"Got Wisdom: Week 2 "

Last week we looked at the book of Proverbs to see the benefits of wisdom and the cost of ignoring her. We saw that there are two paths in life: Wisdom and Folly. Folly is the inability to learn and grow while wisdom is the path of skillful living. Folly brings a slippery slope away from life’s fullness and wisdom acts as a guide to boldly live life in it’s fullness in spite of difficulty.

We left off last week endeavoring to learn how to acquire wisdom. There are two verses in Proverbs that provide us with clear signage for how to get onto the wisdom path. Proverbs 1:7 says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline.” and 9:10 says, “ The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.” Proverbs 9:10

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Something rubs us wrong about that statement. Even after studying that word over the last couple days it feels wrong to me. Fear God? Don’t we have enough fears in our lives? And what kind of basis for a relationship is fear? We hope for something intimate with him. Doesn’t fear fly in the face of hope and love?

It’s also a troubling word for me because I like the idea of No Fear. There’s even a clothing line with that name: “No Fear”. No fear is appealing. No fear feels like freedom and confidence. It feels indestructible, invincible. No fear sounds safe. Psalm 147:11 seems to add even more confusion to this idea: It says, “the Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who hope in his steadfast love.” Confusing.

According to some dictionaries, f ear is a distressing emotional response aroused by impending danger or loss – something that causes fright or apprehension. And God wants us to feel that?

Fear… some of us will have turned our minds to the city of London and the tragedy that happened there only a few days ago. There’s a war going on in our world that is based on fear. Terrorists are attacking here and there not so they can wipe out nations but so they can instill fear and thereby cripple nations. Experts on the Terrorists say that of the countries they are targeting, most have had some kind of attack. Canada, they say is possibly next. Something tells me Osama Bin Laden isn’t interested in Saskatoon, SK but what if he is? Or what if we’re traveling to Toronto or Vancouver in the next months?

After 9/11, when the United States came to grips with the fact that this thing was in their back yard they responded quickly with money and action to deal with the fears they were realizing - Fears that were everywhere. In the year following 9/11 t he United States government had:

• Deployed more than 4,000 FBI special agents and 3,000 support staff to the international investigation of the September 11 terrorist attacks—the largest criminal investigation in history.
• Deployed more than 9,000 National Guard troops to help secure the nation's airports.
• Dispensed antibiotics to thousands of people potentially exposed to anthrax mail attacks.
• Acquired more than a billion doses of antibiotics and signed agreements for the procurement of the smallpox vaccine.
• Provided round-the-clock security at 348 dams and reservoirs and 58 hydroelectric power plants.

That's an impressive response—and only a small part of a very long list of measures. In this one year these expenses added up to over $10 billion. And this was prior to moving their military to the Middle East.

There is nothing much appealing about fear. So again, what’s so useful about fear? Why does Proverbs say fear is the beginning of wisdom? How does fear lead to wisdom and what kind of a basis is it for a relationship with our creator?

Let me explain 4 different kinds of fear that I believe apply to our relationship with God today:

1. 1. I have a fear of Sharks. Sharks freak me out– especially the Tiger and Great White Sharks. Every time I’ve been in the ocean (and a few times in fresh water) I’ve kept an eye out for Jaws. When I went snorkeling my head was on a swivel. When I went parasailing over the ocean the guy driving the boat thought it humorous to drop us in the water – all I did was watch for those fins on my way down and then wait for one of them to have lunch once I was in the water. And because I fear them, I love watching shark documentaries to learn more about them. I have to admit though, it drives me somewhat crazy when the narrator (who for some reason always has a British accent) goes into that talk about how this human-eating monster is beautiful and if we only got to know it better we wouldn’t fear it. I’m sorry. I realize that the shark is just trying to get by but I also know that he’ll eat me just to get by. And what about this talk of getting to know the shark so that our fears subside? As though I’ll go from screaming to cuddling once I know how the shark lives and feels? Getting to know them… It actually doesn’t help when the British guy tells me they can smell blood a mile away underwater. It doesn’t help when he says they can swim 10x faster than any human. Or when he explains that their teeth are made for ripping and sawing and that they keep growing new ones so that they’re never dull. No. When I get to know them better I want to stay out of the water more because I know what they’re capable of. Sharks are dangerous. We fear danger – it leaves us feeling vulnerable. Danger grips us. I believe God is dangerous. Unlike the shark though, I do believe I can trust him. As much as we’ve tried to remove his teeth, I don’t believe that God is safe. And when he comes close, he’ll take a nip off of us here or tweak us a little there. I’ll come back to this.
2. Back when I worked in construction and when I used to hire construction workers, I would provide initial orientation for them – primarily on safety – prior to sending them out to the work sight. And during this talk I would counsel them to fear the heavy equipment that they would be working around. Some of these machines weighed in excess of 100,000 lbs and if we put ourselves in the wrong place around them… we wouldn’t fair well. After a few hours on sight they usually understood what I meant. Witnessing these large machines made of steel rip through earth like a hot knife through butter put them back and made them take notice. This fear was brought on by the realization that they were small, very weak and fragile before these monsters. The machines were powerful – unbelievably so. We love power when we can watch it from afar or when we can wield it. But when it gets too close and it’s out of our control, we fear power and we are left feeling small and weak. Power can overwhelm us. I don’t think anyone of us would argue about the power of God and just like those machines, the thought of getting in the way of it can and should make us pause.
3. The 3rd kind of fear is the kind we feel when we encounter rightness or in Christian jargon, righteousness - in the sense of being just, pure and true. I can remember the fear I had at grad school when I submitted my first couple sermons to a professional speaking and preaching instructor. My fear was partially around the idea of failure. But more than that I feared that what I was putting together was wrong. You see the premise of our work was to present the truth of God accurately and appropriately. This meant digging into, interpreting and understanding ancient documents inspired by God and then presenting them in a way that was accurate and beneficial to today’s culture. The challenge was to represent God faithfully. I can remember the sick feeling (I still get it every time I prepare to speak) I had at the thought of me in my error-prone, mistake-ridden, off-the-mark life presenting the eternal truth of our creator to others so that their lives could potentially be caught up in the divine (there’s that sick feeling now).
4. The fear of being wrong and damaging the truth of God was stifling. We fear that our sin or our lack of virtue – our folly – will undo what is right. We fear that our wrongdoing disqualifies us from what is right. We feel wrong in the face of right. And as God is pure righteousness we sometimes fear that our folly keeps the math from working… that our transgression messes up the equation. The last kind of fear is subtle but real. In our brokenness, we fear beauty. This is the feeling we get when we are in the presence of greatness and we don’t measure up. This is the feeling we get when we hesitate to hold a baby because they are so pure and innocent while we are tainted. We are broken, emotionally, mentally and sometimes physically. At the end of the day we are damaged goods and just like coming out of a dark room causes our eyes to squint, coming into God’s beauty can cause us to shrink back. In our brokenness we fear beauty.

Inherent in our fears is an understanding about ourselves… and understanding about our limitations… an understanding of who we are.

There is a common thread running through the fears I described. Socrates had a handle on this thread. He said “ Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.” – Socrates. I was out for lunch this week with a friend of mine named Lloyd Colborne. Lloyd was telling me a story. It’s about an experience he had when he was 23 years old and serving Canada’s armed forces as a pilot in World War II. It was the morning after a nighttime patrol shift when he and his fleet were heading back to base that he came into a new realization. They were flying back just below thick cloud cover when Lloyd suggested that they elevate themselves 1000 feet in order to get above the clouds and see better. Once above the clouds, the world opened up for him. The top of these clouds were flat as a table and long and wide as the eye could see. He was flying over a white cloud canopy. Above him and all around him was the clear blue sky. Lloyd relishes the memory of taking in this view in while skirting across those clouds at 400 mph. It was in the middle of this that something amazing happened. It was in the middle of this experience that Lloyd encountered God. His view of reality and creation suddenly exploded as he gazed across the heavens and suddenly grasped the miracle of this planet suspended in the space below him. From his innermost being, this young fighter pilot knew that the miracle of this planet which was suspended within our solar system was made for humanity by a powerful, good and loving creator. Life suddenly became big and it took his breath away.

Within Lloyd’s experience was incredible wonder. And within that wonder are the four types of fear I just described. These kinds of fears will always take us to a crossroads. We either become stifled by these fears and we run for cover or they drive us to understanding.

John Flavel summed up the understanding that this fear, this wonder is intended to drive us to:

He said, “They that know God are humble and they that know themselves cannot be proud.” John Flavel

If this is true, then there is a healthy side to fear – at least the book of Proverbs would say so. There are characteristics in the person of God – he is dangerous, powerful, righteous and beautiful – and these characteristics should leave us understanding that we are vulnerable, weak, fallen and broken.

Don’t our fears confirm these things about us? Statistics say that if I single one of you out to come up on stage, chances are that you’ll feel fear due to vulnerability. How about weakness? I enjoyed watching that thunderstorm in Saskatoon last week and even the rain we received was amazing. But I liked the storm where I could see it off my deck much better than when it was above my house where my kids where in bed… and the rain had me checking on my eavestroffs and the water sitting around my foundation – I felt a tinge of fear due to my weakness in the face of all that power. The same goes for our encounters with true goodness and beauty – they stir up our awareness of our fallen-ness and brokenness… and we cannot be proud.

Proverbs 3:7 says “Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord and shun evil.” If we take inventory around these fears we’ll again come to a crossroads. We’ll either go our own way – that way that seems right but in the end leads to death – or we’ll embark on the wisdom path. When we know who we are and who God is, we begin: The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. That still doesn’t erase all the confusion about how fear can be an ingredient in a healthy relationship with our creator.

Here’s how 9:10 is paraphrased by Eugene Peterson:

Proverbs 9:10 (The Message)

"Skilled living gets its start in the Fear-of-GOD, insight into life from knowing a Holy God."

It’s when we know God that we fear his sharp-edge, his power, his righteousness and his beauty. What next? Once here, the rug has been pulled out. We’re now vulnerable, weak, wrong and broken. So much for being self-made, figuring it out on our own. So much for wearing “No Fear” on our t-shirts. What next?

Can we know him beyond this?

In his book, A Severe Mercy, Sheldon Vanauken describes his encounter with God. He had been catching glimpses of these attributes that we just covered but he couldn’t decide whether or not he was going to take the next step because the next step was a big one… in fact it was a leap… a leap of faith. When he finally took his eyes off of Jesus to consider his other options he then realized that he no longer had other options. As skeptical as he was about faith in Jesus, his intent investigation of Jesus revealed that the ground he was standing on was crumbling. It’s kinda like driving a Ford all your life and then trying out pretty much anything else – it’s folly to go back. So Vanauken leapt toward Jesus, not turning back.

It’s when we get to know God that we fear his sharp-edge, his power, his righteousness and his beauty. But this knowledge should only lead us to knowing more about him and more about ourselves. Like Vanauken, this knowledge leads us to seeing that there is no other place to jump.

Proverbs describes this next step along the wisdom path. In Proverbs 3:5-6 it says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.”

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, trusting him with your life is the next, reasonable step. Trust in God, lean not on your own understanding. If we’ve taken a good enough look at God, we’ll realize that we don’t have understanding to lean on. Last week we defined the fool in Proverbs as the one who is wise in their own eyes, trusting in themselves and unwilling to learn. The wise person understands that our understanding is limited and flawed and that our ways lead to death.

Like Sheldon Vanauken, this lands the wise person in the world where fear and hope mix. John Piper said “Hope turns fear into a trembling and peaceful wonder; and fear takes everything trivial out of hope and makes it earnest and profound.” - John PiperWe fear because God is sharp and powerful and righteous and beautiful. But there are reasons beyond this wonder that draw us to trusting him: two reasons that come when we get to know him better.

The best avenue to knowing the person of God is by looking at Jesus. In the book of John, Jesus said, “If you know me, you know my Father.” And thankfully we have a lot of information about Jesus.

In his book, The Lion, the Witch and Wardrobe, CS Lewis has his characters, the beavers telling the children about Aslan the lion. Aslan is the Jesus figure in the story. Susan, one of the children, asks the beaver the question, “Is he quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.” “That you will, dearie, and make no mistake,” said Mrs. Beaver. “If there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without his knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or just silly.” “Then he isn’t safe?” said Lucy. “Safe”? said Mr. Beaver. “Who said anything about being safe?” Of course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He is the King, I tell you.”

When Lloyd Colborne was flying over the table of cloud he was struck by the wonder of God… but he was also convinced in that moment that this God was good… that he made the creation Lloyd was sitting on top of for us to live in with him. For Lloyd, scripture affirmed this assumption about God’s goodness. And over 60 years later, his life experience confirms it. We can trust him because he is good.

Jeremiah 9:23-24 “Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight.” He delights in kindness and justice – he is good.

Especially in the Christian west, we more easily assume that Jesus is good. Even in non-faith circles, Jesus is considered a great person – sacrificial and honest and good. But we overlook his brilliance. If we’re going to leap into this mystery of hope and fear, we can be thankful that he his good and strong and beautiful but what about smart? We often throw Jesus in that naïve, good person camp without acknowledging his brilliance. But he is brilliant and we can enjoy jumping into the arms of someone very competent… someone who can hold our trust in every way. Dallas Willard said, “Our commitment to Jesus can stand on no other foundation than a recognition that he is the one who knows the truth about our lives and our universe. It is not possible to trust Jesus, or anyone else, in matters where we do not believe him to be competent.” - Dallas Willard

Willard goes on to describe Jesus as master of molecules, as maestro of creation. Jesus did the things quantum physicists are only guessing could actually happen. He knew how to transform the molecular structure of water to make it wine. That same knowledge allowed him to take a few pieces of bread and some little fish and feed thousands of people. He could create matter from the energy he could access right where he was. Of course people tried to force him to be king – surely one who could play on the energy/matter equation like that could do anything. Turn gravel into gold and pay off the national debt. He’d be a shoe-in if he ran for election today. He knew how to transform the tissues of the human body from sickness to health and from death to life. He knew how to suspend gravity, interrupt weather patterns, and eliminate unfruitful trees without ax or saw. He would take the nobel prize to a whole new level.

In regard to ethics, he brought an understanding of life that has influenced the world thought more than any other. And one of the greatest signs of his intelligence is that he knew how to enter physical death, actually to die, and then live on beyond death. He seized death by the throat and defeated it! Now who do we want beside us in this war against terror?

Jesus had cognitive and practical mastery of every phase of reality: physical, moral, and spiritual. As Willard says, “Jesus is Lord” can mean very little in practice for anyone who has to hesitate before saying, “Jesus is smart.” – Dallas Willard Jesus is not just nice, he is brilliant – the smartest man who ever lived. God is dangerous and powerful and righteous and beautiful and for these reasons we fear him. And this is the beginning of wisdom. Further down that path we also see that God is good and brilliant and for these reasons we trust him… hopefully with our whole hearts.

The place where hope and fear meet is a place of incredible risk and overwhelming peace. As Piper describes, it’s like coming upon a canyon where there’s an incredible storm – not unlike the one a week and half ago – and suddenly finding yourself in the middle of it. It’s awesome, it’s powerful and it’s beautiful. But it’s also overwhelming and you want anything but to be on the wrong end of such power. And then you discover a crevasse in the cliff. You step into the crevasse where it’s dry and calm and you continue to watch the storm unfold. You watch and listen to an amazing theater of flashing electricity and gale force winds tearing apart the landscape.

As Piper explains, “The fear of God is what is left of the storm when you have a safe place to watch right in the middle of it. And in that place of refuge we say, “This is amazing, this is terrible, this is incredible power” And in that place we humbly take in the thrill of being there in the center of the awful power of God, yet protected by God himself because God is good.

Remember what fear is? Fear is a distressing emotional response aroused by impending danger or loss or evil or pain – something that causes fright or apprehension.

Remember the fears I mentioned? Fears of illness or death; losing someone we love; loneliness; vulnerability, fear of running out of money, fear of not fitting in, fear of losing, fear of losing control, fear of attention, fear of hurting others, fear of evil, fear of war, fear of bullies, fear of being wrong, fear of failure, fear of being found out.What about a terrorist attack in Canada – we can now say that this is real. Chemical warfare? Suicide bombs?

These fears have potential to leave us feeling handcuffed and isolated and almost always feeling powerless. As William Gurnall observed,“We fear men so much, because we fear God so little. One fear cures another. —William GurnallHugh Black said “The fear of God kills all other fears.” When the storm-maker holds you in the palm of his hand, the rest comes into perspective. When our fear is in the right place it is no longer about loss, but gain.As the Apostle Paul said, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” Romans 8:31 If God is all-powerful and mighty and brilliant and good - if he is worthy of our trust, then what do we have to fear? A friend of mine noted the same in his life, saying, “When God becomes small, our fears become big”.

A right understanding of God puts thing in perspective. Let’s let God be as big as he is. Let’s let him in his awful power and dangerous beauty swallow up all our other fears. Let’s let ourselves be who we are – vulnerable, weak and broken – so that God can protect us, strengthen us and make us whole and wise.

God has mastery over life and death and everything in between. They that know themselves are humble and they that know God cannot be proud.

No fear = No wisdom. Invincibility isn’t compatible with “No fear”. Invincibility has everything to do with fear – fear and trust. When we fear God who is also good, we will fling ourselves into his lap and what comes comes. If he is for us, who can be against us?

Jeremiah 9:23-24 “Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight.”

Last week we said that the wise person boldly lives life in spite of difficulty. We are never bolder than when we stand on the foundation of God. We are never stronger than when we stand behind the power of God. We are never more confident than when we are covered in his righteousness. We are never more invincible than when we trust him. May you boldly walk into every corner of your life, knowing full well that the God of wonders is walking with you.