The Wisdom of God E-Book

Nancy Guthrie

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Serie: Seeing Jesus in the Old Testament
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 386

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

This 10-week study of Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon mines the Wisdom Literature not only for wise principles for living, but also for the wise person these books point to through their drama, poetry, proverb, and song. In her accessible and authentic style, Nancy Guthrie focuses on seeing Jesus in the Old Testament instead of emphasizing works-based moralism. She presents clear commentary and contemporary application of gospel truths, speaking directly to issues such as repentance, submission, happiness, and sexuality. Each weekly lesson includes questions for personal study, a contemporary teaching chapter that emphasizes how the passage fits into the bigger story of redemptive history, a brief section on how the passage uniquely points to what is yet to come at the consummation of Christ's kingdom, and a leader's guide for group discussion.

Leseprobe

“In an age where too many ‘Bible’ studies fail to open the Bible—or, if opened, fail to touch on the actual themes in the text itself—Nancy Guthrie immerses us in the wisdom of the Word. How refreshing! With her keen observations, penetrating applications, and thoughtful, engaging questions, Nancy Guthrie’s latest study on the Old Testament Wisdom Books and the Psalms gets us to see and smell, taste and touch, and understand and apply the everyday wisdom of Christ—our creator and crucified Lord.”

Douglas O’Donnell, Senior Pastor, New Covenant Church, Naperville, Illinois; author, The Beginning and End of Wisdom

“In this study guide, Nancy Guthrie shows how the Old Testament Wisdom Books and the Psalms provide practical life lessons for Christians and stand as pointers to the supreme wisdom of God in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. With great skill she leads the reader to the heart of each book being studied and demonstrates its place in Scripture as a testimony to Christ. Christian readers are encouraged to read the Old Testament Wisdom Literature in light of the relationship we have with Christ, who is the power and wisdom of God.”

Graeme Goldsworthy, Visiting Lecturer in Hermeneutics, Moore Theological College

~Praise for the Series~

“The Bible is a book about Jesus. The disciples walking to Emmaus after the resurrection discovered this as Christ himself walked along with them and explained how the Old Testament pointed to the Savior. This important series by Nancy Guthrie spotlights how Jesus can be seen throughout the Old Testament. I recommend the entire series to you.”

Alistair Begg, Senior Pastor, Parkside Church, Chagrin Falls, Ohio

“It’s not hyperbole to say, ‘It’s about time.’ While there are good books out there telling pastors how to preach Christ from all the Scriptures, there have been very few Bible studies for laypeople—especially for women—along these lines. Nancy Guthrie does an amazing job of helping us to fit the pieces of the biblical puzzle together, with Christ at the center.”

Michael S. Horton, J. Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics, Westminster Seminary California

“Nancy takes us by the hand and the heart on an exegetical excursion to see Christ in the Old Testament. The beauty of Guthrie’s writing is that you are certain she has met him there first.”

Jean F. Larroux, Senior Pastor, Southwood Presbyterian Church, PCA, Huntsville, Alabama

“There are many great Christian books, but not many great Bible studies. Nancy is a master of getting the Word of God into the mouths, hearts, and lives of her students. I cannot wait to share these studies with my people.”

Donna Dobbs, Christian Education Director, First Presbyterian Church, Jackson, Mississippi

The Wisdom of God

Other books in the Seeing Jesus in the Old Testament series:

The Promised One

The Wisdom of God: Seeing Jesus in the Psalms and Wisdom Books

© 2012 by Nancy Guthrie

Published by Crossway                  1300 Crescent Street                  Wheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law.

Cover design: Amy Bristow

Cover image: The Golden Violin, c.1898 (oil on canvas)                        by Maxwell Ashby Armfield (1882–1972)                      Private Collection / The Bridgeman Art Library

First printing 2012

Printed in the United States of America

Unless otherwise indicated, scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated in whole or in part into any other language.

Scripture quotations marked MESSAGE are from The Message. Copyright © by Eugene H. Peterson 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.

Scripture references marked NIV are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture references marked NLT are from The Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Ill., 60189. All rights reserved.

All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the author.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-2632-9 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-2633-6 Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-2634-3 ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-2635-0

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Guthrie, Nancy.

The wisdom of God : seeing Jesus in the Psalms and wisdom books / Nancy Guthrie

p. cm. (Seeing Jesus in the Old Testament)

ISBN 978-1-4335-2632-9 (tp)

ISBN-10: 1-4335-2659-X

1. Bible O.T. Psalms—Textbooks. 2. Bible. O.T. Psalms—Criticism, interpretation, etc. 3. Wisdom literature—Textbooks. 4. Wisdom literature—Criticism, interpretation, etc. 5. Jesus Christ—Biblical teaching. I. Title. BS1456.G88    2012 223'.0607—dc23                                                         2011025567

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

To my wise husband of twenty-five years and counting, David Guthrie.

My beloved is mine, and I am his.

—Song of Solomon 2:16

Contents

Before We Get Started: A Note from Nancy

Week 1: The Wisdom Hidden in the Wisdom Books

Teaching Chapter: What We Need Most to Know

Looking Forward

Discussion Guide

Week 2: Job

Personal Bible Study

Teaching Chapter: No Fair

Looking Forward

Discussion Guide

Week 3: Psalms: The Songs of Jesus

Personal Bible Study

Teaching Chapter: I Can’t Stop This Feelin’

Looking Forward

Discussion Guide

Week 4: Blessing and Perishing in the Psalms

Personal Bible Study

Teaching Chapter: Secure in the Storm

Looking Forward

Discussion Guide

Week 5: The Royal Psalms

Personal Bible Study

Teaching Chapter: The Royal Wedding

Looking Forward

Discussion Guide

Week 6: Repentance in the Psalms

Personal Bible Study

Teaching Chapter: Wash Me

Looking Forward

Discussion Guide

Week 7: The Suffering and Glory of Messiah in the Psalms

Personal Bible Study

Teaching Chapter: Who Is This Song About?

Looking Forward

Discussion Guide

Week 8: Proverbs

Personal Bible Study

Teaching Chapter: Wisdom Calling

Looking Forward

Discussion Guide

Week 9: Ecclesiastes

Personal Bible Study

Teaching Chapter: What Really Matters

Looking Forward

Discussion Guide

Week 10: Song of Solomon

Personal Bible Study

Teaching Chapter: Kiss Me

Looking Forward

Discussion Guide

Bibliography

Notes

Before We Get Started

A Note from Nancy

I like to think of myself as smart; I know stuff. In fact, it seems as good a time as any to make it known that I was robbed of being my high school class valedictorian by the A- I got in driver’s education during the summer before my sophomore year. But I’m not bitter. (Okay, maybe a little.) Of course there are some things I find it convenient not to know—like how to work my husband’s espresso machine. And there are some things I try to understand that make me feel like I have rocks for brains—like how the stock market works or what the mechanic tried to explain to me about the problem with my car.

But there is something I want far more than to be smart. And that is to be wise. And I don’t want to settle for what the world labels as wisdom. I want to have the wisdom that comes only from being given the gift of wisdom that God generously gives to his own. He has given us the entire Old and New Testaments that we might grow in wisdom and knowledge. But I’m also not talking about just knowing more about the Bible. Because we can have all the right Sunday school answers and still not be truly wise.

What I want, and what I believe you must want if you have opened up this book to do this study, is to have the wisdom of God that is ours only through a relationship with the incarnation of the wisdom of God, Jesus Christ. And the way we come to know him in a more intimate and transforming way is to listen to him speak to us and to chew on what he has to say, allowing it to work its way through our thinking and our emotions and our will so that it comes out in our day-to-day lives as wisdom.

So welcome to The Wisdom of God: Seeing Jesus in the Psalms and Wisdom Books. I’m so glad you have committed to set time aside to look into God’s Word along with me through this book. Paul wrote to Timothy, “From childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 3:15). He was saying that the Old Testament was able to make Timothy wise so that he could see and embrace Jesus Christ. And as we open up Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon, that is what we want—to be made “wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” Again and again Jesus himself made it clear that we can search the Old Testament Scriptures and find him there. This study is uniquely designed to help you to look into the wonder of the wisdom literature of the Old Testament and see how it prepares us for and points us toward Christ.

There are three essential parts to this study. The first is the personal time you will spend reading your Bible, seeking to strengthen your grip on its truths as you work your way through the questions provided in the Personal Bible Study section of each week’s lesson. This will be the easiest part to skip. But nothing is more important than reading and studying God’s Word expecting that he will meet you as you do.

As you work on the Personal Bible Study, don’t become frustrated if you can’t come up with an answer to every question or if you’re not sure what the question is getting at. I am hoping that the questions will get you into the passage and get you thinking it through in a fresh way. The goal is not necessarily to record all of the “right” answers but to interact with the passage and grow in your understanding. Certainly some answers to your lingering questions will become clearer as you read the Teaching Chapter and as you discuss the passage with your group.

The second part of each lesson is the Teaching Chapter, in which I seek to explain and apply the passage we are studying. At the end of each Teaching Chapter is a short piece called “Looking Forward” that will turn your attention to how what we’ve just studied in that part of the wisdom literature gives us insight into what is still to come when Christ returns. The wisdom of God helps us understand not just the history of what God has done to glorify himself through redemption but what he is doing now and what is still to come when his wise plan comes to its glorious conclusion, or we might say, its “glorious new beginning,” in the new heaven and the new earth.

The third part of each week’s lesson is the time you spend with your group sharing your lives together and discussing what you’ve learned and what you’re still trying to understand and apply. A discussion guide is included at the end of each week’s lesson. You may want to follow it exactly, working through each question as written. Or you may just want to use the guide as an idea starter for your discussion.

Each aspect is important—laying the foundation, building on it, and sealing it in. We all have different learning styles, so one aspect of the study will likely have more impact on you than another, but all three together will help you to truly “own” the truths in this study so that they can become a part of you as you seek to know your covenant God in deeper ways.

I’ve put the sections of this study together in a way that offers flexibility for how you can use it and flexibility in how you can schedule your time working through it. If you are going to use it for a ten-week group study, you will want to read the Teaching Chapter in Week 1, “The Wisdom Hidden in the Wisdom Books,” before the first meeting. (There is no Personal Bible Study section for the first week.) From then on, each week participants will want to come to the group time having completed the Personal Bible Study section of the next week’s lesson as well as having read the Teaching Chapter. You may want to put a star beside questions in the Personal Bible Study and underline key passages in the chapter that you want to be sure to bring up in the discussion. During your time together each week you will use the Discussion Guide to talk through the big ideas of the week’s lesson.

There is a great deal of material here, and you may want to take your time with it, giving more time to discuss its foundational truths, allowing it to sink in. To expand the study over twenty weeks, you would break each Week into two parts, spending one week on the Personal Bible Study section—either doing it on your own and discussing your answers when you meet, or actually working through the questions together when you meet. Then, you would ask group members to read the chapter on their own over the next week and use the discussion guide to discuss the big ideas of the lesson the following week.

If you are leading a group study, we would like to provide you with some resources that have been developed specifically for this study. We hope that these resources will increase your confidence in leading the group. To request those helps, go to http://www.SeeingJesusintheOldTestament.com.

I am praying that as you see the Wisdom of God—Jesus himself—in a fresh way through this study over the coming weeks, he will “make you wise for salvation” and that you will walk through this life and one day into his presence as one who is truly wise.

—Nancy Guthrie

Teaching Chapter

What We Need Most to Know

When someone speaking to me begins a sentence with “God told me,” I have to admit that it sends up a red flag for me, especially if it is not followed by a verse of Scripture. Perhaps I should think that the person saying it is so incredibly spiritual and sensitive that he has an ongoing conversation with God in which God speaks to him clearly and directly, giving him specific extrabiblical instructions about what to do and where to go. Certainly, many people today see this as the way we should expect to receive guidance from God if we are in intimate relationship with him.

A while ago, a friend of mine gave me a copy of a new book by an author who has had multiple books on the best-seller list, and because I’ve read other books by this author that I found tremendously insightful, I looked forward to reading it. The book’s premise is that a conversational relationship with God is not only available but meant to be normative, and that if you are not hearing God speak to you in this way, something is wrong with your spiritual life. The author encouraged his readers to still themselves in a posture of surrender and begin by asking the Lord questions about small matters that are not addressed in Scripture, offering examples from his own experience throughout the book: asking God if he should paint the bathroom, where he could find his missing watch, and what dogs do after they die.

Certainly having a relationship with God in which you hear him answer your questions and tell you clearly what to do in every aspect of life is very appealing. We all want wisdom for making decisions that will be pleasing to God.

As I continued to read the book, I came to an account of a horse-riding accident. The author writes that he thinks he remembered to ask God about riding the horse but realizes he did not ask where he should ride.

What do you think? Is this really the normative way for the Christian to go about life in this world—listening for a word from God about every choice and decision we have in front of us? Should I pray about which socks to wear today or what to make for dinner tonight and wait to move forward until I hear him speak to me inside my head?

At the risk that you will deem me thoroughly unspiritual and disconnected from God and put this book down before we barely get started, I have to tell you that I have never heard God speak to me in this way.1 This is not to say that God never speaks to believers today in this way.2 And it is not to say that I haven’t heard the voice of God clearly in my life. I could talk with you for hours about specific ways God has spoken to me as I have read, studied, and heard his Word preached and taught. He has spoken to me clear words of conviction, instruction, warning, encouragement, assurance, comfort, promise, and guidance regarding his will for my life in powerful ways so that I knew he was speaking directly to my heart and my circumstances. But I would never claim to say authoritatively that God told me something that I cannot find in the Bible.

While the super-spiritual may expect to hear a direct word from God internally or externally through their circumstances so that they will know what to do and what is right, on the opposite spectrum, most of our culture assumes that God has nothing relevant to say to them about how they live and the choices they make. While they might consult the latest self-help book on the best-seller list, or tune in to the latest self-help guru, or look around at the larger culture to absorb its values and moral sense of right and wrong, seeking out God’s perspective on the matter would never occur to them. Most people in this world live their lives and make their decisions with little or no thought of God.

So how about you? Some decisions are quite easy to make—especially concerning those matters on which God has clearly spoken. Certainly we don’t have to pray about whether to sleep with someone we are not married to. We have clear instructions on that. We don’t have to expect to hear a word from God about whether we should forgive someone who has hurt us. We know clearly what we should do; we just don’t want to do it. What we struggle with are the things that are not directly addressed in Scripture. Is this the person I should marry? Is this the job I should take? Should I watch this television program? Which way should I vote in this election?

These are the things for which we need wisdom. So how do we get that wisdom? Should we expect to hear a direct word from God on these matters? And, if so, how do we know it is his voice we are hearing? Are we to make those decisions on the basis of a vague and subjective feeling about the Lord’s will in the matter? Are we to try on one option to see if we “have a peace about it”?

Or can we make decisions in these matters freely and consciously on the basis of what the Scriptures say and the principles they contain? Is it possible that God has given us a source of wisdom that is grounded in who he is and his purposes in the world that will give us the guidance we need to make wise decisions in all matters of life in this world?

Paul writes that there is “a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory” (1 Cor. 2:7). So perhaps in our efforts to find answers to these questions, we need to start at the beginning, or maybe even before the beginning, when, in perfect wisdom, God’s plans for his creation took shape.

The Secret Wisdom Hidden

God’s revelation of himself and of his plans for this world is progressive. He began revealing his character and his plan in the creation of the world when he made humanity in his own image and put them in charge of the world he created. Adam and Eve’s wisdom for navigating life in the perfect environment of Eden came from what God had told them and what they discovered through their own senses, interpreted in light of what God had told them. The big question was whether they would accept and obey God’s clearly revealed wisdom by not eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Then the Serpent came along and implanted in Eve’s mind the suggestion that God was withholding something from them. She looked at God’s prohibition and thought, “The tree was to be desired to make one wise” (Gen. 3:6). This was the first time a human being disobeyed God, thinking she knew better than God, but it certainly wasn’t the last.

In fact, as a result of Adam and Eve’s sin, and the curse that came upon all of creation because of it, all of us are born with a resistance to the wisdom that comes from God. But God, in his grace, has not been content to leave us living in darkness and alienation. God, over history, has continued to reveal himself. God called a people to himself and spoke to them through dreams, visions, and the prophetic word and gave them his covenant and his law. God gave his people story and symbols and shadows to prepare them to understand his wise plan, but it was not yet explicitly clear. Faith for God’s people in the Old Testament era meant placing their hopes in God’s promises, promises that had an element of mystery to them as to when and how they would come about (1 Pet. 1:10–12). And to guide them in living by faith as they waited for God to bring about more of his plan, God gave his people the Wisdom Literature we find in the Old Testament.

Each of the five books we’ll study together deals with how to live in wisdom. They provide guidance for how to live in this world as one who belongs to God. Job shows how a wise person lives in a world in which the seemingly innocent suffer. Psalms provides the wise person with praise and prayers and laments for expressing his heart and mind to his God. Proverbs offers practical daily advice for living as a wise person in matters of relationship and work in the real world. Ecclesiastes reveals that living wisely requires not just living under the sun but under the rule of God and in the fear of God. And Song of Solomon sings a song of wisdom in regard to sexual desire and delight.

On one hand the Wisdom Books help us “to make sense of our world, and on the other hand [they] strengthen our trust in God in the face of things we cannot make sense of.”3 They address the tensions of living in a world marked by sin as we anticipate full redemption.

But as good and true as this revelation of wisdom from God was, more was needed. Just as the law served not only to provide instruction but also to reveal people’s utter inability to live up to the law, so did Old Testament Wisdom Literature provide needed guidance for living while also revealing the people’s inability to live in perfect wisdom. Just as the law revealed the need for One who would follow the law perfectly in their place, so the Wisdom Literature exposed the need for One who would live in perfect wisdom in their place.

The wisest person of their day was King Solomon, who ruled Israel in great wisdom, but in many ways he turned against God’s wisdom and pursued his own passions. Clearly someone wiser than Solomon was needed.

The Secret Wisdom Disclosed

After centuries of waiting, the day finally came when God sent exactly what was needed. Jesus stood in the midst of the wisdom teachers of his day—the scribes and Pharisees—and told them, “Something greater than Solomon is here” (Matt. 12:42; Luke 11:31). Indeed, standing there among them was wisdom incarnate.

In Jesus we were given the wisdom of God both mediated to us as a gift and lived out before us in perfection.

In Jesus we were given the wisdom of God both mediated to us as a gift and lived out before us in perfection. They called Jesus “Teacher,” and in truth, he was a great wisdom teacher. Throughout the Gospel narratives Jesus is portrayed as the wise man who, in the form and content of his sayings, followed the traditions of Israel’s wisdom teachers.3 The people who heard him teach recognized that he was endowed with insight and authority that none of their other teachers had. Matthew writes that “coming to his hometown he taught them in their synagogue, so that they were astonished, and said, ‘Where did this man get this wisdom and these mighty works?’” (Matt. 13:54).

Jesus’s most characteristic form of teaching was the parable. Matthew explains in his Gospel that “this was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet: ‘I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter what has been hidden since the foundation of the world” (Matt. 13:35). What was it Jesus uttered that had been hidden since the foundation of the world? It was what he said about himself, still in a somewhat hidden way through parables. The treasure hidden in a field that is worth selling everything to own? It’s Jesus (Matt. 13:44). The vineyard owner’s son who is killed by the evil tenants? That’s Jesus (Matt. 20:33–41). The rock upon which a house and a life can be built so that it can withstand the storms that inevitably come? Jesus is that rock (Matt. 7:24). What was the “secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory” (1 Cor. 2:7)? It is Jesus.

But the supreme revelation and demonstration of God’s hidden wisdom was much more than Jesus’s teaching on the hillside or in the synagogue. Most profoundly, it was Jesus hanging on a cross.

God’s secret wisdom that was hidden is his plan to accomplish the salvation of sinners and the restoration of the perfect environment and perfect relationship he intends to share with them. That could not be accomplished merely through Jesus’s living life before us so that we could learn from him and follow his example. This restored relationship could come only through his death in our place and his resurrection as the firstfruits of all who believe (1 Cor. 15:20). God’s secret plan was not just sending Jesus and setting him up as the wisest of all teachers but in offering him up as a sacrifice for sin and raising him up victorious over death.

In your search for wisdom that is practical and pivotal, God wants to lead you to the foot of Christ’s cross. Perhaps that makes no sense to you. Perhaps you cannot see how a man hanging on a cross in the ancient world has anything to do with your needs and concerns today in our modern world. Most people saw the cross of Christ that way in his day too. Paul wrote: “For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles” (1 Cor. 1:22–23).

To see its vast wisdom, the cross must be seen in context of God’s grand plan for all things, determined before the world was made, accomplished in human history, and coming to its culmination in eternity future. Perhaps you think your life is all about you and your needs and your thoughts and your questions in the here and now. My friend, you are part of a much grander story than just your little life. And the more you see your life in the context of this much bigger story, this much grander plan, the wiser you become as you live it.

The Jews of Jesus’s day expected the long-awaited Messiah to come in glory and begin his reign with uncontested power, not to die like a common criminal. Similarly, the Greeks of Jesus’s day who exalted reason and public philosophy considered a crucified messiah as dangerous stupidity. Yet it was God’s intention that what seemed to them to be utter foolishness would put his unfathomable wisdom on display most profoundly.4

The devastating turn of events that put Christ on the cross was not God’s plan gone terribly wrong but the fulfillment of it (see Acts 2:23–24). Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 1:23–24 that Christ crucified is “the power of God and the wisdom of God.” In fact, Paul, a very educated man, told the Corinthians that he “decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2). Paul was not saying that he intended to devote himself to blissful ignorance about anything other than the cross. He was saying that everything he did and everything he thought and taught became centered on this ultimate wisdom: the cross of Christ.

Can you imagine what it would mean for you, like Paul, to put Christ crucified at the center of your life so that everything else revolves around it and emanates from it? How would it impact your Facebook status, your credit card bill, your vacation plans, your marriage or singleness, your parenting, your professional pursuits, your political involvement? Does not embracing this wisdom impact and inform every aspect of our ordinary lives?

Surely this is how the hidden wisdom of God takes root in our lives and provides us the guidance we long for—it becomes the functional center of our lives. The gospel is not simply a story; it is a power, so that when the gospel is loved and applied and enjoyed, this power goes to work on the interior of our lives, making us wise.

The Image We Are to Be Conformed To

Do you want to know God’s will for your life? It is not a secret God expects you to figure out on your own or wait to hear whispered in your ear. The Bible clearly reveals God’s will for us. It is that we are “to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Rom. 8:29). God wants you to walk and talk and think and live like Jesus.

One way to see how Jesus walked and talked and lived is to read the Gospels. Yet long before Jesus walked this earth, God provided his people with foreshadows of Jesus throughout the Old Testament. Over the coming weeks, as we make our way through the Wisdom Literature of the Old Testament, we’ll not only find wise principles for living life in this world as one who belongs to God, but we’ll also see the wise person these books point to, the wisest person who ever lived, hidden in its drama and poetry and proverb and song.

The gospel is not simply a story; it is a power, so that when the gospel is loved and applied and enjoyed, this power goes to work on the interior of our lives, making us wise.

We’ll begin in Job, reading a story in which a seemingly innocent man who fears God suffers in unthinkable ways and is restored, defeating Satan’s destructive purposes in the process. In Job’s story we’ll see shadows of the greater Job, Jesus, the only perfectly innocent person who ever lived, whose life was not spared in his suffering but is now resurrected and glorified, having soundly defeated Satan’s schemes.

We’ll make our way through Psalms over five weeks, singing our way through the songs Jesus sang along with his fellow Israelites—the praises he sang out from his heart, the laments he cried out in his suffering, the prayers through which he expressed trust in his Father. Because these are the songs he sang, we will discover what it means to sing them with Christ, but we will also discover that we sing the psalms about Christ. He is the blessed man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, but his delight is in the law of the LORD (Psalm 1). He is the king set on Zion, the Son in whom we take refuge (Psalm 2). He is our good shepherd who prepares a table before us in the presence of our enemies (Psalm 23). He is the one who has clean hands and a pure heart who can ascend the hill of the LORD (Psalm 24). It is he who was truly forsaken by God (Psalm 22). It is his blood that blots out our transgressions and washes us from our iniquity (Psalm 51). It is his body that did not rot in the grave (Psalm 16). We’ll also discover that we sing the psalms to Christ, the Lord. He is the Lord who sits enthroned forever (Ps. 9:7); he is our rock and our redeemer (Ps. 19:14); it is his beauty we want to gaze upon, his face we seek (Ps. 27:4, 8).

When we read in Proverbs that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, and that fools despise wisdom and instruction, we’ll see that Jesus is the one who truly fears the Lord, and that to fear the Lord is to believe the gospel. When the writer of Proverbs sets before us two ways—one that leads to life and one that leads to death—we’ll realize that he is ultimately pointing us to Christ who is “the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).

In Ecclesiastes we’ll discover that life’s true meaning and purpose, which eluded the preacher, is found not in chasing after the wind but in following after Christ.

And in the love poetry of Song of Solomon we’ll hear echoes of the longing we have for the lover of our souls, our beloved bridegroom, who intends to make us his pure bride and to make his home with us forever and ever.

The Questions We Need to Have Answered

We often come to the Bible with questions we think we need to have answered and discover that the Bible presents us with answers to a completely different set of questions that we didn’t know enough to ask. The Bible opens up God’s agenda to us and in the process quiets our own. We come looking for answers to our questions about what we should do, and the Bible meets us with its own questions, repeatedly pointing us to what Christ has done.

Job asks how the suffering of an innocent man can be redeemed. And the answer is, by the redeemer that Job saw only in shadow but we see clearly in Jesus Christ. Job asks, “How can a man be in the right before God?” (Job 9:2). And we know, “For our sake [God] made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21). Job longs for a mediator that he cannot see (Job 9:32). But we know “there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5).

The psalmists ask, “Who shall ascend the hill of the LORD?” (Ps. 24:3), “Who is this King of glory?” (Ps. 24:8), and “Who is the man who fears the LORD?” (Ps. 25:12). And we know the answer. Jesus will ascend the hill of the Lord, making it possible for us to one day enter into God’s holy presence. Jesus is the king of glory who reigns forever and ever. Jesus is the man who fears the Lord perfectly in our place.

Proverbs asks, “Does not wisdom call? Does not understanding raise her voice?” (8:1). And we know that in Christ “are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:3). We have heard wisdom’s call in Christ’s call to repent and believe.

Ecclesiastes asks, “What has a man from all the toil and striving of heart with which he toils beneath the sun?” (2:22). And we know that in him we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28) and that nothing done for the Lord is ever wasted (1 Cor. 15:58).

The chorus in Song of Solomon asks the bride, “What is your beloved more than another beloved?” (5:9), and we celebrate that our bridegroom is more faithful, more beautiful, and that he is stronger, purer, than any other beloved, and so we throw open the door to him saying, “Come, Lord Jesus!” (Rev. 22:20).

As we work our way through the Wisdom Books of the Old Testament, we will not only understand the writings in these books more clearly because we are looking at them through the illumination of Christ, but we will also see new facets of the person and work of Christ as they are presented uniquely in Old Testament Wisdom Books. We will take in and enjoy and explore “the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints” (Col. 1:26).

And we’ll be grateful that we have the illumination of the entire New Testament to see Christ in the Old Testament, which the saints of the Old Testament era did not have, as well as the Holy Spirit livinginside us, helping us to understand his written Word and apply it to our experiences in this world. This, indeed, is how God guides us.

The Newness We Need in Our Minds

Do you long to know God’s will for your life, for your family, for today’s to-do list and tomorrow’s big decisions? Peter said that it comes through knowing Christ. “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence” (2 Pet. 1:3).

Paul also tells us how we can discern God’s will. And it is not by leaving thinking and decision making behind to listen for divine messages. He wrote: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom. 12:2).

God intends, by his Spirit through the means of the Scripture, to accomplish a metamorphosis in the way you think. He intends to make you wise, to give to you “the mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:16) so that you will see the way Christ sees and desire what he desires and assess the way he assesses and be repelled by what repels him.5 He wants you to have a mind that increasingly thinks more like he thinks so that you will choose the way he chooses.

God, by uniting us to Christ by the Spirit, is filling us with “the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God” (Col. 1:9–10). He has given us the privilege of prayer so that we might pour out our concerns and questions before him and share our lives with him in intimate and personal ways. And he has given us the Holy Spirit who illumines our reading of the Scripture so that we can understand it, apply it, and live in light of it. The Spirit takes the words on the pages of our Bible and impresses them into our minds and hearts so that we hear God speaking to us through them.

This is why you and I intend to open up our Bibles over the coming weeks to study God’s Word together. As we immerse ourselves in the wisdom of the Scriptures, the Spirit will renew our minds. Wisdom from God is not a mysterious thing that is revealed to us in a secret experience of the heart. It is revealed to us in a Bible experience in which our minds are renewed and our hearts are cleansed.

God is not hiding from you what you most need to know from him. The secret wisdom, God’s mysterious plan for the world, and for your life, has been fully disclosed, put on glorious display in Jesus Christ.

Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith—to the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ! Amen. (Rom. 16:25–27)

Looking Forward: Wisdom Redeemed

When Christ returns and completes his work of redeeming all things, we will have not only redeemed and purified bodies but also redeemed and purified emotions and thoughts. Indeed, when all things are redeemed, our now faulty and often confused wisdom will be redeemed and even glorified. Salvation is God’s way of restoring all things to their proper order—the way things once were in Eden. So if we want to let our minds imagine what it will be like to live in the new heaven and the new earth as one whose wisdom has been redeemed, considering the way it once was in Eden provides insight.

If we look back at Adam and Eve in the garden before the fall, we realize that they did not know everything. They learned as they experienced life in Eden where God walked with them in the cool of the day. They knew more a week after they were created than they did on their first day.6 Likewise, we will not become omniscient at the resurrection. To be sinless does not imply that we will have nothing to learn. In fact, when we look at the only person who was ever sinless, we discover that Jesus “increased in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man” (Luke 2:52).

Just as Adam and Eve used the freedom that God gave them within clear boundaries to make decisions, so will we, as we reign with Christ, make important decisions, devise plans, and share ideas.7 Heaven will not be the removal of the need for wise decisions but the redemption of it. Our thoughts will no longer be plagued by sinful selfishness, prideful misconceptions, impure obsessions, or poisonous cynicism. Satan will not slip into heaven to tempt us as “nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false” (Rev. 21:27). While some of us may have thoughts that others don’t, and while we may have differing perspectives, we’ll be able to interact in regard to our differences in perfect love, without the blur of defensiveness or ego.

Life in the new heaven and the new earth will not be a static experience of knowing but an ongoing learning experience. It will unfold before us in ages, one new era of discovery after another, with new waves of the beauty and goodness and wisdom of God washing over us.

By grace you have been saved—and [God] raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. (Eph. 2:5–7)

One day we will emerge from this momentary blink called human history and enter the everlasting kingdom of Christ, unfolding age upon age, each one showing us something new about God in ever clearer manifestations of his infinite wisdom. Our minds will finally and forever shake off all dullness so that with minds bright and quick we’ll see everything about God with new richness of understanding and new pleasures of fascination. Our experience of him will not come from our powers of discovery but through his powers of display as he reveals more and more of himself to us.8

The Wisdom that formed the earth and everything in it, and ordered history and brought it about, and chose to use the foolish things of the world—like you and me—to accomplish his wise purposes, will no longer be hidden from our view but will have made his home with us.

Discussion Guide

The Wisdom Hidden in the Wisdom Books

Getting the Discussion Going

1. Over the coming weeks we’ll be studying the Psalms and Wisdom Books together—Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon. Tell us something you remember about one of these books, or perhaps a question you’ve always had about one of them.

Getting to the Heart of It

2. It is hard for those of us who have the entire Old and New Testaments to imagine what it must have been like for God’s people to live in this world and seek to follow after him without that complete written revelation. Try to put yourself in the place of God’s people living in those times. How might the teaching of the Wisdom Literature on matters such as suffering, the future of God’s people, dealing with people, finding meaning, and sexuality have been important to you?