GracePointe Church of Christ in Elizabethtown, PA

Wisdom wants us to not only accept the created order of the world, but to rejoice and delight in it.  In this cosmic poem, Wisdom recounts her work as a creation of God to help in the creation of the world.  Because She has partnered with God for such a long time, she offers to us the lessons learned and experiences had…when we choose to embrace wisdom, we choose to embrace God’s way of life. 

A celebration of our time at Camp Manatawny. 

Psalm 103

Proverbs 6 - Appropriate boundaries are crucial to Proverbs. Self-limitation (or some might say discipline) and deliberate acceptance of interpersonal and cosmic limits are foundational to biblical wisdom. When we practice boundaries in our relationship to goods and other persons (sex, food, sleep, exercise, work, play, speech) it promotes self-knowledge, self-mastery, and freedom.  (See Bonhoeffer’s “stages on the way to freedom” poem) Ultimately, self-denial is where we join Christ in living God’s way, and not creating our own way… 

Proverbs 5: In the Lord’s prayer we say “lead us not into temptation.”  While prayer is a necessary conversation with God about the things that tempt us and prey on us, perhaps stalk us; it is also important for us to work at righteous living and avoid such “desirable delights” that lead to harm and brokenness. In this passage, temptation is a desirable and willing woman…but we are asked to avoid her.  While the various sins we pray about and work to avoid vary, we all have them and must acknowledge them and stay away from them.  

Proverbs 4 Overview: Biblical wisdom works with “tradition,” the very ones that have us seeking recipes our grandmother’s used to make and saying things to our kids that our parents said to us.  Wisdom is about preserving tradition… biblical wisdom appeals to the creation order and the experience of past generations to provide insights for new lives situations. To face that which is new, we have the abiding patterns of reality lived in the past. The new situation becomes something that fits a pattern of human life, equipping us to take on the new with confidence from the past. 

Proverbs 3 provides two poems.  The first presents a paradox: the more dependent a person is on God, the more independent that person becomes. This is because the person who depends on God is free from external controls and coercion.  Their path is straight, meaning that they have a clear direction and goals…not that they have an easy road or do not have difficulty.  The second considers life in two very different directions and it asks us to seek the life of wisdom, righteousness and life (essential quality).  We must refrain from not acting when we can and should, and not envying others’ lives as if they are better than ours.

In the second chapter of Proverbs, there is a structure of Wisdom that is to be understood by those seeking it.  First, for human to be wise they must begin with a right relationship with God.  Any attempt to be moral without a proper respect and relationship with God will not end in righteousness, justice, and equity.  Second, once the proper love of God is in place, then it is manifested in the way we treat the world around us.  For Proverbs, the one pursuing wisdom is saved from the “way of evil,” and the “loose woman.”  Personal transformation happens and the result is the ability to live with integrity, being unswayed by various temptations. 

Matthew 25:1-13