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.
Reader (0:48)
Tonight'S scripture reading is from the Book of Proverbs, chapter 1, verses 1 through 9, 22 and 32, 33 the Proverbs of Solomon, son of David, King of Israel, for gaining wisdom and instruction for understanding words of insight for receiving instruction in prudent behavior, doing what is right and just and fair. For giving prudence to those who are simple knowledge and discretion to the young. Let the wise listen and add to their learning, and let the discerning get guidance for understanding proverbs and parables, the sayings and riddles of the wise. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction. Listen, my son, to your Father's instruction and do not forsake your mother's teaching. They are a garland to grace your head and a chain to adorn your neck. How long will you who are simple love your simple ways? How long will mockers delight in mockery and fools hate knowledge? For the waywardness of the simple will kill them, and the complacency of fools will destroy them. But whoever listens to me will live in safety and be at ease without fear of harm. The word of the Lord thanks be to God.
Tim Keller (2:20)
So for the first three weeks here after Labor Day, we're going to do a real short series on the very first chapters of the Book of Proverbs, which is the number one book in the Bible about wisdom. Now, if you live in New York City, one of the things that you see are choices. They're just zillions and zillions of choices. One of the reasons for that is that. Excuse me. One of the reasons for that is that is the density. You know, in the rest of the country, there's 90 people per square mile living 90 people per square mile living in the rest of America. In Manhattan, there's 60,000 people per square mile. So if you have. And that means more than just more restaurants. It means, which is, you know, I don't know where to go out to eat. Where to go out to eat. But you have all these other choices. Should I stay in the business I'm in? Should I. Should I get into a new career? Should I stay with this company? Should I move to another company? Should I go into business myself? Should I go to grad school? Where will I work after grad school? Where will I work after school? Should I marry this person or not? All the deals, all the collaborations, all the partnerships, because it's dense here. There's all these choices to make. And you know what? If you don't make good choices, it can be very destructive. Bad choices blow up on you. Every choice is like a fork in a road. And once you make it, you really can't go back to where you were. And if you make the wrong choice, you never really, in a sense, can go back. So what does it take to make good choices? Especially in a place like New York? To live is to make good choices. Well, what does it take? It takes wisdom. And the Book of Proverbs is perhaps the most famous text in the world. Millions of people, for thousands of years, have looked to it for help, and we're going to look for just three weeks at it ourselves. Now, if we take a look at the very first few verses of the book, we're going to see the basics. And what do we have here? What wisdom is, why it's important, why it's a problem, and where to get it. Okay. What wisdom is why it's important, why it's a problem, and where you can find it. First of all, let's look at what wisdom is. And. And the. Right off the bat, look at verse one and two. It says, these are the proverbs of Solomon for gaining wisdom. What's the word wisdom mean? Well, one of the best ways to figure out what it means is to look at the synonyms. Look at the other words that are used to describe wisdom. Right there in those first sentences, one of the synonyms is the word insight. Do you see this? For gaining wisdom. That's the first part of verse two. And for understanding words of insight. What's insight? It's a Hebrew word. It's a word binah, and it's a word that actually means to notice differences, to see fine distinctions that other people can't see. Ever notice when a master detective walks into a crime scene? The master detective sees 20 or 30 clues and everybody else has just got two. That's insight. But by the way, insight doesn't just mean noticing 20 things when other people only see one or two. It also means to imagine wisdom. And insight means to imagine 20 or 30 things where other people can only imagine one or two. If somebody says, well, I'm in this situation and there's only two things I can do, and the wise and insightful person says, no, no, you got about 15 things that you could do, and here they are, and breaks it down. So wisdom is insight. It's the ability to see distinctions where other people just see a blur. Secondly, we have the word prudence. You see that for receiving. This is verse three and four. For receiving instruction in prudent behavior, verse four, for giving prudence to those who are simple. And the word prudence is. Translates the Hebrew word that means practical. It means to know strategic. It means to know how to actually get things done, how to make a goal into reality, not just to talk about it, but to actually bring it into reality or another way to say it. Wise people are not just characterized by insight, but also by foresight. They don't just diagnose the problem, they also, you know, know how to solve it. And then third, by the way, is the word instruction. It's notice it says in verse two, for gaining wisdom and instruction. It's a kind of strange English word to translate a Hebrew word that means character, depth of character. Now let's pull them all together. What is wisdom? One Old Testament scholar, Gerhard Van Raad, who knew all about the wisdom literature of the Bible, said this. Wisdom, according to the Bible, is competence with regard to the realities of life. Competence with regard to how life really works. Really works. So for example, is wisdom knowledge? Well, wisdom assumes knowledge. If you don't know anything about a subject, you can't be wise about a subject. So you can't be wise unless you know. But you can obviously know a lot about a subject and be stupid. Because wisdom is knowing what to do with the knowledge. How to practically use it, or put it like this, is wisdom the same thing as being good and moral, following the rules? Now, according to the Bible, if the guy, if God made the universe and he did so, if there's a God who made the universe and you disobey him, you're not just being. It's not. To disobey the God who made the universe is not just wrong, it's stupid. I mean, if there's a God and he made the universe and you disobey him, it's not just wrong. It's just. It's dumb. It's not going to work. And so according to the Bible, wisdom assumes that you're good, assumes that you're following the moral rules. But it is quite possible to be very moral and still be stupid. And you know why? So wisdom is not less than being good. It's more. It's not. But wisdom is not. It's more than just following the moral rules. You know why? Wisdom is knowing what the right thing is to do in the 80% of life situations to which the moral rules don't directly apply. Like if somebody comes and says, well, I've got these two jobs. Okay, what is the Christ, I'm a Christian, I want to. I got these two jobs. What does the Bible tell me? Well, the Bible's filled with moral rules, and they're both okay. It wouldn't be a sin to take either job. And yet if you take the wrong job, it'll be a disaster. So you see why you can be very moral. You can be following all the moral rules and yet still not know the right thing to do in the 80% of life situations to which the moral rules don't directly apply. So wisdom is, you got to be knowledgeable and you got to be good to be wise. But you can be both good and wise and still be really dumb. Wisdom is competence with regard to the realities of life. It's competence with regard to how life really works. That's the first point. That's what it is. Now do you begin to see why it's so important? Because down here in verse 32, it says, for the waywardness of the simple will kill them, and the complacency of fools will destroy them. Now that's saying that people without wisdom, the simple and the fools, are not just simply. It's not just unfortunate. If you don't have wisdom, it'll kill you. It'll literally kill you. Why? Well, let's take a look at this for a minute. First of all, let's look at these two words, the simple and the fool. Now, these are two Hebrew words and they're used throughout the Book of Proverbs. The simple is a word that means young, naive people who are too unrooted and unformed to make smart decisions because they're going with a crowd. And by the way, those of I got to be careful here. I always put this. This is a particular form of foolishness that young people fall into. What is it? Notice it says the waywardness of the simple will kill them. Wayward means to go off the road. And the thing that often really harms us when we're young is, is we care so much what our friends think. I mean, to be a teenager or young adult, the people that you like, to have them think you're not cool is the worst thing in the world. And because young people are so incredibly affected by what their friends think, they'll very often go off the road. They'll be wayward because they're too concerned with what people think. They're too affected by what people think. Instead of doing the wise thing, they'll do the popular thing. And you're looking back, there are so many choices that people made when they were in this simpleton form. You look back on your younger years and you say, why did I ever think that would ever work? Why did I think I would get away with it? Why did I think I wouldn't be found out? It was because I was blinded by the crowd I was with. And so that's one. The waywardness of the simple will kill you. But the other name, the other word, a fool. This is a Hebrew word that actually means almost the opposite kind of foolishness. Why? Well, the fool is a person who is wise in his own eyes. That's the characteristic of the fool in the Book of Proverbs. And you see, a simple fool, you might say a simpleton is a young person who is too concerned about what people think. Whereas a fool, according to the Book of Proverbs, is somebody who doesn't care enough what other people think. That is, he's wise in his own eyes, by the way, just because it's so hard to go, he, she, he, she. Whenever I talk about fools here, I'm going to talk about he. But I just want you to know, those of you who aren't he's, it could be you. I just like, it could be you. But anyway, the fool, he. He's wise in his own eyes and he is set in his ways. Here's a bunch of synonyms that one Old Testament professor put in his commentary. A fool is self righteous, opinionated, stubborn, hard to persuade, gets his back up when you try to correct him, and despises correction. Now, there are opposites. The simpleton is a person too concerned about what people think, whereas the fool is a person who's not concerned enough. The fools are people who don't listen to what others say. You can't talk to them. They're set in their ways. They're sure they know, but they're both out of Touch with reality. See, if wisdom is competence with regard to reality, wisdom does the thing in the situation that fits with reality as God has made it. Basically, you know, God made the world in a certain way. This is God's world. It's also a broken world because of sin. And a wise person, figures, sees the created brokenness of the reality and says, what is the wisest thing to do? Simpletons don't aren't in touch with reality. They're in touch with their friends. Okay? Fools are not in touch with the reality. They're in touch with their own pride, their own dignity. They're sure they know, See? But what it takes to be wise is to be in touch with reality. And fools, whether they're too open to what other people say or not open enough, are not in touch with reality. So, for example, here you have a situation, a really difficult situation, and you're in it with people. And here's the question. Should. Should I speak out? Should I open my mouth? Should I just tell them everything? Should I confront or should I let it go? Should I let it be? Should I not say anything? Now, both of those things are perfectly right. As we go through the Book of Proverbs, you're gonna see that there's two proverbs that are almost back to back. And I think it's in chapter 25, and it goes like this. Answer a fool according to his folly, or he'll be wise in his own eyes. Like the next verse is, don't answer a fool in his folly because he'll despise you. So you read it and you say, okay, which is it? Ah, see, we don't know. Christians do not know how to read the Book of Proverbs because we look at the Book of Proverbs as if it's a bunch of rules. But it's not a bunch of rules. It's about wisdom. It's about how life actually works. And those two proverbs next to each other are not contradictions. What it's trying to say is sometimes you ought to confront a fool and sometimes you shouldn't. And a wise person knows the difference. Now, here's the problem. Almost all of us are not in touch with reality enough to know when to do it and when not to. Why? Point three. Point three is, here's why wisdom is such a problem. Some years ago, I was. I read a really great article in the Atlantic Monthly. With it was an interview with Jerome Kagan. Jerome Kagan taught for many years at Harvard. He's retired and Long retired, he's still alive, I believe, but he was like the child psychologist of his time. Later on, that's called developmental psychology. Very, very respected, brilliant man. And in the article, he was being interviewed and he said that across 36 cultures now, with thousands and thousands and thousands of people studied, he says we now know that. I'm paraphrasing, I'm reading it, but paraphrasing it, that neurochemistry creates three basic habitual reactions to threats. So every one of us, no matter what the culture, there's three different ways that our neurochemistry has wired us to respond to danger or a threat or a problem. He says some people are wired for what he calls some are anxious, some are aggressive and some are philosophical. He says the anxious people, basically you're wired to instinctively say, let me out of here. When there's a threat, you say, just cut your losses, just get out, just go. He says the aggressive is when there's a problem, you say, let me get in there and deal with it. You know, I'm going to get it before it gets me. That's the aggressive part. So he says anxious people tend to be pessimistic. This is never going to work. Just leave. Aggressive people tend to be optimistic and say, I can handle this. Get in there and try to deal with it. The philosophical are wired to say something like this, just calm down. Let's not do anything rash. No use getting bent out of shape. Let's wait and see. Okay? Now Kagan goes on and says, do you realize that we're all wired for one of those responses? One of those responses feels right, feels absolutely right, feels wise to you, feels like it happens instinctively. It feels like the best thing to do. You do it almost without thinking. But he says, you realize that in most situations your habitual response is inappropriate. He says anxious people are best in situations where danger is really high. You know why? Because the only way that you're going to actually survive is without spending a lot of time thinking about it to get out. So anxious. The anxious response is the best response for highly dangerous situations. And anxious people are the people who are the most functional in that situation. He says aggressive people are best when it comes to mid level danger. If the danger is kind of middle sized. Sometimes your confidence, I can handle this actually sometimes makes, you know, pays off. But even if it doesn't pay off, it won't be lethal. He says philosophical types are best in situations that look worse than they are. If you're in a situation and it kind of looks dangerous, but actually it's not. The philosophical say, let's slow down, let's stop, and some situations are really not that bad. But if you act evasively like the anxious person or aggressively, you can actually make it worse. And so what Kagan says is you realize that whatever seems the most natural way for you to deal with threats is usually wrong in the exact right spot. It's perfect, but in many cases it's inappropriate and kind of dysfunctional. In some cases, it's absolutely lethal.