The Wisdom That Does Not Change

My family and I have visited Mount Vernon on a couple of occasions — the home of George Washington. Many of you have probably visited Mount Vernon over the years. When you go there, they walk you around the property, you go through the house and all the rooms, and you learn about George Washington and how he managed Mount Vernon.

He managed it in a very entrepreneurial way. He was a wise businessman. He was an inventor, a farmer, an explorer, a leader, and more. He was just a wise, wise person.

But when you are there, you also learn about the final hours of his life. They take you up to his bedroom where he passed away, and you learn about the events that surrounded his death.

Apparently, one day he spent the day riding horseback around his property in bad weather, marking trees to be cut down for milling. He developed what at first seemed like a general sore throat. However, within the next few hours and overnight, that sore throat progressively got worse. It developed into a serious throat infection that caused him to have trouble breathing, and that continued to get worse and worse until he eventually passed away in his bedroom at Mount Vernon.

What stands out is the medical treatment he received while the doctors were trying to heal him. There were a couple of times when the doctors performed a procedure on him known as bloodletting. Back in that day, they thought the wise thing to do was to open up his vein and drain some blood. They did not know exactly how much blood they were going to drain. They just drained some out until they felt like it was enough.

That shocks us today because somehow Washington and his doctors thought this would get the sickness out of him. Here was George Washington, a man known throughout history for wisdom and capability — a man who led a ragtag army during the American Revolution and defeated the most powerful army in the world at the time. He helped guide the birth of our great nation. He helped establish a foundation of government that has influenced the world. Few people in human history have been as respected as this man for his wisdom and character.

And yet even George was only as wise as his time.

With all of his intellect, he thought the thing to do was to drain his blood and somehow that would help. Today, we look back and wonder: how could he think that doing something like that in his weakened state would make him stronger?

What seemed like wisdom then seems like foolishness now. What seems like wisdom in one generation often looks completely foolish to the next.

Have you ever noticed how confident we are today about how smart we are and how much wisdom we have gained? Every generation believes it has finally figured it out. Every generation believes it is smarter than the generation before. Every generation looks back at the previous ones and says, “How could they be so foolish?”

C.S. Lewis had a word for it. He called it chronological snobbery. It is when people look back at previous generations and wonder how they could have believed the things they believed. There were times when people believed the earth was flat. When smoking was first advertised, it was promoted as a healthy thing to do. Doctors once believed that bleeding sick patients would heal them.

We ask, “How could they have been so blind? How could they convince themselves of something so wrong?”

But it also makes me wonder: what will future generations look back at us and say? What things do we celebrate today that one day people will look at and ask, “How did they not see how foolish that was?”

That is why we need something greater than the wisdom of the time or the wisdom of the age. We need a wisdom that does not change with time, culture, or popularity. We need a wisdom that does not shift with every opinion on the wind.

We need the wisdom of God.

We need God’s wisdom because no matter what the wisdom of the day is, every generation leaves behind a trail of brokenness. We need eternal wisdom. We proclaim it when we say, “Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be.”

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — beginning, now, and ever shall be. An eternal wisdom.

We need that wisdom because every generation, with its own wisdom, leaves behind brokenness.

We have more information now than people have ever had in previous generations. We carry devices in our pockets that can answer almost any question in seconds. Some of you remember how you used to get information. You had to go to the library, find the big wooden card catalog, figure out how they cataloged things, find the card for the book you wanted, go get the book, read the book, and then retain the information.

Now you just ask Google. You ask ChatGPT, and there it is. We can communicate across the world in an instant. We can explore space. We can split the atom.

And yet, with all of our knowledge, we still cannot solve the deepest problems of the human heart.

We still have loneliness. We still have hatred. We still have families falling apart. We still have anxiety and fear. We still have wars. We still have violence. We still have evil all over the world.

We have become experts at gaining information, but we are still searching for wisdom — wisdom that transforms us.

Information and wisdom are not the same thing.

Around 2,000 years ago, the apostle Paul walked into one of the most impressive cities in the Roman world: the city of Corinth. If any city believed it had wisdom, it was Corinth. It was wealthy, successful, powerful, and full of trade, culture, philosophy, and entertainment. People came from everywhere, bringing new ideas, new beliefs, and new ways of thinking.

Corinth was a city that valued success, status, pleasure, intellect, and wisdom.

Into that world, Paul walked in with a message that sounded foolish. He did not come saying, “Let me tell you how you can become powerful.” He did not say, “Let me show you the secret of success.” He did not say, “Let me give you a new philosophy.”

Paul walked into Corinth and said that the hope and wisdom of the world is found in a simple, ordinary Jewish man who was nailed to a Roman cross as a criminal and rose from the dead.

That message sounded foolish to the people in Corinth.

Paul writes, “Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age?” In other words, where are all those experts who promised they could fix the world? Where are all the voices that said humanity could save itself?

Paul knew that after all the speeches, all the new philosophies, and all the human wisdom, the world was still broken.

Then Paul says, “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise.”

Think about how strange the cross looked to them. Rome looked at Jesus and saw weakness. A crucified man was a defeated man. He was a criminal. The cross was not a symbol of victory. It was a symbol of shame.

The Greeks looked at Jesus and saw foolishness — a suffering God, a dying Savior, a King without an army. It made no sense.

But heaven looked at the cross and saw something completely different.

The world saw defeat, but God knew it was victory. The world saw weakness, but God saw power. The world saw foolishness, and God said, “That is the wisdom.”

What is true wisdom? True wisdom is seeing reality the way God sees it.

The world says, “Save yourself,” and Jesus says, “Lose your life and you will find it.”The world says, “Get revenge,” and Jesus says, “Forgive.”The world says, “Succeed. Take what is yours. Take what is coming to you,” and Jesus says, “Become a servant.”The world says, “Blessed are the rich, the powerful, the intellectual, the attractive, and the charismatic,” and Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, the merciful, and the pure in heart.”

Everything is upside down with Jesus — or maybe Jesus reveals that we were the ones who had everything upside down.

The world will keep chasing wisdom without God, and it will keep building towers. It will keep making promises. It will keep saying the answer is more money, more power, more influence, more pleasure, better circumstances, the right career, the right house, or the right image.

It will say that if science and technology advance far enough, humanity can save itself. It will say that if we eradicate enough, legislate enough, or achieve enough, then we can build the world we have always wanted.

But every tower humanity builds without God eventually reaches the same place. It does not reach heaven. It reaches destruction.

So how do we live with godly wisdom?

Paul answers in Ephesians when he says, “Be careful then how you live, not as unwise, but as wise. Understand what the Lord’s will is. Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery, but instead be filled with the Spirit.”

Wisdom looks like someone who knows that their days are a gift from God. They understand that life is short. They stop chasing things that disappear. They stop building kingdoms that will not last. They wake up every morning saying, “Lord, this day belongs to You.”

That is a wise person.

If our lives belong to Him, then wisdom is not simply believing the right things. It means living the right way. Jesus called people not only to admire Him or worship Him. He called them to follow Him.

Wisdom also means repentance. Jesus says, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”

Repentance means having enough wisdom, and enough courage, to look honestly at your life and ask, “Lord, where have I accepted the wisdom of the world instead of Your wisdom? Where have I excused what You call sin? Where have I chosen comfort instead of obedience? Where have I wanted approval from this world instead of holiness?”

Wisdom also means possessing the wisdom of the cross. It means having a bend toward humility, surrender, and sacrifice, just like Christ did on the cross.

When the world says, “Follow your desires,” Jesus says, “Follow Me.”When the world says, “Do whatever makes you happy,” Jesus says, “Be holy.”When the world says, “Stay silent if truth costs you something,” Jesus says, “Be faithful no matter the cost.”

Pick up your cross and follow Him.

All of that takes courage because real wisdom requires courage. It takes courage to love people enough to tell the truth. It takes courage to stand for righteousness even when righteousness is unpopular. It takes courage to say no to sin, not because we hate the world, but because we trust the One who came to save the world.

Christians are not called to be angry voices shouting at a broken world. We are called to be faithful witnesses of Jesus Christ, pointing that broken world toward His healing.

We stand against sin because sin is the thorn that grows and grows until it chokes out the harvest of the field. Sin is the disease that destroys creation. So it is wise to eradicate sin from your life and from the world.

Paul says in Galatians 5:17, “The desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh.”

The greatest battle we face is not simply somewhere out there, competing with the wisdom of the world. The greatest battle is inside our own hearts. We battle with the flesh every day because the flesh does not care about eternity. Your physical flesh is temporary, so it will always crave the temporary. It will always crave what is easy and pleasurable, and it will drown you in sin.

But Jesus did not die so that we can make peace with the thorns. He did not die to make the thorns feel better. He did not die to make the thorns sound better.

He died to remove the thorns.

So we live each day as a gift from the Lord. We repent, forgive, sacrifice, obey, and stand with courage — not because we are better than anybody else, but because we belong to the One who is making all things new.

He is making your soul new. He is making you a new flesh, a redeemed flesh, a resurrected flesh that will walk with you for eternity.

In the end, the question will not be, “Did people think you were successful?”The question will not be, “Did you impress everyone?”The question will not be, “Did you gain the world?”The question will not be, “Did the world call you wise?”

Eventually, the world will turn, and like George Washington, it will see the ways we lived as foolish. We will be foolish to the next generation.

The question should be, “Did your life belong to Christ?”

One day every kingdom built on human wisdom will fall. Every voice that mocks God will become silent. Every knee will bow, and everyone will finally see that the foolishness of God was wiser than anything our fallen flesh could ever come up with.

So, brothers and sisters, as Christians, live wisely. Love deeply. Forgive freely. Serve humbly. Be courageous in your faith. Give thanks always, because you belong to Christ now and into eternity.

There is no greater wisdom than that.

Paul says in Romans 14, “If we live, we live for the Lord. And if we die, we die for the Lord. So whether we live or whether we die, we belong to the Lord.”

Oh, how smart that is.

Glory be to the Lord our God, Jesus the Christ.

Amen.