Wisdom Literature

Today on Renewing Your Mind the Avenue to the heart is through the mind. If you try to bypass the mind then what you get are empty emotional responses that mean nothing. The word of God is intended to be understood through that understanding we gave the knowledge and wisdom. Welcome to the Wednesday edition of Renewing Your Mind. Today we have pulled a message from our archives that is never aired before your on the program were bringing you these hidden gems all week to highlight the importance of a group of people we call ministry partners messages like this are available in the ministry, partner, archive, and I'll tell you more about that at the end of the program today, but for now resources pull when we look at the Old Testament. There is a segment of the Old Testament that is traditionally called the wisdom literature the wisdom literature is called wisdom because it is basically an expression of aphorisms that teach us.

Sort of a folk wisdom only of folk wisdom that has the endorsement of God himself, the five books that are traditionally gathered into this subgroup include the Proverbs the Psalms, the song of Solomon Ecclesiastes and Joe those of the five books of the Old Testament that are usually designated wisdom literature.

One of things and passing on the song of Solomon is if you look in your old translations and you look at your subheadings in your topical headings at the top of the page they will frequently refer to elements of the song of Solomon as allegorical references to Christ and the church did notice that in your Bibles. While there may be a fitting application to Christ and the church. The basic reason why those subtitles are included in the older English translations is that the translators just couldn't accept that God the Holy Spirit would include in the canon of sacred Scripture, a hymn of praise to sensuous attraction and love that adorns the marriage relationship. And so to get around this seeming scandal of the Old Testament. It was completely out of her eyes to refer to the love that Christ has for the church only problem with that is is that if it's improper for the Holy Ghost to inspire human love song, how much more improper would be to attribute that the relationship between Jesus and the church. They have to go figure. What we have there in the sauna. Solomon really is a beautiful love song of a couple anticipating marriage and celebrating their mutual attraction. And so now let's look at some of the characteristics of the wisdom literature because it's called wisdom literature. In the first instance because it places so much emphasis on the gaining of wisdom, the book of Proverbs is the clearest example to that and it tells us over and again that it is the fear of the Lord.

That is the beginning of wisdom so that the necessary prerequisite for achieving wisdom in the biblical sense is to have a sense of reverence for God in the quest for wisdom and the love of wisdom in Hebrew thought, you begin with the proper attitude. Respect and reverence for God so that the reverence for God becomes the sine qua non for the achieving of wisdom in Hebrew categories also that wisdom literature, particularly the book of Proverbs makes a sharp distinction between knowledge and wisdom wave may be sometimes heard the phrase so-and-so is an educated fool you know that some people are educated beyond their intelligence, where they maybe have a string of alphabet soup after their name indicating the degrees that they've achieved which is supposed to be some may spring barometer of intelligence and yet these people have no common sense can't find their way out of their office at the end of the day without stumbling over the wastebasket you know about people like that who, though there educated they act in a foolish manner.

Now it's not that the Hebrew says what's important is wisdom and not knowledge is not like Jewish wisdom despises knowledge, but rather it sees knowledge never as an end in itself but simply as a means to an end albeit a very important means to the end so that they wisdom literature will say get knowledge pursue knowledge, but even more what get wisdom several years ago I had a businessman who ran a large corporation asked me the question about legionnaire ministries. He said RC. What's the big idea is what he mean he says what every business and every mission, every organization has a consuming idea, not just their mission, but it's this idea that determines everything they do in every department within that organization has its own big idea that contributes to the big idea. Overall, and so he wanted asked me what was our mission. What were we trying to accomplish what was the big deal. What was the big idea and I just gave him two words to answer the question. I said, here's the big idea big idea is Coram Dayo I didn't invent this I stole this from the Reformation because this was the big idea of the Reformation Coram Dayo meaning before the face of God, or in the presence of God in that big idea is this that God in his word is teaching us how to live every moment of our lives before his face.

We are to live all of life before the presence of God under the authority of God and to the glory of God. So that's the big idea of the Christian faith isn't that we are all to live our lives aware that we are walking every moment before the face of God. Now in that sense the big idea is not an abstract philosophical concept. It is an idea that determines behavior and so the Hebrew thinkers again made this statement that as a man think it in his heart so is he reset again as a man think if in his heart so is he know that strange sounding to the ear because when we talk about thought we usually think of the organ that is connected with thought is the brain and so we would think the well what really what the Hebrew is mine. This is saying here is this as a man thinks in his mind when his brain so is he.

But instead it's as a man thinks it's hard now. It's not because the Hebrew thought that the heart was the Oregon for rational thought, but what the Hebrew was getting at is that we have an abundance of ideas that clutter our minds and that we can recite them, and pass exams on them, but they never penetrate to the place that is the core of our existence and and that of course is the heart when the Hebrew talks about the heart.

The Hebrews talking about the center of one's being, not about an organ that pumps blood throughout the body so that we have what we call had knowledge that never seems to get beyond the head so that it begins to inform our lives, but rather the Hebrew saying it's that knowledge that thought that gets to the heart that determines who you are and what you do and how you behave now in our day with the massive influence of existential philosophy and neo-Gnostic thinking the idea in our culture is that this not the head that matters at all is simply the heart and we are to respond with our hearts don't give meaning this knowledge stuff. We shouldn't have intellectually loaded content in our sermons or in our music leave that stuff out of it just me, just respond from my feelings and from the heart and so we see this dichotomy established in postmodernism between the mind and the heart. Here's the problem God does want us to love him with all of our hearts, and with all of our soul and all of our strength, not simply to have a cerebral intellectual grasp of him in that manner, but the way God has so constructed human being is that the Avenue to the heart is through the mind. If you try to bypass the mind then what you get are empty emotional responses that mean nothing. The word of God is intended to be understood and with the idea Bank. The more I know him.

Remember the old song. The more I know him the more I love him.

I cannot really grow inauthentic affection for Christ and for God based on ignorance and that's what the message here is that the Proverbs and the rest of the wisdom literature is saying get knowledge but get beyond the knowledge to the wisdom because what wisdom literature is about is teaching us what is pleasing to God and how to please him in our every day experience is how to live Coram Dayo that's why I think it's a wonderful thing that we have this special group of books in the Bible and it would do us well to spend time in the wisdom literature on a regular basis. One good little discipline this every day to read 10 Psalms or five Psalms are two songs couple of Proverbs get that into your thinking. It's amazing how practical this wisdom is.

I can remember when I was in seminary, I was driving home from downtown Pittsburgh and to get to the South Hills. You have to go through what's called the liberty tubes of the liberty tunnels ago right underneath my Washington and when you got out the other side there's like six or seven lanes and only the couple lanes turn left and I was in the wrong lane coming out of the tunnels and there's a sign there you are not allowed to cross lanes. There was a policeman standing at the edge of the tunnel I came out of the tunnel.

I realize I was in the wrong line and I just darted over into the lane that I was allow the dart over into because the light was still green but just as I made that change of Lane the light in front of me turned red and so I stopped and I saw more red. I saw this policeman.

It was heavyset I look in the rearview mirror. He was running to me his face was scarlet and I could tell he was furious. He came running up and pounded on the top of my car and he was enraged the manual is in big trouble and the words came in my mind.

A soft answer turns away work that faces you think you're doing as though I know just in the wrong things that I know I was supposed to do that some source or should do it anymore.

It fit said thank you Solomon for getting me out of that.

That's what the wisdom literature is concerned with his very practical matters, teaching us how to be industrious, teaching us how to be practically skilled how not to behave in our lives as a door turns on its hinges, so does the sluggard turn on his bed, and the author will say to us. Consider the ant tells us to pay attention to the behavioral patterns of ants ever done that ever sat and watched a colony of ants breaking down pieces of bread and then you see, each soldier ant is a work taking his little piece of that bread looks like a piece of bread is bigger than the ant and they drag it back to the ant hill and you see how industrious they are. You don't see five of them leaning on their shuffles.

One of them is working again. When we see wisdom literature and we see Proverbs. For example, we have to understand the difference if you remember when we were looking at the law earlier in this course, I made a distinction between two types of law apodictic law and casuistry claw rug upon 1/3 category here because this gets people in trouble from time to time you've apodictic law, casuistry, claw, and then the category of the proverb mouth apodictic law comes to us in the form you shall or you shall not, it's the form in which the 10 Commandments come to us and the apodictic law is like the Bill of Rights of American law there. The foundational laws upon which every other law is judged.

There is a moral absolutes if you will, the casuistry claw is the case law and it has the literary structure of the if then clause if your dog tramples down your neighbors rose bed then…… Certain consequences, but the case law is to give you for instances or examples of how to apply the overarching law, but both of these are structures of law and sometimes Christians who want to be faithful to the word of God put the proverb at the level of law and the proverb is not a law of Proverbs is a maximum of wisdom and it has to be applied contextually that we see the same thing in American wisdom. I've given you this illustration before from the pulpit. You have these kinds of English. Proverbs look before you leap, who hesitates is lost. Well, if you look before you leap in order to look before you leap.

You have to hesitate to see how it sometimes our proverbial wisdom. If you absolutize it will end in a contradiction, while the same thing is true in the Hebrew wisdom in the Proverbs in the same chapter. You have two different Proverbs one that says answer, not a fool according to his folly and in the same chapter it says answer the full according to his folly. Some people read that and they scratch their heads and they said this is inspired. This is the truth of God. How can that be these two Proverbs actually contradict each other and how could the author or the editor of this work not have seen that blatant contradiction 11 and he says don't answer a fool according to his folly and then do answer the fool according to his folly. Again, if you see those as moral laws, you can end up in total confusion that they're not there just like I look before you leap and he who hesitates is lost.

That is, there are some real concrete life situations where wisdom demands that you count the cost before you embark on a particular project that you look at the situation over and don't jump into things rashly but that you consider the consequences and that you look before you leap. But there are other crisis situations in our lives that we've all encountered where you have to act and you have to act decisively, you don't have the time to deliberate because of you hesitate now in this situation. Everything is lost but know when we look at wisdom literature were interested in certain characteristics that define it. I said earlier, but sometimes wisdom literature is simply called the poetic literature and then I corrected myself by saying that unfortunately the five books that I mentioned, although they have much poetry and are not the only ones that are loaded with poetry and now the next question.

How do we recognize Hebrew poetry. The Hebrew's when they did their poetry weren't the least bit interested in rhyming sentences or verses, even though they had no rhyme for their poetry, they did have a reason for their poetry and their poetry had a certain meter to it. Just as English poetry does, however, the metrical structure of Hebrew poetry differs somewhat from English meter what Hebrew poetry manifests more than anything else is not a rhyme of vowel sounds, or rhythm of vowel sounds, but rather a rhythm of ideas or concepts which is called parallelism and there are different types of parallelism, but so much of wisdom literature is written in couplets or in three or four, five, versus where you find the repetition of ideas or the contrast of ideas or the complex building up of ideas, all of which are common to the literature. Now in the King James version of the book of Isaiah. There is a passage in Isaiah that has created all kinds of problems for people where Isaiah writes in the King James Isaiah didn't write the King James, some people think he did that at any gate where he says I bring prosperity and I create evil and you look at that and people read that for the first time they run the minister. Why does the Bible say that God is the creator of evil.

We thought that it was axiomatic in our faith that God is never ever ever the author of evil well there about eight different words in Hebrew for evil and there's all kinds of different sorts of evil, and this was just really an error that the translator failed to see a clear example of parallelism, where in this case it was a case of antithetical parallelism where what the later translations will show you something like this. I am the Lord God, I bring real that is prosperity and I bring well or I bring prosperity.

I bring calamity. I will give you good gifts or blessings, but I will also bring curses upon you, and if you would see that the way in which Isaiah writes this text uses this poetic structure of parallelism, you would never fall into the trap of thinking that the text is saying that God actually creates evil like the beginning of time. That's not what is talking about a little again.

If you see the parallel form of that it helps unlock the text because again when we interpret the Bible and we have principles of interpretation and rules of interpretation is the science of interpretation called hermeneutics. You know, hermeneutics is a plumber up in Apopka.

That's hermeneutics of the science of the rules of how to interpret and the most fundamental rule of biblical interpretation is this one you interpret the Bible like you would any other book. What Bob was not like any other book well in some regards is not like any other book assuming when I know that's inspired by the Holy Ghost.

In that way it's unique but like every other book.

It has sentences, paragraphs, phrases, words, and it has all different types of literary structures in it. It has historical narrative. It has didactic literature. It has poetry and what you do is just like you do in English, you interpret poetry a little bit differently from how you interpret didactic literature, don't you, when we read in the Bible that the hills clap their hands. We know that this is a metaphorical expression of poetic expression that conveys a truth to us, but it's not the same thing as a scientific textbook on the anatomy of hills is it. So again all I'm saying here is, the better able to recognize the literary structures in which these things, and really help us more the meaning of the is so helpful. That's mercy scroll on the importance of interpreting wisdom literature correctly so that we apply it correctly all week. We have been bringing you messages that we've never aired before on Renewing Your Mind. This is a great opportunity to highlight the benefits of becoming a ministry partner with Ligonier. These messages are made available exclusively to the special group of people they commit to give up a monthly donation to this ministry and as our way of saying thank you. We provide access to exclusive content from the look in your archives today when you signed up to contribute $25 or more per month. The messages were hearing this week will be available in your learning library along with the entire ministry partner archive sign up today and that it will be like you been a partner for years.

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Tomorrow will return to the archive in a message from Dr. scroll, giving us insight into his favorite Old Testament prophet Isaiah, I hope you'll join us Thursday for Renewing Your Mind