Wake Up to “Woke”
“O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been His counsellor? Or who hath first given to Him, and it shall be recompensed unto Him again? For of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen” Romans 11:33-36
When are folks going to wake up to the fact that God is the sovereign LORD over EVERYTHING? There are so many people today who think that they know more than God judging by the way they try to transform things that God has made. He made man with an intelligent mind to be able to discover and invent things that make life easier for folks. I am glad that we still don’t have to travel by horse and buggy or go down to the creek and beat our clothes on a rock. There is nothing wrong with modern conveniences to help us in our daily lives. Some of the things, though, that man has invented have been used for evil purposes. The internet is great for researching and staying informed and in touch with friends, but unscrupulous people have gone online to further their wicked purposes. God gave man free will and, unfortunately, not everything that man thinks up is beneficial for mankind nor pleasing to the Lord. I wonder what the men of God in scripture, like Abraham, Moses, Paul, and Daniel would say about our modern world.
Paul, before he became a believer in Christ, was completely against Christ. He was pursuing believers and locking them up in his efforts to rid the world of the followers of Christ. There are folks living on this planet now who would like to do the same. However, when Paul came to know Christ in the forgiveness of sin, it was like night and day for him. In this passage, he had just finished his dissertation on the wisdom and justice of God in providing salvation for Jew and Gentile alike, and then he began to express a doxology of praise to Almighty God who is worthy of all praise and honor. There is no bottom to God’s wisdom and knowledge. Matthew Henry wrote, “Men’s riches of all kinds are shallow, you may soon see the bottom; but God’s riches are deep”. The problem with this “wokeness” is that it is shallow and doesn’t provide any benefit at all to those to whom its ideas are directed which are all those who aren’t “woke”. Those who are caught up in this what I hope is nothing more than a fad have abandoned true justice and have made up rules to fit their narrative, and those who don’t go along with their ideas are “cancelled”. The “wokesters” have given up wisdom in exchange for blindness to the truth of God’s word. It is really sad to waste one’s life seeking power and popularity only to wake up one day and realize that it was all a lie.
Ray Stedman wrote, “God’s judgments are unsearchable. His thoughts are beyond our understanding. His wisdom is light-years deeper than human wisdom. There is no way we can fathom God. All of our efforts to define Him, confine, Him, and reduce Him to our level are doomed to failure. He is not accountable to us. He owes us no explanation. He is God”. None of us has ever told God what to do, not successfully. We might have tried to help Him in His decisions, only to find out that we don’t know squat! God doesn’t owe us anything. To owe someone is to imply a debt for a previous favor or act on someone else’s behalf. Salvation is not a payment to us for something we have done. It is a wonderful gift that we don’t deserve. Because God made everything and thus owns everything, then He has the right to do as He pleases.
Job, the righteous man whom God allowed Satan to test by cursing everything that Job owned and eventually cursing Job’s physical body, was visited by three so-called friends who offered their reasons for his adversity. When they finished their discourse, the LORD spoke to Job, who had been trying to figure out why so many bad things had happened to him. God asked Job where he was when God made the world. Of course, Job had no answer for Him. Who is so super intelligent that they can know why God does the things that He does? No one. Who does God go to for advice? No one. What gift did anyone give to God which required God to return the favor? Absolutely nothing. God’s ways are way past finding out, and much of the time, we can’t understand His ways. We don’t understand why God allowed a fierce storm to destroy so many lives and property last week. One day everything is fine, and the next, everything is gone. Life is fleeting. There is no promise of tomorrow: all the reason to be at peace with God for one never knows what a day will bring. It is a hard lesson to learn.
The “woke” need to wake up to reality. This is God’s earth and no amount of transformation on the part of those who desire to eliminate God and His followers will succeed. They may win a few battles, but they have already lost the war.