Chasing the Wind 3

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Speaker 1: Chasing the Wind. Episode three, Meet Lady Wisdom. She's the woman who gets a joke. Episodes one and two have been cerebral. Are we reading Ecclesiastes correctly? Where does wisdom come from?

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Speaker 2: Episode three is beautiful Gohelen is well, meaningly, sweating, investigating, experimenting, trying to make the universe yield its secrets.

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Speaker 1: Lady Wisdom is already there, delighting in God's purposes. She's dancing. She understands what Q cannot because she sees the larger meaning Well, Q, that's us peers through a keyhole. This episode's central idea, Biblical wisdom isn't primarily knowing more things memorizing more verses. It's learning to see reality from God's side of the keyhole. That takes an algorithm shift in our brain that we can't do on our own. And I'm want to point out in passing, you know, so we can memorize all the verses and not have discernment or wisdom, the Pharisees knew all kinds of verses and they killed God. It is not just memorizing, that's knowledge. We also need discernment and wisdom, and that comes from God regularly to the bottom line. Q studies the creation. Lenny Wisdom knows the creator and she's dancing. So welcome to Gospel Rant Podcast and doctor Bill Senored YouTube channel. I'm your host, Doctor Bill Sinyord. We are free wherever you get good podcast of course on YouTube as well, so please subscribe. As always, one of the fastest ways you can help us grow is by leaving your comments below. Thank you sincerely for that. Also, thanks for making Gospel Rant Podcast one of the top ten percent in the world and top sixty Christian podcast in Colorado. Thank you for listening every week. We hope that it helps to regularly hear a God's love that loves the unlovable and loved, unlovely and worthy and unlikely. And that's all all of us, that's me that you on any given day, any given hour, if we were just a little bit honest, and it really helps to be honest. Yeah, I want to get right into it. After this brief word from our sponsors, we'll be right back. So listen. I just need to know have you ever desperately wanted God to tell you what He's doing? I mean, not everything, just about that one thing that you know. It's right in front of you. Why did she leave? Why didn't I get a job? Why did the cancer come back? Why did my child walk away? Why did I lose my loved one? Why did that prayer go unanswered? Why did the person who cheated prosper? Why did doing the right thing cost me so much? God? What are you doing? And wouldn't it be wonderful if God just handed you the script? Well, Ecclesiastes is written for people who don't have the script, which means Ecclesiastes is written for us. We think too often wisdom means having the answer. Don't you let me say it again? Don't you think often wisdom means having the answer. We usually imagine a wise person is the person who knows something, knows the answer right. He's the wise guy or gal ask the expert, asked the pastor ask the theologian, ask Google, AI, chat GPT. Fairly, we're even willing to ask complete strangers on Reddit whether we should get divorced or transced, or invest in this or that scheme, or stock or bitcoin. Human civilization has come a long way, but biblical wisdom is stranger than that. Wisdom is the capacity to know what your next step should be. And notice it doesn't say wisdom means knowing how the story ends or why you are in this mess, and it is it requires to diment, discernment the sernment, remember what's really going on here? And that's critical. Maybe wisdom isn't God explain everything. Maybe wisdom is God help me see what's going on here, and then give me my next faithful step, my next loving step, sacrificial step, my next Jesus step manifesting your love for the unlovable here. Right now we've moved from information to relationship with God and with others. Well, then scripture does something weird. If you asked me to write a theological textbook about divine wisdom, you know, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't do what Proverbs does, but I should. Proverbs gives wisdom a personality. She's a woman. She's calling, she's speaking, she's inviting. And in Proverbs eight, she takes us somewhere extraordinary creation, before the mountains, before the fields, before the seas, before humanity. There she is Lady Wisdom, and she describes herself alongside of God as he establishes creation. She sees the code, she sees the fabric, you know what's underneath, and then comes apart. I really want to linger over. She delights, which means, by the way, she's you know, she's reflecting this characteristic of God, this God who delights in his creation. Lady Wisdom sees God's plan and delights over it, and we're part of that, by the way, and in a way. She does that in a way that the human observer cannot because she understands the whole and she trusts God, she trusts the planner. She's got the whole script. You know, she knows how the movie ends, the book ends. She can enjoy it. Wisdom is happy, and that's unexpected because Q is exhausted. Wisdom is delighted. Q is so tired. And now we can make the contrast. Cohele looks at the world. Generations come, generations go, sun goes up, sun goes down, wind blows around and around and around, Rivers keep running, nothing changes, nobody remembers, and eventually you die. And you can hear the deliberate exhaustion and the symmetry, the sun almost gasping as it repeats its endless cycle, and the wind turning and turning, and Q watches creation and just says this is tiring. Letdy Wisdom watches creation and says, this is magnificent. Same creation, different perspective. That's huge. So what's the difference? Not IQ? Not observation? Perspective is the difference. Discernment is the difference. Be nah. Q is standing inside of history trying to infer what everything means. Lady Wisdom stands with the Creator and sees where everything belongs. And then we get back to our image. Q looks through a keyhole, Wisdom reads the room. All right, let's look at a contrast between Eden prefall and Q under the sun. Work then, wasn't originally drudgery, exhausting a moll in the Hebrew toil, non meaningful work right, humanity's vocation and Eden was fruitful, meaningful. It was participating in God's creation. It was delighting alongside of him. A mile right represents what that calling feels like in this broken world post fall. We were made to participate in meaning, joy, delight, And that's why meaningless in Q's language hurts so badly. Animals don't appear to have existential cries about career advancement, but humans do. Why maybe because something in us remembers. Work was supposed to mean something, create something of worth and value and legacy. Love was supposed to last and grow. Justice was supposed to prevail. Bodies weren't supposed to decay, Relationships weren't supposed to break. God wasn't supposed to feel distant. And that's why havel renumber foolishness bothers us because somehow or another, we know this isn't how the story was supposed to feel. So Lady Wisdom doesn't give us the map, right, how do I get lady wisdom to tell me what happens? Yeah, she doesn't. That's not the deal. Wisdom tells me the next step, not necessarily the destination, or two steps ahead of me, or not necessarily the why take that step instead of this other one. Abraham just gets go, Moses gets go to Pharaoh, Israel gets step into the sea, Joshua gets cross the river, Peter gets get out of the boat. Faith rarely gets the entire itinerary. And again, let me say, we want God's itinerary. No judgment, me too, And God usually gives us his hand. Because the alternative to queue isn't know everything. It's trust someone capital s, which is hard for humans to do. We don't have that trust muscle, and it's been ripped. So imagine looking through a keyhole into a room and you see someone crying. That's all what conclusion could you draw? Something terrible happened, right, it's a tragedy, a loss. Then the door opens and you see she's crying because her son just came home after three years. Same tears, but completely different meeting. One sees through the keyhole, one sees from a much larger perspective. So data without context or discernment can tell the truth and still lead us the wrong conclusion. That's Q. He's not necessarily lying about what he sees. He's not evil. He's very smart. He's right about some very important things. Death is real, and justice is real. Exhaustion is real. The wicked sometimes prosper, good people sometimes suffer. This is precisely Q looks at the world and sees genuinely disturbing things, and his observations can be accurate. The problem is he can't see enough to know what they ultimately mean, which is why discernment matters. This is why an ongoing relationship with God matters, and asking for discernment and spirit and power and wisdom. Right, So in the end, the parent, the character and Ecclesiastes is going to say to the son the disciple, listen to Q, but we're going to take a different path discernment. Paul writes, Christ Jesus having come for us wisdom from God. Christianity makes an outrageous claim. Wisdom is an ultimately technique philosophy, seven principles, not even a collection of proverbs. Ultimately, wisdom has a face, and we know it. It's Jesus. It's a person, which means when I don't understand what God is doing, Christianity doesn't necessarily give me the explanation I'm demanding. It gives me a person. It gives me Christ and says, can you trust him before you understand him? You know, Jesus, I've got a lot of questions that I need real answers for, and Jesus says, okay, I'm the answer. Follow me. That's not exactly what I was asking for, Jesus. Right back to the lady. Lady Wisdom has been with God. She knows the creations, she knows the purpose, and she's dancing because she gets it. She invites human beings to come and dance and learn. And then there's C brilliant, educated, wealthy. He's got the time, resources, access experience, and Q has decided arrogantly so but I get it, no judgment. He's going to figure the whole thing out. You almost want to stop him, right, It's like a train wreck about to happen because we already know something that he doesn't. He can see through a keyhole, but he can't see the room. All right, what's next? I will let you know after this brief word from our sponsors. As I've mentioned, good Enough Christian, my new book is out a sequel to Good Enough Parent. It's all about trying to deal with the question why Christians feel so stuck. We're going to we're gonna apply discernment to that how we can experience more of the love of Christ. If you've ever asked, what's the love of God's supposed to feel like? God bless you, brother and sister. That's the right question, and the book will can tell you. And you're not alone. If you've had that inner stirring for a long time that you want more, and you've be afraid that Jesus would be a disappointment. You're stalled in your faith. Your expectation of experiencing the love and delight this dancing God is low. This book is for you, and the key of it is we're going to really expand on the role of the Holy Spirit in making Christ's love real to you. That is his passion and I don't know why we don't talk about it more, but we don't. The Holy Spirit I've called the missing partner of the Trinity. And that's crazy. It's just too bad. So check it out. Good copies for your church, Bible study, book club, devotion. You're going to love it. Yep. Well, thanks for listening to my series Chasing the Wind. Next time we're going to talk about the Man who knew Everything. In session number four, we're going to unleash cohal It. We've talked about how to recognize genuine biblical wisdom, and now we hand the microphone to a man who announces essentially, don't worry. I've looked into everything. Oh what could possibly go wrong? Well, we'll see you next time. Take our child of God