Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable His judgments and His paths beyond searching out.

Consider the irony of it all. We mere mortals, we whose lives are but a wisp of smoke, we whose reasoning when it comes to things of God is fundamentally flawed, we who have no real view of the “big picture” at all, despite all this we try to define God – who He is and how He operates. We try to understand Him in such a way as to manipulate Him and bend His will to do what we want.

With our limited intellect and fallen nature we couldn’t understand God any more than pigs could spontaneously fly. The great thinkers and theologians have spent their lives studying a few of the aspects of God’s character and attributes, only to discover that full understanding of God cannot be done. St. Paul does reveal a divine mystery for those who want to know God. Even though we can’t understand Him, the more we come to know about God, the more we realize we don’t know, and the more we realize we don’t know Him the more we want to know Him and spend time with Him.

I wish I could say that this was true for the world at large but sadly it is not. In Romans we read that the sinful mind is hostile to God. (Rms 8.7) Where man may look at the complexity of creation: DNA, the resilience of the human body, photosynthesis, gravity, and butterflies and knows that there has to be a creator- a higher being- the world still rejects the Creator’s revelation as to who He is.

Jesus came that we might know God, yet people did not accept Him and His revelation to them as to who He was- the Wisdom of God, the Word made flesh, the One who is without beginning or end. In our arrogance we reject this Jesus and we even reject the Holy Spirit who is at work in us revealing who this Jesus was and is. Instead, we glorify our own wisdom and our own limited and flawed thinking. In our arrogance we pronounce our own opinions about who God is, what He is like, and what would draw us closer to Him.

We live in a time of great selfishness and “me ism”. We want a God that sees the world as we do and acts more in line with our own desires, one who shares our selfish view how things ought to be. I fear we live in a time when if we don’t like God for who He is and what He has to say then we go god shopping until we find one we like.

This is the height of arrogance and idolatry. We as flawed, mentally limited and short-lived creatures think we can decide who this Creator of ours is and on what basis we will relate to Him. Into this new century we have carried the notion that we get to set the rules by which this God, whoever He may be, can govern His own creation.

In our sinfulness and at the urging of Satan, who by the way is real and not some quaint, historical literary device, we think, because we say it or think it or stomp our feet or demand it, God will be compelled to do it. We think we know best and this collides with a God who can see what we cannot. St. Paul writes it this way, Who has known the mind of the Lord? How unsearchable His judgments and His paths beyond searching out.

Knowing His mind or not, sinful man seeks to create His own path to God. We see it in Islam: build your faith on the five pillars and it will be your path to Allah. Buddhists follow the eightfold path to enlightenment. Mormons stress being good enough to please God and Joseph Smith. We see it even in Christians who abandon the cross and come to believe that salvation can be earned by living a good and decent life. Such ideas, any idea about pleasing God or earning His favor, apart from that which God has revealed only feeds that which God despises above all things- the idolatry of self–righteousness.

To offer our imperfections, our tainted and our foul self-righteousness to God as payment for our sins is like the man who invited his boss home for dinner to impress him. Even though his housekeeper had prepared a wonderful meal the man pushed it aside saying he’d do it himself. The man worked hard to prepare a meal for his honored guest but when he lifted the lid on the main dish he discovered the meat had spoiled and to make matters worse cockroaches were even feasting on that. The prophet Isaiah writes it this way; All our works are like filthy rags before the Lord. (Is 64.6)

It is an insult to God that anything less than perfect can be offered to Him as payment for our sins. The insult only grows worse when God’s Son has already made the perfect payment for our sins by His death on the cross. …What manner of imperfect living could be substituted for the life of Jesus Christ? What offering of tainted human performance will be acceptable to God when it is His Son who has already done all things well? What meal could we offer up that surpasses the Lord’s Supper?

It is time that we mere humans cease our endless speculation about who God is and what earns His favor. It is time that we kneel before Jesus for He is the Wisdom of God, the Word of God in flesh appearing, He is as St. Peter confesses, the Christ, the Son of the Living God. (Matt 16. 16) It is time we listen to what He has revealed about Himself. We see and hear this revelation in Jesus for as the Scriptures record, in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form. (Col 2.9) He came teaching us about God. Listen to Me and you will begin to know the mind, heart, and love of the Father.

In Jesus we see the One who lived a life how is to be lived- without sin; He lived the life we could never live, but He by Word and Sacrament gives to us the benefits of that life that we might be declared prefect before the Father. God declares we have a high priest in Jesus who has come from Heaven yet is one who is able to sympathize with us in our weaknesses, for He was tempted in every way just as we are but He lived without sin. (Heb 4.14-16) This perfection He gives us when we are brought by the working of the Holy Spirit to confess Him to be the Christ and to cling to Him.

In Jesus, the Father shows us the singular and perfect payment for the demands of His perfect justice. God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. (2 Cor 5.19) The world may say there is no sin, but God says there is. If we say we have not sinned we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. (1st John 18) The world may see the cross as foolishness- I can atone for my sins, but we can’t. Forgiveness is found only at the cross. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only ours but also for the sins of the whole world. (1 John 2.2) It is that forgiveness that comes to us when we confess our sins and turn from them. It is that forgiveness we receive when we cast aside our self-righteous attitudes and endeavors and take hold of the cross. It is that forgiveness we receive when we take hold of the promises made in our baptism.

All of this sounds nice in here but out there people will respond, “What you say is ‘nice’, but how do I really know that your Jesus is different from Mohammed, the Buddha, Joseph Smith, or this philosopher, or that teacher?” It is not because I reasoned it so or believe ever so sincerely it to be so but because the eternal creator God declares it so. At Jesus’ transfiguration a voice came from heaven saying, This is My Son… Listen to Him. (Matt 17.5) It is so not because I wish it to be so, but because Jesus did what no one else could do: the blind saw, the lame walked, the dead where raised and the good news of the kingdom of God was preached to the poor. (Matt 11.4-5) Signs and wonders accredited Him to us. It is so because His life was one fulfillment after another of promises made even hundreds of years before he lived. By His life, death, and resurrection He fulfilled them all, and then this Jesus ascended back to heaven. Check it out.

Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable His judgments and His paths beyond searching out. “Who has known the mind of the Lord?” Yet, how will they know if we do not tell them? How will we know if we stop listening and studying? Amen.