“The beginning of wisdom is this: get wisdom,
and whatever else you get, get insight.” Proverbs 4:7
Where do you go to find wisdom? Wouldn’t it be great if you could stick a shovel into the ground and dig up some insight, discernment, or understanding? There’s a chapter in scripture that muses about such a thing, smack dab in the middle of the book of Job.
For twenty-seven chapters, Job and his three friends have engaged in a fever-pitched debate about the relationship between God’s justice, human sin, and Job’s suffering. There’s nothing else quite like it in Scripture. In the midst of this debate stands the poem of Job 28, calm and reflective, like the eye of a hurricane.
The poem repeats a key question related to the theme of Job: Where can wisdom be found? Where does understanding dwell? This refrain divides the poem into three sections. The first claims that despite our human skill and cleverness in mining up mineral treasures, we haven’t found a way to mine wisdom. The second says that despite great human treasures and wealth, we cannot buy wisdom. The third declares that God alone has wisdom and is the source of it.
Our human success in mining shows our capabilities and our poet expresses admiration for our human industry and ingenuity. But for all our subterranean discoveries, we’ve failed to unearth wisdom. Though among all creatures we alone can dig up mineral treasures, we cannot unearth wisdom, because God alone has wisdom. According to our poet in Job 28, “God understands the way to [wisdom], and he knows its place.”
The answer to the question “Where can wisdom be found?” is in God. God not only has wisdom but also reveals it to us. Of course, we need to be wise enough to acknowledge that even with God’s wisdom to guide us, we often fail to fully apprehend it.
In this Sunday’s sermon, we’ll be considering Paul’s teaching about God’s “foolish” wisdom revealed in the cross (1 Cor. 1). The wisdom of the cross is not an obvious wisdom. In contrast to prevailing views that look for God in dramatic displays of power or through carefully reasoned discourse, Paul argues that God is known through a stunning and paradoxical display of divine love: God on a cross. While admittedly counterintuitive, this understanding must shape how we as Christians ultimately understand divine wisdom. May God enable us to comprehend and live by this life changing wisdom.
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