Proverbs 16:16 ESV
How much better to get wisdom than gold! To get understanding is to be chosen rather than silver.
[https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=proverbs+16%3A16&version=ESV]
It’s easy to prioritize literally everything besides Scripture. I’ve done it; you’ve done it; we’ve all done it. The day starts, and you’re in a hurry, so no time there. Work or kids or school or what have you fills up the next few hours, lunch rushes by, hopefully with a meal, back to the grind, night comes, dinner, a little bit of fun or time with the family if exhaustion allows it, and then bed. Next day, you wake up, remember briefly that you meant to spend a few minutes reading Isaiah, and then the cycle repeats. It’s not good, but it’s easy. Why? We humans, even Christians, have difficulty taking what we know up in our heads to be true and moving it down into our hearts so that it comes out in our actions.
The Psalmist of Psalm 119 gives us a valuation of wisdom: “The law of Your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces” (72). More, a verse earlier, he declared how it was inculcated into him: “It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn Your statutes” (71). We may have difficulties with turning knowledge into action, but the psalmist has clearly internalized the value of God’s wisdom and made it preeminent in his life. Like many saints, he has suffered for this allegiance, but such is its strength that he counts this suffering actually good because it aids him in learning of God.
What does he mean, though, that through suffering he learned God’s statutes? Suffering, whatever it may be, is rarely a provider of direct propositional truth. Most trials we face don’t include a recitation of the Ten Commandments; particularly when they are trials occasioned by faithfulness to Him (Acts 19:21-41), they contain more repudiation of His law than endorsement. No, suffering incorporates wisdom into us not as a factor of intellectual learning but in a much deeper way. It gives us the opportunity to imprint it into thought, word, and deed till when we bleed, metaphorically or literally, we bleed His wisdom (metaphorically).
When we suffer, we are given two courses. We can choose to honor God in our suffering, to seek joy in Him (Is. 66:10), or we can turn our hearts against Him, descend into fear and anger and pride. Being flawed humans, of course, we never quite take the first course, not fully, but it is there, and the question of our response is of how closely we cleave to this path of righteousness. Job was not entirely guiltless (Job 42:1-6), but he was faithful (42:7), and God counted it to him as righteousness (James 5:11). Insofar as we turned towards Him under pressure, like Job in our small way, we are ‘learning’ wisdom.
When we wish to engrave metal, we use a drill bit which grinds it away in a shower of sparks. When we wish to shape wood, we slice it apart with blades and bits, scrape it away with sandpaper, gouge into it with metal it tries to resist. When we want to make our gems beautiful, we apply chisels and files and hammers (or their technologically advanced equivalents) in precise violence, bringing out facets and shimmers before hidden. As with these, so with mankind. When God would bring us to a finer polish, a better pattern, a more perfect shape, He brings us through adversity, fire to our ore, burning at the dross (Is. 1:25).
We are people, though, not metal or wood or gemstones, and so the process of shaping is not merely reception. We are shaped not just by what comes to us but by how we respond to it. When a man is imprisoned unjustly, his livelihood seized, his family persecuted without cause, this is the fire coming from without, but he must choose how to respond. If he responds with submission to God’s decision and with steadfast defiance of the world’s evil purposes, this righteousness will be made a part of his character; if he quivers and quails, he will be more the coward the next time. How we shape ourselves amidst suffering holds when the suffering lets up or when a new episode arrives; the brave man will by his bravery make himself braver, and the righteous man will by his righteousness craft himself yet closer to God’s image.
All this learning of wisdom, though, may never be attributed to us, to our feeble hearts. Exodus 15:2 puts it succinctly, saying, “The Lord is my strength and my song, and He has become my salvation.” The wisdom which we burn into ourselves in suffering by practicing it is given to us by God, and by God alone are we made able to put it into practice (for without being put into practice, it is condemnation). Exodus 15:2 also gives us the blueprint for where to go from this understanding in declaring, “This is my God, and I will praise Him, my father’s God, and I will exalt Him.” All His wisdom has a singular result in us, when applied; it turns us from ourselves and our sin to Him, to the Almighty Wisdom of God, to Christ our mediator, to the Father our protector, to the Spirit our strength and comfort in darkness. Therefore, let us praise and exult in Him.
God bless.
Written by Colson Potter
Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.
