Monday's follow-up to Sunday's message: Humility and wisdom

I was wondering how I was going to write this week's Monday follow-up, because just about everybody can be worldly wise, but few people know how to find a person who is a source of true, Godly wisdom.  And so this morning as I was backtracking into some readings I had missed in our "Read the Bible in one year" reading plan, I hit a section of verses from the book of Job that I considered a gift from God.



Job 32:1-9 
So these three men stopped answering Job, because he was righteous in his own eyes.  2 But Elihu son of Barakel the Buzite, of the family of Ram, became very angry with Job for justifying himself rather than God.  3 He was also angry with the three friends, because they had found no way to refute Job, and yet had condemned him.  4 Now Elihu had waited before speaking to Job because they were older than he.  5 But when he saw that the three men had nothing more to say, his anger was aroused.

6 So Elihu son of Barakel the Buzite said: "I am young in years, and you are old; that is why I was fearful, not daring to tell you what I know.  7 I thought, 'Age should speak; advanced years should teach wisdom.'  8 But it is the spirit in a man, the breath of the Almighty, that gives him understanding.  9 It is not only the old who are wise, not only the aged who understand what is right.


Pay careful attention to two things:

1)  Elihu has quietly stood just outside the spotlight throughout the entire conversation, giving his elders a chance to speak.  He expected their wisdom to be greater than his own, and so did not speak.  He expected to learn, so he listened.  This immediately marks Elihu as a man of great humility and wisdom, for the wise are always thirsting for more wisdom.  I suspect that when he speaks, he will be someone worth listening to.

2)  When the time is ripe, Elihu speaks, and speaks boldly.  For he recognizes that his words of wisdom are not really his at all, but they are the wisdom of God.  Elihu puts no trust in himself nor in his ability to think and reason, but he leans upon God and His understanding.  What Elihu's character suggested is now confirmed:  This is a man of Godly wisdom and someone worth listening to.

Elihu's words in the following chapters are wise because they point Job not to himself and not to his circumstances, but to God.  He speaks wise words that encourage Job to consider his proper place before God as being one that answers to Him and not the other way around.  His Godly wisdom exhorts Job to have a repentant and humble heart, a heart that acknowledges God's great holiness and trusts in God's great forgiveness.

In short, Elihu speaks words of Godly wisdom that the world does not possess and that those in the world cannot understand.  The older men--Job's so-called "friends"--probably considered his words foolishness.  But to Job, perishing but longing for salvation, Elihu's message of repentance and faith is the power of God and the wisdom of God..

Genuine humility marks a person of Godly wisdom, and God's wisdom helps make a person humble.  Find a person who has both of those traits, and that person will be someone worth listening to, for they will teach you the wisdom of the cross.



"Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding."  Proverbs 3:5

Monday's follow-up to Sunday's message: Patience is a pain

Okay, let's begin with everyone being really honest and up front, shall we?

Getting stuff NOW is great.  Waiting is a pain.

Patience is kind of a pain in the kiester.  No one really likes to wait for their hopes and dreams to come true.  And more to the point of yesterday's message, no one really likes to wait on other people.  It's so much easier, so much more natural feeling, to get irritated by that one particular person's quirks and foibles and write them off as antagonistic or  difficult or just simply not worth my time.  Being patient with them generates a lot of hassle and pain we simply just don't feel we need.

But there's something important we're missing with that attitude: we're missing an opportunity to grow.

Learning to be patient with prickly people teaches you something about yourself.  You already know what faults other people have, but what we often lack is self-awareness of our own stress fractures.  The process of learning to be patient with the faults of other people is a revealing look in a none-too flattering mirror.  It teaches you what your hot buttons are, what things are likely to set you off, no matter whether those things are petty or grand.  And once you better learn what your own fault lines are, the better you will be at predicting their collapse.  In other words, learn more about yourself and you'll be more patient with others.

Try it next time you feel yourself growing impatient with another.  Ask yourself, "What, exactly, is going on inside me that I'm growing impatient with this person?"  I'd wager that if you are serious enough about that question, you'll find something inside yourself that you don't much like.  Something that God didn't plant there. Something that needs to be uprooted through confession.  Something that He wants to take away from you, to forgive, and in it's place bring new life and joy.

Something that God's Holy Spirit will have revealed to you through the painful process of learning patience.


Proverbs 19:8, "He who gets wisdom loves his own soul; he who cherishes understanding prospers."

Monday's follow-up to Sunday's message: Wisdom

Christ is God's wisdom.

Think about that for a moment.  Christ.  Is.  God's.  Wisdom.

That means something.  It means that you can't be considered wise  in God's Kingdom unless you have Jesus Christ.  It means that all the wisdom that the world has to offer is zilch compared to the wisdom we have in Christ.

And it means that, very frequently, God's "wisdom" will look very strange to our human eyes:

For some reason, God in His wisdom condemned His own Son to die as payment for our sins.
For some reason, God in His wisdom considers your sin for Christ's righteousness as being a fair trade.
For some reason, God in His wisdom does things upside-down and inside-out of what we think would be the wisest course of action.

Philippians 3:10, "I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death."

But there it is:  Christ is God's wisdom.  Christ, who left behind the splendors of heaven to serve us.  Who set aside His glory and power and authority to put on a towel and wash the feet of those who should be groveling at his.  Who chose to die a rebel's death if it meant that we could have the inheritance of a true child.

Christ's "wisdom" doesn't look much like wisdom at all.  Not unless you have it.  Not unless you have Him.

Then His wisdom is revealed for the precious, priceless treasure it is.  Something to be desired and pursued.  Something to be loved and lived.  That's what I want: Christ's wisdom made real in me.  That's what I want for you.

Monday's follow-up to Sunday's message: Idols lie

Isaiah 44:15-19   ¹⁵ It is man's fuel for burning; some of it he takes and warms himself, he kindles a fire and bakes bread. But he also fashions a god and worships it; he makes an idol and bows down to it. 

¹⁶ Half of the wood he burns in the fire; over it he prepares his meal, he roasts his meat and eats his fill. He also warms himself and says, "Ah! I am warm; I see the fire." 

¹⁷ From the rest he makes a god, his idol; he bows down to it and worships. He prays to it and says, "Save me; you are my god." 

¹⁸ They know nothing, they understand nothing; their eyes are plastered over so they cannot see, and their minds closed so they cannot understand. 

¹⁹ No one stops to think, no one has the knowledge or understanding to say, "Half of it I used for fuel; I even baked bread over its coals, I roasted meat and I ate. Shall I make a detestable thing from what is left? Shall I bow down to a block of wood?"

There, once again, is the thing about idols:  They are things we make.  Good things—necessary things, even—that our hearts have elevated to the status of “God.”  And when we do that, the thing is transformed from something God intends for our good into something that brings about our own destruction. 

It seems right at the time, putting our trust in some thing or circumstance.  But idols deceive and lie.  They cannot provide what they promise.  They never have been able to do that.  They never will.  And one day, they will vanish.

The real God, the true Christ, is so much better than an idol.  What Christ promises, He always delivers.  What Christ says, endures.  What Christ brings about no human being can take away.

What Christ gives is always good.

Don’t waste your trust on the idols any longer.  Trust in the God who can—and will—deliver on His promises.