God's Hidden Wisdom

Anyone who has worked through this site has either seen something or felt something resist. Either response raises the same question. If the knowledge of God comes out of God's own mouth, and the Word is sitting there in Isaiah 40, Isaiah 45, Isaiah 55, and every place the chain has traced, why is this not taught? Why has the credentialed class of Christianity missed what the site has laid out passage by passage?

Scripture already answered this question. Before the question gets asked, before the articles are written, before any reader walks through the chain, the Bible itself said the wise would miss what God has spoken and the humble would find it. This was not an accident. It was the plan.

The answer is simple and it sits on top of the site's foundation. Wisdom does not come from the wise man's head. Wisdom comes from God's mouth. And the wise have spent two thousand years trying to produce wisdom from their heads instead of going to where God said wisdom actually lives.

Where wisdom lives

The site's foundation is Proverbs 2:6.

For the LORD gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding.

This is the Bible's own definition of the knowledge of God. It does not come from interpretation. It does not come from training. It does not come from councils or commentaries or credentialed scholars. It comes from his mouth. That is where knowledge and understanding live. That is the only place they live.

This matters because the articles in this series have traced, verse by verse, exactly what has come from God's mouth. The Gospel is what Isaiah 40:8-9 calls good news. It is what Isaiah 45:20-24 proclaims to all the ends of the earth. It is what Isaiah 55:11 says goes out from God's mouth and does not return empty. It is what Mark 1:1-3 calls the beginning of the Gospel. It is what Peter quotes in 1 Peter 1:23-25 as the imperishable Word by which you were born again. It is what John 1:14 says became flesh.

The Word comes from God's mouth. The knowledge of God comes from God's mouth. Proverbs 2:6 ties the two together and says plainly: wisdom is not something you produce. Wisdom is something you receive from what has been spoken.

Now hold that foundation in view and read what Scripture says about the wise.

The hiding

Matthew 11:25-26.

At that time Jesus said, I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and revealed them to children. Yes, Father, because this was your good pleasure.

Read what Jesus is doing. He is thanking the Father. He is giving praise. And the thing he is giving praise for is that the Father has hidden these things from the wise and intelligent, and revealed them to children.

Not accidentally. Not because the wise were too busy. Actively hidden.

Jesus calls this the Father's good pleasure. The Greek is eudokia, what God wills, what God delights in, what pleases God. This is not a regrettable situation. This is the design.

The wise do not get these things.

Children do.

And if you hold this next to Proverbs 2:6, the reason becomes obvious. The wise man assumes wisdom is something he can produce from his own mind. The child assumes wisdom is something he has to be told. The child is right. The wise man is wrong. God hides from the one who thinks he can generate knowledge. God reveals to the one who listens for it from a mouth that is not his own.

The destroying

Paul is not making a new claim when he writes 1 Corinthians 1. He is quoting Isaiah, because the pattern Jesus named was already promised centuries before.

Isaiah 29:14.

Therefore, behold, I will proceed to do a marvellous work among this people, even a marvellous work and a wonder: for the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the understanding of their prudent men shall be hidden.

Isaiah 44:25.

Who destroys the omens of the false prophets and makes fools of diviners; who confounds the wise and makes their knowledge foolishness.

Two prophetic declarations. God promises a work in which the wisdom of the wise perishes, the understanding of the prudent is hidden, the knowledge of the learned is made foolish. This is not a prediction about outsiders. Isaiah is speaking about Israel's own wise men. The ones inside the religious system. The ones trained to interpret.

Now Paul. 1 Corinthians 1:19-20.

For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this world? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?

Paul takes Isaiah 29:14 and sets it down on top of the cross. It is written, he says, and then quotes the prophecy. Then he asks four questions in a row.

Where is the wise.

Where is the scribe.

Where is the debater.

Has God not made the wisdom of this world foolish.

The wise, the scribe, the debater are the three credentialed classes of Paul's day. The philosopher, the legal scholar, the rhetorician. Paul names all three and asks where they are. Meaning: where are they at the cross. Where are they when the actual Word of God takes flesh and walks out of the tomb. Where are they when what came out of God's mouth arrives in a human body.

They are not there. That is the point. The wisdom of the world did not produce the Gospel. The wisdom of the world was standing outside the Gospel calling it foolish. The Gospel was what came out of God's mouth. The wise were trying to produce it from their own heads. They could not. So they missed it when it walked past.

The hidden wisdom

Paul keeps going in the next chapter and names what the wise were missing in plain terms.

1 Corinthians 2:7-10.

But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written, What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him, these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit.

Hidden wisdom. Decreed before the ages. Not understood by the rulers, meaning the credentialed leadership of the day. If they had understood, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. They crucified him because they did not know what he was. They did not know what he was because the wisdom that identifies him is hidden from the wise. It comes not from the heart of man, not from what the eye has seen, not from what the ear has heard through human tradition. It comes through the Spirit of God, from God's own mouth, revealed to those who listen.

Put the pieces together.

Proverbs 2:6 says wisdom comes from God's mouth.

Matthew 11:25-26 says it is hidden from the wise and revealed to children.

Isaiah 29:14 and Isaiah 44:25 say God will destroy the wisdom of the wise as part of his wondrous work.

1 Corinthians 1:19-20 says the cross is where this destruction actually happened.

1 Corinthians 2:7-10 says the wisdom of God was hidden before the ages and is revealed by the Spirit, not by training.

Every one of these passages points at the same picture. Knowledge of God lives in God's mouth. It does not live in the wise man's head. The wise man cannot produce it. He can only receive it, and he will only receive it if he is willing to listen instead of interpret.

This is the pattern Scripture laid out in advance to explain exactly what has happened in church history. The wise of this age have been trying to produce the knowledge of God from their own credentials. Scripture said they would fail. They have failed. And they keep failing in the same place Scripture said they would fail, which is at the cross, where the Word from God's mouth took flesh.

The hidden treasure

If wisdom is hidden from the wise, it has to be hidden somewhere. Scripture tells you where, and tells you who finds it.

Proverbs 2:3-6.

Yes, if you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding, if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures, then you will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God. For the LORD gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding.

Read the verbs. Call out. Raise your voice. Seek. Search. Every verb belongs to a person who does not already have what they are looking for. The searcher is on his knees digging. The searcher is crying out because he cannot find it himself. The searcher is treating wisdom as silver buried in a field, valuable enough to give up everything to uncover.

Then the landing line, which is the same verse the whole site rests on.

For the LORD gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding.

The hidden treasure is not hidden in the seeker. It is not hidden in his head or his training or his credentials. It is hidden in God's mouth. The seeker finds it by going to where it is. He listens to what has come out of the mouth of God, and that is what he finds.

This is the mirror image of Matthew 11. God hides from the wise and reveals to children because the child's posture matches the Proverbs 2 posture. The child does not already know. The child has to be told. The child listens for a voice that is not his own.

The wise man can never find the treasure because he is looking in the wrong place. He is digging in his own head. The humble seeker finds it because he is digging where Scripture told him to dig, which is at the mouth of God.

The hiding is not punishment. It is direction. Scripture hides wisdom from the self-sufficient so that the self-sufficient will either give up and walk away or stop being self-sufficient. And Scripture puts the treasure in God's mouth so that anyone willing to go there and listen will find it.

What this means

This is the answer to the question a reader of this series might have been carrying.

How did the church miss that the Word of God is not the Bible but the specific Gospel traced from Isaiah, the Word from God's mouth that became flesh in Jesus Christ?

How did the church miss that the fire of God is his own Word refining, not a torture chamber he never commanded?

How did the church miss that Matthew 25 uses the Greek word for corrective pruning, not retributive punishment?

How did the church miss that Jesus cursed and promised the Pharisees in the same breath, both moves sitting inside Psalm 118?

How did the church miss that hairesis meant faction from the moment Peter wrote it, not the doctrinal opinions denominations now use it to attack?

Every one of these corrections lives in what came out of God's mouth. The language is there. The passages are there. The chain is traceable verse by verse. Every correction was available to anyone reading Scripture with the posture Proverbs 2 describes. And every one of them was missed for centuries by the people most equipped to see it. Scripture told us this would happen. God hides these things from the wise and intelligent and reveals them to children. That is the Father's good pleasure. The wisdom of the wise is being destroyed. The hidden wisdom of God is revealed by the Spirit. These things were not hidden by accident. They were hidden to direct the seeker back to the only place wisdom actually lives.

So the response to this series is not trust the writer. The writer has no special access. What the writer has done is what Paul named as his own commission.

Colossians 1:23, 25.

the hope promised by the Gospel that you heard... I, Paul, became a servant of this Gospel... I became its servant according to God's commission... to make the Word of God fully known.

Paul's work was not to produce wisdom. It was to make the Word of God fully known, the Word that is the Gospel, the Word that came out of God's mouth, the Word Scripture had already spoken. This site has done the same thing. Every article has been pointing at what has already come out of God's mouth, verse by verse, from Isaiah forward. The reader who has worked through the chain has heard the Word proclaimed, not invented.

What remains is the response Proverbs 2 named long before any of this was written.

Call out for understanding.

Raise your voice for insight.

Seek wisdom as silver.

Search for it as hidden treasure.

The LORD gives wisdom. From his mouth come knowledge and understanding.

That has always been the way in. Every correction in this series came from going to what God's mouth has said, in the language he said it. Anyone who does the same will find what is there. And anyone who will not go to God's mouth, who insists on producing wisdom from his own head or from the tradition he was handed, will keep missing what the Father has been saying to children the entire time.