"The Beginning of Wisdom”
When I ask young people what they want in life they will say things like success, peace, meaning or most of all, happiness. Few people will say wisdom, unless of course they’re in a pinch where they need some good advice fast. But when you talk to older people, they will say looking back, “I wish I had been wiser…wiser with my money, wiser in my choices, and wiser with my time.” The old saying is, “Youth is lost on the young,” meaning that we wish we had been wiser when we had the speed, the agility, the strength, the endurance when we were young.
There was a young new bank president who made an appointment with his predecessor to seek some advice. He began, “Sir, as you well know, I lack a great deal of the qualifications you already have for this job. You have been very successful as president of this bank, and I wondered if you would be kind enough to share with me some of the insights you have gained from your years here that have been the keys to your success.” The older man looked at him with a stare and replied: “Young man, two words: good decisions.” Thank you, very much sir, but how does one come to know which is the good decision?” “One word, young man: experience.” But how does one get that experience?” “Two words, young man: bad decisions.”
Another quip says, “The wise person learns from the mistakes of others, the ordinary person learns from his or her own mistakes, and fool learns from no one.” The truth is that most of us go through lives wisdom short, and the same is true from society. So this morning I invite you to join with me in attempting in the words of Psalm 90 “to gain a heart of wisdom.”
Proverbs 9 brings together an ongoing discussion that had been happening in the first eight chapters, in which people are asked to make a choice between two approaches to life. And they are personified to us with two women: Dame Wisdom and Dame Folly. Jesus put before us a similar choice when he told us to choose between the narrow way and the broad way. I invite you to contrast those two approaches with me. Now there is an assumption in this passage and that is this: All of us enter life naïve and all of us as part of life get to go through “the school of hard knocks.” As one of you said to me in a hallway, “Life is tough, but it’s really tough if you’re stupid.” In terms of today’s scripture lesson, we would say, “life is really tough if you’re foolish.”
CONTRAST 1: One that is lasting and one that is here today and gone tomorrow.
The first thing we’re told about wisdom is that it is a house built on seven pillars. The seven means that it is perfect. We sing often here, “How firm a foundation ye saints of the Lord is laid for your faith in his excellent Word.” Jesus told the parable of the Wise and Foolish man. The one who heard God’s Word and put it into practice was compared to the wise man who built his house on a rock – who had a foundation no matter what storms came. The one who did not do so was like one who built a home on sand – with collapse and devastation when the storms came. Again, there is an assumption. Storms will come. Wisdom based on God’s word will give you the foundation that will last. The question I have for you is this: In the choices you are making with your time, your money, your actions and your words, are they contributing to that which lasts or mainly in things that will be here today and gone tomorrow.
CONTRAST 2: That which is loud and that which is quiet.
Notice here that wisdom has no media hype or marketing plan. It invites and whispers in the ear. Folly on the other hand tends to market heavily. In Proverbs 9, folly is loud and noisy. One of the things I don’t like about casinos is that they are so noisy. I want to ask the people as they drop their coins, “What do you hear?” They can hear the bells and sirens and the thunder of the slot machines, but they cannot hear the wasted money and wasted lives that prop up that industry. Folly is loud but the damage she does is often kept silent, so we become duped. The writer of Proverbs says in 9:13 that Dame Folly “sits outside the door of her house on a seat at the highest point of the city.” Location, location, location.
When we lived in El Paso we would occasionally go over to the market and people would come of their stores saying, “Want to buy my junk? I have good junk.” Sometimes we would go in and bargain with the merchants. I remember a puffed heart necklace that Tina wanted. The merchant started at $20. We said know and started to walk off. He said, “Don’t do that. How ‘bout $10.” We haggled more and Tina walked out with the puffed heart for $2. We thought we had the bargain of the century. Within twenty four hours the chain had come apart and the “silver” coating had come nearly totally off. It was junk.
The commercials on television are programmed to be loud so they will get our attention. And much of it, too, is junk. Like you, I am entertained by many of those commercials. Who is the leading advertiser for sports events? Is it any accident that the Super Bowl is second only to New Year’s Eve for domestic violence in America? Overconsumption of junk that is advertised as “the high life.” And can we call ourselves a wise or even civilized society when more money is spent advertising that than anything else?
CONTRAST 3: That which fills and that which empties.
Our scripture lesson says that wisdom has prepared a wonderful feast for us to enjoy. She says, “Come, eat my food and drink the wine that I have mixed…Leave your simple ways and you will live.” But she will not force herself on you. There is that wonderful passage then that talks about who you can correct and who you can’t. One you cannot correct or give wisdom to is the scoffer. In our generation, we have made idols of scoffers – people who rudely and cynically cut down everyone and everything around them. I love comedy. As serious as my life gets, I look for chances to just laugh. But I must admit that most comedy I hear is not that which causes us to healthily laugh at ourselves. Leno, Letterman, O’Brien, and Mencia, among all have the gift of being hilarious. But they use that gift to contribute to our mistrust, cynicism, crudeness and tendency to lift up ourselves by putting others down. You say, “Will, you’re taking out a pretty wide blade today,” and perhaps I am. But I think it’s time we look at the ways we pay the best of our time and money to that which empties rather than fills, to Dame Folly rather than Dame Wisdom. Dame Wisdom is pictured here as a moral evangelist offering good news, while Dame Folly is pictured as a seducer, as an immorality hooker.
CONTRAST 4: Life or Death
With wisdom, the promise is clear in verse 11:
“Through me, your days will be many, and years will be added to your life.”
It was Jesus who said, “I have come that you might have life and have it to the full.” In making the choice for Dame Wisdom, we join our live-giving, life-saving, life-redeeming Lord. Dame Folly claims to do the same. Live it up. Enjoy life to the fullest. But the writer of Proverbs says in verse 18:
“But little do they know that the dead are there,
that her guests are in the depths of the grave.”
So which will you choose, the evangelist or the seducer? God’s Word gives us the proper choice and gives us the starting point: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom.” And what is the fear of the Lord? When the thieves were on each side of Jesus on the cross, the good and penitent thief asked the rude and scoffing thief, “Do you not fear God?” he had God wrong. He was saying, “You’re about to die and it’s no time to be cursing God or somebody that represents him. You should be very afraid.” We cannot truly love one who scares us to death. That kind of fear will cause us to avoid God rather than embrace him and lead us to more unwise choices. I like A.W. Tozer’s definition:
“The fear of God is…astonished reverence. I believe that the reverential fear of God mixed with love and fascination is the most enjoyable state and the most satisfying emotion the human soul can know.”
The fear of God happens when we hold God’s awesome power and intimate love in tension. The fear of God happens when we make God’s wisdom and God’s Spirit the central reference point of what we say and do. Wise followers of Jesus will ask, “What would Jesus do?” and “What would Jesus say?” Wise followers of Jesus will ask, “Does what I want to say or do line up with making God’s way of life visible on planet earth?” Wise followers will ask, “Is there peace and joy in the Lord in what I am about to say and do?” And when our words line up with the wise answer to those questions, here today and gone tomorrow becomes eternal life and lasting goodness, laughter at other’s expense becomes true joy in the Holy Spirit, and life takes on greater meaning and impact. Indeed, Lord, give us a heart of wisdom and give us the courage and freedom to choose, speak and act wisely.