Wonderful World of Wisdom - Foundations

Preached on Sunday, July 8, 2018

Scripture readings: Proverbs 1:1-9; Colossians 1:15-29; John 1:1-14

A family was getting ready to go to the Christmas pageant and their son had already put on his royal looking costume, and he was holding his little golden box to give to the baby Jesus. His dad, knowing his son’s special weaknesses, gave him this warning; “Boy, in this play remember to be the wise-man and not the wise-guy.”

The Book of the Proverbs gives a lot of healthy attention to both kinds of guys. And not all the guys are guys. There are a lot of women in Proverbs and they get a lot of attention too; but there are three women who are the most important people in the whole book. There is Lady Wisdom. There is Foxy Folly. There is Vera Goodwife. Well, to make it simpler, there is Wisdom, and Folly, and the Noble Wife who is one hundred percent lady and one hundred percent woman.

This Book of Proverbs is presented to us as the wise sayings of Solomon. The Books of Kings tells us that Solomon spoke 3,000 proverbs, but that’s way too many to fit in the book of Proverbs as we have it. And the Book of Proverbs itself tell us that not all of the proverbs in the Book of Proverbs are his.

Since Solomon was wise he knew how to listen to the wisdom of others. His book honestly tells us who some of those people were: a wise man named Agur (Proverbs 30.1), who might have been an Ishmaelite from the descendants of Ishmael, the half-brother of Isaac; and the last chapter in the book comes from the mother of Lemuel who was the king of a neighboring country (Proverbs 31.1).

There are so many proverbs and there’s so little organization to them. Every now and then you find groupings. The noble wife, at the end, has the biggest topical grouping of them all. So, the wisdom of women is the big ending and the happily ever after of all wisdom. Proverbs has a sense of humor, by the way.

There’s a pair of proverbs about talking to fools that really is a joke. Here’s the pair in Proverbs chapter twenty-six, verses four and five: “Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you will be like him yourself. Answer a fool according to his folly, or he will be wise in his own eyes.” So, it says: “Don’t do it, but go ahead and do it”. Or it says: “Darned if you do and darned if you don’t.”

You have to admit that’s pretty good. I think it’s a hint that trying to be perfectly wise will make you a fool if it doesn’t drive you crazy. And Solomon will say something like that in his later book “Ecclesiastes” chapter seven.

First of all, we must ask: What is wisdom? Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon are the wisdom books of the Bible. They’ve been set apart as that for two thousand years. What is wisdom? Read those books.

Still they give us clues; right from the start. The proverbs are for “attaining wisdom” as verse two tells us. You need wisdom, first of all, in order to find out what wisdom really is. That’s what wisdom is. Wisdom teaches you what is wise and what isn’t.

There’s something even better. What is wisdom? Proverbs tells us almost from the start. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline.” (Proverbs 1.7) Proverbs 9.10 says it better: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.”

I think the whole world, as it is now, is farther from wisdom than at any time in history or prehistory. It is more important than ever, in the world as it is now, to have the right wisdom to make the right choices and set the right priorities. And the world, as it is now, makes it harder to learn the wisdom that we need to make the hardest choices ever.

I think (and please guide me if I am astray here) that, in the world as it is now, the highest values are information and conformity. Both of those are dangerous substitutes for wisdom. They will never lead you to wisdom.

When you look back at our wisdom books, in the Bible, the words that point the way to wisdom are fear and knowledge. But our world no longer understands the ancient language of wisdom. In the Bible world, “fear” and “knowledge” are (or can be) love words.

Maybe something in our ancient-world heart (and not in our modern-world blood pump) can help us understand. In families where love is built on the foundation of beautiful promises, when spouses say, “I know my husband” or “I know my wife”, it means something revolutionary to the world as it is now.

Such love can make mistakes, but such love is the kind of knowledge that makes the other person beautiful. You know and love every pause, every joke, every knuckle, and crooked toe, and wrinkle of that person. You look at them and see the lost beauty of the youth that they spent loving you, and trying to love you better, and yet that lost beauty isn’t really lost at all, but dearer than ever.

The lifetime of loving that one person has also made you beautiful in a way that only your spouse can see and know. A sometimes-trembling love has somehow saved your life and there is a wisdom and knowledge coming from that which influences every day of your life and every definite plan and every open-ended, wait-and-see view of the future. Such a love has given you wisdom.

The knowledge of the Most High is that kind of love. It’s built on that kind of experience. Even when you haven’t known the Most High for long, your knowledge sees something that runs up and down the ages. Your brand new Lord Most High becomes your very own Ancient of Days in no time at all. The knowledge of wisdom is foolishness unless it’s the knowledge of love in the Most High.

It’s the same with the fear of the Lord. The only kind of fear acceptable to God is when our fear is a love-word for God. Fear works on different levels and not all those levels are love. If you fear chain-saws, then you might never know the beauty of using one. If your fear turns into respect, and you respect that chain-saw, it will prosper and sing in your hands. If you really fall in love with that chain-saw, you might learn to carve tree trunks into grizzly bears, over even into the strong, beautiful likeness of your husband or wife. That is when fear becomes a love-word.

Deeper still, when your children or grandchildren want to learn how to use a chain-saw, there you see fear and love fit like hand in glove. You want those children to grow up with the most healthy and beautiful fears that their little tender hearts can hold because you love them. And your fear and your love go hand in glove (and you better make them wear gloves when they hold that chain-saw) as you introduce them to object of your love and joy, so that they can love, and enjoy, and lovingly fear that machine with the shattering voice, and those sharp teeth.

Great Fear and Great Love are not enemies, or strangers, in the ancient heart of wisdom. So, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

But what does the beginning of wisdom mean? You can’t go wrong if you call that fear the first step. Woe! Woe, unto you if you don’t start with the first step. Step one: put the chain on the chain-saw. Step two: put gas and oil in the chain saw. Step three: start your motors gentlemen.

If you don’t say that you must begin with the first step, first, and not the last step, first, then you’re going to end up married to Foxy Folly, or you may lose an arm or two. Every journey, including the journey to wisdom, begins with the first step. Take the right one first step, or you will have a long job of back-tracking to do to find your Lady Wisdom.

But the beginning of wisdom is much more than a first step. The beginning of wisdom depends on every step.

God’s wisdom for our lives, for each one of us, is a moving target of which God is the focus. God is not only with us, but God is also ahead of us, at the same time, leading the way.

When I was serving the church in Davenport, I was in Lions Club, and we had a special summer meeting for which we met at the gun club and went trap shooting. Well, I had experience shooting at things before, and I wasn’t first in line, and so I had the chance to set my thinking in the direction of trap shooting wisdom.

Because I wanted to make more than my first step wise, I didn’t aim at the spot where I saw the clay pigeon. I aimed for where I knew the pigeon was going to be, and I surprised everybody. I mean I impressed them. For someone who had never done it before I did it better than a lot of the others.

The fear-love of the Lord, as a moving target, is the beginning of wisdom, meaning that it is much more than the first step. The fear-love of the Lord is the core and heart of your trajectory. The goal of God’s wisdom for you is God himself leading you there. God has a trajectory, and God’s wisdom shares his trajectory. It’s as if the beginning of an apple is the heart of a flower that becomes the seed in a tiny pod that becomes the center of a juicy, ripe sweet fruit. The center is always there, but the center has a trajectory. It’s always changing.

Wisdom is a road with a first step and with many steps needed to reach the destination. Wisdom is a flower that turns to fruit, and from fruit to a tree. It not only has a beginning in time: it has a target, and it has something worth celebrating that you could never put into words, if you only judged it by its beginning.

Wisdom is what life is for with God. Yes, wisdom must begin, but, in God’s wisdom the target is also the beginning, and the end is the greatest beginning of all.

Beginning, in Hebrew, almost means simply that it’s number one. The fear of the Lord is the number one of wisdom. It’s step number one, and it’s number one all the way after that.

Even the end is the beginning. Wisdom is for getting there. And the achievement of wisdom is the work of love.

It’s the work of love, and “God is love.” (1 Jn 4.8)

“Listen, my son, to your father’s instruction; and do not forsake your mother’s teaching.” (Proverbs 1.8) Love desires wisdom, for one’s own sake and for others. Proverbs is about love, and relationships with others, and with communities, and with those in need, and with those who have power over you, and with those who work under you. Proverbs is about love and relationships with your work, and your family, and your home. It’s about your relationship with yourself. It’s about love. It’s about God. And, so, in every way, it’s about love.

There is, in Proverbs, and in wisdom, a goal. The goal is all of us together, and all creation, and God, and love, and connection, and belonging, and love. It’s really the secret to understanding Proverbs, and the Old Testament, and the Gospel.

We are made for fellowship with God. God is connection within himself: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And the everlasting Son carries this fellowship to us, in our world’s lostness and brokenness, which all we share. Jesus, the everlasting Son, comes out of eternity and down to us, in time and space, to restore a lost relationship that was intended to be our whole life and home. Jesus, the everlasting Son, comes down to us to restore a lost resemblance, and Proverbs identifies that resemblance.

When, through Jesus, we begin with God we understand and know the Most High and how we are to embody in our love everything that God is and everything that God has done for us.

In Proverbs chapter ten, verse twelve, it says: “Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses.” Hatred is the fruit of the fall of the human race from the image of God to the image of sin. Whatever makes us tick seems to naturally stir up strife and conflict; in marriages, families, nations, and humankind. We stir up strife against the love, and the forgiveness, and the salvation, and the rescue that God creates for us in Christ.

But the love that has not been broken or fallen (the love of God) covers all those offenses. The love of God was poured out on the cross for us, and for the world, to cover our offenses: to heal our sins, and blot them out, and make us new in Jesus, the Son of God.

Wisdom working in us shows us how to heal the brokenness of others caused by the conflict of sin. Wisdom shows us what to do and say in order to make people new and to make the past forgotten.

“All day long the wicked covets, but the righteous gives and does not hold back.” (Proverbs 21.26) The righteous one, here, is God who gives to us, through Jesus, the cross and the resurrection. In this process of giving, through the cross and the resurrection, God and does not hold back.

Our knowledge of the Most High changes us. This knowledge of God, and God’s righteousness, gives us the wisdom to give and not hold back. Our knowledge of the Most High restores our lost resemblance to God. The Book of Proverbs is a book about God’s wisdom restoring us so that his wisdom becomes our resemblance to him, in Jesus.

God is our true home and, in Proverbs, the Wisdom of God invites us home and prepares a meal for us, and this meal is the bond of the home of God’s wisdom being our home, because our food and refreshment are there. Remember that seven, used here, is the sign of fullness, completion, and perfection: “Wisdom has built her house, she has set up her seven pillars. She has slaughtered her beasts, she has mixed her wine, she has also set her table. She has sent out her maids to call from the highest place in the town, “Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!” To him who is without sense she says, “Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. Leave simpleness, and live, and walk in the way of insight.” (Proverbs 9.1-6)

The cross and the resurrection are the food of the Lord’s Table: the food of wisdom. It feeds us with the wisdom of knowing that we are changed by a righteous love that is not our own. We know that this righteous love does not hold back, no matter how small the portions may seem at the time. The wisdom of God was love in the form of self-sacrifice. That’s the wisdom we find in the food here in the Holy Communion of the Lord’s Table.

Let’s come. Let’s leave our simpleness or find its blessing. Let’s eat, and live, and walk with the Lord.