The Treasure of Wisdom

Where can wisdom be found?

That is the key question of Job 28.

Job 28 is the most unique chapter in all of the book. It is not part of a reply to a friend. It does not involve Job defending himself. It is not a prayer or a self-reflection.

It has been called “An ode to wisdom” because it is just that - a poem that highlights the rich treasure, and the unsearchable nature, of wisdom.

The book of Job, really, is a search for wisdom.

For so many, life is a search for wisdom.

What is wisdom? Wisdom is a knowledge that is beyond mere facts.

It is an understanding that is more than just knowing about things, or knowing true things. It is a familiarity that is deeper than just being able to recite truths or a familiarity with ideas.

Wisdom is the ability to apply the truth in the various circumstances of life.

Facts, bits of truth, are like tools of our trade.

Wisdom is knowing how to use them.

illustrate various tools and their master/novice use.

For Job, the search for wisdom is a search for making sense out of the wreckage of his life.

All his friends poured their supposed wisdom into his ears, but they have come up short.

Job 12:2 ESV

“No doubt you are the people, and wisdom will die with you.

Job 21:34 ESV

How then will you comfort me with empty nothings? There is nothing left of your answers but falsehood.”

One big premise

The problem is with Job, and the answer is with Job, with God acting as an outside agent.

How Job stayed on track

God is over all, and the answers are in him.

The efforts of Job’s friends went on to exhaustion to make his life make sense.

Do yours do the same?

Wisdom has one source. Any search for wisdom must end in God to be successful.

1. Wisdom Can’t Be Unearthed - 1-11

In around 1960, there was an invention demonstrated called the integrated circuit.

In the late 1930’s, vacuum tube computers were invented. They were massive machines that could do relatively simple calculations. One the size of a common bedroom, for instance, could do math equations.

This took a dramatic change with that invention, though.

The computer chip, made primarily of silica dust, allows smaller and smaller circuit boards to do more and more work.

Comparison of silica mine - mining for truth and wisdom.

2. Wisdom Can’t be Bought - 12-19

The idea is pricelessness. Not relative worth.

It is equally out of reach for the incredibly wealthy as it is for the incredibly poor.

Consider Job, who was incredibly rich. Made incredibly poor.

3. Wisdom Can’t be Discovered - 20-22

Hidden from the living - even from the highest height.

May 29, 1953 - Tenzing Norgay helped Sir Edmund Hillary summit Mt. Everest. 29,031 ft.

4. Wisdom has One Source - 23-28

Contrast death/abbaddon w/ God.

The farthest man can reach still only knows rumors of wisdom.

God knows it and understands it.

Vs. 24 - already a place beyond achievable ability.

cf. 28:27 w

Proverbs 8:22–31 ““The Lord possessed me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth. When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water. Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth, before he had made the earth with its fields, or the first of the dust of the world. When he established the heavens, I was there; when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him, like a master workman, and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the children of man.”

Wisdom, then, is something beyond experience with all the earthly elements.

So it is unavailable no matter how hard you work for it and how deep you dig for it.

It is unavailable no matter how much you pay to the most elusive of merchants to buy it.

It is unavailable at the heights of human existence, and in the farthest reach of human ability.

It is undiscoverable even to the renaissance man who has experience in every vein of life’s mines.

Man can live and stay alive without wisdom.

Man can accomplish amazing feats without wisdom.

Man can prosper without wisdom.

But what can man not do?

Job 28:28 ESV

And he said to man, ‘Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to turn away from evil is understanding.’ ”

Man can do everything without wisdom except live as God intended.

Man can do everything without wisdom except live in God’s blessing.

2 Peter 1:3 ESV

His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence,

life and godliness - supplied by God’s power through the knowledge Him.

Colossians 2:3 ESV

in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

To know wisdom is to know Christ.

the Lord

I Am

To be in Christ is to be in the one whom all wisdom and knowledge are hidden in.

The fear of the “LORD” is the fear of Christ.

To know Christ is to make sense of this world.

To know Christ is to see beauty in the ashes.

To dwell in Christ is to dwell in what’s settled vs. what’s in termoil.

Job was on the right path in finding wisdom - in making sense of his shaken-up reality.

Job and his friends both had the facts about God in their arsenal. We find Job continually going beyond “facts” to God himself.

To know him in a deeper sense. To understand that whatever is mysterious and unknowable is wrapped up succinctly in Him, and to be in Him is to be secure because there is no mystery left to the unknown.

To make beauty out of ashes is to see Christ in all, because he is all.