‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your
ways my ways,’declares the Lord. ‘As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways
higher than your ways and my thoughts
than your thoughts.’
Isaiah 55:8-9
God does some things that we would never do (we would have
let Ananias and Sapphira off with a caution). God doesn’t do some things that
we would do (remove evil dictators).
If we were in charge, then we would do things differently –
but then we’re not God, we don’t know everything, we don’t know the end from
the beginning. We have the Bible as God’s revelation to us about Himself, about
ourselves and about what God is doing in and through humanity. Until we get to
glory, our quest should be to seek God’s presence and His Power and His
kingdom, but also to seek an understanding of God’s heart and God’s nature –
why does He act differently to how we would. In short, we need to try and
understand God’s ways, as revealed to us in the Scriptures. We sit under the
authority of God and under the authority of His Word.
There are basically 3 ways to learn:
1. Live and
learn
School of hard knocks. The way we learn a lot of things in
life – once bitten twice shy
Advantages:
First hand experience – your mother can tell you not to go
out without your coat when it might rain, but when you get wet yourself, you’re
more likely to do it.
Disadvantages:
Can be very damaging – experiment with fire can burn your
house down, experiment with drugs can lead to serious addiction, experiment
with adultery can destroy your marriage. “Live and learn” is ok for some
aspects of life, but not for others.
2. Listen
and learn
Take advice from others, do what the teacher says, do what
your parents say and if you go on to college, you get training for your career.
So we all listen and learn to some extent in order to avoid the drawbacks of
the “live and learn” method.
If an electrician adopted a “live and learn” attitude to his
training and to his work, then he’d probably electrocute himself and burn down
a few houses before he got it right! An
electrician has got to listen and learn very carefully for his own safety and
the safety of others.
This method actively seeks advice e.g. buying a stereo or
computer, look at customer reviews, research.
Advantages:
Benefit from the advice and experience of others.
Disadvantages:
You may not be convinced by what others have to say. You might think that you know better or you
want to find our for yourself.
The advice we receive might be untrustworthy. (could be from
a salesman! Could be an advertisement that emphasises the pros and doesn’t
mention the cons).
3. Understand
and learn
Superior method!
Not only do we listen, but we take the time to think about
what we hear and to understand it. When we come to an understanding about a
certain concept, whether it’s farming, or engineering, we are far more likely
to apply what we have learnt correctly.
What’s more, when we understand the principle behind
something, we can then apply the same principle to all sorts of different
circumstances.
Example: 12 times 13? How did you work that out when you didn’t
learn it in your multiplication tables? 12
times 24?
Another example – 2 principles behind most financial
products.
(1) Find out the APR (Annual Percentage Rate) “true interest
rate” as opposed to the misleading interest rates that people quote. [25% after 5 years is not 5% a year, 4.56%]
(2) Stay within the rules. [early withdrawal from fixed rate
interest rate will incur penalties]
Credit card limit, pay late, overdraft, free banking,
pension contribution holiday can remove terminal bonus.
You see you learn all sorts of things when you come to
church!
What’s all this got to do with Proverbs?
Let’s compare “Live and Learn” to “Listen and Learn”.
Proverbs was written from a father to a son to give moral guidance and it’s
basic premise is that when it comes to morality and right living, “Live and
learn” doesn’t work. “Live and learn” will let you down. “Live and learn” may
look attractive at the time but in the end it will destroy you. In the language
of Proverbs, “Live and learn” is folly. “Live and learn” might be ok to teach
us certain things in life but when it comes to the business of personal
morality, “live and learn” is inadequate.
Throughout Proverbs there are seemingly endless warnings
about falling into bad company and adultery and gossip because these are
exactly the kind of things we do when we’re left to our own devices, when we
think we know best, when we say to ourselves “if it feels right, do it”, when
we don’t heed good advice, when we “live and learn”.
And there’s the first application for us today. When it
comes to issues of personal morality, we cannot afford to just do what seems
best to us at the time and learn from our mistakes, because those mistakes can
be too costly. Instead, we should find out what God has revealed to us about
each issue. In this case, you don’t need
to wait for a voice from heaven or a visit from an angel – all the moral
guidance we need is contained in the Scriptures. That should be our first port
of call.
What about the “listen and learn” method? Well, Solomon is much more in favour of
this. Seventeen times in Proverbs,
you’ll find the word “listen”. Here are just some of them:
- Listen, my son, to your father's instruction
- Listen, for I have worthy things to say;
- Listen to advice and accept instruction
- Listen to the sayings of the wise
- Let the wise listen and add to their learning
I said earlier that one of the disadvantages of “listen and
learn” was that the person giving the advice may be untrustworthy, or they may
be a perfectly genuine person who doesn’t have all the facts and is passing on
bad advice in good faith.
The other disadvantage I mentioned is that we might not be
convinced about the advice we receive, we might think that we know better.
When it comes to listening to advice from the Bible however,
there’s a simple verse in the next chapter (3) that you all know, and that
knocks both of those shortcomings on the head.
Proverbs 3:5
Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your
own understanding.
God is completely trustworthy. You may not be able to trust a double-glazing
salesman or an estate agent or even a minister, but God is completely
trustworthy and he has all the facts – he knows everything. He knows how the
world works and He know how we work and His advice is completely reliable, even
when it doesn’t make sense to our own understanding. So what are you going to
place your trust in? God’s insight into moral issues, or your own ideas?
So, I’m just reinforcing what I said earlier:
When it comes to moral issues, we can’t afford to experiment
with our own ideas, we can’t afford to “live and learn”, we need to “listen and
learn”. We need to read God’s Word and
find out what God says about a particular issue. “Listen & learn”.
But even that’s not the whole picture … God gave the
Israelites the Law – it was straightforward, they believed it was from God,
they learnt it off religiously, they could recite it by heart… but they didn’t
always put it into practice.
And Solomon knew this and he realised that “Listen and
learn”, while being much better than “Live and learn” still had its
deficiencies as a learning method.
And so in the book of Proverbs, although Solomon says
“listen closely, listen well, pay attention”, he also places great emphasis on
the need to understand why his advice is to be heeded. Solomon wanted his son to “Understand and
learn”.
Chapter 1, verse 1
The proverbs of Solomon son of David, king of Israel: for
attaining wisdom and discipline; for understanding words of insight.
It’s one thing to listen to words of insight, it’s quite
another to understand them.
We read from Chapter 2 earlier, where Solomon said to his
son: “store up my commands” (that’s the listen & learn part) and then
“apply your heart to understanding”.
“Call out for insight… cry aloud for understanding” “search for understanding as you would for
hidden treasure”
We have to remember that Solomon is writing Proverbs in the
context of the Old Testament Law.
Although the Law was intended to bring life, it became a religion of
rules and so Solomon is saying, don’t just obey the rules, understand why you
should obey the rules, because then you’re far more likely to follow them. And much of Jesus’ teaching was about
correcting commonly accepted misunderstandings about the Law. When Jesus was only 12 years old, he was in the
temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them
questions and everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his
answers.
In the Scriptures, God has given us a vast storehouse of
knowledge and wisdom. He has shown us His ways, we know how we should live, but
like the Israelites, we don’t always do it.
We question it, we look for loopholes, we try to justify alternative
courses of action or we simply ignore it, and it seems to me that one of the
main barriers to putting God’s Word into practice is a lack of understanding.
Which brings us back to Isaiah. ‘For my thoughts are not
your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the Lord.
God’s ways don’t always make sense to us, and rather than
invest time in trying to understand where the Bible is coming from, we tend to
just do what seems right to us at the time and then regret it later. But thank
God that Chapter 2 has some good news in this regard because it says that
“Understanding God’s way of doing things” is possible, it is attainable. It requires effort and diligence, but if we
look hard enough, we will find it. Verse 6 says that the Lord gives
wisdom, knowledge and understanding. He doles it out. In the book of James we read “If any of you
lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding
fault, and it will be given to him. “
So God is in the business of dispensing His wisdom and
understanding to people – but what kind of people? The ones who really want it and will search
for it as for hidden treasure!
I often come across a verse or a passage that doesn’t make
sense at face value. So I meditate on it, read around it, look at it in
context, then look at the cross-references in my Bible and look up other
verses. I read some commentaries to see
what other people think the verse means and finally, after much searching and
meditation and prayer, the Holy Spirit gives me insight into the verse or
passage. I can see how it fits in. I can see how it is consistent with the rest
of Scripture. It takes time and effort
but the search for understanding is rewarding because you learn so much along
the way.
You’ll never understand all the mysteries of God, but if you
search diligently, the promise of Scripture is that you will understand more
and more about God’s ways and you will find yourself wanting to put them into
practice. There are many rewards
associated with this – we’ll look at them another day but let me leave you with
just one of them - God’s protection, which is promised in verse 11. To those
who gain insight and understanding into God’s ways, the promise is that:
‘…wisdom will enter your heart, and knowledge will
be pleasant to your soul. Discretion will protect you, and understanding
will guard you. (v
10-11)
Let’s pray.
Father we thank you for your Word which reveals to us the
truth about your Ways. We confess that
we don’t always take the time to find out what it says or do what it says. We often lean on our own understanding
instead of trusting in You and Your Word.
Help us to be a people who want to know more and more about You. Give us a desire for wisdom and knowledge and
understanding so that we will be equipped to live lives that will honour you
and to pass on spiritual wisdom to the next generation. For we pray in Jesus
name. Amen.
