Families, Church & Discipleship (iv) Prov.2:1-11
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; all who follow his precepts have good understanding. To him belongs eternal praise.
(Ps.11:10)
My goal is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
(Col.2:2-3)
Who is wise and understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you harbour bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such “wisdom” does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.
(Jas.3:13-17)
We’re beginning to get a sense of how significant God’s vision for parents teaching and training their children in the ways of God actually is. We see the command to do so popping up all over the Bible, and in all kinds of genres of literature: Law, Psalms, Epistles... and now, in the Wisdom literature. In fact, the whole book of Proverbs, the book in the Bible designed to detail wisdom, and to cultivate Christ-like wisdom in His disciples, is set up as parents teaching their child. ‘Listen, my son, to your father’s instruction and do not forsake your mother’s teaching’ (Prov.1:11, see also 2:1, 3:1, 4:1, 5:1, etc.). Not only are parents commanded to bring up their children in the training and instruction of the Lord, the Bible actually contains a case study, a sustained 31 Chapter manual on the specifics of how to do this. Parents might struggle to think through how to teach their children to think like, to behave like Jesus – but the Spirit is so committed to helping them in their task, that He provides a step-by-step model of what to teach and how to teach it. Of course, other Christians can benefit from this too – but it is presented as a model of parents (David & Bathsheba?) teaching their son (Solomon?) the art of beautiful and skilful living: wisdom.
But before we get into the ‘guts’ of the syllabus (Chs 10-29), this opening section deals with preliminary questions, which in some ways are harder to answer, or indeed for your child(ren) to answer. And yet everything depends on us teaching them how to do so well. They are questions like: Do you want to be wise? Is the desire of your heart to be able to live like Jesus? Are you willing to work hard for this? The pursuit for wisdom is likened to mining for precious metals (2:4, see also Job 28). Are you willing to search for it as for hidden treasure? Are you willing to value wisdom above all else (see e.g. 3:15)? Of course, the question for parents is how do I teach my child(ren) to value wisdom above all else...
But the list goes on: Are you willing to be humble, so that when wisdom says something you disagree with, or that your culture disagrees with, you will trust the Lord and submit to Him (Prov.3:5-6)? Are you willing to be disciplined and trained, or are you going to resent rebuke, and despise discipline? Don’t you understand, (3:11-12) that if the Lord is training you to be wise it’s because He loves you as His child? This takes us back to our earlier weeks in this series, in which we were reflecting on the responsibility of parents (especially fathers) to teach their children how to obey the Lord, by teaching them how to obey them. Loving fathers must insist on obedience without resentment.
Are you willing to repent and make changes when you get things wrong (1:23)? Are you willing to live now in ways that will only come to fruition and be of benefit later in life? …or maybe not even until the age to come? How do we model this perspective as parents, and as a Church? Some will realise only at the end of their lives the consequences of their decisions (Prov.5:11-12).
These are the kinds of questions our child(ren) will need to be answer before they can be taught the wisdom of the Book of Proverbs. This section finishes in Chap.9 with a call for decision. Wisdom and Folly are both there, calling out to your child(ren) to come to them. This is critical to appreciate. Parents may train, and teach, invest and support, but at the end of the day, the decision to embrace wisdom will be with the child. We recognise that, but we do all we can to ensure they make that decision well, and can move into Chapters 10-29!
Questions
How can you cultivate a ‘fear of the Lord’? How is that the beginning of wisdom (Ps.11:10), and knowledge (Prov.1:7, 2:4-5)? what would you think of someone who didn’t have any fear of the Lord?
In Prov.1:10 warns us against the ‘wisdom’ of ‘sinful men’. Why is foolish and sinful advice so appealing to us? How would you respond to someone who didn’t want God’s wisdom? Why might this be the case?
The foolish (i.e. sinful) men warned against in 1:10-19 seek to benefit from the ruin of others, indeed to ruin others for their own benefit. But who gets hurt most? Can you think of examples of this from your own experience? Why then, do the wicked seem to prosper in this life?
Read Prov.2:1-11
Why does the LORD make it so hard to acquire wisdom? Is this out of character for a God who is elsewhere seen as generous (e.g. Ps.65:9-13; Matt.7:11)?
This passage is built as a conditional promise: if... then... Can you list the conditions, and the promises that God makes to those who fulfil those conditions (NB: there are three ‘if’s two ‘then’s)?
What does it actually look like to ‘store up’ [H]is commands, to turn our ear to wisdom and to apply our heart to understanding (2:1-2)? How can we develop such skills in our own experience, and in the experience of others?
Is it possible to attain wisdom without reference to God (v.6)? How can you explain someone who is wise, but who is not a Christian? Can such people exist?
How can we instil a desire for wisdom in ourselves and in other people?
How can we make sense of the persecuted Church in the light of Prov.2:7-8?
In Prov.2:11, what are being protected and guarded from? Does this, as a consequence of acquiring wisdom, inspire and motivate us in our pursuit of it?
Memory Passage:
For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.
I Cor.1:21-25
Going Deeper:
No-one follows a map to the ‘X’ if they don’t believe there is treasure buried there. To put in the effort required, we must value the (potential) reward. If we don’t, we simply won’t care. Can we instil in the children growing up through MIE a breath-taking sense of the value and worth of the wisdom of God?
Part of this might be to be clear in our own minds that the wisdom of God and the wisdom of the world are in utterly different categories. They are not on a spectrum with ‘godly wisdom’ somehow an enhanced version the wisdom of the world. They are utterly different. And the idea that we can attain to true wisdom without relationship with Jesus, is as old as Gen.3:6. James contrasts wisdom from the Lord that leads to righteousness with a ‘wisdom’ does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic (Jas.3:13-17). Indeed, the wisdom of God is so antithetical to this world, that it cannot be found within it. Even if you go to the very borders of creation, to the gates of death itself, the wisdom of Christ will still elude you (Job 28:14-22). The whole point is that Wisdom is something that comes from outside of this world… that can only be given by God in Christ (Prov.2:6, see also I Cor.1:18-31).
So living according to the wisdom of God will be a real problem in a world that rejects God and that becomes increasingly foolish (Rom.1:21-22). Which means that as we learn to live wisely, we will be living in an experience of deep and painful tension and contradiction with our world. That will be costly. To live with wisdom, we will need the Lord to give us more than wisdom... courage.
