Transcript
Tim Keller (0:03)
Welcome to the Gospel in Life Podcast. Many of the questions we face in life are complex and aren't always answered by simply following rules. Do I speak up now or do I wait? Should I take that job or stay where I am? That's why wisdom is so crucial. But how do we develop it? Today, join us as Tim Keller explores how we apply God's wisdom to the everyday complexities of our lives. After you listen to today's teaching, we invite you to go online to gospelandlife.com and sign up for our email updates. When you sign up, you'll receive our quarterly journal and other valuable gospel centered resources. Subscribe today@gospelandlife.com.
Scripture Reader (0:48)
The scripture this morning is from Proverbs, chapter 4, verses 5 to 9 and verses 14 to 27. Get wisdom. Get understanding. Do not forget my words or turn away from them. Do not forsake wisdom and she will protect you. Love her and she will watch over you. The beginning of wisdom is this. Get wisdom though it cost you all you have. Get understanding. Cherish her and she will exalt you. Embrace her and she will honor you. She will give you a garland to grace your head and present you with a glorious crown. Do not set foot on the path of the wicked or walk in the way of evildoers. Avoid it, do not travel on it, turn from it and go on your way. For they cannot rest until they do evil. They are robbed of sleep till they make someone stumble. They eat the bread of wickedness and drink the wine of vials. The path of the righteous is like the morning sun, shining ever brighter till the full light of day. But the way of the wicked is like deep darkness. They do not know what makes them stumble. My son, pay attention to what I say. Turn your ears to my words. Do not let them out of your sight. Keep them within your heart, for they are life to those who find them and health to one's whole body above all else. Guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. Keep your mouth from perversity. Keep corrupt, talk far from your lips. Let your eyes look straight ahead. Fix your gaze directly before you. Give careful thought to the paths for your feet and be steadfast in all your ways. Do not turn to the right or the left. Keep your foot from evil. The Word of the Lord.
Tim Keller (3:34)
We live in a culture of choice now. I know that often is. It's an advertisement, It's a slogan, but it's really true. You know most places and most times in history. You didn't choose who you married, you know, that's a fairly recent idea that you decided instead of your parents. But of course, that's just the beginning. We are free to be who we want to be, live as we want to live, do the things we want to do, because our culture is the most individualistic culture in the history of the world. And therefore our place and our parents and our social location do not determine so much what we can do. We have choices. Choices. And what does that mean? That means that we've never needed wisdom more than we do now. Because wisdom is the ability to make wise choices. It's not enough just to be good and decent. Here's two careers you could choose, and they're both morally permissible. Neither is sinful. Neither of them is. There's nothing wrong about either of them. But if you choose unwisely, if you choose the wrong one, one that doesn't fit you, you could lose years of your life. Actually, it could be a disaster. So we've never needed wisdom more than we do now. Now, what we've been doing for three weeks, and this is the last of the three, we've been looking at the early chapters of the Book of Proverbs in the Bible, and we're looking at the themes of the Book of Proverbs. We've been looking at what wisdom is, its competence with regard to the complex realities of life. We've been looking at how you develop wisdom. And today we're looking at this famous passage where we learn three things that characterize a wise life. If you want to lead a life of wisdom, that life will be characterized by three. A glorious fight, a guarded heart, a living word. Let's take a look. First of all, way of wisdom is the way of or a life of wisdom is basically could be characterized as a glorious fight. Verses five to nine, I'm thinking of get wisdom, get understanding, do not forsake wisdom, though it cost you all you have. Get understanding, cherish her, embrace her, and she will give you a garland to grace your head and present you with a glorious crown. Now, the words through there are various words that get across. Diligent exertion and determination of will. So the word get that comes up four times is actually a word that means purchase, and it means a costly purchase. So it's the language of sacrifice. And besides that, it says right there in verse seven, though it costs you all you have, get wisdom, do not forsake in verse six, literally means don't let go of be dogged, see relentlessness. So there's sacrifice, there's relentlessness. Notice that there's a language here. It's a metaphor of pursuing a woman to marry. It says, don't forsake her, love her, cherish her, embrace her, and she will respond and she will honor you. So that's the language of passionate pursuit. So all through here, we're talking about determination of will, something that you actually have to fight in order to keep at the very center of your life. But it's a glorious fight because, as it says, it ends with a glorious crown. Some of the other verses, which we won't take the time to look at, tell you about that. Gradually. Gradually, you know. See verse 18 and 19. The path of the righteous is like the morning sun, shining ever brighter until the full light of day. The way of the wicked is deep darkness. They do not know what makes them stumble. The contrast. The reason why wisdom is worth it is because as time goes on, a wise person gets more peace, not restlessness. As the verses talk about more clarity, they understand things that you never understood, not more and more darkness, as it were. Things are going wrong. You're stumbling. You don't even know why. You're just getting more angry. Oh, my. Wisdom is like a glorious crown. It's worth the fight. But why is it such a fight? Why is it such a fight? Why does it take such diligence? Why does it say, get wisdom, though it costs you all you have clear. Why does it take such determination of will? Now, here we can. Whether you were here the last two weeks or not, it's just as well that we recap a bit, because it's good for us. And that means the answer to that question, why does it take so much fight? Is because, first of all, we're naturally fools. We're not blank slates that we need to fill up with foolishness or with wisdom. We come as fools, and therefore, we're fighting our own nature. And secondly, because the basic things that are being told to. Excuse me. Excuse me, sir. The blinking of the camera is very, very distracting. Forgive me. And I don't mean to embarrass anybody, and I've never done that in my whole life before, but it's been very hard. So I'm glad you're here. It just. You know, years ago, my wife would say I would have been a fool and not even said anything. But I'm wiser today. I'm just. I found a way to make it okay. And you're okay, and I'm okay, but. Okay, thanks. All right, here's two reasons. Do you remember if you were here two weeks ago, look, you have a temperament, right? Haven't you taken temperament inventories? The Myers Briggs. Some are introverts, some are extroverts, some are intuitive, some are more analytical. Some of us like closure, some of us like process. Do you remember we talked about a study that across three dozen, three dozen different cultures, we realized that there's three basic ways that we're neurologically wired in order to deal with problems. Some of us retreat instinctively, some of us attack instinctively, Some of us stand pat and wait. And if you remember what the psychologist said about all these temperaments is that since we habitually, you know, those of us are introverts, extroverts. Rational, intuitive, closure process. You know, attack, hold back. We instinctively respond to situations the way we're wired or the way we've been raised, or the way our culture has taught us. And only a small fraction of the situations in which we find ourselves is that natural approach the right one. If you attack when you should be retreating, if you retreat when you should be attacking, if you stand and wait and see when you should be acting, you can die. And all of us are wired to instinctively act in a certain way in certain situations, which means we have temperaments. You say, well, what's wrong with the temperament? Everybody's got a temperament. Yeah, that's why we're all fools, because the world doesn't have a temperament, you see, the world doesn't. If the world was perfectly fitted to your temperament. So the introverted approach or the extroverted approach, the speak out or the wait and listen, the come to closure or the. Or the let's let it go into process. If the world had a temperament and you perfectly fit it, you'd be perfectly wise. But none of us, none of us are. And therefore we're all naturally fools. And to become a wise person means that you have to be so in touch with reality that you know how to get out beyond. You have a range of responses that goes beyond your inborn, your culture, your psychology, your neurology. And you know how to go against those and always act in a way that's wise. Very, very difficult. That's why it's always a fight to be wise. You're always having to fight against the normal way you do things. But as time goes on, if you're becoming wise, you realize, look, I hate doing it that way. I don't like doing it that way, but this situation calls for, so I'm going to do it. The other reason why it's a fight is because as we saw when you looked at the book of Proverbs, Proverbs, chapter three, the things that the Bible says are the things that develop wisdom are processes and they are disciplines that you have to stay at for years and years and years. That's the reason why wisdom actually is always a gradual thing. The path of the righteous is like the morning sun, shining ever brighter and brighter to the full light of day. Remember, one of the things the Bible says is in chapter three, that is the root of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. Now you hear that and you say, what is that? Well, we said the fear of the Lord means to have a vital existential relationship with God. Not just believing in him, but a vibrant, vital relationship in which his love and his holiness is real to you, which means a prayer life. And anybody who even just says, I'm going to pray 30 minutes a day, you know how hard that is? It's unbelievably hard just to keep your mind on it. We said another thing that brings wisdom is accountability, is having people. A fool is wise in his own eyes. So the definition of a fool is someone who only cares what he or she thinks. That's a fool and wise in my own eyes. My eyes is all that matter. I see it. That's the way it is. Wisdom always is trying to see the thing through other people's eyes. And so the wise person has got a company of counselors and a company of advisors and friends who are, they're never making. A wise person never makes decisions unilaterally, but always comes and gets a lot of advice and takes it. You have to be accountable. Do you have anybody, for example, do you have four or five people? Do you have somebody who looks at how you spend your money? You say, well, that's private. No. Okay, that's also foolish. If you get nobody else's perspective, of course you're going to have all kinds of self justifications. You might be very unwise in the way you spend your money. You'd be more wise if you were actually spending your money accountable to other people that you trust in community. That's hard. One last thing, as we've said, I didn't tell the story on this side of the park, so I'll tell it to you now is you've all heard that you become wise by immersing yourself in the word of God. I think most of us say, and when you read the Bible, that takes, it makes you wise. Now it takes years and years and years. I Mean, after all these years of, I don't know, you know, having to probably. I probably had a teacher preach on the Bible about two or three thousand times in my life. And I'm sometimes. I don't mean to discourage anybody. I'm just starting to feel like I'm starting to get it. In other words, passages that didn't used to make sense start to make sense because you've seen enough other passages now. But here's the thing. It's not just the details of the Bible. It's not just, you know, I found a verse that says this. I didn't know I was supposed to do that. That doesn't happen that often anymore to me. But here's what you do have to constantly do. Alastair MacIntyre, Catholic theologian, a Catholic philosopher, tells a story in his book After Virtue Gives an illustration. It's a lot of fun. The illustration is, imagine you are standing at a bus stop, and a man who you've never met in your life before comes up. Never met him. And he says, hey, do you know that the Latin name for the common wild duck is histrionicus? Histrionicus. Histrionicus. And then he walks away. Okay, so how do you make sense of that? Must be some reason. How do you make sense of it? And MacIntyre says, the only way to make sense of it is you have to put it into a story. Now, it could be a sad story. And you say, maybe he's mentally ill, and that would be a sad story. But that would make sense of it, right? It would make sense of it, yes. The other possibility is a little more of a funny story, and that is that it's mistaken identity. He was at a library the other day, and he was asking a librarian for a book on wild ducks. He got the book, and he sees you at the bus stop, and you look like the librarian. You know, your hair or your lack of hair or whatever, look, you just. It reminds. So he thinks you're the librarian. That's a funny story. That would make sense of it. MacIntyre brings up one more possibility. He says, maybe the guy is a secret agent and he mistakes you for his contact and he's giving you the code words. Now, that's outlandish, but it's possible. And what he says is, unless you understand what happened in the light of a story, you don't know how to respond. Now, this world tells you that. Well, this culture will tell you this. There might be a God or might not. Nobody can know that's what they'll tell you. And there might be an afterlife or not, but nobody can tell you that either. So this life is the place where you have to. If you're gonna have any happiness, you have to have it right now. That's the story of the world. The Bible tells you a different story, that God created the world and therefore you. And therefore everything you have is a gift. And he's going to renew the world. And if you believe in him, you're going to live in that world forever and ever. Which means this life is like the vestibule to a mansion. Your entire life here is just the tiniest little beginning of it. Which story are you going to believe? Depending on which story you believe and depending the degree to which the. That you really take that into your heart, it affects everything. How do you spend your money? How much money do you give away? If you put it in that story, you're gonna be. Your behavior with your money is gonna be utterly different than if you put your money in this story over here, the Bible story. And therefore it's not just reading the Bible to get the principles and the rules out of it, though there's lots of great principles and rules. You have to read every part of the Bible. You have to read the narratives and the poetry and the history and everything. And more and more you do that, the more you become conversant with the Bible, the wiser you get, the more it affects everything you do. Even where the Bible doesn't speak as directly to say, here's how much money you have to give away. Exactly. It doesn't say that. And yet it has an immense impact on the way in which you do your. Just how you spend your money daily, depending on the story. It's a fight to be wise. It takes years and years and years, but it's a glorious fight. Second thing, a wise life is not just characterized by a glorious fight, but by a guarded heart. Now, what do we mean by a guarded heart? That's the second thing here. Remember, considering that the book of Proverbs is all about. Proverbs is all about wisdom and getting wisdom. Verse 23 is pretty amazing because essentially it's saying, and there's nothing more important than this if you're going to be wise above all else. Verse 23, Guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. Now, that is not the modern understanding of the heart. We believe the heart is the seat of the emotions. We think that the thoughts come from the head and the emotions come from the heart. And the now we live in a day and time in which the emotions are privileged. We have lots and lots of science fiction. We have all. One of the metanarratives of all the Star Trek movies and television series is that machines have reason. Robots and computers have reason, but we have emotions. And that's what makes us human. What makes us human is not reasonable, but it's emotion. See, that's what makes us not a machine, but a human being. It's interesting. The Greeks and the Romans thought exactly the opposite. They said the thing that makes us humans and not animals is that we have reason. But that's another sermon, another story. But the point is actually, no, it's not totally different. Another story. Greeks and Romans and modern people have always pitted the emotions versus the reason.