Wisdom & Faith

“Blessed is the one who fears the Lord always, but whoever hardens his heart will fall into calamity.” Proverbs 28:14

When the Apostle Paul tells us that the righteous by faith shall live by faith (Romans 1:17) we hear a truth that’s central to the Christian life. We know that “pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall” (Proverbs 16:18) because Solomon tells us. He also reminds us that whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool, but he who walks in wisdom will be delivered (Proverbs 28:26). Indeed, time and again throughout Proverbs we read admonitions against relying upon our own estimations of reality, good and evil, truth and falsehood. “There’s a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death” (Proverbs 14:12).

On the one hand, it’s easy to read the pithy sayings of Proverbs and think, “yeah, I got this…that’s right…yeah, that’s pretty obvious…” and so on. Yes, it’s easy to see all this as we’re often tempted to do as morally therapeutic stuff and forget what’s going on in the background. What’s that exactly? Well, it’s that Solomon himself, a man with the gift of wisdom from God himself, manages to make an utter mess of himself and, consequently, all of Israel. In fact, the wisdom of Solomon – if looked at as merely philosophical knowledge – doesn’t interrupt the King’s march into sexual mania and then blatant idolatry.

This is the issue at hand. Biblical wisdom isn’t mere philosophy but faith in God. One can’t separate knowledge of God from love of God, or wisdom from faith. True wisdom is real faith. “Always, the relationship between God and His people was to be one of heart devotion and love” (Rick Phillips Turning Back the Darkness). Let’s be careful not to miss this all-important aspect of biblical wisdom: it’s personal faith in the personal Savior. This personal faith can’t be abstract. The word “faith”, as we understand it, is devoid of meaning when separated from Jesus Christ and the Scriptures that testify about Him. Often times, the world speaks of faith as if it’s a benign force, or some goodly force emanating from man himself. But that turns the whole of Scripture, as well as these previous verses, upside down and backwards.

If we look at the Old Testament, we see a disturbing pattern. Success and prosperity – those very things that we seek incessantly here in America – were exactly the things that led Israel astray. Wealth and comfort would come as a blessing from the Lord and then – you can almost set your watch by it – the people would depart from the Lord. The principle is that faithfulness to God is always linked to separation from the world and this is because one is always tempted to trust in the one or the other.

“And when the Lord your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you- with great and good cities that you did not build, and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant – and when you eat and are full, then take care lest you forget the Lord, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” Deuteronomy 6:10-12).

Thus, the key to understanding Solomon – his rise and fall, as it concerns us here – is in seeing that faithfulness to God is the key to life. We’d generally think that it’s success measured by material standards. Do you have the right car – or cars? Do you have a nice home? Do you make enough money? These are the things through which the world judges wealth. But the Bible, as evidenced in Deuteronomy 6, estimates one’s wealth through their wisdom and that wisdom is one’s faithfulness to the God of salvation, Jesus Christ.

Solomon would have been very well acquainted with Deuteronomy since it was to Jewish life, as Richard Phillips called it, what the Constitution is to American law. In chapter 17:14-20 the Lord commands the King that he may not acquire many horses for himself or cause people to return to Egypt in order to acquire many horses. Emphatically, the Lord tells Israel that they must never return that way again. Also, the king must not acquire many wives either, or stockpile silver and gold.

None of this is arbitrary. God isn’t saying that Israel’s king isn’t to have nice things, nor is God saying that to us today. What’s at the heart of it all is whether our trust will be in the Lord or in the things of the world. The king is told to have a copy of this law for himself – approved by the Levitical priests. “And it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes, and doing them, that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he may not turn aside from the commandment, either to the right hand or to the left, so that he may continue long in his kingdom, he and his children, in Israel.”

Unfortunately, and tragically, Solomon, despite his divine gift of wisdom, failed on all of these accounts. This shows us that knowledge of the Lord and His word alone isn’t enough if we forget the central thing about it all: that Jesus Christ died for our sins. This fact of facts, when fixed in our minds, when written on the tablet of our hearts, reminds us of who we are – sinners redeemed by grace. And this grace isn’t because of works but a gift.

Our issue then – as it comes into focus – is in trying to obtain “security” in anything other than Christ and His finished work on our behalf. A person that kneels low before the cross of Christ keeps God’s commandment because His commandment is to believe on the One He sent.

Trouble emerges for Solomon almost right away. He marries a daughter of Pharaoh (1 Kings 3:1) and performs sacrifices and offerings at high places (1 Kings 3:3). And we learn that he has 40,000 stalls of horses for his chariots, and 12,000 horsemen (1 Kings 4:26). These things aren’t necessarily sinful, of course, but represent a temptation to trust in earthly power – in this case, military power – for safety, rather than God.

In 1 Kings 10:14-29 we get an account of Solomon’s extraordinary wealth. Again we read about all the horses and, tellingly, how many were imported from Egypt. Then, in 1 Kings 11 we read that Solomon loved many foreign women. We read that and think of Deuteronomy 17:17 and just as God warned that marrying these foreign women would turn his heart away to other gods, Solomon ended up disobeying the Lord his God. In all, wisdom does not replace or in any way supersede faithful trust in God through His holy word.

God’s response to Solomon’s sin in 1 Kings 11:9-12 should have been readily anticipated since God had already put His standards down in writing back in Deuteronomy. But judgment is always a surprise because sin is always deceptive, which is precisely why Christians need the word of the Lord so desperately. The trouble is, in Solomon’s day as well as in our own, that wealth and success can turn our hearts away from the word of God.

In Solomon’s case, his idolatry led eventually to civil war in Israel and the splitting of the kingdom. The danger was that pragmatism sets in. We think, as Solomon apparently did, that since things were going well, everything is fine. Every sinner throughout history has convinced themselves that what they were doing – even if it wasn’t okay – wasn’t going to lead to judgment. Because the judgment against an evil deed isn’t executed right away, the sinner thinks he’s never going to be judged. In this way, God’s mercy and forbearance, which are meant to lead us to repentance, is mistaken for apathy. But it’s a dreadful mistake indeed. God is not mocked.

“But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed. He will render to each one according to his works: to those who by patience and well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury. There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good the Jew first and also the Greek. For God shows no partiality.” (Romans 2:5-11)

This is what it means to say that pride goes before destruction. Pride says “I can live however I want” and this after a hundred little compromises have already been made. Solomon loved and love is from God, but he loved women outside the Lord. And Solomon wanted military security but before long this security became a goal outside the Lord too. The same thing happened with the trappings of wealth and all that gold and silver. Nice things are a treasure to have when they’re a gift from the Lord but only in this context. When these things must be had for us to be happy, they replace God as our goal and purpose. Solomon had great wealth and, therefore, great opportunity to sin. We have lesser wealth than he did but this shouldn’t make us smug. On the contrary, our fall can be just as ruinous to us and our family if we follow a path that seems right to us, leaning on our own understanding, rather than on the word of the Lord. Instead of 1,000 women, we need only one; instead of halls of gold, it might just be too much debt and a job that takes our time and hearts away from our family.

The Devil works off the jab. He doesn’t do anything fancy, so be warned. If even Solomon fell into the deceptive clutches of sin, he of all that wisdom, we should pray, “and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” The answer is to keep our eyes forever fixed upon that wise leader of whom Solomon was but a type – Jesus Christ.

The Solution to Pride

Scripture doesn’t leave us unarmed in the battle against pride. On the contrary, it reminds us repeatedly of the primary tool used to thwart sin’s advance. And this answer isn’t a technique, or some form of legalism or asceticism that makes us holy. No. Only Christ makes us holy – and this is the key, which is proper doctrine! True knowledge of Scripture and what it says about our sin and God’s grace for us in Christ will reap the practical benefit of thankfulness – and thankfulness, a heart bursting with the joy of undeserved salvation, is antithetical to pride.

To this end, notice how many epistles are literally bursting with thanks to God. Paul says, “First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you…” (Romans 1:8) and “I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus.” (1 Corinthians 1:4). And when Paul isn’t thanking God for his fellow believers in Christ, his cup is bubbling over with awe and love toward God in Christ. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.” (Ephesians 1:3-10)

Paul’s thankfulness isn’t vague or arbitrary, rising up to an ill-defined void somewhere, to be heard by no one. His praise is doctrinal in that because he understands who Christ is and what he has done for us, he (Paul) is continually astonished and overwhelmed by gratitude. Indeed, Christian thankfulness is exactly that which becomes the “default” setting in the renewed mind, replacing the arrogant pride of the old mind, which was set on the flesh, never content, and always unsettled. The old nature, in sin, was always critical and always focused on the next big thing. The new mind, which is set on the Spirit, isn’t hostile to God anymore and is finally and wonderfully free from the bondage of pride and the never ending and impossible task of trying to wrest the blessings of God from the things of this world. Yes, the renewed mind rejoices in the excellencies of Christ and seeks – as a logical conclusion to it all – God’s glory, rather than their own.

Pride demands to live life in God’s world on its own terms and hates that God won’t allow this. This is why it’s written that the mind that’s set on the flesh is hostile to God and can’t submit to Him. The repentant sinner, however, doesn’t think of himself more highly than he/she ought to think any longer but sees, at last, that “from Him and through Him and to Him are all things.” Pride resents God’s sovereignty because it thinks God isn’t good. The thankful Christian, on the other hand, loves God’s sovereignty precisely because it loves God’s goodness, known through His immeasurable mercy.

This is why no one is wise that doesn’t rest in God’s abundant mercy in Jesus Christ. Pride doesn’t want a savior because it doesn’t think it needs one – an ally, maybe, but not a savior. Pride says to God, “I want your gifts, your riches, my health, family, nature, talents, joys, and everything else good in this world, but I don’t want you. Leave me alone!” The new man says, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord…” and “the Lord is my portion…”