There are three books in the Bible that have come to be called the wisdom literature
Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Job
and all these books are addressing the same set of questions
What kind of world are we living in
and what does it look like to live well in this world?
so how to be good at life?
Yeah! So each of these books tackles these questions from a unique perspective
and it's important to understand all of them to get a fully biblical perspective on the good life
So as a thought experiment, you could actually imagine each of these books as a person
So Proverbs would be like this brilliant young teacher
and Ecclesiastes the sharp middle-aged critic
and Job would be the weathered old man who seen a lot in his day
We're gonna start by meeting the book of Proverbs the brilliant teacher
And she's not just smart she's smart about everything, work, relationships, sex, spirituality
She has incredible insights things you would see on your own
Yeah! She would be the perfect friend have around when you need really specific advice
So what makes her so smart?
Well! Proverbs can see things that most people don't see
She believes that there is an invisible creative force in the universe that can guide people and how they should live
You can't see it just like you can't see the gravity but it affects everything that we do
So what's this force?
In Hebrew, it's called chokma and it's usually gets translated into English as a wisdom
It's an attribute of God that God used to create the world
and hokmah has been woven into the fabric of thing and how they work
So wherever people are making good or just or wise decisions they are tapping into chokma
and whenever someone is making a bad decision they're working against chokma
Right! Or as it says in Proverbs chapter one
the waywardness of fools will destroy them but the one who listens to wisdom lives in security
So it's like a moral law of the universe
Yeah! It's a cause-effect pattern and no one can escape
and Proverbs personifies all of this as a woman
Yeah! Lady wisdom
Right! She runs around the earth calling out making herself available to anyone who's willing to listen to her and to learn
which leads to the second thing Proverbs believes that anyone can access
and interact with wisdom and use it to make the beautiful life for yourself or others
you can create with it like a designer
Yes, in fact, chokma in hebrew isn't simply intellectual knowledge
The word is also used to describe the skilled artisan who excels at their craft like woodworking or stonemason
so you show you possess chokma when you put it to work and develop the skill of making a Good Life
OK! That makes sense. So let's do this. Let's go find some wisdom
Before you do, Proverbs has one more really important thing to consider
chokma isn't some impersonal force it's an attribute of God himself
and so in Hebrew thought, your journey to becoming wise has to begin with what Proverbs called the Fear of the Lord
It's this healthy respect for God's definition of good and evil
and true wisdom means learning those boundary lines and not crossing them
Now all those ideas you just unpacked are in chapters one through nine in Proverbs
but when I think of the book of Proverbs, I think of the collection of sayings
the Proverbs themselves. Tell me about those
Yeah! Those are what you find in chapters ten onto the end of the book
it's a collection of hundreds and hundreds of Proverbs about any and all aspects of life
and chokma gets applied to them resulting in this wise guidance
to help you find a path toward success and no matter what you do
if I designed my life with these sayings, life is gonna be good
Yeah! or if proverbs puts it, it'll give health to your bones, prosperity, a long rich life
which is a really big claim
but you can see how it's often the case
wise people, they tend to do better, things usually work out well for them in life
and so that is the promise and the wisdom of the book of Proverbs
The book of Proverbs is really beautiful but if we take a step back
some people would argue it's a little too simplistic
cause sometimes horrible things happened to really wise people
and sometimes foolish people get rewarded
it doesn't always work the way we think it should work
that's right which is why we need to go and listen to our next wise friend ecclesiastes the critic
because he's wrestled with that very problem
and he's going to push us further in our journey to find the Good Life
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