Wisdom Truck 41

 

Well, once again, God has overridden the plans of man.  You see, I was planning to do another 10 or so verse post this week, but by chance I was listening to a Charles Stanley talk to men in the ministry, and one thing he said hit home: A sermon is no good unless it has involved time on your knees, wrestling with how the passage applies to yourself.  Now, I don't pretend to be 'in the ministry' per se, and this is certainly not intended to be a sermon, but it IS intended to be something I need to wrestle with, and you have a hard time doing that with a ten-part focus.  So at least for this week, we draw our wisdom from one verse:

Pro 16:16  How much better to get wisdom than gold! To get understanding is to be chosen rather than silver. 

So if the Spirit (Wisdom) and Jesus (Understanding), are more precious than these, I had to do a hard look at God's preciousness to ME.  One place I was taken to was a sermon by CH Spurgeon on the preciousness of Jesus:

First, consider WHAT CHRIST IS TO HIS PEOPLE. We read in our own version, “To you therefore who believe he is precious”; yet the word is not an adjective, but a noun. Hence the 1881 English Revised Version reads the text, “For you therefore who believe is the preciousness.” His very self is preciousness itself. He is the essence, the substance, the sum of all preciousness. Every believer will subscribe to this; many things are more or less precious; but the Lord Jesus is preciousness itself, outsoaring all degrees of comparison.

I went through a lot of places and a lot of bunny holes trying to figure how to explain this.  I was taken back to our recently-visited Job, where he explains that you cannot so much as mine for Wisdom, gold and silver do not know where it/He is at. But what Job DID know:

Job 28:28  And He (God) said to man, ‘Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to turn away from evil is understanding.’” 

Back again to the Fear of the Lord.  So I looked at four cases I knew of 4 men who had been brought before God in Heaven itself, and came back to tell us about it (sort of); Isaiah, Ezekiel, Paul, and John.  I used grok to help me sort out the similarities I was seeing, and it came down to grok saying this:

Across these encounters, the consistent human response to the unveiled glory or presence of God (or the exalted Christ) is overwhelm—whether expressed as confession of uncleanness (Isaiah), prostration (Ezekiel and John), or reverent silence about the inexpressible (Paul).

Yep, overwhelm I get.  But I needed to tie it back to 'precious'.  So the next thing I asked grok for was the most important non-monetary uses for the two metals, and here it opens up much brighter.

GOLD

-Jewelry (also applies to silver).  I was just listening to a sermon where the pastor mentioned that, for whatever reason, they had opened Elizabeth Taylor's casket and took pictures.  The jewels, diamonds, were still there, slung around the rotted remains of the body.  They're still there, she's all gone, as Springsteen might paraphrase.  But the forgiveness that is draped over us, the grace we see in the Prodigal son story ( as well as the example of the prophecy of Zechariah about the high priest Joshua:

Zec 3:3  Now Joshua was standing before the angel, clothed with filthy garments. 

Zec 3:4  And the angel said to those who were standing before him, “Remove the filthy garments from him.” And to him he said, “Behold, I have taken your iniquity away from you, and I will clothe you with pure vestments.” )

Is TRUE adornment.

-Electronics (again, applies to both). Communications on almost every level we have them today depend on both gold and silver.  But to communicate with God, all we need do is come before Him with a sincere heart.

-Reflects infrared radiations, keeps sensitive tech safe from extremes.  Re-read Pslam 107, the greatest example of how God does this very thing for our souls.

-Biocompatible.  Able to be used in fillings and implants without rejection.  How much more biocompatible can you be, when God was born a human child and lived among us, True God and True man?

-Best of all was this description:  "Critical when performance can't be compromised." If we compromise on Christ, hell awaits.  It doesn't get more critical than that.

SILVER

In addition to elctronics and jewelry:

Solar cells- the photovoltaic silver compounds turn what would have been wasted ambient energy into storable, usable energy.  God goes a step better: He makes hopeless sinners into fruitful workers for the Kingdom.

Catalyst used to make a variety of items- A catalyst is added to a reaction to change its properties, and yet comes out itself unchanged.  Our lives don't change God- He changes us.

Strong Anti-bacterial- "With low toxicity to humans." Think of sin as bacteria. Jesus kills sin, leaves us whole.

And the description closed with a probably-unintended warning to those who reject Christ:

"(Their) specialized properties make substitution difficult."