The Wisdom of God Romans 11:25-36
-The Wisdom of God demonstrated in salvation is both mysterious and glorious
“Grantland Rice was the greatest man I have known, the greatest talent, the greatest gentleman.” This is the appraisal of the late Red Smith. Many felt the only thing greater than his talent was his generous heart. Rice was the epitome of courtesy.
The story goes that the noted journalist’s working pass ticket for the Army-Notre Dame football game went astray. This man, who virtually created that classic game, did not complain. Instead he went down Broadway, bought a ticket from a scalper, and watched the game from the stands with his typewriter on his knee. Afterwards, he went to the press box to complete his story. Hearing of the experience, a friend asked, “Why didn’t you throw some weight around?”
“Tell you the truth,” Granny came back, “I don’t weigh much.”
I. The Wisdom of God’s Merciful Inclusion vv. 25-27
John Templeton, who founded the Templeton Growth Fund, held his company’s first annual business meeting forty years ago in the dining room of the home of a retired General Foods executive. The company had only one part-time employee and one shareholder.
Forty years later, the Templeton Funds have more than six hundred employees and thirty-six billion dollars in assets. If you had invested ten thousand dollars in the company forty years ago, you would now have three million dollars.
What has been John Templeton’s basic stock market strategy? Gobble up stock market bargains. He buys the stock of good companies that for one reason or another other investors hate. In the 1930s he borrowed ten thousand dollars and bought the 104 stocks that traded for less than one dollar on the New York Stock Exchange. He made a killing.
II. The Wisdom of God’s Irrevocable Calling vv. 28-32
III. The Wisdom of God’s Glory vv. 33-36
One of the most decisive moments in our lives is when we admit our need. That admission is what it took to turn Tracey Bailey around. Bailey writes in Guideposts that in 1993 he stood in the White House Rose Garden in the presence of the president of the United States to receive the National Teacher of the Year Award. He had come a long way. Some fifteen years earlier he had stood as a teenager in the presence of a county judge in an Indiana courtroom to be sentenced to jail. Bailey had gone on a drunken rampage with friends, vandalizing a high school, had been caught and found guilty. Nevertheless Bailey stood before the judge with his head held high, the words of his high school wrestling coach ringing in his ears: “Don’t you ever hang your head. Don’t admit defeat. The minute you do, it’s over.”
The judge looked at the proud teenager and stunned the courtroom with Bailey’s sentence: five years in the Indiana youth center, a prison one step below the state penitentiary.
Tracey Bailey went to jail with his head still held high, but it took only a few months for reality to set in. One day as he sat in solitary confinement in a cell with nothing more than a metal cot, a sink, and a toilet, he realized what a mistake he had made. He began to weep. More important, he began to pray to God. “God, I need help,” he said. “I am defeated without you.”
That was the turning point for Tracey Bailey. He joined a prison Bible study and began taking college correspondence courses. After fourteen months in jail he was released on probation, and after further college studies he became a science teacher in Florida. With these words he summarizes the lesson he had learned in life: “I bowed my head and tasted victory.”