SPROUL: There is no happier person in the world than the obedient man. And there’s no rationale
that can make wisdom out of disobedience of God. To violate God’s command is not only immoral,
it’s foolish. I think one of the most intelligent things a person can ever do is to submit his life
to the wisdom of God. I’ve come to the place by means of pastoral counseling that I stand
in absolute awe of the practical wisdom of the commandments of Christ for living. You see,
when he says, for example let fornication not once being named among you is befitting saints. You can
hear the whole case against that by contemporary psychologists of the creative self-expression, and
all of that business, and the need to participate in these kinds of things, to prepare oneself for
a fruitful and lasting relationship. I mean, all of that, all of the arguments that sound very,
very wise in terms of your contemporary culture, I respect the wisdom and the insight of sociologists
and psychologists, clinical and behavioral psychologists, examining them and see what
happens to people in these kinds of things. But I’ll be honest with you at this point,
I have far more respect for the wisdom of God. That God’s commandments ... You see,
to violate God’s command is not only immoral it’s foolish. God does not give commandments
just to be commandment giving, just to show who’s boss or to restrict us from our creative
self-expression. And this is where we are called to be children. Babes in evil. Not in knowledge.
Not in intelligence. Not in maturity are we called to be children. But babes in evil. And the trust,
you see, the analogy being the trust the child has for his father, even when he cannot see. You see,
there many times where I just have to simply overrule my child and pull rank. I cannot make
my child understand why such-and-such a course of action will be injurious to him or to her. It may
be that I can’t articulate it on their level, or it’s just too difficult for them to understand.
But when it comes to the commandments of Christ, even when we cannot see the wisdom of what he’s
saying, we are called upon to submit as children to our Father who knows the basic needs of His
creation. We’ve been listening to the advice and to the counsel, the greatest minds of a
scholarly institution of the world today. And we are living in a culture of radical foolishness,
and of radical misery and unhappiness, which I think are the inevitable fruits of foolishness.
Although, I’m impressed by the scholarly level of the discussion, I am singularly unimpressed by the
fruits of the practical wisdom of our day. And Jesus Himself suggested this test for
wisdom when He said, “Wisdom is justified by her children.” Wisdom is justified by her children.
There is no happier person in the world than the obedient man. And there’s simply no rationale that
can make wisdom out of disobedience of God. This may bring Christians into conflict with serious
scholarly investigation on certain areas. But no matter how much knowledge a psychiatrist,
a psychologist, a sociologist, or theologian has about human behavior,
it is at best severely limited. It’s the knowledge and the advice and the recommendation of someone
or a group who lack one quality, omniscience. But our presupposition as Christians is that
the advice and the counsel that we received from Scripture is the insight and the counsel
and the advice of the omniscient One, speaking to His foolish creatures. I just don't think he
can improve on it. The one who has made us, who knows our frame, who knows our origin,
who knows our destiny, and indeed we are fearfully and wonderfully made, has told us how to live.