Awake with Wonder

Introduction

Last week, Don introduced our new Summer series to you all, as we spend the next few weeks working through a few Proverbs from the Old Testament. We’re calling this series Sophia Street, because the Greek word for wisdom is sophia, and honestly, it just sounded better than Hokma Highway (the Hebrew word for wisdom). Proverbs is this writing of a father to his son about walking in the way of wisdom and how he has come to love and value the beauty and life that wisdom brings—it’s not just practical life stuff, its more than that. The imagery in the first 9 chapters Proverbs is that Wisdom is this sage woman, this protector and provider who promises pure life and joy if you can only reach her home. To get there, you need to travel this road, and this road is life, it’s the journey you take every day. And this road has twists and bends and forks and lots of different avenues that try to tempt you to go you own way, to forge your own path toward happiness and life and satisfaction. And at the end of those paths is another woman, named Folly, who promises a lot of the same things as Wisdom, but they are temporary pleasures that will not last the night. So it is vital, the father says to the son, that you walk the Way of Wisdom, that you take Sophia Street, because like Wisdom herself says:

Proverbs 8:35a (CSB)

35 For the one who finds me finds life.

PRAY

Alright, let’s jump into our passage this morning. Proverbs chapter 4, verses 5-9:

Proverbs 4:5–9 CSB

5 Get wisdom, get understanding; don’t forget or turn away from the words from my mouth. 6 Don’t abandon wisdom, and she will watch over you; love her, and she will guard you. 7 Wisdom is supreme—so get wisdom. And whatever else you get, get understanding. 8 Cherish her, and she will exalt you; if you embrace her, she will honor you. 9 She will place a garland of favor on your head; she will give you a crown of beauty.”

What is Wisdom?

Let’s look at the first couple verses here. Get wisdom, get understanding. Those words, wisdom and understanding, are two sides of the same coin. Understanding is how you perceive the world; wisdom is what you do with that perception. I read a great definition of wisdom this week by William Brown:

Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom knows not to put it in a fruit salad.

There’s a cleverness about wisdom, isn’t there? You might say it’s not just book smarts, but street smarts (see what I did there?). It’s not just about knowing things, it’s knowing what works and what doesn’t work.

There’s a tendency in religion and yes, in Christian communities, to make faith in Jesus all about knowledge, understanding. In fact I’ve heard it said recently that church on Sundays has basically turned into sermon centers. People come and hear a word about God, they gain understanding, but they don’t gain wisdom. I do believe that Biblical literacy is an issue—often our teaching is not rooting in a real understanding of God’s word, and that’s why we are told to get understanding—but perhaps a greater issue (I’m quoting Dan White Jr. here) is that we are discipleship starved. Wisdom is following the way of life.

When we talk about wisdom from a biblical perspective, here’s another fantastic definition from William Brown, and this is the one I really want you to get ahold of:

Wisdom is about making sense of God, the self, and the world, and acting accordingly. It cuts to what is truly important in life. Wisdom is the art of living fully, acting justly, and venturing forth reverently.

This of wisdom as this threefold triangle of relationships. How you relate to God, how you relate to yourself, and how you relate to others. Go back to that road of life. As you walk along the path of wisdom, you are looking up and around, focused on the goal, but aware of how all reality is being ordered beyond you, and wisdom says, you fit into that ordering, when you line up with the divine order of work and pleasure and relationships, you will be blessed because you are in the vein of fruitfulness. But if you see the world and try to align everything else—God, others, work, pleasure, etc.—around you and your priorities and your motives, you will find this terribly disordered way of life. Proverbs calls that folly, foolishness, and it’s dangerous.

So get wisdom, get understanding.

Wisdom first

But follow up here with verse 7: Wisdom is supreme, so get wisdom, and whatever else you get, get understanding. This is huge, and this is my main point for the day. Wisdom first, understanding second. Proverbs says if you are going get anything, get wisdom. Street smarts before book smarts.

Knowledge first is a worrisome road. It can be summed up by the founder of modern philosophy, Rene Descartes (early 1600s), whose famous axiom is cogito ergo sum. Latin: I think, therefore, I am. What he meant by this was my ability to understand, to know things and perceive things, is the mark of human existence. It’s the highest sense of what it means to be human. My identity is wrapped up supremely in what I know. I think, I perceive, therefore I am. That’s basis of all modern philosophy. And every other existence, every other being, is aligned in accordance with me. Who is God? Depends on what I think God should be. Who are these people? Depends on how much they think like me? What is fair and just? It’s fair and just when I say it is.

You can see where this might fall apart in some places. If the whole world is aligned by how each human thinks it should be, we get a world pulled apart by the seams, where no one is blessed beyond mere moments, and the vein of abundant life cannot be traced.

I know Descartes sounds really smart because he speak in Latin and all, but he’s wrong. Because understanding is not our starting point. Wisdom is. And wisdom, according to Proverbs, does not start with you and what you think about yourself and what you think about God and other people.

Where does wisdom start? Don hit on it last week. The beginning of knowing, of true wisdom is… the fear of the Lord.

And what that means is that you cannot know who you are and how you fit into the order of things until first have a healthy wonder of God.

Wisdom Starts with Wonder

Wisdom Starts with Wonder. When the Bible refers to the fear of YHWH, it means our wonderment over the divine Creator who brings all things into being.

Go back and look at the tone of our passage:

Proverbs 4:6 CSB

6 Don’t abandon wisdom, and she will watch over you; love her, and she will guard you.

It’s strange right? Wisdom is like a real person here. She protects you. If you are faithful to her, she will guard you and watch over. Your relationship with wisdom keeps you safe. It’s almost like wisdom is not just a character trait you can gain for yourself, like knowledge. It’s almost like a divine being in a way (hold tight to that thought!)

Proverbs 4:8–9 CSB

8 Cherish her, and she will exalt you; if you embrace her, she will honor you. 9 She will place a garland of favor on your head; she will give you a crown of beauty.”

Wisdom protects, but it also lifts you up, honors you, gives you a state of favor and royalty. If you have a thriving relationship with her. If you love wisdom, you have life.

Again, keeps those words close. But look here at the tone. We are not merely to acquire wisdom or possess it. We love wisdom. We cherish it. We embrace it.

See, when wisdom is rooted in the fear of the Lord, in the wonder of God, we begin to see the beautiful ordering of the Creator and the Created world as something cooperative, almost animated, active. Our wonder of God focuses our eyes on the way of wisdom.

And it does so by breaking us out of our selfish ways. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “wonder” as:

Astonishment mingled with perplexity or bewildered curiosity.

Put this in your own world now: When do you experience something that you would describe as wondrous or wonderful? What puts you in state of wonder? I can’t speak for you, but for me it usually comes when I am exposed to something that is beyond me. I don’t know how it works, I can’t reason it out, it certainly didn’t come from me.

Photo of James Webb telescope

I’m quoting William Brown again:

Wonder is frequently prompted by experiences that destabilize the existing order of things, an experience of disorientation in which the unknown breaks into one’s world of familiarity, throwing everything into question—in short, a crisis. The beginning point of wonder thus can elicit fear, contrary to current sanitized notions.

Wonder is disorienting, its threatening, it brings questions that familiarity—our comfort with our own little world—refuses to ask. That’s fearful, right? And that fear pushes you out into the world to find answers to questions that you cannot answer for yourself. If you are not the cornerstone of your own reality—if the will of the world does not bend to you—there must be some Other that I must bend to instead.

Wonder pushes you out. Wisdom pulls you in. The rest of Proverbs is about the journey to find Wisdom, this spiritual figure that promises wealth and beauty and joy and life. And it is our wonder that fixes our eyes on her home and keeps us steady on the path.

So, from here on out, as we go from week to week and explore the short, pithy says of Proverbs, the little fortune cookies of wisdom and insight, none of it will work unless you begin with wonder. Start with wisdom, and every else will make sense.

The Way of Wisdom is the Way of Christ

I want to close today by pointing out one last amazing thing. This is one of these “for those who have ears to hear” moments.

I mentioned that wisdom is this spiritual figure almost. If we are faithful to her, she will protect and provide. We will find our happiness and satisfaction in her. But we will know to seek her unless we first have our walls of knowledge broken through, our self-made houses of satisfaction and happiness shattered. When the light breaks through and wonder pushes us out, we will find ourselves drawn to the life giving embrace of Sophia.

Hang with me here. This is not a cult.

Proverbs also says in chapter 9 that wisdom was with God in the beginning. And through wisdom, God brought forth creation and ordered it according to himself. Proverbs says that Wisdom is the creative force behind our world. And the world fell apart when wonder and wisdom were denied in favor of knowledge, knowing good and evil for the self. And that pursuit disoriented and disordered us from the good ways of God. And so the whole Hebrew Bible is really a search to recover the Wisdom that will one day reorder and realign everything.

Enter Jesus.

When Jesus Christ came onto the scene, humans encountered a being who was truly Other. Who loved like no one could love, who shook out our preconceptions and comforts and familiarities and called out to us to leave those things behind and follow him. When Jesus dies on the cross, he breaks the bondages of sin and selfishness and reveals himself as the Way, the Truth, and the Abundant life. In Christ, we have our identity. In Christ, we find happiness and wholeness. in Christ, we find that vein of life. And Christ becomes the head of a new society people aligned around a new way of living, a way that points to the Creator as the awe-inspiring wondrous Giver of all things.

Sophia was the shadow, the hope of life. Jesus is the true Wisdom, the true source of life. When you truly search for wisdom, you find Christ. When you find Christ, you find wisdom. And everything else just begins to fit.

PRAY