LifeWay Explore the Bible Series for Jan. 11: Rejecting wisdom is tantamount to rejecting God_122203

Posted: 12/19/03

LifeWay Explore the Bible Series for Jan. 11

Rejecting wisdom is tantamount to rejecting God

Proverbs 1:20-3:8

By John Duncan

Lakeside Baptist Church, Granbury

“There is no happiness where there is no wisdom, and proud men in old age learn to be wise,” Shakespeare once poetically opined. Wisdom returns life to the basics. It is as essential for the Christian as an engine to a car or a heart pumping blood through the body. God's wisdom creates an inner happiness. Where there is no wisdom, there is no happiness and no joy. Where there is no wisdom, there is no security in the soul or in life (Proverbs 1:33). Eternal wisdom provides every person an opportunity to stop, look and listen. Wisdom announces an invitation.

Wisdom calls

Proverbs pictures wisdom as a person calling to people in the marketplace (v. 20). Wisdom raises her voice in the chief concourses where people move to buy, sell and transact business. Wisdom sings (v. 20, literally, “hymn”), attracting attention to the musical score of God's symphony. Wisdom also preaches (v. 21), signaling a cry from one heart to another the message of good news that falls from heaven. Wisdom goes forth singing and preaching, while inviting people to look into the happiness and joy of life lived under God's wisdom. The scholar Duane Garrett says: “Wisdom is not abstract, secular or academic but personal and theological. To reject wisdom is to reject God.”

What words does a personified wisdom speak? Wisdom shouts on the streets, “How long will you act unwisely?” (v. 22). Eugene Peterson's “The Message” clearly gives the force of the Hebrew translation: “Simpletons! How long will you wallow in ignorance? Cynics! How long will you feed your cynicism? Idiots! How long will you refuse to learn?”

The writer of Proverbs mentions three kinds of people who need wisdom–the simple ones who refuse wisdom's good; the scorners or mockers who desire to boldly laugh in the face of wisdom; and the foolish who, literally, have “thick skulls” that refuse to listen to the voice of wisdom. Wisdom calls out wise words that, if believed, will supply grace and truth for life (John 1:14).

Wisdom and the human machine

C.S. Lewis once remarked, “Now God designed the human machine to run on himself.” Lewis feared many men and women tried to go at life alone, trying, in Lewis' own words, “to invent some sort of happiness for themselves outside God–apart from God.” Wisdom supplants the self apart from God and joins the heart, soul and mind to the joy of God. Wisdom yearns for a return to life's most basic need: God's pure and holy wisdom (v. 23). Wisdom invites the people on the streets from all walks of life to simply turn their hearts toward God in his wisdom. Turn, literally, to God's proof and to his conviction. In the New Testament, such a turning would require confession of sin and repentance.

What will God do when people turn their lives toward him? God will do two things: (1) He will create an eternal spring (literally, “gush forth”) of his Spirit that will fall like dew on the morning grass; (2) he will make clear his words and provide purpose for life like the lifting of a window shade to reveal light (v. 23).

God desires to refresh and reveal himself in your life, but many people refuse (v. 24). God begs with wisdom to draw people near to his security and grace, but some stubbornly refuse. Chuck Swindoll warns, “A stubborn will stiff-arms reproofs.” Not only have many people stiff-armed God's reproofs; they have also treated God's counsel as if it were nothing (literally, “zero,” v. 25). Wisdom pleads for an answer. What happens when God's wisdom is stiff-armed and counted as nothing?

Answer?

God returns on the heads of those who refuse his wisdom that which the foolish practiced in life: Simpletons receive the judgment of their choices; mockers brace for the laughing whirlwind of God's terror as if in a storm; and the foolish swim in the misery of their own foolishness while crying out in distress and anguish (vv. 24-27). Storm winds blow. Who will the people in the marketplace, on the streets and in the concourses of business cry out to now? Who will listen?

The unwise refused to listen to God in his wisdom when he warned them. God called. They refused to listen or answer. They heard the noise of the streets but turned a deaf ear to God's voice. How will God answer their calls in a storm?

God will not answer (v. 28). God will do to them what they did to him. They will search for God in the fury of the storm, but like a man stumbling in the rain, wind and fog while reaching for something to hold on to, they will not be able to balance their feet beneath them (v. 28). The fools refused knowledge and lifted their faces away from God (v. 29). They anxiously clamored for a hold on life but found nothing to grasp (v. 30). The storm destroyed the fruit of their lives (v. 31). In the chaos of the storm, the people destroyed themselves and each other (v. 32). Complacency surrounded them like the wind- blown trash from a storm (v. 32).

As the storm calms, God gives one final call. Who will turn to me? Who will listen to wisdom? Who will receive the final message? Those who do are wise. They “settle down” as God settles down in them and peace calms their hearts (v. 33). The Son shines again. Mourning turns to joy and laughter.

Question for discussion

How would you describe wisdom?