1 Kings 4:29, Now God gave Solomon wisdom and very great discernment and breadth of mind, like the sand that is on the seashore. 
	 We are deep in the midst of our consideration of the wisdom that God is to us as we call upon Him and seek after Him. He provides the every element of understanding and comprehension and discernment and judgment to face all the decisions of this age despite the supposed complications that are entangling and stifling to the human abilities to deal with it. 
No matter what, at the core, elemental heart of every issue, there will be that Spirit to spirit time when we can simply watch as God manifests His Omniscience and Omnipotence through His Omnipresence. This will remove the smoke screen and camouflage of the power of this age. He clearly demonstrates that He does have it all well in His hands as we learn to trust and to obey Him. 
	This is nothing that will be used to promote ourselves in any measure. We are not put forth as the means of some mystical power of divination. No, we simply choose to let Our Lord’s Sovereignty and Majesty reign in our lives as we learn to, moment by moment, listen to the still, quiet voice of His Holy Spirit guiding our decisions and our steps as each day unfolds. 
	One major, elemental reality of this wisdom from above is that it will always and ever be fully in accordance with His Word. That requires that we are reading and studying The Word as the regular means of spending time with God. We do so prayerfully asking Him to open that Word to us in more than just stories that we tell our children. We seek Him, by the Holy Spirit, to make the connected reality of His life to be our walk on this earth. Each word, each sentence, each chapter, each book all is tied together in the unfailing reality that it expresses the fullest measure of how we are in a related walk with the triune Godhead – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
	We learn to delight in the revealed measures of Who He is and all that He has already accomplished. As well, we cherish what He promises to still accomplish as we sojourn for these relatively few years in this present physical realm with these failing and imperfect bodies of flesh and blood. As His so great love is manifested in the Word, and through it into our beings, surrounding us with all that is required to meet the needs of each day, including the manifest supply of His being our very wisdom, so do we learn the greater measure of how gloriously and awesomely our living relationship with Him is unfolding. 
	As an encapsulation of the difference between the wisdom of this age that is so highly and popularly promoted and expounded, set against the true wisdom that is from God and how much greater and awe-inspiring He is, let us first hear from the Apostle Paul. Please open in your Bibles to 1 Cor 2:1-13.
	1 Cor 2:1-13, And when I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God. For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. And my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God. Yet we do speak wisdom among those who are mature; a wisdom, however, not of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, who are passing away; but we speak God's wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom, which God predestined before the ages to our glory; the wisdom which none of the rulers of this age has understood; for if they had understood it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory; but just as it is written, "Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, And which have not entered the heart of man, All that God has prepared for those who love Him." For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man, which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. 
Notice, first of all, that the Apostle did not try to bring forth some measure of superiority of worldly wisdom when he came to Corinth. He actually brought forth that which the world scoffed at as foolishness and something to be discounted and ridiculed. That was the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. 
What the Apostle determined was that what the people would hear was only that which pointed to Christ Jesus, crucified, resurrected, and glorified. Nothing else, in any measure, to try to convince or argue or win over by persuasion those who would choose to believe what he was telling them. He set aside the worldly course of trying to outwit and out maneuver those people with convincing arguments of unheralded mental capacity and breadth of knowledge. 
The Apostle had just come from Athens where all the argumentation of human wisdom had been considered and measured by the greatest of philosophers and worldly thinkers to no assessable effect. A few had accepted the Good News, but many had just relegated it into another religious movement with some interesting elements that were highly unlikely and without human merit. They saw it as not worth more consideration than as a different strain of the Judaism that they had already chosen to tolerate. 
The Apostle had learned that it would not be through argumentation and higher level superiority of human mental prowess that the Gospel message would overcome and be accepted. It was simply through the declaration of Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen and glorious One, by the wisdom of God touching the hearts and minds of those listeners. It was simply by the preaching of Christ that they would accept that freely offered and so manifestly abundant gift of salvation and restoration into the family of God. Nothing else would bring forth that new life of Jesus Christ except as He was so powerfully presented by the wisdom of God, Alone. 
Only God could prepare the hearts and minds of those whom He would call unto Himself in His wise bestowment of that salvation! It is all the work of God to bring forth, in those whom He knows will respond, the desire, the utmost and unquenchable need and hunger to know more about Jesus, the Only Begotten Son of God, sent from the heart of the Father.
He declares the great day of The Lord. In Him, by His death and His resurrection, we are given the free access into the very family of God. We are made fellow brothers and sisters in a life that transcends anything this world has to offer. …"Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, And which have not entered the heart of man, All that God has prepared for those who love Him." For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God.     
The Apostle James, next, in James 1:2-8, makes clearly known how this wisdom becomes established in those who do believe upon Jesus and who crave, with their entire being, the greater measure of this living relationship with God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We know that this present time on earth is filled with all those challenges and trials that work together for our good as we learn to wait on God, to trust in Him totally, and to obey as He deals in our lives and in the lives of those whom we love so dearly.
James 1:2-8, Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all men generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. For let not that man expect that he will receive anything from the Lord, being a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. 
	This is the manner in which we learn what it means to live by faith. It requires that we are established in the wisdom of God that has been worked deep into the innermost aspects of our lives. That is through the patient endurance of all those times of trials and tribulations which cause us to cling more forcefully and more tenaciously and more dedicatedly to God as our everything!
If we can deal with the hard times out of our own measure of earthly intellect and physical strength and human endurance, then it will not work to the measure so required of one who is utterly and ever more desperately set into the true wisdom of God. It is the wisdom that knows precisely and manifestly that if God does not do the work, if God does not supply the means to endure, if God does not make known the great measure of His grace and patience and love and provision and strength to overcome, then we are lost and without any other hope of survival! 
It has to be God and God, Alone, by Whom this trial, this tribulation, this so extreme and dangerous and hurtful and painful situation will have any measure of His working good in our lives. It is at that point that we will come to know the greater measure of the wisdom and the power and the presence of God Who will see us through to the end!
	Then, in verses 17+18, James details how we will see the manifested glory of God as He reveals how He has made His provision to hold us close and to comfort our sorrow and to heal our brokenness through His wondrous and evidenced goodness enveloping us. We will receive utmost fulfillment and appreciation of how our lives will reflect and manifest His glory in action through the working power of His wisdom in us. 
James 1:17+18, Every good thing bestowed and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation, or shifting shadow. In the exercise of His will He brought us forth by the word of truth, so that we might be, as it were, the first fruits among His creatures. 
	James also puts forth very clearly and completely the difference in the wisdom that is from God and that which proceeds forth from this age. It is the same manner of earthly wisdom that the Apostle Paul encountered in Athens with the inherent struggle for supremacy in trying to convince others that it is better than any other. Please refer to James 3:17+18. 
James 3:17+18, But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy. And the seed whose fruit is righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. 
	The wisdom of this age seeks to rule in the minds of mankind as a tyrannical force which demands to be heard and fights to conquer anything that is opposed to it. There is violence and disturbance and maniacal intent that springs forth to try to obliterate and bulldoze anything that rises up in opposition. It will do so in the most egregious and unreasonable manners which just boggle the mind. Such horrid and obscene actions of mankind are the result of the wisdom of this age which would seek to force every idea in opposition to be chomped down and smashed beneath the grinding heels of brutal force. 
`That is not the way of the wisdom of God which works from within to instill the peace of God. We know in our hearts when we are walking in line with The Lord, feasting fully on His Word and obeying His wise prompting at each decision point of our lives. There is that peace that fills our hearts and our minds. That is one of the ways that we know when our thoughts are aligned with His plan and purpose, because that peace reigns in our lives. 
When that peace is missing, we recognize that something is amiss and we seek after Him to reveal and to cleanse anything that might be interfering with our wondrous living relationship with Him. We stop until we again have that peace to move ahead with Him, rather than against Him.  
	It is the Apostle Peter who will close this entire consideration for the time being with the wondrous declaration of 2 Peter 3:14-18. Herein is detailed the distinct difference as was encountered by the Apostle Paul in Athens and how he chose a completely different way of bringing forth the Gospel message in the wisdom of God from then on. 
2 Peter 3:14-18, Therefore, beloved, since you look for these things, be diligent to be found by Him in peace, spotless and blameless, and regard the patience of our Lord to be salvation; just as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you, as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction. You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, be on your guard lest, being carried away by the error of unprincipled men, you fall from your own steadfastness, but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity. Amen. 
	We have the warning proclaimed not to distort that which is from God. As man so often does, there is a twisting and a mangling into some semblance of human understanding and cunning intent to take the things of God and pervert them into the tools of the human inclination to lord them over one another. 
This is to be very diligently and concisely avoided as we desire to maintain a vigilant and unblemished cherishing of the wondrously gifted wisdom of God. He will see us through our every time of trial and decision as to our relationship on this earth with Our Precious Savior and Lord Jesus Christ. So be it.
Now God gave Solomon wisdom and very great discernment and breadth of mind, like the sand that is on the seashore. Amen.

This morning’s benediction is Mic 4:5. Though all the peoples walk Each in the name of his god, As for us, we will walk In the name of the Lord our God forever and ever. Amen.