God with Us?

Isaiah 7

In this story, Isaiah speaks to a king and a nation in stressful times.  There are two nations in league against them, King Ahaz has already lost battles to both nations, and now he hears they plan on taking his city and setting up their own king.  The result is, as Isaiah so vividly puts it, “the heart of his people shook as the trees of the forest shake before the wind” (vs. 2).  The way things look to Ahaz, there is very little hope of success unless he is able to form an allegiance with another, stronger nation, so that is what he does by sending treasures from the Temple to the nation of Assyria (2 Kings 16). He hopes to buy their support and save the day.  Isaiah sees things differently.

Ahaz is shaken at the prospect of enemies at the gate and an uncertain future.  Isaiah, though a citizen of the city in danger, is not shaken by foreign nations no matter how strong.  Isaiah has seen the One who shakes the foundations of the earth and whose glory saturates everything that exists, so the fears of this world pale in comparison to him.  Isaiah has seen the Lord and there is now no question of his faith and trust.  Ahaz only sees the foreign threat and everything that could possibly go wrong, so his faith and trust in God is shaky at best.  The difference is in what each man sees; one trusts God in the face of anything and everything, and the other cannot trust God no matter what God does.  And in the end, this difference is also the difference in how the greatest gift of God to a broken people in a difficult world is received.  What does it mean that, “God is with us”?

God wants Ahaz to learn to trust him.  Isaiah tells the king, “If you are not firm in the faith, you will not be firm at all” (vs 9).  What God means is that the only place to stand firm and secure in a world like ours is in him.  Even if Assyria sends the treaty back with good news, they will fail (and ultimately attack) Judah.  Ahaz will fall no matter where he stands unless he stands on God alone.  When God presents himself as the answer to our fears, he does not make our fears small, he makes himself great.  Our fears are real, but our God is greater than any fear we do or will possibly ever face.  Isaiah knew this.  Ahaz needed to learn it.

It is true that without God, Ahaz, and I, have everything to fear.  Every conspiracy has the potential to destroy me.  Every relationship has the potential to leave me hurt and alone.  Every career has the possibility of failure.  Every bank can collapse.  And on it goes ad infinitum, ad phobium.  But with God, it turns out that none of those fears are greater than he is and all of them put together are smaller than he is.  So standing in faith in God is the only safe place to stand.

I said God wanted Ahaz to have faith in him.  He wants it so much he goes to the extraordinary length of offering the king the opportunity to ask him for a sign – anything he can imagine.  And when he refuses out of false piety, God in exasperation offers a sign that would blow anyone’s mind – a virgin will give birth to a son whose life will mean salvation for God’s people.  And his life is a message – “God with us.”

Ahaz was waiting for a treaty to be signed that meant, “Assyria is with you!”  God was giving him what only God can possibly give, “God is with you!”  Ahaz missed it.  Will we? 

The Voice and Character of Wisdom

Proverbs 8:6-11

The voice of Folly in Proverbs speaks at twilight and into the night to foolish and simple young men who have wandered down the wrong streets.  Foolishness appeals to the simpleton within us and uses crooked and deceptive speech to lure us into her traps.  Wisdom, on the other hand, could not be more different.  Not only does she cry out on in the streets and marketplaces pleading with men and women to listen to her ways, but everything she says is trustworthy, straight, right, and true.  We can trust everything Wisdom has to say.  When we do not understand or agree with the particulars, we can know that what she has said is righteous and that there is nothing twisted or crooked in it.

In his letter to the Philippians, Paul admonishes them to meditate on the kinds of things that are true, noble, just, praiseworthy, and so forth.  Hearing Wisdom speak in Proverbs chapter 8 we learn that all these things turn out to be the voice of Wisdom.  Paul notes that when we think on these kinds of things the God of peace will be with us, will keep our heart and minds in Christ Jesus, will lead us through life.  And Solomon is just as sure of it – when we hear the voice of Wisdom our lives will become rightly-ordered.

Everything Wisdom utters is true, and she hates evil: “for my mouth will utter truth; wickedness is an abomination to my lips” (vs 7).  It turns out that truth valued and held to creates a disposition of distaste for wickedness.  When we long for truth and work for it, we not only reveal a taste of truth, we create a hunger for it.  We may long for an entire well-grilled steak at its first bite, but we eventually find ourselves full and a little sluggish.  And while truth also creates that longing at first bite, it is an inexhaustible source of nourishment.  We can eat and eat of it and never reach its end.  And along the way we learn to develop a distaste for wickedness.  Not only will the wise person recognize evil, they will also recognize it for the pain and destruction it causes in the human life.  And because Wisdom loves God’s creation, she hates its destruction.

All these characteristics highlight the inner landscaping Wisdom performs in the submitted human soul.  When we listen to Wisdom and when we meditate on these things our inner lives are reshaped to fit the way God created us and the rest of the world.  When a puzzle fits together the pieces do two things – they fit with each other and they match the picture on the box.  The way a rightly-ordered puzzle works is a lot like the way our rightly-ordered souls work.  When God’s wisdom has its way within us the pieces of our lives will fit together and our lives as a whole will fit the picture of what God created us to be.

So this passage on the voice and character of Wisdom is not just a story of what Wisdom sounds like, it is the template for what the follower of Jesus Christ begins to look like.  Is our voice in line with the truth, righteousness, and nobility of the voice of Wisdom?  Are our lives conforming to that very character, or are we still mired in the simplistic and destructive ways of folly?  Have the people of God become people of his Wisdom?

Keeping the Ways of the Lord

Proverbs 2:9-12

The wise person recognizes they are surrounded by temptation every day.  If there isn’t an external pressure to ignore the ways of God, there are internal pressures that lure us from the path of Wisdom.  So what is it this wise person does to not only recognize temptation but to avoid it?  The Apostle Paul once told the Corinthians that the Lord does not allow us to be tempted beyond our power to overcome, and yet we continue to fall.  How do we learn to break that cycle?

We are admonished over and over in the first few chapters of Proverbs to pay close attention to the voice of Wisdom.  We are supposed to learn how to recognize her voice, bind her sayings around our necks, and write her ways on our hearts.  And in this way the simple heart learns not just the words of Wisdom but her ways.  And her ways become the guardrails for our path.  If we are pulled too close to the edge of the path, we hit a guardrail – a precept – and we know what needs to be done.  In short, if we keep the ways of the Lord, the ways of the Lord keep us.

Solomon says that when we are attentive to Wisdom, “Then you will understand righteousness and justice and equity, and every good path” (vs. 9).  Wisdom is understanding – an understanding of the ways of the Lord.  If Wisdom decrees that we ought not be selfish but share our goods with those in need, we will only find the truth of that if we are walking in Wisdom’s path.  The fool, however, sees their goods in a different way and hordes instead of gives.  Or even if they give, do they do so with a heart inclined in the right direction?  How many of us give to be seen giving?

And Wisdom is a matter of both heart and hands: “for wisdom will come into your heart, and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul” (vs 10).  A wise life constructs in us a taste for God’s truth and His ways.  The wiser we are, the more we love the truth and revelation of God.  We will love getting to know him.  And as part of this path, our hearts are changed.  The wise life is lived from the inside out.  We can fake a wise act from time to time, but the insight and motivation that Wisdom creates in us cannot be counterfeited for very long.  Wisdom is an inclination; it is a way of perceiving and filtering the world.  Wise acts are like the surface spring of an underground stream.

This underground stream of wisdom, will in turn guide a life in the ways of the Lord.  “Discretion will watch over you, understanding will guard you, delivering you from the way of evil” (vs 11-12).  Thinking again of Paul’s remark about temptation and our ability to overcome, we see in the ways of Wisdom our path through temptation.  Discretion and understanding are results of a person’s dedication to the knowledge of God, and they turn into the clarity with which we see temptation and its destruction.  Then we gain, more and more, the strength to overcome.

The Lord will keep his people from the ravages of foolishness and sin, but his people need to hear and heed his voice.  Wisdom cries aloud in the streets and in the marketplace asking us to learn what she says.  Humans don’t magically or mistakenly avoid folly and end up living lives of wisdom.  That is a job – a life-long job of seeking after and valuing the wisdom of the Lord.  But in the end our lives are kept safe from our own folly when we learn to keep the ways of the Lord.