pie chart and color a little segment blue, and a little segment orange, and a little segment green—one is love, one is justice, one is holiness, one is righteousness. No, the whole chart. God is love, meaning he is love in all of his being. He is also righteous, but he is lovingly righteous. He is righteously loving. He is also just. He is lovingly righteous and just. He is just in his loving righteousness. All of them have to be applied together. That is what we mean by the simplicity of God. The simplicity of God implies that the wisdom of God is to be viewed in everything he does. So God is wise. It is not that a part of him is wise; He is wise. So everything that God does—in his very being, everything he does, everything he touches, everything he sees, everything he talks about—all of it is wise. So we can pull out some major things here, like creation and redemption and providence.

Creation. God is wise in creation. Proverbs 3:19: “The LORD by wisdom founded the earth; by understanding he established the heavens.” What does it take to make a universe that brings him ultimate glory? Well, knowledge for sure, but it also takes wisdom. It takes infinite wisdom. God is infinitely wise. God knows how to achieve the end that he has in view, and the end that he has in view is the new heavens and the new earth, the new creation. And he knows how to bring that about. And he knows how to bring that about in a way that will bring him the greatest glory. And he will bring that about in a way that is totally moral and ethical, that extols his inherent goodness. Or Jeremiah 10:12: “It is he who made the earth by his power, who established the world by his wisdom” (You see this synonymity, these parallel lines? “He made the earth by his power; he established the world by his wisdom.” Power and wisdom—that is a parallel statement here) “and by his understanding stretched out the heavens.” So you have understanding (knowledge), you have wisdom, and you have power. You have these three things coming into play here in the creation of the universe. Or Psalm 104:24: “Oh LORD, how manifold are your works! In wisdom have you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.” So when you go on that 6am walk and you look out at the sheer beauty of a sunrise and oak trees, and even a squirrel or two waking up and gathering nuts, or a flock of Canadian geese that have just landed for the night and parked beside a lake somewhere—you see the wisdom of God. God is so wise. He is infinitely wise.

Redemption. Redemption. The famous verse in 1 Corinthians 1:24: “Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.” Now, remember in Corinthians (especially in the first two chapters) Paul is contrasting worldly wisdom and divine wisdom. There is the wisdom of the gospel, and then there is the wisdom of the world. The world by its wisdom crucified Christ. It despised the gospel. The world thinks itself as wise. But wisdom that does not have the gospel, wisdom that does not have Christ in it, is not wisdom. It calls itself wisdom, but it is not wisdom. Where can you find the epitome of wisdom? Where can you see wisdom personified? Answer: it is Jesus. Where can you see wisdom personified? Jesus. You look at Jesus and you see the wisdom of God personified, in person. So the context then of 1 Corinthians is important. “Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God”—that which Christ came into the world to do. His incarnation, life, crucifixion. Yes, even the crucifixion is a display of the wisdom of God. The Jews were offended by it, the Greeks thought it was foolish, but this is God’s wisdom. How can a sinner—a rebel sinner—be saved? By a display of this wisdom: the crucifixion of Jesus in our room and in our stead, as the substitute on behalf of sinners.

Providence. Or providence. And we could spend an hour or two now talking about the wisdom of God in providence. I have singled out the passage in Genesis 50 that describes the inscrutable ways of God in providence. This is the story of Joseph and his brothers. Here is Joseph: “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.” And God can only mean it for good, good meaning you see the wisdom of God in the providence of Joseph’s life. Joseph is extolling the wisdom of God. God is wise. God can achieve his ends. And he can achieve his ends even through the malevolent evil acts of others without Himself being imputed with that sin. “He is not the author of sin, nor can you impute sin to God.” But he can work all things together in order to bring good for his people. The wisdom of God then in creation, in redemption, and in providence.

Paul and the Wisdom of God←↰⤒🔗

Now, let me do a little excursus here for a few minutes on an important passage about wisdom, and the wisdom of God especially in Ephesians 3. And I want to focus in particular on verse 10. Notice in verse 10: “so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.” Now, the word ‘manifold’ (“the manifold wisdom of God”) is the word ‘polupoikilos’, which is the Greek for ‘multifaceted’. Do you remember when you were little at Christmas time you would get, perhaps in your stockings, a little kaleidoscope? They were state of the art things, and you looked down and you saw little chips of red and blue and green. Multifaceted! You could see all these wonderful colors as you turned it around. The multifaceted—the rainbow-like—nature of the wisdom of God! So Paul in Ephesians 3 is writing a symphony about the wisdom of God, and he is saying, “I want us to think about the wisdom of God from every conceivable perspective. I want you to look at the ways of God from this angle and that angle and from up above and from below and from sideways, and you will see the multifaceted nature of the wisdom of God.”

Let me pull out three or four things from the Ephesians 3 passage. You can go back and study this a little more in depth later perhaps.

The wisdom of God is displayed in the person and work of Jesus Christ. The wisdom of God is displayed in the person and work of Christ. Look at verse 8. He talks about the “unsearchable riches of Christ.” The manifold wisdom—the multicolored, multi-faceted wisdom—of God is displayed in the unsearchable riches of Christ. That includes, of course, everything about Christ. The Christmas story—the incarnation. Who would have thought it? Who would have thought that the second person of the Trinity would be born in a stable in Bethlehem? That the infinite, eternal, all wise, omnipotent God could be contracted to about 15, 16 or 17 inches and 8 or 9 pounds? (I am guessing; I have no idea, but something of that nature.) What Charles Wesley says: “Contracted to a span.” We are about to sing that in one of our Christmas carols. A span is from the tip of your middle finger to the tip of your elbow. It’s how they measured horses. “Contracted to a span”! Imagine: this is the second person of the Trinity. This is God, and I am holding him in the crook of my elbow and rocking him back and forth! The wisdom of God!

Who would have thought that you would have seen the second person of the Trinity denying Himself even to the point of death? Hanging on a cross! In all seriousness, I think naked to the world. Paintings usually paint him with a loincloth, but he was in all likelihood naked, laid bare, exposed to the world. “Despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” The unsearchable riches of Christ. Look at Jesus. Look at him in every possible way and from every conceivable angle, and what do you see? You see something of the wisdom of God.

And then Paul says in verse 10 that “the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities.” Commentators have differed and continue to differ as to what Paul might have meant by principalities, rulers and authorities, here. Did he mean the worldly powers like the Roman Empire? The powers and authorities of Herod, Pilate, the Sanhedrin court, the Roman officials, Caesar, or whatever? Or does Paul mean by this reference “rulers and authorities” the angels and archangels? The rulers on the other side, as it were; in the other world. Some of those creatures that are described surrounding the throne of God in Revelation. The 24 elders that surround the throne. What are these creatures? Who are they, and what do they do? There are orders; there are angels and there are archangels. So there is an order of being even within the angelic realm. Is the manifold wisdom of God displayed in Christ to the worldly powers or to the angelic powers? It depends who you are reading. My own view is I think he is talking about angelic powers rather than worldly powers, but the trendy interpretation today is the worldly powers. I am still with the angelic powers. But the wisdom of Jesus is displayed.

The wisdom of God is revealed through the Church. Then in verse 10, the wisdom of God is revealed “through the church.” Someone was asking me a question within the last 48 hours about the importance of the Church. And if that person is listening, then here is your answer. It’s right here in verse 10. Why is the Church important? It is how God’s wisdom is displayed. It is not displayed simply in individuals, but it is actually displayed in the Church, in the corporate body of Christ. In the Church of Jesus Christ, God displays his wisdom. You would not expect that, would you? It comes at you and you think, “God is actually showing something of his wisdom in the life of the Church, in the ministry of the Church.” The Church in all of its fragility; in all of its complexity; in all of its frailty. The Church that is persecuted. The Church that is hemmed in, as it were, by worldly powers. Where do you want to see the wisdom of God? You would think you would see the wisdom of God in the universities—in Athens, in the Acropolis, and so on. That is where you would see the wisdom of God. No, you see the wisdom of God in the Church. It is counterintuitive. God chooses to show his greatest wisdom in the life of the Church, as he gathers sinners together and adopts them into his household and family, and gifts them and employs them and takes care of them and shelters them and feeds them and grows them. That is where you see the wisdom of God.

The wisdom of God is displayed in God’s purpose to save both Jews and Gentiles. Then thirdly, the wisdom of God is displayed in God’s purpose to save both Jews and Gentiles. That is a theme in Ephesians 3, and there is a reference to Gentiles in verse 8. And then in verse 6: “This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel.” So part of God’s wisdom is that his purpose now involves not just the Jews, not just Israel, but it involves the Gentiles too. So that all Israel will be saved! So that Jews and Gentiles, the whole of God’s elect, will be gathered together at the end. And that too is a display of God’s wisdom. As the Gospel goes forth from Jerusalem, Samaria, Judea, to the uttermost parts of the world, to Poland, and Czechoslovakia, and the Sudan, and Australia, and Brazil, and as the church grows and expands to the four corners of the earth, you see the multifaceted wisdom of God.

The wisdom of God is displayed in suffering. And then fourthly (this is particularly important I think), in the middle of this Paul says, “I ask you, therefore, not to be discouraged because of my sufferings for you.” Paul is imprisoned; as far as he knew, he was facing a death sentence. Now, he would have been released from this, but as far as he knew he was facing a death sentence. He is suffering. And Paul says, “I don’t want you to be discouraged. This is part of the wisdom of God.” God is displaying his multifaceted wisdom in the sufferings of Paul. Now, this statement from Calvin is one of my favorite statements; I find myself citing it again and again: “The government of the church of Christ has been so divinely constituted from the beginning that the Cross has been the way to victory, death the way to life.” It is all very counterintuitive, that the way to life is the cross! If you want to live, you have to be prepared to die. You are to take up a cross and follow Christ. You have to crucify your own ambitions and say, “I live out and out for Jesus.” That is where wisdom is being displayed.

It is one of the marks of the church in this world, I think, that the church is suffering. There are areas of the world tonight that they are not sitting in this beautiful architecturally designed room that we are in, and they are instead meeting in secret. And some of them have been arrested and put in prison and have been threatened with death. That is a very real scenario in parts of the world tonight. Paul is saying, “There is the wisdom of God.” We might be tempted to say, “Where is God in all of that?” And Paul turns it right on its heels and he says, “There is the wisdom of God.” God is achieving his purposes. God is bringing glory to Himself, even in the sufferings of God’s people, because he never abandons his wisdom. He is wise in all that he does. So even in the trials, even in the difficulties, even in the problems that some of you are facing, and you are tempted to say, “Where is God in all of this?” he is right at the center of it, because He is working all things together for the good of his people. He is doing what Joseph was saying. This man who had been falsely accused of rape for ten years. I can’t imagine what that would be like, to be imprisoned for ten years on a false accusation of rape. And all of this, even that, was part of God’s wise plan for Joseph, to mold him and shape him into the instrument that God wanted him to be.

God Is Incomprehensible←⤒🔗

Let me move on now to incomprehensibility. God is incomprehensible.

Claims That God Is Unknowable←↰⤒🔗

First of all, we need to deal with claims—and we dealt with them right at the very beginning of this course where we were talking about the doctrine of revelation. We talked about philosophical objections to the knowledge of God—that God cannot be known. They come from all kinds of quarters. David Hume, for example: that knowledge is limited to sense perception. Or Immanuel Kant in the Enlightenment (and the universe is still reeling from the Enlightenment; it is still one of the major forces even in the twenty-first century): “We can know only the phenomena and not reality itself.” We can only see and know for sure things that are in this realm, and we cannot know anything in the God realm, or in the ‘noumena’ as Immanuel Kant said. Which leads to all kinds of skepticism. How can God been known at all? Now, the doctrine of Logical Positivists (scientists, if you like), which is the major philosophy behind much of modern science: we can only know that which science can prove.

God Is Knowable←↰⤒🔗

In contradiction to all of those sorts of views, we assert with absolute conviction and clarity that God is knowable. God can be known. True things about God can be known. God can be apprehended. Now, we tend to use the verb ‘to apprehend’ meaning something the policeman might do and put you in prison; I am using the word ‘apprehend’ in its old fashion sense, that God can be known. God can be comprehended, in one sense. He can be known. Now, do you remember twelve or thirteen weeks ago we were talking about general revelation? We looked at Romans 1. We said things like, “God is known by all men and by all women in the entire world.” Romans 1:21: “Although they knew God, they did not honor him as God.” It is not that the atheist does not know God; it is just that he denies what he actually does know. He holds that truth down in unrighteousness. He suppresses it. Every human being knows more about God than he is willing to confess. He has knowledge. The earth and the stars and the creation of God day-to-day display, reveal, bombard us with information about God. That God is. That God is powerful. That God is bigger than this universe. And we are bombarded with all kinds of information all the time. It is just that the natural man suppresses it. He holds it down in unrighteousness. All men know their obligation to God. “They know God’s righteous decree”, Paul says. They know it. It is just that they deny it. It is a positive act of rebellion. So God does not believe in atheists. You have to think about that. God does not believe in atheists.

And yet, only believers know God in a covenantal sense, in a saving sense. “This is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” Now, we have compressed a great deal of information into those few statements. God can be known. All of us in here who claim to be Christians, we say, “I know God. I know him personally. I walk with him, I talk with him, I fellowship with him, I am in communion with him. I know him. I know things about him. I know more things about him now after this course than I did it before I started this course. I know him.” And it is true knowledge. “It is true truth”, as Francis Schaeffer would say.

Our Knowledge Is Finite←↰⤒🔗

But our knowledge is finite. What we know of God, we know only a little. There is an axiom (forgive me for the Latin once again): finitum non capax infiniti—the finite cannot understand, cannot comprehend, cannot grasp, the infinite. This is an axiom that has been around for a thousand years or more, and found its way into schools of Philosophy and found its way into schools of Theology. It is a truism. Finitum non capax infiniti. The finite cannot comprehend, cannot grasp, the infinite. Now, that is true for a variety of reasons, and let me suggest two or three reasons.

Sin. One: because of sin. Sin limits our knowledge of God. Look at what Paul says in Romans 1:25: “They exchanged the truth about God for a lie.” We know less than we ought to know. We know less than we can know because we suppress it. We refuse that knowledge. Here is another thought: All of us need to engage in epistemological repentance. We need to repent of the way that we think. We need to repent of our ignorance, in other words. Sin limits our knowledge of God.

Immaturity. Immaturity limits our knowledge of God. Had Adam not fallen, he would still have acquired knowledge discursively. He would not suddenly have been sort of “zapped” with x-amount of gigabytes of information. He would still have to investigate. He would still have to leave the confines of Eden and explore what was beyond those four rivers that are described in the creation account. He would still have been an explorer, and he would have acquired that knowledge piecemeal.

Jesus is without sin, but he acquires knowledge discursively. The two-year-old Jesus knew less than the four-year-old Jesus or the eight-year-old Jesus or the sixteen-year-old Jesus or the thirty-year-old Jesus. Luke 2:52: “He grew in wisdom.” And he grew in knowledge. How did Jesus know the Old Testament? Because he read it; because he learned it. Because Mary and Joseph taught him the Old Testament. They told him Bible stories. He as a young boy is found in the synagogue, and he is reading the scrolls and he is discussing with the Rabbis. He acquires knowledge. Now, in his divine mind he is omniscient. He knows everything. In his human mind he does not know everything. In his human mind he acquires knowledge discursively. Jesus has two natures—two natures in one person. Two natures in what we call “hypostatic union.” In maturity then, Jesus grew in maturity. We may balk at saying that Jesus was immature, but he was a two-year-old, he was a four-year-old, he was a ten-year-old, he was a fifteen-year-old. As a two-year-old, he would have known things that were way beyond perhaps your average two-year-old, but it would still have been less than what he knew when he was four. So growth in maturity is a factor in what we know about God.

Creature-liness. Creature-liness is a factor. We don’t know everything about God because we are creatures. We have a finite mind. Paul Reber suggests: “If your brain worked like a digital video recorder in a television, 2.5 petabytes would be enough to hold three million hours of TV shows. You would have to leave the TV running continuously for more than 300 years to use up all that storage.” The brain is finite. It is of a certain size. And they can only contain a finite amount of information. So sin, immaturity and creature-liness—all of these are factors in limiting our knowledge of God. (Transcription of audio file from 44:20 to 44:48 omitted.)

Incomprehensible vs. Inapprehensible←↰⤒🔗

So we say God is ultimately incomprehensible. He is knowable—we may know God and we may know true things about God, and what we know about God are true things—but what we know about God is only a little. We only know some things about God. We only know about God what he has chosen to show us and reveal to us. And the fact is that he has only revealed a little. I mean, how much information about God would you think your brain could actually hold or digest or fathom? How could you fathom infinity? How could you fathom omniscience? This has some pastoral implications, of course, because we sometimes misuse John 13:7. Jesus is washing the disciples’ feet and Peter is objecting, and Jesus says, “What I do now you don’t understand, but you will understand hereafter.” And that verse is sometimes used, and it says something like this: what is going on in your life now you don’t understand, but when you get to heaven you will understand. And that is actually not what Jesus is saying. He was actually talking about Pentecost and after Pentecost, and Peter would understand the significance of the foot-washing because he would see it as pointing to the cross, basically.

When you get to heaven you will get a new body and you will get a new brain, but it will still be a finite brain. It will still only hold so many petabytes of information. We will always be creatures. We will always be finite. We will never be God. I believe that we will continue to acquire knowledge discursively forever. We will always be explorers. We will always be asking questions and getting information and using that information for the best possible wisdom. So we will grow even in heaven. Even in eternity we will grow in knowledge. I believe that. I think that Scripture points in that direction. But we will still have finite brains. And maybe there are things that go on in this life, terrible things that go on in this life, and we say to ourselves, “We will understand when we get to heaven.” Perhaps, and perhaps not. But we will be perfectly happy and content with it in heaven. We will be content not knowing.

I want to point you here to a debate that is rather convoluted (and I am actually not going through all of the details of this debate; you can chase it up for yourselves) between two Christian philosophers of the twentieth century. In the red corner, Cornelius Van Til, and in the opposite corner would be Gordon Clark. And Van Til says, When God thinks apple, what he thinks is not identical to what man thinks. There was a big spat about that in the late 1930s, 1940s, roughly around the time of World War II, and there was a big discussion in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church between Van Til and Gordon Clark. If this is your thing, then I would urge you to chase after this debate and read the exchanges between Van Til and Gordon Clark. But neither of them I think were on their best performance, nor did either of them ever have their best day in court on this issue. I think Van Til was trying to maintain the distinction between God and the creature. The way God sees apple and understands apple is an infinite comprehension—that is what he was trying to say. But Gordon Clark thought he was trying to say something else—that when God says apple, he actually thinks banana—and therefore that what Van TIl was saying was introducing irrationality into the argument, and perhaps skepticism into the argument.

Let me cut through it all and say that what we know about God, we know truly. We don’t have false information. We have true information about God. What God has revealed is true information. It is what it is. But it is only a little. I wish I had time to take you through the whole book of Job. Maybe I can do it in five minutes. Job is asking the question “Why?” He wants information. Job 38: “Who is this that asks questions without knowledge?” Job has been asking for a fight. It is an epistemological fight. It is a fight about knowledge. It is a fight about wisdom. It is a fight about understanding. God seems to be doing things that are unwise, and Job wants answers. So what does God do? He asks him the sixty-five questions, and it starts with this question: “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?” And Job is dead on the floor. It is a knock-out blow. This contest is over in the first round, because he has no answer to that question or any of the questions that follow.

And then God raises the issue of Behemoth and Leviathan. If you have not been in Job recently, Job 39-40 talks about Behemoth and Leviathan. Let’s cut through all the possible identifications here. Let’s just for the sake of argument say Behemoth is a hippopotamus and Leviathan is a crocodile. Why did God make a hippopotamus? (Transcription of audio file from 52:33 to 53:01 omitted.) For God’s glory! That is the answer. Why does God make a hippopotamus? For his own glory! That is the answer. Why does God send pain? For his own glory. That is the answer. That is a difficult answer, isn’t it? That is not the answer you want. It is not the answer that you are expecting. It is what Job received. Job never actually got an answer. Because it is not important that we know. It is not important that I know. What is important is that he knows, and that I trust him. God is incomprehensible. His ways are past finding out.

So this doctrine is a doctrine that ultimately humbles us, doesn’t it? I mean, at the end of the semester we will know stuff. I mean, seriously, we will know stuff! But you know what all our knowledge needs to do? It needs to humble us! Because the more you know, the more you study, the more degrees that you do, the more letters behind your name, the more you realize how much you don’t know. The more I have studied, the more ignorant I realize I am, and how great and vast is the knowledge of God. God is wise, but he is incomprehensible.