Tuesday, October
16, 2018
“But do people know where to find wisdom? Where can they find understanding? It is hidden from the eyes of all humanity. Even the sharp-eyed birds in the sky cannot discover it. Destruction and Death say, ‘We’ve heard only rumors of where wisdom can be found.’ “God alone understands the way to wisdom; he knows where it can be found, for he looks throughout the whole earth and sees everything under the heavens. He decided how hard the winds should blow and how much rain should fall. He made the laws for the rain and laid out a path for the lightning. Then he saw wisdom and evaluated it. He set it in place and examined it thoroughly. And this is what he says to all humanity: ‘The fear of the Lord is true wisdom; to forsake evil is real understanding.’” Job 28:20-28(NLT)
Old sayings come from
somewhere! And the reason those sayings
are “old” is because they’ve been around a long time. Profound stuff, eh? Seriously – the only reason some sayings hang
around is because they hold a great deal of wisdom.
But that’s only one scenario; someone
could make the case that the first time an “old saying” was heard it came from
the mouth of a fool and was heard by a second fool…and has been passed down to
fools who will hear it for generations. Fools,
unthinking people, accept statements without employing wisdom to verify what
they’re hearing.
Job, who turned out to be a very
wise man, understood that wisdom is in short supply amongst fools. He looked to God who controls the measures of
wind and rain force, and where the lightning goes; which is to say God not only
understands, but He is the author of understanding; if you will, He is the
force behind the force.
Job interprets for all humanity in
this, the first writings of all Scripture,[2]
that God has said first base, in our game of life, is when you learn to fear,
or worship God. Reverence for our
Creator by obediently resisting evil is the first eternal progress we can make.
Death and Destruction, say Job,
are the children of evil, and therefore the whole concept of wisdom is only a
rumor to them. When it comes to true
wisdom there will never be a meeting of that east and west distance between holiness
and hellishness.
We are tempted (in our human
foolishness) to overthink this concept.
By that I mean we want to assume we are equipped to recognize evil and
judge for ourselves what is good, and what we can handle. Eve assumed she was equipped with enough wisdom
to deal with Satan, but it turned out Eve was wrong…and we’ve been repeating
that foolishness ever since the Garden closed down.
Note that Scripture says the beginning
of understanding is simple obedience. Scripture
does not
say we will begin to be wise when we learn enough, or sin big enough to
understand the consequences. Scripture
starts at the beginning, which is to reverence God with obedience to His Word,
whether we understand or not.
We are children in that respect. And, like a child playing near a street filled
with rush-hour traffic, our Father has drawn a line, and we do well (if we
would be wise) to obey.
For You Today
You’ve got stuff rolling around in your mind that you don’t
understand about politics, family, human relationships, terrorism, anger, and,
perhaps even why the chicken crosses the road.
Until God makes some of the more important ones clear to you, how about
resolving to just worship and obey; fear God first, and wisdom won’t be just a
rumor; it will develop in you like a fruitful garden.
Go to VIDEO
[2] Many Biblical scholars place Job as first, chronologically in the
canon of Scripture
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