The God Who Is Unfathomably Wise (Ps. 1)

Listen or read the following transcript from The Gospel Coalition as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of Biblical theology from Psalm 1.

This is the sixth in a series of 14 addresses designed to introduce you to The God Who is There. In this talk, I try to get across two depictions of God in the Bible: The God Who Makes His People Sing and The God Who is Unfathomably Wise. The two themes of singing and wisdom are much more than a mere reflection of certain kinds of writing in the Bible.

The singing erupts because God has given his people so much to sing about, and wisdom is pursued (that is, knowing how to live under God in this God’s world) because we are to recognize how unfathomably wise God himself is.

These two topics reflect certain kinds of writing in the Old Testament, certain literary genres. First, the book of Psalms, which contains many psalms and other poems often meant to be sung and, second, an array of books in the Bible that are quite different from another that are often called Wisdom Literature.

Neither the Psalms nor the Wisdom Literature brings the story forward a whole lot. They’re not part of the narrative sequence of books that tells us what happens next to the Jews or what’s going on in the world history at the time or something like that. They, nevertheless, reflect the experiences, the insight, the revelation of God that is given to people living in these times.

It’s not the narrative that goes forward, and yet they’re such a big part of the Old Testament that they really can’t be ignored. We must say something about these books to understand what they contribute to our grasp of God as he has disclosed himself in the Bible. First I will discuss …

1. The God Who Makes His People Sing

Some wag said, “Let me write the songs of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws.” Granted, some of the things that are being sung today, that’s a pretty scary thought, and yet you can understand it. If people are walking around with iPods and music all the time, whatever they decide in Washington, what I really think is what I’m listening to in my iPod.

In the Old Testament, the book that incorporates most of this song-like, hymn-like material is the book of Psalms (virtually in the middle of the Bible). There are 150 of them. It was written over a period of about 1,200 years. It wasn’t somebody sitting down to make it their writing project in a particular year.

For example, one of the psalms is a psalm of Moses, taking you all the way back to the first part of the Bible. Then there are many psalms by David himself, who was a musician and, in due course, helped to organize the choirs and so on that were connected with the ancient tabernacle, then improved again by his son Solomon under the new temple Solomon oversaw.

Then there are psalms that depict the experiences of the people of God as they’re going off into exile. Then there are some psalms that depict the people of God as they come back from exile, which brings you down to about 400 BC. They really cover a very broad period of time. Obviously, there’s no way we can survey 150 psalms. What I would like to do is drop in on a few of them so you can overhear what they were singing. They’re very, very diverse.

For those of you who have been a Christian for some time and have gotten to know some elderly believers, you’ve probably discovered, often it’s the elderly Christians who love the book of Psalms. There aren’t a lot of people at 25 who know the book of Psalms well. I’ll tell you why. It’s because the book of Psalms resonates with people who have had a lot of experiences.

You have to have quite a lot of different experiences under your belt before you resonate easily with a lot of the things that are said in the book of Psalms. Lament. Loss. Shame. Death. Triumph. The exaltation of informed and godly, God-centered praise. Biblical prophecy anticipating what is still to come. If, instead, you have a very limited experience, most of these things just sound a bit over the top or a bit extravagant or even alien to you.

But I’ve been by the beds of enough people who were dying and had been a Christian for a long time. If I ask, “What would you like me to read to you?” oh, some of them might say, “The Resurrection Chapter, 1 Corinthians 15,” or something like that. But many will say, “Psalm 23, ‘The Lord is my shepherd …’ ” or, “Psalm 42” or, “Psalm 40, about how he lifts me out of the miry bog and sets my feet on a safe, stable place.”

Until you have been through experiences where you feel as if you are wallowing in a miry bog, that psalm isn’t going to speak so powerfully to you. Let me drop in on a few psalms quickly and show you the kind of things they say about God and his people. We’ll begin at the beginning: Psalm 1.

“Blessed are those who do not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, but who delight in the law of the Lord and meditate on his law day and night. They are like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither—whatever they do prospers.

Not so the wicked! They are like chaff that the wind blows away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will be destroyed.”

Now if you look at the psalm closely, if you have your Bibles in front of you, you discover it’s broken into three unequal parts. Verses 1 through 3 describe the righteous. Verses 4 and 5 describe the unrighteous. Then verse 6 is a final summarizing contrast. If you go back to verses 1 through 3 describing the righteous, they’re described negatively in verse 1, what they’re not like, what they don’t do.

“Blessed are those who do not walk in step with the wicked …” That is, they’re walking along, and they are marching beside them. They are coordinated with them. They’re picking up advice and counsel from them. If you do that long enough, you might “… stand in the way that sinners take,” stand in the way of people. That’s not an easy translation. Almost all our English translations say something like that.

The trouble is in Hebrew, to stand in someone’s way does not mean in English what we mean when we say stand in someone’s way. To stand in someone’s way in English means to impede them, to block their path. Robin Hood and Little John on the bridge, each standing in the other’s way. One of them ends in the stream.

In Hebrew, to stand in someone’s way means to have your feet in their moccasins, to do what they do, to be indifferentiable from them. You’re not blocking them. You’re where they are. You stand in their way, which is why this version has it somewhat periphrastically “to stand in the way that sinners take.” You’re now where they are.

If you do that long enough, you might sit in the company of mockers. Now you’re in your La-Z-Boy chair. You pull the lever, look down your long self-righteous nose at those ignorant, stupid, right-winged, bigoted Christians. The very first verse of the very first psalm says blessed are those who don’t do these things. It’s describing them negatively.

Then verse 2 describes them positively. Positively! They “… delight in the law of the Lord and meditate on his law day and night.” That is, this is what they think about. It changes them. When I first started teaching at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, we had a lecturer there, an old man already at the time, who had any number of one-liners out of about 50 years of ministry. Some of them were really good.

One of his best was, “You’re not what you think you are, but what you think, you are.” Isn’t that what the book of Proverbs says? “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” You’re not just what you say or what you do, because we can say and do things to cover up what’s really going on inside. But what you think, you are. This text says the righteous person learns to think God’s thoughts after him. He delights in the law of the Lord. He meditates on God’s Word day and night.

It’s not just a question of, “A verse a day keeps the Devil away. Make sure you read in a corner somewhere and have a Bible verse handy” or, “Make sure you have your devotions.” It’s such a love affair with all God says that it feeds your mind. You go for a lunch break, or the light turns red ahead of you, and you sit in your car, and your mind just in the blank moments naturally gravitates toward thinking through what God says. It’s there all the time. You meditate on it day and night.

You see, that means you’re now not listening to the advice of the wicked or developing paths that are indifferentiable from theirs or slinking down into a sneaky mockery. Then the same people are described metaphorically in verse 3. We’re told, “They are like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither—whatever they do prospers.”

The land of Palestine, the land of Israel, is a semi-arid land a bit like the American Southwest so that you can have seasons of the year when there’s no rain at all. The dry arroyos in the Southwest just looked like death warmed over. Then suddenly you can have some rains, and then gullies can be washed out. They can be really quite dangerous. Flash floods. They call them wadis in Israel.

That means land that seems like death suddenly blooms. It comes to life, and you have all of these desert flowers. But it’s only where there’s a confluence of streams, not intermittent water but a confluence of streams with a guaranteed water supply that you have trees whose leaf never withers and that brings forth its fruit in its season.

In that sense, you see it always prospers. This is not talking about a prosperity gospel. “Follow Jesus and get filthy rich.” It’s still in the metaphor of this tree. This tree prospers even when there’s heat and blight and the like, because it’s well watered. It is always evergreen. It is showing signs of life, and in due course, it produces fruit.

That’s language you find not uncommonly in the Bible. You understand why if you’re brought up in that sort of country. You see these cycles of things every year. Hence, Jeremiah 17, a prophet writing about 600 BC or a little later. “Cursed are those who trust in mortals, who depend on flesh for their strength, and whose hearts turn away from the Lord. They will be like a bush in the wastelands. They will not see prosperity when it comes.” That is, the prosperity of life and growth and fruitfulness again.

“They will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in the salt land where no one lives. But blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.”

Here’s the righteous person described negatively, positively, metaphorically. Then in verses 4 and 5, the unrighteous are described. It’s a very strong negative. “Not so the wicked!” Not so! As if everything of significance that you want to predicate of the righteous, you have to negate of the unrighteous. Are the righteous those who avoid the counsel and the patterns of life, of rebels and ungodly people? Not so the wicked. Not so!

Are the righteous those who delight in the law of the Lord and think about it day and night? Not so the wicked. Not so! Are the righteous those who can be likened to a tree planted by streams of water which yields its fruit in its season, whose leaf never withers? Not so the wicked. Not so! What are they like? “They are like chaff that the wind blows away.”

That is, the image is of the ancient grain harvest where someone would take the heads of grain that have come in with a winnowing shovel, throw them up in the air and beat them. Throw them up in the air and beat them. The chaff falls off, and the wind blows it away. The grains fall to the ground. The grains become the basis for your flour, your bread, all the rest. The chaff goes. Rootless, lifeless, fruitless, useless.

Until as a final summarizing contrast, which is strictly speaking not even between the righteous and the wicked but between the way of the righteous and the way of the wicked, “The Lord watches over … the righteous.” That is, he owns it as his. He protects it. “The way of the wicked will be destroyed,” like tracks made on the seashore when the tide is out. Then the tide rolls in. The tide rolls out. You don’t see the tracks!

Fifty billion years from now, if I may dare speak of eternity in the categories of time, no one will be talking about the significance of Stalin or Pol Pot, but every cup of cold water given in the name of Jesus will still be remembered, because the Lord watches over the way of the righteous. The way of the wicked will perish. That’s the first psalm: two ways, and there is no third.

There are a lot of psalms like that. They’re sometimes called wisdom psalms. The psalms and the Wisdom Literature get tied together because in wisdom, literally, the way of wisdom is cast against the way of folly. We’ll see shortly that Wisdom Literature regularly offers you a choice between two ways. That’s why this is sometimes called a wisdom psalm.

In the New Testament, do you know who the most remarkable wisdom preacher is? Jesus. Now Jesus is, in fact, an astonishingly flexible preacher. He preaches using apocalyptic imagery. He preaches using one-liners. He preaches telling parables. He is an astonishingly flexible preacher. But in not a few of his addresses, he uses these sorts of wisdom categories two ways.

You come, for example, to the end of Matthew 5, 6, and 7 (the Sermon on the Mount). He offers a number of vignettes that are exactly along this line. He says, “Picture two people: one builds a house on rock; the other builds a house on sand. On sand, it’s not stable. The storms come in, the water rises, the winds lash the place, and it collapses. The house that is strongly built on rock endures.”

There are just two houses. It rather misses the point to say, “Jesus, supposing you try hardpan clay.” You can’t do that. It’s wisdom preaching. It’s this way or that way. In the same context, he says, “Wide is the gate and broad is the path that leads to destruction, and many go there. But the gate is narrow, and the way constrained that leads to eternal life. Only a few go in there.”

“Jesus, that one is a bit destructive. This one is a bit sort of narrow fundamentalist. How about a medium-size gate? I could make do with that.” You can’t do that. It’s Wisdom Literature. It’s wisdom preaching. It’s this way or that way. There are only two ways. Do you know what’s scary about Wisdom Literature? Do you know what’s scary about this psalm? It’s that if you’re really, really honest, you never quite fit the good way.

Oh, there are times I delight in the law of the Lord and meditate on it day and night. There are other times, quite frankly, where it’s a real struggle to really delight in the law of the Lord. Don’t you find that, where you find yourself parched, not nourished at all by the Word of God as streams of water flooding through your whole system?

So although these wisdom psalms show two ways, they clarify our thinking and show us that there are some differences out there that must not be fudged over, even though most of us find ourselves in the middle, sometimes acting this way, sometimes acting that way, like King David himself.… King David who was responsible for some of these psalms, King David who was rightly described as a man after God’s own heart who can also commit adultery and even arrange for a murder. One wonders what he would have done if he hadn’t been a man after God’s own heart.

Once again, as important as these psalms are, as important as Wisdom Literature is, to teach us that there is a difference between holiness and unholiness, between righteousness and unrighteousness and you can’t keep fudging, yet at the end of the day, that information by itself doesn’t save you. All by itself it clarifies, but it could drive you to despair. That’s not all there is in the Bible. Let me mention some other psalms.

Psalm 8 not only praises God for his power in creation (“You have set your glory above the heavens”), but also marvels at the fact that God has a peculiar relation with human beings, mortals. Verse 4: “You are mindful of them. You care for them. You have actually set them above the rest of the created order.”

“You have made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet; all flocks and herds and the animals of the wild, the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas. Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”

Do you hear what this is? This is a hymn that has been composed as a reflection on Genesis 1 and 2. You find quite a lot of psalms like that that are meditative reflections for the corporate worship of the people of God based on earlier Scriptures, people reflecting on them and singing these truths, not just reciting them and reading them but singing them.

Or Psalm 19, another one that is a reflection on how the created order does reflect who God is. “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them.

Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. In the heavens he has pitched a tent for the sun, which is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, like a champion rejoicing to run his course. It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other; nothing is deprived of its warmth.” Then after talking about how the Lord has disclosed himself in this created order, he talks about how the Lord has disclosed himself in Scripture.

To change the pace entirely, take a look at the opening line of Psalm 14. “Fools say in their hearts, ‘There is no God.’ ” I have a friend in Australia who has a bit of a reputation for engaging in talking about Christ a bit like a bull in a china shop. He once gave an address called Atheists Are Fools and Agnostics Are Cowards.

Now by and large, that’s not a great way to win friends and influence people, but there is a sense in which that’s what this psalm begins with. It’s the fool who says in his heart, “There is no God.” That is so out of line with contemporary perceptions. The fool is the idiot who believes there is a God. But look at it from God’s perspective. Just grant for a moment that the God of the Bible is real. He is there. He is the God who is there, and what the Bible has said so far is entirely true. Who is the fool?

You see, this is not written from the point of view of someone who sets himself up in the heritage of RenÈ Descartes, sort of Cartesian independence, saying, “I think I am in the place where I can evaluate whether God exists and which God it will be.” This is the God who is there, who has named himself, disclosed himself. In forbearance, he has come back again and again to save his people. He keeps promising an even greater deliverance to come.

He insists that the reason people don’t see this is because this side of the fall, there’s already a moral contagion such that we are blind to the obvious. It’s the fool who says in his heart, “There is no God,” which does not mean that no Christian is a fool. What it means is everyone who has become a Christian started off a fool.

If in this respect we are no longer foolish, that too in the Bible storyline is a mark of singular grace. Christians never, ever have the right to say, “I’m smarter than you are,” because Christians deep down know they’re never more than fools who have been shown forgiveness and grace. They’re never more than poor beggars telling other poor beggars where there’s bread.

Let’s try another psalm, a different approach again. Psalm 40. This is a psalm of personal experience that develops into something more. I don’t have time to go through all of it, but here we’re told by the superscription that this is one of the ones written by David himself.

“I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear the Lord and put their trust in him.”

We don’t know what this miry bog is, what this slimy pit is. It was obviously something so awful in his experience that he felt the way you do in a miry bog, in a slimy pit. Desperate, unable to get out, sliding into oblivion, sucked down. God pulled him out. Much of the rest of the psalm talks about how he will respond to that by devoting himself to the living God, how he must give testimony to this in the community of God’s people.

Then in the last part of the psalm, he openly acknowledges that just because he has been through this sort of experience doesn’t mean he won’t be through other bleak experiences. Just because you’ve been through a divorce doesn’t mean you’re, therefore, going to be spared cancer. Just because you’ve had cancer doesn’t mean you won’t lose your spouse. Just because you’ve had a kid go off the rails doesn’t mean you won’t be in a car accident.

Life in this fallen and broken world brings all kinds of heartaches and defeats and discouragements. He gives thanks to God for God’s help and release in this one, and then he looks to the future and says, “There are so many other things, Lord God, where I’m going to need your help. False friends, for example.”

Verse 11: “Do not withhold your mercy from me, Lord; may your love and faithfulness always protect me. For troubles without number surround me; my sins …” For a start. “… have overtaken me, and I cannot see. They are more than the hairs of my head, and my heart fails within me. Be pleased to save me, Lord; come quickly, Lord, to help me.”

“The worst thing I face is not just this slimy pit experience through which I’ve passed but my own sins which cripple me and crush me and take me down because I look at my own heart, and I cannot even fit Psalm 1.” But there are other troubles: those who mock him and give him difficulties. Verses 14 and 15: “May those who say to me, ‘Aha! Aha!’ be appalled at their own shame.” Here’s a psalm of huge intensity as a believer looks at how God has helped him and looks to the way he is going to need God’s help in the future.

Another psalm, Psalm 51. Here it is very important to read the superscription. It’s a psalm of David when the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba. This is the account where he seduces a young woman next door who is the wife of one of David’s own troops fighting on the front in one of David’s wars. How callous is that?

The war goes on, and it transpires that Bathsheba has become pregnant, and she lets the king know. He arranges to have her husband, Uriah, shipped back from the front. He sends a message. Uriah is supposed to bring back a message to the king, ostensibly to communicate between the officers in the field and the commander-in-chief.

In fact, it’s David’s way of getting the bloke home. He thinks then that he’ll go home, and he’ll sleep with his wife. But in fact, he is so concerned for his mates at the front, he can’t even bring himself to do that. So he sleeps in the open courtyard of the palace, prepared to go back the next day.

King David knows he is snookered. So he sends back a message by this young man’s hand … a sealed message … for the unit commanders on the front. They’re to arrange a skirmish, and everybody else in the platoon is supposed to have some sort of code to know when to fall back … everyone except this young man Uriah. They’re in the skirmish. The code is given. Everybody falls back except Uriah, and he is killed.

David thinks he has gotten away with it. That’s when the prophet Nathan confronts him. David in the steps of public humiliation and shame and public repentance and so on.… It’s all out in the open. It’s a mess. Nevertheless, he is a broken man out of it all. In the midst of this, he writes Psalm 51.

That’s what is meant by the superscription. It’s written, “When the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba.” “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me.”

Have you not had feelings like that when you’ve woken up in the middle of the night and remembered some insanely evil thing you’ve done, some really stupid thing, and you break out into a cold sweat and squirm and wish you could undo it but can’t? “My sin is always before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done this evil in your sight.”

Now isn’t that a stunning comment? At one level, you want to say it’s not true. He sinned against Bathsheba. He seduced her! He sinned against Bathsheba’s husband. He had him bumped off after cuckolding him! He sinned against his own family. He betrayed them! He sinned against the military high command. He corrupted them! He sinned against the people. He was not acting as a righteous king! It’s hard to think of anybody he didn’t sin against.

Yet he has the cheek to say, “Against you only have I sinned and done this evil in your sight.” You see, at the deepest level, it is exactly the truth. What makes sin so heinous? What makes sin so sinful? It’s precisely that it defies God. I mean, it’s awful that we hurt our friends. It’s awful that we wound one another. When we wake up in the middle of the night with those feelings of huge shame, often it’s because we’re embarrassed at what our friends will think of us now because we’ve said something so stupid or been so insensitive or so cruel.

Beyond all of the shame before them is a much bigger guilt that we’re rarely even aware of and do not often squirm over. That’s what David is doing here. He is squirming over it because he sees what it is in God’s sight. “Against you, you only, have I sinned …” What gives it its most horrendous odor, its most heinous aspect, is precisely that it is defiance of the God who made us and who judges us on the last day.

David understands that because, you see, he understands the opening chapters of Genesis. The heart of Eve’s problem or of Adam’s problem is not that they had just broken a rule or betrayed each other’s trust or the like. It’s they de-Godded God. In any sin we commit, whether it’s genocide or cheating on your income tax, the most offended party is always God. “Against you only have I sinned and done this evil in your sight.” That’s why, as we’ve seen from the beginning, what we must have—whatever else we have—is his forgiveness, or we have nothing.

Oh, there are other psalms. Psalm 110 looks to a coming Redeemer who is simultaneously the King and a Priest. It’s the most frequently quoted chapter in the New Testament. There’s Psalm 119, the longest chapter in the Old Testament, a chapter which is full of thanksgiving to God and a meditation on the very nature of God’s words, of God’s self-disclosure in words, of his law, of his decrees, of his judgments, of his teaching, of his instruction. It’s all about what we would call the Bible. It’s all about how to think about the fact that God is a talking God, a God who speaks and gives us his words.

Psalm 139 says something of the same in one verse (verse 17). “How precious are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!” This is the God who makes his people sing in thanksgiving, in contrition, in petition, in lament, in reflection. He is also …

2. The God Who is Unfathomably Wise

The book of Proverbs has one kind of Wisdom Literature, a lot of proverbs. In the book of Proverbs, you find two metaphorical women. Wisdom itself is regularly pictured as a woman (Lady Wisdom). Over against her is Dame Folly. The whole book is structured in many of its sections as a course laid out either by Lady Wisdom or Dame Folly. One or the other. You’re following one of these ladies.

Wisdom Literature likes to present either this path or that path. It will compare two things and say, “This is the way of wisdom, and this is the way of folly. Make sure what you follow is the way of wisdom.” Right toward the beginning of the book, a proverb that recurs in a variety of ways (chapter 1, verse 7) is, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.”

A little later, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” This does not mean the kind of cringing fear that a whipped cur has when you pick up a newspaper, knowing you’re an arbitrary and cruel master who gets some sort of cheap glee out of scaring the poor little thing to death.

This is the fear of God that recognizes he is matchlessly holy and righteous and just, and he is our judge as well as our only hope. There lies the beginning of wisdom. You see, this is the Proverbs equivalent of Psalm 14. It’s the fool who says in his heart, “There is no God.” To have a right sense of how to live under the sun must begin with God and his self-disclosure. There is the beginning of wisdom.

Then there are other books that are called Wisdom Literature. One that’s very remarkable is the book of Job. We really don’t know when it was written. It’s probably very old, and it depicts a man who.… Oh, he is not perfect, but he is an astonishingly good man, filthy rich, but generous, caring, loving.

He even prays preemptively for his own 10 children. He prays preemptively lest they should commit any sins and do something bad. He is generous with the poor. He could testify, “I made a covenant with my own heart that I would not look on women in order to lust after them.” He is an astonishingly pious man.

But he doesn’t know that behind the scenes the Devil, our dear friend from Genesis 3, returns (Satan). He returns and makes a wager with God. “The only reason why Job likes you is he is filthy rich and you protect him. You take away all the good things he has, and he will turn around and curse you to your face.” God says, “Go ahead. Just don’t hurt him.”

In successive waves of marauding grifts, his cattle are stolen. His herds are decimated. A windstorm comes along. The house where his children are having a party blows down, and all 10 of his kids are killed. The man says, “Naked I came out of my mother’s womb. Naked I will return. The Lord gives. The Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

Satan says to God, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Skin for skin. Just take away this chap’s health, and he’ll curse you to your face.” God says, “Go ahead, but spare his life.” Pretty soon you find him on an ash pit using pieces of broken pottery, picking away at his scabs. When three friends come in to visit him, they sit down, and for a week they do nothing but simply keep quiet, the wisest thing they could do.

Then the rest of the book is set out as a drama. These friends think they have the theology all under control. They say, “Job, do you believe God is sovereign?”

“Yes.”

“Do you believe God is just?”

“Yes.”

“So if he is sovereign and he is just and you’re suffering, then the implication is …?”

“I know God is sovereign. I know he is just, but quite frankly I don’t deserve this. I’m an innocent sufferer. I shouldn’t be suffering this.”

“Job, do you hear what you’re saying? Are you saying God is making a mistake or God is unjust to you?”

“Oh, no. No, I’m not saying that. I know God is sovereign. I know he is just, but I still have to say this isn’t fair what I’m going through.”

Then the discussion gets hotter and hotter until eventually the friends begin to say, “Job, you don’t understand. You’ve got more sins behind you that you don’t even recognize, sins you’ve committed you don’t even know about, than you can possibly imagine. Otherwise, you’re really saying God is unjust. If that’s the case, then what you really ought to do is confess them in any case, even if you can’t name any specific ones. Just sort of confess generally to God, and God will forgive you, and everything will get better.”

Job says, “How can I possibly do that? How can I repent of something I don’t know what I’ve done wrong? How can I possibly repent and claim I’m asking for God’s mercy and forgiveness when I don’t think I deserve this? That would be making me a liar. That would actually be sinning against God. What I really need is a lawyer. I wish I had somebody who would go between God and me. That’s what I need.”

The tension mounts and mounts and mounts. I won’t go through all of the levels of argumentation, but eventually God speaks. Do you know what he says? “Job, have you ever designed a snowflake? Where were you when I made the first hippopotamus? Did you give me any wisdom on how to cast the constellation Orion into the heavens, Job?” There are two or three chapters of these rhetorical questions.

At the end, Job says, “I’m sorry. I spoke foolishly, claiming I know more than I do. I repent.” Do you know what God says? “Stand up on your feet. I’m not finished yet” and has two more chapters of questions. It’s stunning, because at the end of the day, there is no systematic answer that’s provided to sort out the entire problem of innocent suffering. All of the rhetorical questions combine to mean one thing: We’re not always going to get the explanations. But God is bigger than we are, and sometimes you just have to trust him.

Then God says that, nevertheless, Job basically got the account right. He was pushing on the arrogance front a bit by the end, but it’s the three friends whom God condemns because they think they have God tapped. They have him all figured out. He is nicely boxed. He is done. At the end, God restores the fortunes of Job because, after all, in the Bible in the end, not only is justice done, but it’s seen to be done. That too is a book of wisdom.

There is one other book of wisdom that’s worth a brief mention here now too. It’s the book of Ecclesiastes, where Solomon sets out to find meaning in life. He thinks of public works, and he devotes himself to public works and discovers that is meaningless too. Then he devotes himself to wisdom and literature and writing and meditation. He discovers that after awhile that doesn’t satisfy.

Then he devotes himself to generosity. Then he devotes himself to asceticism. Then he devotes himself to something else and something else. At the end of the day, nothing finally satisfies. His conclusion at the end of it all.… You come to chapter 12, and he looks back over his life and the various things he has attempted to do in his effort to seek pleasure, meaning, fulfillment.

He writes, “Remember your creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, ‘I find no pleasure in them.’ […] Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the duty of every human being. God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.”

That is to say, what he finally comes up with is a teleological vision, a vision of what happens at the end. You have to live in the light of the end. That is wisdom, because we will give an account to this God. When we feel in our hearts and minds as we grow older that there has to be something more … there has to be something more satisfying, there has to be something bigger … we are right to listen to that brooding voice, because we were made for God, and our souls will be restless until we know him.

Those are the kinds of things the wisdom books teach us. As the Old Testament barrels along in its anticipation of the day when Wisdom incarnate will come, when there is some final resolution between the perfections God demands in Psalm 1 and the compromise and misconduct of our own lives, when there is a David who acknowledges he sins before God and that he must have God’s mercy, but his sins are always before him, and there is no hope before him, there is a resolution still coming, and his name is Jesus.