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Defining Our Terms
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In my message this past Sunday, I shared a number of definitions relating to wisdom and the fear of God. Here they are for your reference:
1. What is wisdom?
a. Definitions:
• “Wisdom is the art of living skillfully in whatever actual conditions we find ourselves.”—Eugene Peterson
• “Wisdom is the right use of knowledge.”—Charles Spurgeon
• “[Wisdom] is practical know-how in the hard realities of living with others before God in the world He has created.”—John Kitchenb. Proverbs teaches us wisdom by piling up synonyms about how we learn wisdom. The following definitions are adapted from Proverbs: A Mentor Commentary
by John Kitchen:
Instruction: Can also be translated “discipline”—the idea is education through correction. Receiving instruction about what we got wrong.
Discernment: The ability to look at two things and see what God sees, to tell the difference between what is good and what is evil.
Understanding: Implies not only discernment but the ability to understand why one option is God’s preference.
Prudence: A Spirit-born cleverness that understands the trend of events and inherent dangers, and avoids the pitfalls of life.
Knowledge: More than possessing information, it is a knowing that is deeply personal and experiential.
Discretion: Avoiding harm brought on by foolishly proceeding with ill-advised plans.
2. What is “the fear of the LORD”?
“Reverence mingled with honor and fear.” —John Calvin
“That affectionate reverence by which the child of God bends himself humbly and carefully to his Father’s law.” —Charles Bridges
“Right recognition of God.” —Sinclair Ferguson
3. How are wisdom and the fear of the LORD related?
“What the alphabet is to reading, notes to reading music, and numerals to mathematics, the fear of the LORD is to attaining the revealed knowledge of [Proverbs].” – Bruce Waltke
July 13 2009 at 9:05 pm
Gracia Soberana Family Concert
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Iglesia Gracia Soberana de Gaithersburg is having a family concert this Thursday, July 16, at 7 p.m., at the Gaithersburg City Hall Concert Pavilion in Olde Towne Gaithersburg (map here).
There will be balloons, family entertainment and two professional singers performing. The featured musical guest is John Ray, a singer from Puerto Rico and personal friend of Senior Pastor Joselo Mercado.
God has blessed Iglesia Gracia Soberana with a unique opportunity to serve and bless the community this Thursday. Please be praying for this event, and invite any Spanish speakers you know!
July 13 2009 at 4:00 am
Proverbs, Part 2: Application
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Yesterday I preached the second message in our Proverbs series, titled “Wisdom Starts Here.” Based on Proverbs 1:7 and 9:10, I considered: What is wisdom? What is “the fear of the Lord”? And what is the relationship between the two?
You can listen online or download an mp3 of the message here.
Application questions:
1. Before this message, how would have understood “the fear of the LORD”? What did you learn about fearing God that was new or helpful to you? How could this insight impact your life?
2. If the fear of the Lord is a “right recognition of God,” how can you grow in knowing God’s character and His ways?3. What fears in your life compete with one essential fear, the fear of the Lord (e.g., fear of spouse, kids or friends; fear of failure; fear of being unhappy or unfulfilled; fear of growing old, etc.)?
4. In what one area of your life can you grow in cultivating the fear of the Lord (e.g., consistently reading and obeying God’s Word, bringing the Lord into every aspect of your life, etc.)?
July 10 2009 at 11:58 am
WorshipGod09 Needs You
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WorshipGod ‘09 is coming to Covenant Life August 5-8, just a few short weeks from now, and the conference is looking for volunteers—lots of ‘em! Please prayerfully consider being a part of the team for this event, and call or e-mail conference coordinator Paul Medler today (301.330.7400 or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)). Opportunities: check-in and reception greeters, lunch and evening refreshments, morning and evening greeters.
The theme for this year’s conference is equipping leaders “for declaring the mighty acts of God to the next generation.” To that end, WorshipGod ‘09 will host main session speakers John Piper, C.J. Mahaney, Jeff Purswell, Bob Kauflin and Thabiti Anyabwile as well as special musical guests Keith and Kristyn Getty and Shai Linne.
Seminars this year (36 in all) include intermediate and advanced instrumental tracks, encouraging physical expressiveness, raising up young worship leaders, teaching children about worship, songwriting, media applications, and much more.
We’re honored to be hosting this conference. Please do consider how you can help out.
July 9 2009 at 2:56 pm
‘To Be Like Jesus’
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My kids and I are loving the new CD from Sovereign Grace, “To Be Like Jesus.” This great collection of songs teaches kids about the fruits of the Spirit listed in Galatians 5, with 10 of the 12 songs devoted to specific fruits (they give us two on self-control). As the Sovereign Grace site says:
Through these songs kids will learn that Jesus is our perfect example of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. More than that, they’ll discover that we can’t be like Jesus unless we trust in the power of his cross to forgive us and the power of his Spirit to change us.
“To Be Like Jesus” is available as a CD ($12) or download set ($9) at the Sovereign Grace store, where you can also listen to song samples and download sheet music.
July 7 2009 at 4:52 pm
‘God’s Grace and Your Suffering’
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I want to point you to a great resource related to this month’s hymn, “How Firm a Foundation.” (Thanks to Susan Jansen for e-mailing about this.) It’s a chapter that David Powlison contributed to the book “Suffering and the Sovereignty of God,” edited by Justin Taylor and John Piper. The book consists of chapters from seven different authors, most of whom gave talks at the 2005 Desiring God National Conference and agreed to convert their oral presentations into written form.
Powlison’s chapter, “God’s Grace and Your Suffering,” (pp. 145-173) explores each stanza of “How Firm a Foundation” in depth with the goal of helping readers to think and act biblically in the midst of suffering and trials.
Photocopies of the chapter will be available at the Welcome Center each Sunday in July, and the entire book is available as a free download from the Desiring God site.
To whet your appetite, here’s a section where Powlison looks at the hymn’s third verse:
“When through the deep waters I call you to go,
the rivers of sorrow shall not overflow;
for I will be with you, your troubles to bless,
and sanctify to you your deepest distress.”Words from Isaiah 43:2 weave through this stanza. Your troubles are envisioned as “deep waters” and “rivers.” Isaiah alludes to when God’s people faced the Red Sea with enemies at their back, and to when they faced the Jordan River at flood stage. No human being could carve a path through such difficulties. God restates his core promise with an eye to the future: “I will be with you.” That itself is significant, because the effects of most significant sufferings extend into an indeterminate future. We need much more than help in the present moment. What exactly does it mean that God will be “with” you amid destructive forces?
In promising this, God explicitly does not mean that he will give you mere comfort, warm feelings because a friend is standing at your side through tough times. God plays a much more active and powerful role.
This stanza fills in the meaning with four vast truths:
• God himself calls you into the deep waters in your life.
• God sets a limit on the sorrows.
• God is with you actively bringing good from your troubles.
• In the context of distressing events, God changes you to become like him.This is heady stuff. High and purposeful sovereignty. A big God—who comes close to speak tenderly, work personally, make you different, finish what he begins.
In other words, your significant sufferings don’t happen by accident. No random chance. No purposeless misery. No bad luck. Not even (and understand this the right way) a tragedy. Tragedy means ruin, destruction, downfall, an unhappy ending with no redemption. Your life story may contain a great deal of misery and heartache along the way. But in the end, in Christ, your life story will prove to be a “comedy” in the good old sense of the word, a story with a happy ending. You play a part in the Divine Comedy, as Dante called it, with the happiest ending of any story ever written. Death, mourning, tears, and pain will be no more (Rev. 21:4). Life, joy, and love get last say. High sovereignty is going somewhere. People miss that when they make “the sovereignty of God” sound as if it implied fatalism, like Islamic kismet, like que sera sera, like being realistic and resigned to life’s hardships. God’s sovereign purposes don’t include the goal of getting you to just accept your troubles. He’s not interested in offering you some perspective to just help get you through a rough patch.
This stanza expresses the kind purposes of the most high God. But it does not make light of your hardships. There is no chilly objectivity in God’s words. He carefully refers to the pain of deep sufferings in every line. He speaks poignantly, not matter-of-factly: “deep waters, rivers of sorrow, troubles, deepest distress.” In fact, the original hymn (with “thee and thou”) put the second line even more graphically: “The rivers of woe shall not thee overflow.” Woe is the keenest edge of anguish, the extremity of distress, sorrow raised to the highest degree of pain.
Those rivers of woe sweep many good things away. Your deepest distress is deeply distressing. But the God who loves you is master of your significant sorrow. He calls you to go through even this hard thing. Though it feels impossible and devastates earthly hopes, he sets a boundary (not where we would set it). He convinces you that this hard thing will come out good beyond all you can ask, imagine, see, hear, or conceive in your heart (Eph. 3:20; 1 Cor. 2:9). You will pass through the valley of the shadow of death filled with evils, but you will say that goodness and mercy followed you all the days of your life.