Wise Up – Proverbs 30:18-33

Today's scripture reading is Proverbs thirty, verses eighteen to thirty-three.

Three things are too wonderful for me, four I do not understand: the way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a serpent on a rock, the way of a ship on the high seas, and the way of a man with a virgin.

This is the way of an adulteress.

She eats and wipes her mouth and says, I have done no wrong.

Under three things the earth trembles, under four it cannot bear up.

A slave when he becomes king, and a fool when he is filled with food, an unloved woman when she gets a husband, and a maidservant when she displaces her mistress.

Four things on earth are small, but they are exceedingly wise.

The ants are a people not strong, yet they provide their food in the summer.

The rock badgers are a people not mighty, yet they make their homes in the cliffs.

The locusts have no king, yet all of them march in rank.

The lizard you can take in your hands, yet it is in the king's palaces.

Three things are stately in their tread, four are stately in their stride.

The lion, which is mightiest among beasts, and does not turn back before any, the strutting rooster, the he-goat, and the king whose army is with him.

If you have been foolish, exalting yourself, or if you have been devising evil, put your hand on your mouth.

For pressing milk produces curds, and pressing the nose produces blood, and pressing anger produces strife.

So reads God's word.

We will finish off uh chapter 31 over the next uh two uh Sundays.

And uh if you want to follow along, uh if you've got a Bible, you can turn up Proverbs chapter 30.

Proverbs 30 · chapter mention

Or if you've just got a phone, you can actually just Google search Proverbs 30 ESV, and we're gonna pick it up uh down there at verse uh 18.

Uh the um the lessons that we uh that we learn that really stick, have you noticed that we don't tend to learn them in the classroom?

Uh that the lessons that we learn that really stick they come in the normal events of life.

Sometimes it's when you hold a newborn in your arms and you realize how out of control you really are.

Or it's when tragedy unexpectedly hits.

It's in those moments that we learn about ourselves, it's in those moments that we learn about our world, about others.

We maybe even think that we learned some lessons about God as well.

The pandemic uh broke in part the illusion that we were in control of our lives, and for a moment it felt like the world was trembling, to use Eger's language.

But it's a lesson that we needed to learn.

It's a lesson that's important not to forget that we fool ourselves thinking that we are the masters of our own fate.

Eger in this section of Proverbs wants us to see that there are lessons everywhere outside of the classroom, outside of the lecture hall.

There are lessons everywhere in the world, in where you work, in how you love, in the relationships that you find yourself in, even down to the ant and the rock badger.

I don't know what a rock badger is.

Badger that plays electric guitar, maybe.

Because we can go through life, can we?

Just kind of a day passes day, moment passes moment, we kind of just get swept along by it, and we're not really clearly perceiving all of the things that are there to glean, to grow in, to learn, the things that God would want to teach us if only we had eyes to see.

And one of the things that Igar is doing is he's saying, kind of stop just looking at the immediate thing in front of you in your day and uh and look up.

There are wisdom lessons out there in the world.

So often the urgent crowds out the important, doesn't it?

The tasks of our day make us miss the wisdom that God has woven into the fabric of our world.

And one of the things that Eager wants to do this morning is show us that rich tapestry and fabric that God has laid before us in the world.

So we step into a strange passage with some strange verses, a poetic and earthy chapter, where wisdom isn't found in the lecture hall, but on the anthill, in the lion's stride, and even in the silence of self-control.

What does Eger have to teach us?

First, if you're taking notes, is this wisdom seeks out wonder.

Wisdom seeks wonder.

When was the last time you were odd?

Sorry.

Not ODD.

Some of you are that perpetually.

Three things are too wonderful for me, four I do not understand.

You see that this kind of three-four thing.

It's like he's forgotten.

Oh no, actually, uh, the fourth one is kind of the most important one in the list when he's doing that three-four thing.

But he starts, three things are too wonderful for me, four I do not understand, the way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a serpent on a rock, ship on the high seas, and the way of a man with a virgin.

And he's saying that there's something imperceptibly wonderful about each of these things.

There's something that we should go wow at when we see each of these things, that they're hard to fully fathom and understand.

Now you might sit here and go, well, Eger, you know, whenever he lived, you know, if he was even a real person 3,000 years ago, had no idea about Benui's principle.

Uh, but if you got an aeronautical engineer, he could talk to you about kind of air pressures and the aerodynamics of an eagle's wing.

Or you could get a, I had to look this up, a herpetologist.

That's a person who studies snakes, apparently, otherwise known as a weirdo.

Um, who could talk about the intricate anatomy of the vertebrae and how kind of flexible it is and their musculature and how they're able to slither and move without legs.

You could get a you could get a seasoned sailor with a patch over his eye to tell you about uh you know the principles of ballast and how it weighs down a great ship in a storm.

You could get a urologist or an endocrinologist to educate you in the various hormones that are surging through your body when you fall in love.

Or you could uh meet with a psychologist who could explain why humans have needs for companionship and intimacy.

If you did that, would you have gained wisdom?

I think Eager's answer is no.

You might have gained more information, but have you become wise?

I think Eagar would say no, you haven't.

This is illustrated for us beautifully, and really, because we're in the cinema, I should have shown it.

Um this is illustrated beautifully in a scene in the movie Goodwill Hunting.

Goodwill Hunting, Matt Damon is the uh the kind of troubled, kind of young adult genius around Harvard, and he meets Robin Williams, who's a psychotherapist who's trying to kind of sort out Matt Damon's troubledness.

And Matt Damon has been through a whole bunch of psychotherapists and psychologists, and none of them want to touch him.

And Robin Williams is this kind of cynical, grizzled, older man, and there's this scene that they have on a on a park bench, and it beautifully encapsulates what I think Agar is driving at here.

So it's a longer quote, but stick with me.

Is Robin Williams, the psychologist speaking.

He says, So if I asked you about art, you'd probably give me the skinny on every art book ever written.

Michelangelo, you know him, right?

You talk about his life's work, political aspirations, him and the Pope, sexual orientation, the whole works, right?

But I bet you can't tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel.

You've no idea what it is to stand there and to look up at that magnificent ceiling.

And seen that.

If I asked you about women, you'd probably give me a syllabus of your personal favorites.

You may have even been laid a few times, but you can't tell me what it feels like to wake up next to a woman and feel truly happy.

You're a tough kid.

I could ask you about war, and you'd probably throw a s uh throw Shakespeare at me, right?

Once more onto the breach, dear friends.

But you've never been near one.

You've never held your best friend's head on your lap and watched him gasp his last breath, looking to you for help.

If I asked you about love, you'd probably quote me a sonnet.

But you've never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable.

Known someone who could level you with her eyes, feeling like God put an angel on earth just for you, who could rescue you from the depths of hell.

You wouldn't know what it was like to be her angel, and to have that love for her, and to be there forever, through anything, through cancer.

You wouldn't know about sleeping, sitting in a hospital room for two months, holding her hand, because the doctors could see in your eyes that the words visiting hours don't apply to you.

You don't know about real loss.

Because that only occurs when you love something when more than you love yourself.

And I doubt that you've ever dared to know and love anybody that much.

That's Eger's point.

There's wisdom to be found when we don't intellectualize everything.

Of standing staring high into the sky and seeing the eagle swirl overhead and be captivated by the effortlessness of its movement, and to allow that sight to remind you of your own smallness, your own finitude.

There's wisdom in that.

To see a ship disappear below the level of the horizon and to come to the realization that not one of us holds the full span of the horizon in our view, that we are limited in our perspective.

There is wisdom in that.

We should be humbled by that.

Or to fall in love, and to learn, maybe even the hard way, the lessons of self-sacrifice, of humility, of service.

Wisdom is gained when we realize that we don't master the world around us.

We're supposed to be overtaken by wonder every now and again.

Because it draws us out of ourselves, it draws our eyes heavenward, so that we might contemplate the infinite and the eternal.

Or Agar, maybe he's French, like the cheese.

And he slams the brake on us and gives us verse 20.

In the way of the adulteress, she eats her, uh she eats and wipes her mouth and says, I've done nothing wrong.

Oh, hold on a second, Igor.

However, you say your name.

What's going on here?

Why is he doing this?

But do you see how it fits?

Igor's talking about incomprehensible things.

And one of the things that he's saying in the negative is that the human ability to self-deceive, to self-justify, is almost incomprehensible.

I had a good friend at uh a theological college.

Uh, he was above me uh in years, well respected within uh the community of the college.

And it was discovered after he left theological college that he'd been having an affair for years.

He left his wife in ministry not long after they had their first child.

And all of us who knew him were slackjawed with disbelief.

We couldn't believe it.

We thought we knew this, we thought actually he was the best of us.

We could not believe it.

Egar would say to us, friends, you have not been wise.

Do not be unwise about the human ability to deceive ourselves.

Our capacity to explain away our behavior, to rationalize an excuse, to push it down and just to pretend that it didn't happen.

It's immense, Eger says.

It's as much as just wipe your mouth and move on with your day.

The wise person recognizes that tendency in ourselves.

That's why Jared led us in a moment of confession where we self-reflect because we would actually go through lots of our life deceiving ourselves, telling ourselves lies, not wanting to interact with the darker parts of ourselves.

One of the things that Egar encourages us to do is to think actually, you can fool yourself.

You can believe those lies.

But this is why Jesus came.

Because what the human being needs is not just more guidance on how to live better.

We actually need transformation at the level of the heart.

We need to recognize that our heart needs to be changed.

It's one of the things that Christians celebrate about the good news of Jesus, that He changes us from the inside out.

Secondly, and I'll that's a longer point.

They actually get shorter as we go.

Uh, secondly, wisdom, wisdom's a bit of a realist.

Verses 21 to 23.

Uh pick it up with me.

Let me remind you of them.

Under three things the earth trembles, under four it cannot bear up.

A slave when he becomes king, and a fool when he is filled with food, an unloved woman when she gets a husband, and a maidservant when she displaces her mistress.

Folks, these voices, these verses are hard.

I banged my head off these verses this week.

Because what it seems to be saying is that Egar just he just loves hierarchy, just loves structure and order, and that makes us all kind of a little bit uncomfortable, doesn't it?

But I actually think that there's something else going on.

In part it's that wisdom understands what really changes people, that that a change of status doesn't change a person internally, that a change of status doesn't change a person's character.

It doesn't mean that a person is suddenly wise.

A fool can be full of food and still a fool.

Like those countless people who win the lottery, and after five years, all of the money is gone because they've squandered it away.

Their status was changed, they've gone to the ultra-wealthy.

And yet their character was not changed.

The slave who becomes king, isn't that a great fairy story?

Why why is Agar taking a pot shot at like Cinderella?

What did she ever do to you, Egar?

It sounds like a great story, a great redemption arc, the slave becomes the king.

To say nothing of Jesus, we'll get to him in a second.

But think about it this way.

Have you ever had a boss who was promoted to the level of manager, but who couldn't really manage?

I hear some laughter.

If you're not laughing, it might be ah.

They're brilliant as colleagues, brilliant team members, just the best.

Terrible managers.

Is that because they're bad people?

No.

But they were given power without preparedness.

That's what Eger's kind of getting at.

That's what he's criticizing.

When the slave becomes the king, that's not always a great thing.

It's a warning to us that a change of status doesn't necessarily mean that we are prepared or suited for that change.

And sometimes there's actually wisdom in knowing our own gifting, disposition, limitations, and not being beguiled by the pay bump.

Because with it comes more responsibility, and perhaps more than you are willing or able to bear.

The unloved woman that finds a husband.

Why is Egar, why is Hagar got his knives out for her?

Isn't this a wonderful thing?

That also seems harsh, doesn't it?

But the unloved here in Unloved Woman seems to be more negative.

Is a a contemptible person who's been made bitter, who is without virtue, suddenly finding themselves in a status where they can begin to lord it over others.

And you're saying, that's not a good thing.

It's one of the things that we talk about in kind of premarital counseling, is that in some in some senses, when you get married, it changes everything, right?

It's a completely different context of life.

But you're the same person that walked down the aisle, that walked back up it.

One of the best bits of marriage advice I was ever given is as now, so then.

The way you are now, don't just think that it's gonna sudden suddenly be transformed as soon as you get married.

As now, so then I think that's kind of what Hegar is getting at.

Why?

Because there is a there's a kind of moral shape to the world that God has made.

It ought to be that those who are diligent and wise, that they're the ones that are full of food, that the more deserving and wise become kings and rulers, that the most virtuous become the most loved.

But this is not always how the world works, is it?

This is why alongside the book of Proverbs, what we actually need is the book of Ecclesiastes.

Book of Proverbs tells us, here's how the world kind of ought to work.

And Ecclesiastes comes along and says, and it very rarely does, it doesn't always work this way.

And how do you interact with that as followers of Jesus?

Rich people leave their inheritance to foolish children who squander it all.

The wisest are left in the dust while fools are elevated to political significance.

Have you noticed?

Such is a life in a world that actually wants to cut against the grain that God has made, that actually doesn't want to live within the moral fabric that he has woven for his world.

So wisdom, therefore, might mean knowing your limitations, where God has best placed us, our own capacity.

But it might also mean understanding how the world actually is and not just how we want it to be.

Not everyone is nice, not everyone is virtuous, not everyone is altruistic.

And just because somebody occupies a certain status does not mean that they have the virtue to accompany it.

But the Christian knows that the opposite is also true.

The kings can be born in stables and wear crowns made of thorns.

That the poor man in his death can be buried in a rich tomb.

And that the one who lies cold for three days is ultimately exalted to the highest throne.

And when the uh when the non-Christians in Greece first heard the gospel, one of the things that they said of the Christians is, they're turning the world upside down.

And maybe actually when you became a Christian, one of the things it felt like was that your life got turned upside down.

Maybe one of the things that holds you back from considering Jesus is that you don't want your world to be turned upside down.

But what Eger is pointing out here is that oftentimes our world has been upside down and we haven't even realized it.

We've been walking on our heads.

And what the gospel does is it brings the world the right way up.

Wisdom is a realist.

It understands how the world works.

Third, wisdom sees beyond the swagger.

Now we get into uh now we get into David Attenborough territory, okay?

We're we're with the we're with the ants and the rock badgers and the and the the lions and the the he-goats and all those things.

And I love I love nature documentaries.

There's a whole one about plants at the minute, uh, which sounds desperately boring, but it's not because it focuses on the little things that live on the plants, and I love that.

Okay, love the tiny little spiders, little creepy things.

Uh, that's a little insight into me.

Maybe you don't get that, that's fine.

Uh, there's a there's a fantastic uh caterpillar of the blue moth that I was watching the other week.

Do you know what it does?

It mimics a queen ant.

It sends out the signals to the other ant saying, I'm your queen.

Uh and they're like, what's she doing out here, just in the random undergrowth?

And so they drag this caterpillar back to the back to the nest, and it grows and it grows and it grows while giving off the scent that I'm the queen, and they feed it all the time until it turns into a moth.

Amazing.

I have no spiritual point to that.

I just thought it was cool.

I thought I'd tell you.

And being a Christian's a little bit like that.

No, no, no.

So much ingenuity, so much order.

The question there is, does it point anything?

Does it reflect anything?

David Attenborough goes, no, it's just evolutionary.

Right?

Yeah.

But God has woven wisdom into the fabric of his world.

And he paints these little portraits, these tiny little portraits, for us to learn from.

Things that are great and things that are small.

And the question is: do you have the wit to see it?

Do you learn the lesson of the end and the wisdom of preparedness?

That though our strength might be small and our resources limited, the preparedness and delay gratification that there's wisdom to be sought there.

The rock badger, the hyrax.

Okay, okay.

Small, furry, vulnerable.

And it knows its weakness.

It's know it knows its vulnerability.

And so where does he make its home?

In a rock, there's some wisdom there.

If I'm small, if I'm vulnerable, I need a sure refuge.

If I know my weakness, if I know my limitations, I need to hide myself in something strong.

There might be wisdom there.

The locust.

The value of unity over grasping at power, of moving together towards a vision rather than moving over one another, trying to become the leader, trying to succeed.

Or the lizard that while he has no heirs, no graces, no pretensions, that with subtlety and quiet confidence, he or she finds herself in the grandest of places.

The lizard doesn't shout about the things that he or she can do.

And yet, in wisdom, it finds itself in the palaces.

There's some wisdom there.

Eva then looks at these greater beasts: the lion, the rooster, the he-goat, and the king.

And maybe, maybe, I thought really until Friday that he was also showing us the beauty of kind of stately dignity.

And so where I was going to go was a kind of, you know, maybe you could be the ant, and maybe you could be the lion, and you know, uh, we'll all get masks, right?

Uh, but actually, I think that the second, the greater animals are in contrast to the to the lowly ones.

Because I think Eger's whole point is you need, if you're gonna grow in wisdom, you need to humble yourself to see the lessons that God's teaching you.

And these are pride animals.

And so I think that they're a contrast.

I think Eger would rather that you were a rock badger than a he goat.

Okay, if you're taking notes, that's your kind of that's your motivation for this week.

Be a rock badger, not a he-goat, right?

Um, because these are stately things.

They have swagger and command.

They feel confident.

More confident than a rock badger, more confident than a locust.

A king would feel great confidence at the head of a mighty army.

But far weaker as just one of the men in the ranks.

It's a myrrh.

Yeah, there's a prideful swagger to the lion, a cocky gate to the rooster and to the he-goat.

They can think that they're invincible.

Because of this, many an army has been defeated.

So Eager draws our gaze down, right down, as low as he can go, and says there's wisdom there.

Can you see it?

Will you learn from it?

Finally.

Wisdom knows when to shut up.

Let's pray.

I'll maybe just do a couple of minutes more, but wouldn't that be fantastic?

Because that really is the point.

Wisdom knows when to shut up.

And so I don't want to just pretend like I don't.

Uh, but we're near, we are really nearly there.

It's the last two verses.

If you've been foolish, exalting yourself, if you've been devising evil, do what?

Put your hand to your mouth.

For pressing milk produces curds, pressing the nose produces blood, pressing anger produces strife.

Wisdom knows when to stop, when to back off, when to hold its tongue.

You ever have a conversation with somebody where uh they probably have it with you, they come up to you and they say, um, you okay?

Yeah, I'm fine.

A couple minutes later, like, are you sure you're okay?

Like, you don't you don't seem okay?

Yeah, no, no, I'm I'm fine.

Thanks.

A couple of minutes later.

I don't think that you're okay.

You're like, well, I'm not now.

Just shut up about it.

I'm fine.

Thank you.

Or the proud person who can't let something go.

Are you the kind of person that has to have the last word?

He's like a dog with a bone when it comes to a fight.

If that's you, brother, sister, friend, put your hand over your mouth.

If you like to poison the well against others, do you do that?

After meetings?

After class?

Can you believe that she said?

Can you believe that he did that in there?

Can you go around?

I just look what could you pray for?

You know, if it's a bit of spiritual veneer on it.

Put your hand to your mouth.

Why?

Because if you keep on churning milk, it turns to butter.

And if you keep on stirring a situation, it will come to strife.

Wisdom isn't just wise with its words, wisdom is wise with its silences.

When Paul describes the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives in Galatians, he talks about the fruit of the Holy Spirit.

What are two of them?

Patience and self-control.

God knows that we by nature don't like to put our hands to our mouth because we like to self-justify.

We like to vindicate ourselves.

There's wisdom in knowing when not to do that.

There's wisdom in knowing that you can have confidence because of who God has made you to be and who God has redeemed you to be in Jesus.

And to have that secure identity in him, knowing that he has forgiven you, that he loves you, that he's adopted you into his family, that means you don't need to fight every battle.

That means you don't need to be vindicated in the here and now.

Because there is a day when Jesus is returning and all of this will come out in the wash.

All of your innocence, if you have been wronged, sinned against, it will be seen.

There's value in knowing and trusting that sometimes.

None of that's easy.

So we need the Spirit's help.

The Spirit assures us of who we are, and he grows self-control, patience, as well as joy, even as we carry that burden.

There's wisdom in knowing when to fight and when to speak up and when to hold our tongues.

I don't know what you're all going through this week, what you're moving into, what's going on right now.

But are there lessons?

Does God want to grow you in wisdom?

None of the things that he leads us through are purposeless.

Ask him, what are you teaching me?

Let me see your fingerprints on this.

And know that they're from you.

Even though it's hard, use it.

Grow me in it.

Give me that joy of the Holy Spirit through it.

Have you looked at the world and seen its intricacies and its order?

Even its shock and grief.

When we feel like the world has gone wrong, all of it points to him.

All of it points to Christ, the rock in whom we who are needy and weak take refuge.

The mighty lion.

He does not swagger because he is also the slain lamb.

The king who came not at the head of armies, but who stooped low in humility.

Do you know who he is?

He's the redeemer of fools.

He's the savior of sinners.

He's the one who doesn't just change our status, though wonderfully he does do that.

He's the one who changes our hearts.

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