The text this morning is from the Book of Proverbs, the eighth chapter:
Does not wisdom call? Does not understanding raise her voice? On the heights beside the way, at the crossroads she takes her stand; beside the gates in front of the town, at the entrance of the portals she cries aloud: “To you, O men, I call, and my cry is to the children of man.“
The Lord possessed me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth. When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water. Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth, before he had made the earth with its fields, or the first of the dust of the world. 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.Thus far the text.
My dear friends in Christ,
Our Lord Jesus Christ is Wisdom. He is the literal personification of Wisdom itself. Every time the Scriptures mention Wisdom, your first thought should be: Jesus. Every time Solomon refers to Wisdom in the Proverbs, he’s talking about Jesus. Thus, it shouldn’t surprise us that Wisdom, in today’s text, is found out wherever the people are, calling to them, calling them home to Himself. Jesus is calling from the heights, He’s calling in the streets, in the markets, in the cafes, on your smartphone, He’s calling to you, He’s calling for you, He’s calling you to Himself.
He puts Himself right in the center, right where we should expect Him to be found. Every place we are, every thing we do, we should expect to see Jesus. It’s not just enough that He’s the true personification of Wisdom, but that He brings Wisdom with Him. He calls to you, and when you hear His call, He offers Himself to you as the only source of true wisdom.
I suppose we should ask what this wisdom is that Jesus has to offer. It begins with this: that you are a great sinner, so grievous is your debt to God, that not the entirety of your blood and life would begin to repay the tiniest fragment. Only one who comes to Christ realizes this. But the wisdom of Jesus doesn’t leave it there: now, He calls you to repent. He calls you to realize this sin, to own it, and to seek to leave it behind you, never to take it up again. That’s repentance, and when you come to Him, humbly seeking His pardon for all you’ve done, then He preaches to you the free gift of the Gospel, the full forgiveness of all your sins, not just the ones you know, but the ones you don’t know, and even the ones you keep returning to. His wisdom enlightens you, comforts you, overjoys you. And you ask, what now? Now that I am forgiven, what do I do now? And the wisdom of Christ tells you to follow Him, to walk where He walks, to follow where He leads, to do as He commands you, to live righteously, and when you fail, to return to Him.
You see, this is wisdom: not that we can do life on our own, but that what we do is just not enough. We need Jesus. We need what only He can offer through His life, death, and resurrection. We need that which He offers when He calls out to us. Everyone needs this, and this offering of forgiveness through the cross of Christ, this has always been the plan.
The reading continues by being a narrative from Jesus about the beginning, about creation. It’s not about His creation, for He was never created, but about the creation. The Lord possessed Him, kind of meaning that God the Father, whom we credit with creation, though certainly all the Trinity was there and involved, told Jesus what the plan was. When creation was begun, God would make Adam and Eve, humans, to hold His image and be His representatives upon the earth, to live righteously and to live forever.
Before anything had been formed, the plan was to make man. And before anything had been formed, the plan was to redeem man. God the Father knew that Adam and Eve would forsake Him and choose sin over their God. It always surprises people to hear that. The question they inevitably ask then is why God created mankind when He knew they would reject Him. The answer is clear: love. He loved His creation before they were even created. If you knew that your child would yell at you, spit at you, curse you, walk away from you, and you’d never see them again unless you went after them, would you choose not to have them? Of course not. Just because you know something kinda horrible is going to happen doesn’t negate the pure joy or love that having them in your life brings.
So it was for God. He knew that we weren’t going to cut, so before He created a single thing, He made a plan: He would send His Son to die for that creation, out of love. The Son of God, having always existed with the Father, agreed to put Himself in mortal nature, to suffer and die so that the creation would be redeemed and would now live, not according to their own righteousness, but His. And this delighted Him.
We focus sometimes on the agony that Christ faced in the garden before He was crucified. And that’s a good thing for us to think about, to mediate upon. It helps us understand the agony and torture He endured on our behalf. It’s not likely that any of us have experienced the physical pain that Christ went through, and I know it’s impossible that any of us have faced the pain of the wrath of God He endured. To see Him asking God to take it away if there was another way, and to see Him sweating drops of blood, this shows us that our Jesus took on our flesh and identified with us in every way. What else would you have done?
But, despite the agony He faced, He delighted in giving Himself up for the world, just as He delighted in the very creation He had made. It delighted Him to redeem these lost and condemned creatures that we were and to remake us into His own image. In the wisdom of Christ, there is joy. There is more joy, the Bible says, with the angels in heaven over one sinner who repents than one who needs no repentance. There is joy in our turning from our sins and clinging to Christ. There is joy, certainly, in finding that these sins have been taken from us and we’ve been given new natures in Christ. There’s joy, even, in following the Law of God after our forgiveness, for there we need fear no more punishment, no more having to get things just right. There’s freedom in following Him because we don’t have to chase after every wind that wants to take us. We have a path and we go and that’s good.
And we haven’t really talked about Him, but this is what the Holy Spirit does, delivering to us this Christ who forgives our sins. He is sent by the Father and the Son to bring to us what Christ promises. He brings the wisdom of Christ. The Father made, the Son calls, the Spirit brings. Simplistic, yes, but it does work. The Father gave us all things, the Son redeemed all things, the Spirit sanctifies us, makes us holy so that He gives us all things. The Spirit is the bringer of the wisdom of Christ. He shows us what is good and right and true and holy. And then He brings those things to us through Word and Sacrament, just as He promised.
The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They are always together, working for your good. It’s true. And so much so, in fact, that to remind you of that, they gave you that name in your Baptism. They gave you the name of God Himself that you might everything you are, all of your identity, wrapped up in Him. When you repent, it’s in His name. When you’re forgiven, it’s in His name. When you’re encouraged, it’s in His name. When you’re comforted, it’s in His name. When you’re grieving, it’s in His name. When you’re strong, it’s in His name. And why? Because He has given it to you to use, to hold, and it directs you back always to what has been done for you. It directs you always back to Jesus, the Son of God taking on your flesh and dying for you. The name of God has been placed upon you. That means that you’ve heard the call of Wisdom Himself, and you are in the place of receiving that wisdom from on high. Let’s walk together in the wisdom of God, seeking His forgiveness, receiving His absolution, being strengthened in name, as we approach the day of eternity with Him. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen.
Now may the peace of God which passes all human understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
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