Wednesday Bible Study: God in Proverbs

 

 

For a while now, I have been telling you that to get a better understanding of God, you should play the following word substitution in Proverbs: Knowledge (דּעת da‛ath) for God the Father, Understanding (     בּין  bı̂yn) for Jesus, and Wisdom ( חכמה chokmâh) for the Spirit.  This week, I begin explaining that.

I want to start with three items that have to do with all three that I found in my initial digging. The first involves the finding of God in the first place:

Pro 2:1  My son, if you will receive my words and hide my commandments with you,
Pro 2:2  so that you attend to wisdom, you shall extend your heart to understanding;
Pro 2:3  yea, if you cry after knowledge and lift up your voice for understanding;
Pro 2:4  if you seek her as silver, and search for her as for hidden treasures,
Pro 2:5  then you shall understand the fear of Jehovah and find the knowledge of God. 

 
Step one, "attend to Wisdom", more accurately translated as "incline your ear."  The Spirit, we will learn, is always calling you; Without getting into too much of the Spirit's story, at this point you have two choices.  You can listen, and seek, which will lead you to what is called Fear of the Lord; or you can be a fool, and hate the invitation.  It is said, God is a gentleman, He won't force you to Him; if you hate, the Spirit will turn away:

Pro 1:28  Then they will call upon me, but I will not answer; they will seek me diligently but will not find me.

Step two, "Lift up your voice for understanding", "Extend your heart to understanding".  No better way to prove this is about Jesus than comparing those two phrases to this:

Rom 10:9  because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

Those who don't believe the Spirit is the Author of the entire Bible, explain me that!  So now, we have the two "ifs": IF you listen to the Spirit's call and IF you put heart and voice to Jesus, your "then" will be:

Pro 2:5  then you will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God. 

See, you don't get any of God without all of God: the first calling by the Spirit, then the acceptance of Jesus.  ONLY THEN do you understand God, which is what we've been trying to tell atheists and agnostics since... well...

Joh 14:5  Thomas said to him, "Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?"
Joh 14:6  Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
Joh 14:7  If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him."

The second set of all three I'd like to point out involves your desire for God.  It starts here:

Pro 2:9  Then you will understand righteousness and justice and equity, every good path;
Pro 2:10  for wisdom will come into your heart, and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul;

So first off, what's the "If" that goes with that opening "then"?  Well, that would be the one above at 2:4: You have to VALUE God, higher than anything else.  If you hear the call of the Spirit, once again, you make that choice of value/hate.  If you choose value, the Spirit will enter, and knowing God will be a good thing to you.  If not, the Spirit accepts and leaves you to your foolishness; but be warned, there is a consequence:

Pro 1:24  Because I have called and you refused to listen, have stretched out my hand and no one has heeded,
Pro 1:25  because you have ignored all my counsel and would have none of my reproof,
Pro 1:26  I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when terror strikes you,
Pro 1:27  when terror strikes you like a storm and your calamity comes like a whirlwind, when distress and anguish come upon you.
Pro 1:28  Then they will call upon me, but I will not answer; they will seek me diligently but will not find me.
Pro 1:29  Because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the LORD,
Pro 1:30  would have none of my counsel and despised all my reproof,
Pro 1:31  therefore they shall eat the fruit of their way, and have their fill of their own devices.

The third set, explains the origins of our world, and how all three facets of God worked on it:

Pro 3:19  The LORD by wisdom founded the earth; by understanding he established the heavens;
Pro 3:20  by his knowledge the deeps broke open, and the clouds drop down the dew.

So the world was founded by the Spirit, and established by Jesus; we'll delve into those at a later point. As for the last part, the deeps translate to the abyss, the depths of water.  This is confirmation of the Genesis story:

Gen 1:2  The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. 

Gen 1:6  And God said, "Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters."
Gen 1:7  And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so. 

And what THAT means, is that there is a reality to the beginnings of our world that we don't understand.  Science doesn't begin to explain a world that existed before the Big Bang, that had a universe supernaturally created around it, instead of being a hunk of chance flotsam that got lucky.  To a scientist, it seems "logical" to assign it all to random chance.  BUT... one more thing for today about God.  This one, I had to dig into word meanings to make it make sense...

Pro 1:4  to give prudence to the simple, knowledge and discretion to the youth--

So why the coupling of knowledge and discretion?  To learn that, we learn that 'discretion' is a very complex word in the original... it means "to PLAN".  You cannot know God without knowing, everything has a plan.  Next time, we'll look for that plan as we seek Knowledge.