but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block, to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of God. over the next seven weeks actually we're going to do a little series. Early in the church there were a series of short little hymns or chants that were developed called Antiphons and each hymn began with the name of the Messiah. Each hymn then underscored something of a work that God did through the Messiah. And finally, each one of the hymns responded with some kind of prayer to appropriate that truth and apply it to the life of the individual who was singing that song. There were seven of these hymns. They were called antiphones. They're put together in the song that we sing at Christmas time, O Come O Come Emmanuel. They're called the O Antiphones or the Great Antiphones. All seven of these are found for the first time around the 8th century in the life of the church, but it's very likely and most people believe that these antiphones, these hymns, were developed very early in the life of the church. And so what we're going to do, we're going to be learning these antiphones and the meaning of these antiphones through the next seven Sundays. The other thing I should say is that these antiphones were applied or exercised in the church, particularly during the Advent season, to prepare the individuals and the church for the celebration of the Advent. And one of the things you'll begin to realize as you look through this is that the early church did not differentiate between the worship and the anticipation that gathered around the celebration of the first coming of the messiah coming as a babe to be born unto sacrifice and the second coming of the messiah coming to reign and rule as king and so as we go through these different antiphones and as we look at the title that's been given for the Messiah and the work that the Messiah does and our response to the work as we do this in preparation as a part of the Advent season I would encourage you to have this perspective that allows God to build within you an anticipation a longing, a perspective, looking for the second coming of the Messiah, as he's coming to reign and rule as king. In fact, if you take the different titles that are given for the Messiah here, and think about this, originally they're given in Latin. And so there were seven different titles that are given in Latin. They form an acrostic that's to be read backward, and this they did intentionally. And when you read it backwards, that acrostic says, I am coming soon or tomorrow I come. Today we're going to look at the first antiphon which is a song to the Messiah as wisdom. Oh wisdom. In fact the words to the original hymn would sound something like this. O wisdom that proceedest from the mouth of the Most High, reaching from end to end mightily, disposing all things sweetly, come and teach us the way unto thyself. When we sing, O come, O come, Emmanuel, we sing it this way. O come, O wisdom from on high, who ordered all things mightily, to us the path of knowledge show, and teach us in its way to go. So we'll look first at this idea of the Messiah as wisdom. And that the Messiah is given the name wisdom is apparent to us here in 1 Corinthians 1, verse 24, where Christ, the Christ, that is the Greek word for Messiah, is said to be the wisdom of God. We also can read about this inauguration or this expression of the Messiah as wisdom in Isaiah 11, verses 2 and 3. Let me read those to you. There we read the Messiah speaking. You'll remember that the Lord Jesus pronounced these words when he read for the first time the scriptures in his own hometown. The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. His delight is in the fear of the Lord, and he shall not judge by the sight of his eyes, nor decide by the hearing of his ears. When Paul refers to the Lord Jesus as the wisdom of God, he is actually presenting to us the Lord Jesus as the very being of God. When we think of God's attributes, we have to understand that God does not hold his attributes as if they are something external from himself. as if they exist external from himself, as something that is held outside of himself. But when we think of the attributes of God, we think of something that exists internally, infinitely, forever, resting in the internal, infinite one. And so when Paul speaks of Christ as the wisdom of God and as the power of God, he is speaking of Jesus Christ as God, as the all-wise, all-powerful God. I want to give you a definition for God's wisdom in action so we would know how to understand and recognize it and here's what we would say is the wisdom of God. It is the power of God or the ability of God to plan and take his creation to the highest goal and to do so through the best possible path. Now, that's how we experience God's wisdom. That's how we know God's wisdom. It's God's ability to plan for us and for His creation the highest goal and to bring us to that highest goal through the best possible path. And the goal that God has for His creation is this, to grant to us the maximal experience of His glory and His goodness. That's God's plan. That's God's design is to grant to His creation the maximal expression and experience of His glory and His goodness. And so that's how we encounter the wisdom of God. That's how we will know and encounter and experience the wisdom of God. as God brings us into the fullest expression of His glory and the fullest expression of His goodness. And we'll see that God did it in the perfect and the best possible way. And we'll say at the end of all things, the judge of all the earth has done right. He's done what is good. He's done what is proper. You've served us well. That's our experiences of it. But this is a bit of a challenge when you speak of any attribute of God. Because we can understand the attribute on the basis of how we will experience it, how we will encounter it, but there's something beyond that. There's the wisdom of God that is expressed by God Himself in His own infinity, in His own eternity, that we'll never ever be able to grasp or understand or fathom how it is that the wisdom of God is interplayed in His own delight in Himself. The Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit throughout all eternity echoing back and forth to one another the deep expressions of His wisdom. We'll not be able to totally or ever fully comprehend that or peer into it I would believe that what we experience of the wisdom of God in our life of the glory of God of the maximal goodness of God is the overflow of the delight that God has infinitely and eternally expressed as God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, it pours out in some small measure upon us and we experience it in our lives. For us as creatures, the first view that we are given of the wisdom of God is in his creative order and the expression that he gave in creating all things. So John chapter one verses one through four gives us a vantage point of that moment of creation and how wisdom is expressed and their wisdom is expressed as the word, the word. There we read, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. Let's look at another passage that refers to this moment in terms of wisdom. Go to Proverbs chapter 8. Proverbs chapter eight is an interesting passage. There, wisdom is spoken of metaphorically. There are parts of it, though, as we read it, resonate with and we come away thinking that wisdom has to be something more than just a concept or an attribute or an expression of God, but has to be rooted in God himself. Because here, wisdom is personified. And I think we'll see that if we were to study this passage we'll see that Christ is the wonderful and complete expression of fulfillment of that wisdom which is spoken of here in Proverbs chapter 8 in fact on a different occasion the Lord Jesus is criticized he's criticized along with John the Baptist and the people are basically seeking from the Lord Jesus to expressed himself to them according to their own designs and their own ideas and their own concepts. And the Lord Jesus says, you know, John the Baptist came and you criticized him for the way he dressed and that he was this recluse. And then I've come and you've said I'm a winebibber and a drunkard. And he says, it's, you're like children who are basically saying we played the pipe and you didn't dance for us. You think you're setting the tune for us. And you're telling me what I'm supposed to do. But he says that wisdom is justified by her deeds. and in that passage the Lord Jesus is juxtaposing himself and who he is as Messiah with wisdom who is justified by her deeds and he's referring back to Proverbs chapter 8 and he's saying it's analogous to me. I'm justified by my deeds and what you see in me. Now here's what we read in verses 27 and 31 of Proverbs chapter 8. Here you have this portrait or this image of wisdom expressed in creation and when he established the heavens I was there and when he drew the circle on the face of the deep and when he made firm the skies above when he established the fountains of the deep when he assigned to the sea its limits 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 men. Wisdom was there, and wisdom was giving shape, and wisdom was the word that was with God in the beginning and was God, bringing all things into creation. Now Paul will end his letter to the Romans. The last thing Paul says is he gives an honorific to God himself. He says, to God, who is alone wise, be glory through Jesus Christ forever and ever, amen. He says God is alone wise, or we might know it as God only wise. We just sang that in the songs that we sang this morning. We referred to that phrase God only wise. What we understand there is that All things that may be identified as true wisdom are but expressions or they are but the reflection of the wisdom that God himself, the only wise God, has cast upon the earth. Anything that might be considered wisdom is drawn from God himself and God alone. God alone is wise is what the Bible tells us. what wisdom we find in life, that which we see expressed throughout creation. When you see a little mud dauber building its nest, when you see squirrels out here before the winter gathering their nuts, when you see parents passing on wisdom and instruction to their children, what you're seeing is a reflection of the uncreated wisdom of God that is being diffused into His creation by His decrees. The decree that was given to all its creation that they be fruitful and multiply according to their kind. And in that God then subfused into His creation His own wisdom to guide and direct His created order. What you're seeing then of wisdom is something of the residue and expression of what God has placed of his own wisdom into creation. And we see it throughout the creative order. We see it at every level and we see it in our own human race. I don't know if you know this, but we Christians are not always that smart. And there are people that are not Christians that are much wiser oftentimes than us in how they conduct themselves. As you look at them and you think of the ideas they've come up with, you have to recognize something that God has subfused throughout the human race. The notes of his own wisdom. What we as human beings have done, by the way, is we've distorted that wisdom. We've turned it into cleverness and craftiness and we've used it to achieve foolish ends. The greatness of our folly and the greatness of our sin is that our folly and our sin is nothing but the distorted, refracted wisdom of God that has shown upon us and come to us and we've twisted it and abused it and that's what sin is and we'll talk about that more in just a moment but enough to only note this just by way of concluding these thoughts here is that God is wise, God is the only wise God, God's wisdom is infinite, Christ is the infinite wisdom that is God, God's wisdom is and will be experienced by us creatures in the realization of God's glory and God's goodness. And so we sing, O wisdom that proceeds from the mouth of the Most High, reaching from end to end mightily, and disposing all things sweetly, come and teach us thy way unto thyself. What I'd like to do is I'd like us to consider wisdom from the vantage point of time. I think there's so many things that we understand and we understand it as a way of applying to ourselves by seeing ourselves as we live our lives in our stance before time as it stirs and fills in around us. And so let's look at wisdom as we gaze upon it, as we acquire it or gain it or take hold it for ourselves within the concept of time. And the first thing I'd say this is the way wisdom begins for us when we look at our past through the cross of Jesus Christ. When we look at our past through the cross of Jesus Christ and our response is to confess. I look at what God has done through the cross, and I see His wisdom displayed there, and I confess. Remember that Paul says, we preach Christ crucified. Christ the wisdom of God and so for us initially laying hold of the wisdom of God we see it through the cross and what Christ has done for us and yes as I look back through my life I can see all kinds of things and I drop memories that I can be quite thankful for and it is wisdom for me to look upon those things and to give gratitude and to be thankful and the Bible does in its wisdom say in everything give thanks for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you and that's wisdom but initially I must say that if I look upon my life in the past before I came to that wisdom what began to gather around me through the past was a recollection and a sight of my sins the things that I had done wrong for a number of individuals still the thing that holds them back and the thing that weighs them down are the recollection of things in the past that for whatever reason will not leave go of them and hold on to them and we had the story told this morning of the doctor or pharmacist in Kali Columbia who prayed to give his life to Christ and in that moment he had this great weight that was lifted from him. What was it? It was the weight of the past. It was the weight of sins. It was the weight of all the doubts that accumulated around his life and all the disappointments and the weight of not understanding and not knowing and confusion. So we look to the past and we see these things and we find a wisdom in God in the middle of all these things reaching out and taking hold of what God has provided in himself. We have ourselves distorted the things that God has given to us, the wisdom that God has given to us and turned it into folly and sin. And with this we've fallen far from wisdom. We've invented a new form of wisdom which we think is wisdom which is really folly. And Christ has come, and he's come to us when we thought ourselves wise, but had become fools. And Christ has entered into our folly, and he's taken our sin and our death upon himself. He did so to save us from sin and from death. The cross of Christ is the place where the wisdom of God meets up with the folly of man, our folly, our sin. And there, in that place, God calls us back to himself. That's why Paul says, we preach Christ crucified. to those who are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of God. If you look at Psalm 73, which is one of my favorite psalms, you'll see a portrait of a psalmist who is being filled with doubt. He has all kinds of questions. He resents that he's attempted to follow the way that God's given to him, and it hasn't worked out. He's jealous of those who don't seem to be following the way and being successful, and their lives seem to be blessed. At the end of it, in verse 22 of Psalm 73, The psalmist simply says this, as he looks back, he's giving a view to the past. He's saying something that he was struggling with and something must happen to his life and he says, I was so foolish and ignorant, I was like a beast before you. You know, I believe the day of salvation for any individual came to them with that view of the past. I was foolish. This has been all folly. I'm like a beast before you. I was so ignorant. And what happened? God and His wisdom revealed to us our folly. And God revealed to us that He had not departed from us in the midst of our folly. That He was there. He was calling us to Himself. He's calling to us to confess Him, and believe in Him, and trust in Him. It was a moment of self-knowing. And what we knew of ourself wasn't very much. but our sin. I was foolish, I have been foolish, I was a beast, I am a beast before you. Oh Jesus, wisdom of God, come and make known to my sin now, come and make known to me your forgiveness and your cleansing. That's wisdom. Wash me, forgive me, that's wisdom found in reference to the past, in the recognition of what we are and what our sin is, and then in the insight and knowledge of what Christ has done for us in receiving that forgiveness. By the way, throughout my life, I've continued to hold on to recollections. There are certain recollections that I've taken joy and pleasure in. I've treasured up certain memories and they've delighted me, particularly when I was a young man and I was trying to prove myself and I was entering into various conquests. But now as I get older, I look at these places where I thought I'd made conquest. You know when I made somebody look fool or when I stood down somebody was challenging me and I bore it down and I stood up for myself and all these things. I look back now and realize how much of it was just folly. That I was treasuring up these memories that brought me pleasure and really in the midst of it I was laughing in the face of God. And I was using what I thought was my development to make the other person a fool and to triumph over them and to manipulate and control the situation. Now, as I get older, I look back at many things. This is the surprising thing as you get older is that God shows you things that you did in the past and reveals to you the content of much of it. Much of the points of your triumph in the past were points at which you had really just got better at living out and applying the wisdom of this world than anyone else. And by the way, there is this thing called wisdom in the Bible that is earthly wisdom. Just figure out how to manipulate and control the wisdom of this age in order to get the upper hand and it's born from Satan and the Bible contrasts that with the wisdom that God brings. What I've discovered is many of these pleasant ideas or these thoughts that have come to me in the past and have brought a chuckle to my mind of something that I've done. Actually a reflection of a place where I was I was just choosing the wisdom of this world and living in the midst of folly. As you get older and as you begin to see these things and God reveals these things to you, you see that there was arrogance here and there was self-love here and there was foolishness there and there was great ignorance of what God was doing and who God was in the midst of it and it was callous to others. Here's the wonderful truth though. The blood that the Lord Jesus shed for my sins when I believed Him as Savior and Lord washed over those things before I ever realized what they were. He's washed me and cleansed me. My great joy is in knowing that my broken past is brought under the claim of the cross and it's covered in the shed blood of Jesus Christ for my sins. Yet it's good in my mind to confess, oh, how foolish I was. how ignorant I was. I was like a brute beast before You, but You were always with me. You were holding me still. You were calling me unto Yourself, O God, how faithful and true You are. As we meet the past, the wisdom as it's applied to our lives that's found in Jesus Christ is best expressed by a continued confession of who He is and what He's done for us. Let's look at the next one. It's the way of wisdom in the present. That is, what we do in the present to apply wisdom, and here's what it is. The way of wisdom in the present is to turn into Christ. In other words, the way of wisdom in the present is to choose Christ. When you read the Proverbs of Solomon, you're being presented with the wisdom that God gave to Solomon juxtaposed against the wisdom that men choose and the folly that men choose. And throughout the Proverbs, you're given this choice constantly between choosing wisdom or choosing folly. Solomon is laying out this as this great wisdom that has been given to him. Basically, Solomon is, you choose my way of wisdom that I see is truthful and good and right, or you choose the way of folly and When the Lord Jesus came along, the Lord Jesus said of himself, one greater than Solomon is here. He has a wisdom for us that expands beyond the Proverbs. But let me suggest to you, if you were to get a proper Christological view of the book of Proverbs, see it always in this light that there's this choice that's being given to you to choose wisdom or folly and recognize that folly are the impulses of the flesh and wisdom is the life of Jesus Christ being given to you. Actually, I ran an experiment a couple days ago. I thought, let me just turn anywhere in my Bible in the book of Proverbs and read a section of verses. Whatever I find, I'll just write those down and that's what I'll share with you this morning. I just opened up the book of Proverbs to Proverbs 12. Let me read to you verses 17 through 22. I just want you to see this constant choice that's being given. This is the balance of the book of Proverbs. Choosing wisdom or choosing folly. Here's what we read. Proverbs chapter 12 verses 17 through 22. He who speaks truth declares righteousness. There's the outcome of wisdom. But a false witness deceit. There's folly. There is one who speaks like a piercing sword, but the tongue of the wise promotes health. The truthful lip shall be established forever, but the lying tongue is but for a moment. Deceit is in the heart of those who devise evil, but counselors of peace have joy. No grave trouble will overtake the righteous, but the wicked will be filled with evil. Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord, but those who deal truthfully are his delight. Do you see here the choice that's being set before you? It's all throughout the book of Proverbs. Now we're being called to choose Christ. Actually, James, I preached a series on James years and years ago. I'm not quite where Luther was. Luther called it an epistle of straw. But when I preached on it, it wasn't like I loved the book of James. To me, it comes across, initially when I was looking at it, trying to figure out, it's like a book of ethics. And what surprised me when I announced that I was gonna be preaching a series on James, a number of people came up in the church and said, oh, it's my favorite book. I don't know why that's your favorite book. Why would you like a book that just basically gives you a bunch of do's and don'ts? But then I recognized that in it, God was making known a wisdom that was completely and totally embodied in the life of Jesus Christ. James 1.5 says, if anyone lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him. And then in verse 21 of James chapter one, we're told the secret to the whole book of James. The whole book of James, the decision that's being made to choose between wisdom and folly, and what is at the heart of wisdom. What takes all these different ethical responses, moral responses that are being called from our lives, and infuses them with power and life. It says this, Therefore, here's the laying aside, here's the choice. Lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, here's wisdom, and receive with meekness the engrafted or implanted word which is able to save your souls. Do you see that? What's the engrafted and implanted word? What is it for the believer? What is the engrafted or implanted word? It's the Lord Jesus. When I received Him as my Savior and I believed upon Him, the Spirit of God embedded in me at the core of my being, the life of Jesus Christ. And yet the life of wisdom, the life of a Christian living out the life of wisdom, is to constantly choose to be receptive to that power and that life of Jesus Christ in every situation and every moment. There's always the beckoning call of the folly of human and earthly wisdom saying, do it this way, respond this way. And that there's Christ in you, living and abiding in you, saying, choose me and my way instead. And he lives and he abides within us. the Christian life is the life of being constantly receptive to Christ and what happens then is he transforms all the commands because now the commands are not just a series of do's and don'ts But the commands are an invitation of God to draw, they're like wells in the midst of a desert that you have to travel through. And it's telling us where these wells are that you can stop at and draw up his life and draw up his being and draw up his refreshing. So every command, every do and don't now for the Christian is a place where we encounter and choose Christ and his life and his power within us. They're enablements. They're not just ethics. They're Christ Himself offering Himself to us. That's the choice. That's the choice always we have as believers in doing the right thing or doing the wrong thing, in choosing wisdom or choosing folly. The real choice is me, myself, my wisdom, my understanding, my way, or it's him, his life, his presence, his being, his fellowship, his enjoyment. That's wisdom. is choosing Jesus. Let me read to you James chapter 3 verses 14 through 17 which again illustrates this and these choices that have to be made. The enemy pits his wisdom against the Lord and he teaches us wiliness and craftiness and cunning and cleverness. How we can twist things to our advantage, how we can manipulate words to get our own way. It's subtle, it's deceitful, it's folly. The wisdom of the world's in conflict with the wisdom that comes from above. And it's that wisdom we're called to choose upon. Here it says in verses 14 through 17 of James 3, But if you have bitter envy and self-seeking in your heart, do not lie against the truth. This wisdom does not descend from above, but is earthly and sensual demonic. For where envy and self-seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing are there. But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy. And if we had time, it would be a wonderful Christological discovery to see that that's all of Jesus. That's His life given to us. So in the present, in the choices you make, the call of wisdom is to choose Christ. Here's the third one. The way of wisdom for the future, which is by the way all unknown to us, we're blind, we don't know what's going on the next corner, is to hold on to Christ and confide ourselves in Him or consign ourselves to Him, to entrust ourselves to Him. So let's look at this. Our nature when it comes to looking into the future is not to live a life of trust, but it's to strive towards the future. It's to try to figure out what we're going to face and what we're going to meet and devise strategies as we're approaching it in order to get what we want or preserve what we have, not lose our comforts or to gain other comforts or make sure we're providing for ourselves. I understand that there is a call of God for us to live with some view upon the future and to do certain things. A farmer has to go out and he has to plow his field, he has to plant his seed, he has to prepare in the wintertime himself for the new season that's coming. We have to do those types of things to face the future, but you know, we don't ultimately know if the rain is gonna come, and we don't know whether the crops are gonna come in, and we don't know what's gonna be. Ultimately, it's before God. We do certain things that he calls us to do in faithfulness, but we can't make it happen. But that's not our nature. Our nature is to draw upon ourselves all that needs to take place to secure our future. Edith Betoza writes this about our approach to the future saying this. In respect to the future, it says that the Christian prays a little, plans a little, then jockeys for position, hoping but never quite certain of anything, always secretly afraid that we'll miss the way. And then Tozer says this, this is a tragic waste of truth and never gives rest to the heart. So what's our choice here? It's to reject our wisdom and it's to rest in the infinite wisdom of God that's found in Jesus Christ. If we understood that God has assigned to himself a mission, a purpose to lead his children in the best possible way to unfold before them the greatest experience, the maximal experience of His glory and His goodness. And that's what God has assigned to Himself. The all-wise God has assigned to Himself. Can we trust Him for that? Can we trust Him to deliver on that Or will we orchestrate this by our own conniving and planning? J.I. Packer points us to this wonderful truth that we see in 1 Corinthians that the Lord Jesus is called the wisdom of God and the power of God because these two things go together in order to efficiently fulfill all that God has designed. Packer says this, wisdom without power would be pathetic. Power without wisdom would be frightening. Jesus guards his infinite power under the guide of his infinite wisdom and fulfills the plans of his wisdom by way of his relentless, irresistible power. He's going to bring it about. He's going to accomplish it for us. In Isaiah 42 we had read as our scripture reading a prophecy of the coming of the Messiah. And there we see Him as wisdom and we see Him as power. And by the way, when you read through the Old Testament and you read expressions of the wisdom of God, you'll see that almost always it's paired with the power of God. These two things go together for them to make sense and to be meaningful. And here Christ is presented, the Messiah is presented to us in His wisdom and His power. And then it's applied to us who face the future without knowing what it holds for us. And it's applied to us in verse 16. And here's the promise He gives to us who are blind to the future. And let's admit it, we're blind to the future. You make your plans, you get it all together, you do everything you can to make your life work out, you take all your supplements, you do all those types of things. You don't know what's gonna hit you in the next intersection, right? God knows. Here's what we're told from the Messiah. I will bring the blind by a way they did not know. I will lead them in paths they have not known. I will make darkness light before them and crooked places straight. These things I will do and not forsake them. What's God doing? Why is this happening? What's happening to our world? What's happening in the political system? What's happening to our nation? What's happening in my job? What's going to take place? What do I need to do? How do I provide myself? How many more shelves do I need to build for storage, you know, to store up for the day, you know, that's coming upon us that I have no knowledge about? God knows. God has a plan, and God has a design, and He's all-wise, and He's all-powerful, and He is pursuing the maximal expression and experience for you of His glory and His goodness. And you can consign yourself to Him. You can trust all your life into Him. That's the response. Gerhard Testigen, in the 1700s, wrote this line, Let Him lead thee blindfold onwards. Let Him lead thee blindfold onwards. Love needs not to know. Children whom the Father leadeth, ask not where they go. Though the path be all unknown, over moors and mountains lone. You can trust Him. You can rest in Him. Add another passage to you. God speaking to Cyrus and calling upon Cyrus and telling Cyrus what it is that he's going to accomplish through him gives a promise to Cyrus that we would wisely apply to ourselves. This is what God says in Isaiah 45 verses 2 and 3. I'll go before you. and make the crooked places straight. I will break in pieces the gates of bronze and cut the bars of iron. I will give you the treasures of darkness, the hidden riches of secret places, that you may know that I, the Lord, who call you by your name, am the God of Israel. Wisdom. Wisdom in our Savior. For the past, we confess. For the present, we choose Him. For the future, we consign ourselves to Him. Let's pray. Here we are moving, God, towards a season of celebration. in a season in which we feel the dark clouds of this world and this age, in which we sense the fulfillment of your own declaration that this world is passing away, that like a garment it's wearing out. And as it wears out, there may be a fear that what will wear out is the floor from underneath us. Help us to remember that we are held in the everlasting arms of the only wise God and our Savior, Jesus Christ, who is wisdom, the wisdom of God and the power of God to us. Thank you that our entry point to you was by way of the cross and his sacrifice for our sins. All things past answered in him. Thank you, dear Jesus, you walk by us our daily, calling us to choose you. Oh, God, for the future. We set ourselves at rest in thee, and we give you praise in Jesus' name. Amen.