WHERE IS UNDERSTANDING?

WHERE IS UNDERSTANDING?

Job 28:20-28 NET.

²⁰ “But wisdom — where does it come from? Where is the place of understanding? ²¹ For it has been hidden from the eyes of every living creature, and from the birds of the sky it has been concealed. ²² Destruction and Death say, ‘With our ears we have heard a rumor about where it can be found.’ ²³ God understands the way to it, and he alone knows its place. ²⁴ For he looks to the ends of the earth and observes everything under the heavens. ²⁵ When he made the force of the wind and measured the waters with a gauge. ²⁶ When he imposed a limit for the rain, and a path for the thunderstorm, ²⁷ then he looked at wisdom and assessed its value; he established it and examined it closely. ²⁸ And he said to mankind, ‘The fear of the LORD — that is wisdom, and to turn away from evil is understanding.'”

This is our final peek into the Book of Job (for a while, anyway), so I decided to focus on chapter 28. In this chapter, Job comes closer than anywhere else to the message of the other wisdom literature books. The subject is wisdom, or its synonym, understanding. But the other wisdom literature books tend to encourage people to seek wisdom. Solomon wrote his Proverbs to teach people how to be wise and make discerning decisions. In Ecclesiastes, he says that wisdom is like a sharpened axe head, which makes one’s work easier and makes it more likely for one to succeed.

But in Job, the people who claim to be wise are Job’s “friends” who are proven to be fools. They were experts in the conventional wisdom of their day, but they used their wisdom to condemn Job. The Bible never calls Job wise. Ezekiel calls him righteous, and James praises his endurance. But the point is not that Job was wiser than his two friends. The fact is that wisdom is only one tool in the box. There is a tool that is even more important than wisdom – even more vital than understanding.

Truly wise people understand this. After all he wrote about wisdom, Solomon revealed that humanity’s whole duty can be summed up as fearing God and keeping his commandments. Wisdom is a helpful tool, but respect and obedience finally get the job done. So, Job encounters the wisest of the wise, and he prevails over their arguments, not because he was wise but because he had a right relationship with God.

Job argues that you cannot find wisdom.

If you want some silver or gold, or iron, there are places on the map where you can go, and there are mines you can mine. You can dig deep enough into the mountains that you can bring out precious jewels. You can pan for gold along the streams and get the valuable items you desire. But there are no places on the map where you can go to find wisdom.

This is Job’s point in the first eleven verses of this chapter. At first glance, we might want to object to Job’s argument, though. Some of us have paid good money and gone to several places of higher learning. I, myself, have paid out lots of cash and gone to several educational institutions and added some degrees to my title. Is Job saying that I wasted my time, energy, and resources? No, he is not saying that. But he is saying that if my educational pursuits only get me as far as they got his wise friends, then they were futile.

Job is saying that there are always limits to our understanding. We might find some valuable nuggets along the way, but we never strike the mother lode. Wisdom is a good thing, but it should never be the only thing. Even Solomon eventually conceded this. He had made several fortunes, collected all the wise sayings he could find, written many books, planned and supervised many building projects, but in the end, his reputation was tarnished by his bad moral choices.

Job argues that you cannot buy wisdom.

Again, if we have invested a lot of our resources in education, we might be tempted to counter Job’s argument. But Job is arguing that a wisdom exists that is not part of any school’s curriculum. Even if we had the money to go to every university on every continent, we could not purchase the wisdom that Job is describing. It exists, but it might as well not exist for us, because we cannot access it. There are limits to what we can know.

One of the reasons God gave us the Book of Job is to reveal this fact. The whole plot centers around an event that neither Job nor any of his friends were aware of. They could not figure out what was happening to Job. For the miserable comforters, the lack of that information was not a problem. If they did not know why Job was suffering, they would guess. They figured that they already knew all the data they needed in order to make an approximate guess as to why it was happening. But we learned about the conversation between the LORD and the devil. If Job’s friends had known about that, they could have been actual comforters for him. But the point of Job is that they did not know. They angered God by their proud assumptions. Instead of displaying true wisdom, they displayed their ignorance.

By way of application, we should all remember this fact and learn to keep our assumptions to ourselves. If we do not know the whole story, we should not be quick to accuse others of causing their problems. As I suggested last week, when people are suffering, we should seek to help them, pray for them, and share Christ with them. We should not make the mistake that Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar did. We should not assume we know more than what has been revealed.

Job argues that only God has wisdom.

What Job had experienced had humbled him and put him in his place. Job’s question was, “Wisdom — where does it come from? Where is the place of understanding?” His answer was, “Only God knows.” Not a creature created has ever accessed that divine wisdom. Before we even dare to proclaim that we know anything, we should bow our knees to the heavenly Father. To fear him is wisdom, and to turn away from evil is understanding. That is the least we can do because that is where wisdom begins.

• “Fearing the LORD is the beginning of moral knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction” (Proverbs 1:7).
• The LORD created wisdom before he made the dust of the world (Proverbs 8:22-26).
• “The beginning of wisdom is to fear the LORD, and acknowledging the Holy One is understanding” (Proverbs 9:10).

Knowing how much we don’t know should humble us as it did Job. It should make us cautious about the cause of anyone’s problems – even our own. We should go to prayer – not as a last resort, but as our first response. Being quick to pray acknowledges that only God has the whole solution to any problem. The doctors have their place, medicines have their place, our wisdom has its place, other people’s advise can help, but we have to start with acknowledging our limits and deficiencies.  

Knowing how much we don’t know should make us more compassionate when we see others suffering. Instead of looking for the obvious solution and seeking the quick fix, we should be willing to stay beside the sufferers and be there for them as they face their trials. It is sad, but many of us have grown up in a culture that tends to hide our suffering. When we have problems, we try to avoid bothering others with those problems. We get sick, and we might go to a doctor or two, but we often keep it from our loved ones and fellow believers. Sometimes those closest to us only find out what we had when they read our obituary! That culture of hiding suffering keeps us away from sharing the compassion of Christ with others.

Knowing how much we don’t know should make us more intentionally evangelistic. We can’t figure everything out for others, but we can lead them to the one who has figured everything out. In the Book of Job, the story significantly shifts when God appears and sets the record straight. Even before Job experiences his healing and the restoration of all his blessings of family and wealth, Job is vindicated. We find out what we already knew. God is sovereign over the affairs of humanity; He rules over everything. But knowing that there is a God who knows everything and we do not is not really a problem. There is a way to God. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, and we can come to God through him! No one comes to God through anyone else. The best thing you can do for your non-Christian neighbors is introduce them to Christ. In John, chapter 12, we learn of a group of Greeks who approached Philip. They said, “Sir, we would like to see Jesus.” That was a very wise request. Like Philip, we can tell people about Jesus, but what we really want is to lead people to get to know Jesus himself.

Each of us has the responsibility not to push our agendas and flaunt our wisdom. We have one primary goal: to get others to know Jesus. Once we lead them to Jesus, we can turn our attention to spreading the gospel among others. We should have the attitude of John the Baptist. Once he introduced Jesus and the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, John stepped back. He said Jesus must increase, but John must decrease.

We have to be comfortable with our limits. That does not mean that we should be willfully ignorant. We should always ask God to open our eyes to the wonderful things he has revealed. But everything we learn is not to magnify our own position and status. Our purpose is to reflect his light, not to draw attention to ours.

I don’t know how true it is, but I read a story this week about a little town in North Carolina called Pershing. This town had just built a new high school and installed the latest technology—a series of generators that powered the latest battery-operated lights. The city was so proud of its new technology that it decided to rename itself after the brand of lights—they were called Delco lights.

The Book of Job begins by introducing a man named Job, whom God had blessed. It ends by saying that God blessed Job again. The LORD blessed the second part of Job’s life more than the first. You and I may not experience that kind of blessing in this life. But we can know the same God that Job knew. We cannot know everything, but we can have a relationship with the one who does know everything. What we know is not half as important as who we know.