God’s Word Is Not Humanly Discovered

The Wednesday feature of the Worldly Saints blog is a Scriptural meditation whereby I take a verse or passage I have been pondering lately and seek to edify my readers with it’s promises, encouragements, warnings, rebukes, etc.

Last Wednesday, we talked about how the Word of God is readily available to you and I (I Cor 2:6-7). In today’s posting, I want to consider how the Word of God is not humanly discovered. Paul wrote in I Corinthians 2:8-9, “None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not hae crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written, ‘What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, not the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him.”

Here is the definitive proof that the wisdom of God cannot be grasped by the unbeliever. If they knew it, they would not have killed the Son of God. John MacArthur says the crucifixion is the ultimate proof that natural man is not wise. They did not have the facts, know the facts, believe the facts, etc. They could not because they could not get to them on their own. Even though the wisdom of God is available, it cannot be achieved without divine intervention. The N.T. commentator R.C.H. Lenski reminds us,

“The crucifixion of Christ is the final demonstration of the fact that the world’s highest representatives did not and do not know God’s wisdom … They had the Old Testament revelation to give them knowledge. Yet they did not know.”

I mean if any reasonable human knew they were crucifying the Creator of the universe, they would have never sent Judas, never brought Jesus before Pilate and they would have never let a Roman soldier get near Jesus. But, because God’s wisdom cannot be humanly discovered, the unbeliever cannot get to it on his own. Paul continues the thought in vs. 9.

Paul says the same thing other prophets (Isa 64:4; 65:17) have said – God’s wisdom comes from God and Him alone. No one’s eyes or ears or heart can find their way to His revealed will without divine intervention. “God has prepared” man’s eyes and ears and hear to receive God’s wisdom.

Do you get the sense of how involved God is in all this? He sovereignly “turns the lights on”. You and I don’t and can’t do it without His assistance. We can’t get to His wisdom on our own without His leading us there. The Apostle John said about salvation, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him …” (John 6:44). The wisdom of God cannot be achieved in it’s meaning by the natural man on his own.

One of the reasons man can’t grasp the wisdom of God on his own is that he approaches it as any other book, but the Word is not addressed to everyone. It is for God’s people. A.W. Tozer, in his book Man: The Dwelling Place of God helps us here:

“Not only does God address His words of truth to those who are able to receive them, He actually conceals their meaning from those who are not. The preacher uses stories to make truth clear; our Lord often used them to obscure it. The parables of Christ were the exact opposite of the modern ‘illustration,’ which is meant to give light; the parables were ‘dark sayings’ and Christ asserted that He sometimes used them so that His disciples could understand and His enemies could not. As the pillars of fire gave light to Israel but was cloud and darkness to the Egyptians, so our Lord’s words shine in the hearts of His people but leave the self-confident unbeliever in the obscurity of moral night. …

“The saving power of the Word is reserved for those for whom it is intended. … The natural man must know in order to believe; the spiritual man must believe in order to know. … The Bible is a supernatural book and can be understood only by supernatural aid.”

Without God’s sovereign choice to reveal, we cannot get His wisdom without Him.