Clough Proverbs Lesson 46
Wisdom and Creation I – Proverbs 8:22-23
Before we get into
Proverbs 8 we have some questions that have been handed in on the feedback
cards and I’d like to answer these. One
is: is there need for the state’s recognition of marriage according to biblical
teaching. Where is this taught if it
is? It’s taught through the Old
Testament wherever you have any law that regulates adultery. Obviously, if the state is to punish adultery
the state must therefore also be able to recognize the marriage. So any laws that are ever given for the state
regulation in the legal realm of adultery requires the state, therefore, to
keep records of who is married to whom.
So the state does have precedent to recognize; the only point that we
made earlier in Proverbs is contrary to what many of you have been taught, and
contrary to what you usually read, when we have a marriage ceremony here, a
wedding, when I pronounce the marriage and so on at the end of the service,
that does not make the marriage. The
marriage occurs when the couple makes their vow; that’s when the marriage
occurs. The marriage does not occur when
the state of
The second
question: If parents teach the basic respect toward authority, children learn
authority in the home, but what about parents that could care less about their
children; maybe they drink all the time or work all the time and so on. If the parent is not capable or willing to
take care of a child or keep the child, is it not good to take the child from
his parents and place him in care of a more responsible adult. Why should a child suffer? Of course this has biblical precedent; this
is also given under the Mosaic Law but the question that we raise is what the
state’s unauthorized intrusion upon the parent’s responsibility, and when the
state does move in, in these situations, it’s domain of operation should be strictly
defined and regulated.
Three: you said
under the Mosaic Law that they did not consider a fetus living until breath was
taken. Would this mean that Bible
doctrine supports abortion? Not
necessarily, but what we do say is that abortion cannot be shown to be wrong on
the basis that it is murder from God’s Word.
There are a lot of people that would emotionally this way but the Mosaic
Law in Exodus 21, 22 and 23 and the passages of Genesis 2:5 clearly state that
there is no life until the breath is taken, and since there is no life, no life
can be taken, therefore abortion is not murder on biblical grounds. However, can abortion be wrong on biblical
grounds? Yes, it can be wrong under
certain conditions which we could go into in connection with Psalm 139. All we’re saying is that if you want to argue
against abortion just be careful how you argue; we’re not saying it’s
impossible to create an argument against it but we are saying that you can’t
just automatically plow into the discussion as many people do and say
categorically therefore it is wrong because it’s murder. You have a very difficult time proving that.
Proverbs 6:23, the
New ASV says: “teaching is light,” not “a light.” Which is correct? Well, there is no difference between saying
“teaching is light” and “a light.” The
point is whether a noun has an article or not; whenever in the King James you
have “a light” it means an anarthrous noun, that is it has no article on it. An article would be t-h-e kind of thing. In English “a”, just the letter “a” is
oftentimes an article which sounds like, if you say light or a light there’s
something significantly different between those translations; not so from the
original, both translations mean the same thing. An anarthrous noun emphasizes, generally
speaking, the character of the noun.
When you have an article in front of the noun it emphasizes an identity
or a particular thing about that noun.
Four: There is no
mention in Proverbs 6:25-35 of the Mosaic provision for the death penalty of adultery. Why not?
The answer is that Proverbs 6 is given to give the reasons for God’s
moral law. Proverbs basically has very
little to say about the legal results of behavior; it has to do with the
spiritual results of behavior, the reason being, of course, that obviously
adultery could be committed and never be detected by the state and this is one
of the strongest arguments to show that the teaching in Proverbs is very highly
spiritual, because it is not looking at what the state will and will not do. The issue is you live your life as unto the
Lord, regardless of what the state does or does not do.
Shall we turn to
Proverbs 8 and we’re ready to begin one of the most difficult passages in the
entire Old Testament. It may not strike
this to you but this passage has down through the centuries, since it was
written, caused more discussion than practically any other passage in God’s
Word apart from Isaiah 53. But we go to
Proverbs 8 and in Proverbs 8 you remember we are dealing with the positive
results, positive aspects of wisdom. And
in particular we have a command given in verse 10 and a motivation for that
command in verses 11-31. This is typical
of instruction literature; always the command, always the motivation. However, in this case the motivation is
divided into two parts, there are actually two motivations. Proverbs 8:11-21 and Proverbs 22:31; so you
have motivation number two and motivation number one. Motivation number one we dealt with last week
as wisdom rewards her lovers in a practical way. So throughout verses 11-21 the emphasis was
on the practical nature of wisdom, all the details of life. This is why, for example, you read in verse
15, “By me,” that is wisdom, “kings reign, and princes decree justice. [16] By me princes rule, and nobles, all the
judges of the earth.” Those are the
practical, concrete, every day occurrences in life. And so all of that so far is that which is
practical.
But now we come to
a very strange passage; it begins in verse 22 and takes further along than any
other passage in God’s Word before John, before the Gospel of John, there is no
passage that takes us further back exploring the basis for the Christian faith
than this particular passage; than the claims for the Christian faith, the
answers to the great intellectual questions that men have asked down through
the centuries. But beginning at verse 22
we have an adumbration of Jesus Christ but it is done in such a way that you
have to be very, very careful before you read Christ into what is said in verses
22 and following.
So what we’re
going to do this morning is study one verse in great detail, verse 22, then
next Sunday we will deal with verses 23-31 and finish the passage off. But we’re taking it very slowly to start with
that you won’t prematurely see Christ here.
I don’t want you to see Christ too fast because if you see Him too fast
you won’t see Him for all that He is; you won’t see all of Him that is
here. So the way to see Jesus Christ in
this passage is by not looking for Him.
The way to see Him is to relax and stop trying to read the New Testament
back into this. Forget the New
Testament, just leave it out of your mind until we get there, and come back and
concentrate on the content of this verse, and set the verse in context with the
rest of this chapter. Then, after we
carefully do that for a long enough time, and get our minds prepared, then we
will come over and then we will work with the New Testament.
But this is the
passage that is the basis for the Christian apologetics. Now Christianity makes a very offensive
claim; there is nothing more offensive than in Christianity than this following
claim. Now Christianity makes many
claims that are offensive to some people.
It’s offensive to some people to be told that you cannot be saved except
by grace. Now if you have a person that
has kind of a raunchy background and has had his share of grossness, he is a
relaxed person and can perfectly accept the fact that if he is going to be
entered into fellowship with God it’s going to have to be by grace; God is
going to have to do something, I don’t have it.
So that kind of a person is all set up for grace, they’re all relaxed,
ready to go. But there are some people
who are very religious and self-righteous and they have a great, great, great
problem in accepting and receiving grace because inevitably they would like to
hold on to just something in their life that is good, just something that is
good some place; I’ve got to commend myself to God on the basis of this. And God says no, you will not come to me
commending yourself on the basis of anything except the finished work of Jesus
Christ on the cross, period, over and out.
That’s grace. And a lot of people
have difficulty in grace.
And then if they
get through that hurdle with grace at the beginning of the Christian life, they
have hurdles to face down through the rest of their Christian life because from
the time they become Christians until the time they die it’s a constant
expansion of your perception of grace.
Maybe you’ve never thought of Christian growth this way, but as you grow
spiritually do you realize that one dimension of your spiritual growth is an
enlargement of your perception of grace toward you. In other words, if you go on in the Christian
life you realize more and more, or should, more and more and more that the only
reason why you can ever be acceptable in any way, shape, form, to God is by His
grace. Now if you do not find in your
life that you can enlarge upon the concept of grace, be more relaxed and see
that your standing with God depends totally upon His grace, then I question
your spiritual growth. If you’re still
out hustling to earn points with God by some religious program, if you’re still
out doing some system of good works, gimmicks, giving or something else because
you want to commend yourself to God, you still have not been able to relax with
God’s grace. Now that’s the problem with
some people—grace.
And the other
people have problems with other aspects, but everybody, at least most people, have
problem with the Christian doctrine of truth.
The Christian doctrine of truth given in John 14:6, one among many
verses, is that there is only one correct view, period over and out. There are not ten different ways to God. There are not even two different ways to God,
there is only one way to God, period, no exceptions. There is one view and that is through Jesus
Christ’s finished work. Now if Christ’s
finished work is absolutely necessary, and underline the word
“absolutely,” of Christ’s death is absolutely necessary for your salvation,
that must mean that Confucius is not the way; it must mean that Buddha is not
the way; it must mean that any system of religion that bypasses the cross of
Christ is absolutely wrong. That’s the
only conclusion you can come to. And
this is what offends people horribly about Christianity.
And therefore it
is the thing that I always like to clear the decks on when I’m speaking about
Christianity to a group of people and I know they come from various
backgrounds, I always at least like to get one thing clear, that you can
dislike this but at least know one thing; that Christianity makes this claim
and you have got to decide whether you like it or whether you don’t, and
whether this claim is valid or whether it is not valid, but you’ve got to
decide this. This claim has got to be
decided before you even talk about becoming a Christian, before you even think
about trusting in Christ, you’ve got to first consider, is there definite
spiritual truth in the universe; definite truth about other things but is there
definite truth about spiritual things in the universe. You’ve got to come to this conclusion and
there are only two conclusions you can come to, obviously—yes, no. If you say no then you turn into a
relativist, and that is that there are many ways to God; that’s one possible
answer. But since Christianity says
there is only one way, then Christianity, by definition, is excluded. So as a relativist you are free to accept
every position except biblical Christianity.
This is most
interesting because broad minded people feel they can accept all views. No.
Broad minded people can accept all views except one, and that is
biblical Christianity. That’s the only
view that broad minded people can’t accept.
And you might use this in your conversation some time, when you’re
around somebody that likes to brag how open minded they are, and you can throw
out into the conversation, say, I know something that no broad minded man in
the world can ever accept. And just
throw it up as a challenge. You’re
really broad minded are you? Well, I
know something that you can’t possibly accept.
And then throw out the Christian claim that salvation comes only through
Jesus Christ, that revelation in the Bible is the only valid revelation
available in the human race or ever has been available in the human race today,
and that is a claim that no broad minded person can accept. And they’re free to do what they want to with
other answers, that’s their business, but at least let’s make the issue clear:
no relativist or broad minded person can ever accept biblical
Christianity.
If you say there
is a definite answer, then you can possibly accept biblical Christianity and we
can go on from there. But if you say no
at this point the conversation must come to a halt and we must just cease
discussion at that point, simply because you yourself have cut yourself off
from going any further in the discussion because you have dogmatically asserted
that there is no such thing as definite spiritual religious truth. And the counter to your claim would be how do
you know there is no such thing as definite spiritual truth. That would seem to say that you have passed
through the lengths, the depth, the height, and the breadth of the universe
yourself and have come to the conclusion that throughout your infinite search
you have deduced there is no such thing as definite spiritual truth. When and were do you make such an
odyssey. So this is the first thing that
has to be discussed and that is the thing that is behind Proverbs 8:22. So let’s go and begin to work with Proverbs
8:22.
“The LORD
possessed me in the beginning of His way, before His works of old.” And I’ll read down to the end of verse 26 so
we can get the context. [23] “I was set
up form everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. [24] When there were no depths, I was brought
forth—when there were no fountains abounding with water. [25] Before the mountains were settled,
before the hills, was I brought forth.
[26] While as yet He had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the
highest part of the dust of the world.”
Now from verses
22-26 we have the first claim that is made for wisdom par excellence in
Scripture and that is that it precedes all creation; that wisdom itself is not
part of the universe, that wisdom itself is beyond the cosmos; that the very
practical thing which in verses 15 and 16 was the thing that you see in every
day life, that which you see in every day life lies beyond all creation. Now this is an important point because
Proverbs 8, as we will show as we go through this, Proverbs 8 gave the Jews an
answer for the ancient world. You see,
the Jews were sitting here by themselves, surrounded by various cultures. To the northwest we have the Greeks; to the southwest
you have Egypt; to the northeast you have Assyria; to the east you have
India.
The Jews had to
come out eventually, in 586 BC and face all these cultures, and here God the
Holy Spirit is graciously providing them with revelation. When the time comes and you have to carry on
your discussion with the Greek, with the Egyptian, with the Indian, with the
Assyrian, know this, O men of Israel, that the wisdom that you have come in
contact with in God’s Word is the same wisdom that operates in India, in
Assyria, in Egypt, and in Greece. In
other words, you are encountering truth that is valid all over the universe,
that Jesus Christ, paraphrasing it in our own generation, Jesus Christ is the
way, and the life, for the American; Jesus Christ is the way and the life and
the truth for the African, Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life for
the China man. Wherever you go, even if
you went to Mars, Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life. It never changes; it is an absolute claim
that is valid throughout all the cosmos, throughout all the universe. That is the claim that is being made
here.
At this point I
want to read a short passage from a book, actually it’s a compilation of
lectures given at Dallas Seminary by Frances Schaeffer, and he points out a
very interesting thing that we have to watch for as we come to verse 22 and
deal with truth. Here’s what he says,
and these words have gone on in my mind many, many times as I have thought
through God’s Word, and in particular as I thought through how the Jew must
have felt if he discussed his Bible with the Greeks, with the Egyptians, with
the Indian and with the Assyrian.
Dr. Schaeffer
writes: “Let me add something in passing.
I find that many people who are evangelical and orthodox want truth just
to be true to the dogma, or to be true to what the Bible says. Now nobody stands more for the full
inspiration of Scripture than I, but this is not the end of truth as
Christianity is presented, as the Bible presents itself.” I’ll just pause there, his point is that a
lot of believers say what is true is that which fits the Bible; I believe that
because the Bible says it. Now that’s
fine but it doesn’t go far enough because now suppose you’re with the Greek, or
the Egyptian or the Assyrian or the Indian, and he says fine, but how do I know
your Bible is true. It’s fine to say you
believe something because the Bible says it.
Now I ask you, why is the Bible itself true? And so this is why he says, “I find many
people who are evangelical and orthodox want truth just to be true to the
dogma, or to be true to what the Bible says.”
But, that doesn’t go far enough.
And he continues:
“The truth of Christianity is that it is true to what is there, not just true
to the Bible but the Bible and its content fit the universe as the universe
really is. That is the claim of
Christianity. We make the claim that
this Bible is true to what the universe is.
We’re not just generating truth because the Bible says it,” I believe it
because the Bible says it.
Nonsense. I believe it because
the Bible says it because the Bible is the truth and it fits what’s there. “You can go to the end of the world and you
never need be afraid, like the ancient people that you will fall off the end
and the dragons will eat you up. You can
carry out your intellectual discussion to the end of the game because
Christianity is not only true to the dogmas, it is not only true to what God
has said in the Bible but it is also true to what is there and we will never
fall off the end of the world. It is not
just an approximate model, it is really true to what is there. And then the evangelical believer catches
hold of this vision we will have our revolution; we will begin to have
something beautiful in our lives, something which will have force in our poor
lost world. What is true is from the
Christian viewpoint and as God sets it forth in Scripture but if we are going
to have this answer, notice that we must have a full biblical answer, namely
that it is true to what the universe is like.”
And this is the
claim that is being made in Proverbs 8:22.
“When the LORD possessed me,” first let’s look at “me;” “me” refers to chokmah, the Hebrew word for wisdom, as explained in verses
11-21. So therefore to understand who
the “me” is, don’t go jumping and putting Christ into this passage yet, just go
back to the context, and in verses 11-21 who is “me?” Who is the “me?” All right, let’s look at Proverbs 8:11,
“Wisdom is better than rubies.” Verse
12, “I, wisdom, dwell with prudence,” and remember we said that was skill in
every day details of life… skill in every day details of life, everything from
cooking to sewing to carpentry, to metal working, to anything that required
skill in the ancient world, that was chokmah. Don’t think of something philosophical off in
a distance, this is every day skills in life.
“The fear of the LORD,” that was an idiom for chokmah, “is to hate evil,” that’s the moral dimension. So verse 13 tells you “me” includes what’s
listed here, the first thing, every day skills; every day skills would be one
thing included in “me.” The second thing
would be moral sensitivity, know of good and evil. Verse 14, “Counsel is mine, and sound
wisdom.” That means advice. [15] “By me kings reign, and princes decree
justices. [16] …princes rule, and
nobles, all the judges of the earth.”
This would be political skill.
So look at all the
things that are included in “me” now.
Get this picture first; don’t put Christ into this passage too
fast. In all of these, every day skills
and so on, we would include, because this was included, if a carpenter is
working he’s obviously got dimensions that he measures with, doesn’t he? So included in every day skills wouldn’t we
have mathematics? Sure we would, so does
chokmah include mathematics? Yes; it includes it not by direct statement
but we know that the skills would be skills of computation. Statistics; they kept statistics in the
ancient world; how do you suppose they kept account of their armies? How do you suppose they computed the amount
of food and weapons they would need for their armies? Did they use mathematics? Yes.
So mathematics would be included as chokmah. Do you suppose writing would be
included? And art? Sure a whole third of the Hebrew canon was
the chokmah section; so music, art,
would be included in the “me” under the everyday skills of life. You name it, it would be included here. Would education in the sense of teaching
skills, would that be included? Yes,
that would be included in chokmah or
“me.”
So whatever you
want to name, it’s included in “me.” The
things that the responsible creature does, “me,” “The LORD possessed me.” Now the question becomes why does the pronoun
“me,” why is there a pronoun used here in a personal sense, personal pronoun. And so down through history there’s been a
great debate, and here’s the nature of the debate and I don’t major on these
things when I’m exegeting the Word of God but I think at this time it would do
you good to realize the men that have fought a battle for at least… well, this
was written 1000 BC, it’s now nearly 2000 AD, so this battle has gone of for
3000 years. So since man has thought
this battle worthy enough to discuss for 30 centuries maybe we ought to just
spend three minutes with it to introduce you to it.
That is, is “me”
here personification or is it what they call hypostasis. Now I’ll interpret those words for you. There have been some may who say no, this
passage is personification. What does
that mean? It just means that it’s a
literary device; it just means that wisdom, the skills and everything else are
just viewed for the sake of literary skill as something personal, but they’re
not really personal, it’s just a literary device. Some men have said that. And others have said no, this is an actual
hypostasis, which means it is an actual person with the proper name, Wisdom,
and therefore the Second Person of the Trinity; the Second Person of the
Trinity is actually given here in this verse.
And there have been godly men on both sides of the fence that have taken
both views.
Now that is the
nature of the discussion as this passage was given in 1000 BC, Proverbs. Later on we have a book called the Wisdom of
Solomon. The Wisdom of Solomon is an
Apocryphal book written in 150 BC. By
this time, remember the discussion has gone on for 900 years, the people who
believed in hypostasis were winning out.
For example, there’s a passage in the Wisdom of Solomon like this,
chapter 7, verses 20-27: Wisdom, the fashion of all things taught me, she is
the breath of the power of God, a pure emanation of the glory of the
Almighty. Then there’s a book called the
Book of Eccliasticus, not to be confused with the book of Ecclesiastes which in
your Bible. This is Eccliasticus and
this work was written between 300 and 200 BC, and by this time the discussion
was also going over to hypostasis: From eternity, in the beginning, He created
me. So here we have hypostasis, but it’s
of a created person. Later on a great
philosopher called Philo lived in the city of Alexandria and did a lot with
this concept which we’ll deal with in a moment when we get to John. So there’s this argument; you’ve got to
decide for yourself as you read verse 22, do you think this talking about just
a literary device or is there something back of this that’s talking to
you.
Well, the first
thing to do is to analyze finally what we’re going to say about “me.” In the context “me” obviously does not refer
to Jesus Christ; “me” is referring to the skill mentioned in verses 11-21. So therefore at least we can say that “me”
refers to the practical and at least we can say it is a personification of
sorts. My own position as you will see
come out here is that this is a personification that’s pointing but it never
becomes a hypostasis; in other words, it never becomes a full revelation of
Christ until the New Testament. In the
New Testament, yes, Christ is fully revealed.
In the Old Testament, no, this is a personification that points, and
then it stops and the revelation stops here.
That’s why I say it’s a very powerful revelation in the Old Testament
but doesn’t go very far.
Now down through
the history there have been those who thought that Christ, and today we have
them, Jehovah’s Witnesses would be a modern day illustration of the famous
Arians, who from 8 centuries in the Church have said Christ is a created
being. One of their passages is this
passage; they claim that Proverbs 8:22 is teaching that wisdom is created at a
point in time; therefore Christ, being wisdom is created at a point in time,
therefore Christ is not fully God.
Now we have to
move now to the verb. We’ve dealt with
the object, “me,” we’re going backwards in the first sentence of verse 22. We’ve dealt with “me,” in the context it’s
talking about the skills in life, all wrapped up in a bundle, the skills of
creation. Now we come to the verb; the
verb is “possess” and not “create.” Here
is what it looks like in the Hebrew: kanah,
now if the Hebrew had intended to say “create” it would have used barah, or had it intended to use the
word to “make” it would have used asah. Now the Hebrew had two vocabulary words that
could have been easily used at this point had creation meant to be
implied. But creation is not meant to be
implied; something else.
What is kanah?
This is the verb now we have to zero in on and get accurate meanings
for. The word “possess” or kanah means to acquire, pick up
something, acquire. And it can be
acquire by, first, learning.
Illustration of the use of kanah
this way, turn to Proverbs 4:5, “Get wisdom,” the word “get” is kanah and obviously it means to acquire
wisdom by a process of learning. It’s
also used the same way down in verse 7, “Get wisdom,” kanah chokmah, “Get wisdom,” pick it up and acquire it by
learning. So that’s one way that the
verb can be used.
Now another way
that the verb church age be used is Exodus 15:16; kanah here used to acquire by purchase. Notice the last part of that verse, “Oh LORD,
till the people pass over, whom You have purchased.” Now that is kanah again but here it is acquire by purchase. See, the basic root hasn’t changed, it’s
still acquire, but it’s acquire differently.
Here we’re not acquiring it by learning it; here I acquire it because
I’m buying it; it was speaking of the redemption in Egypt under the Exodus; God
bought Egypt from Pharaoh.
But now there’s a
strange other use of kanah and this
one gets closer to Proverbs 8. Turn to
Genesis 4:1, and this is Eve speaking of her first son, and here Eve says, “I
have gotten a man Yahweh.” And there’s a
great debate on the meaning of that, which we won’t get into. The point is that the use of the verb means
here to acquire by birth. So there are
least three ways the verb kanah can
be used; to acquire by learning, to acquire by purchase, or acquire by
birth.
Now let’s to back
to Proverbs 8 and see which one fits.
“The LORD acquired me in the beginning of His way.” Now if you just look at verse 24, verse 25,
you’ll notice a verb that’s there; in both verses 24-25, notice that. Verse 24, “When there were no depths,” what
does it say, “I was brought forth,” that is the verb for child bearing, “I was
born.” Verse 25, same verb, the verb for
child bearing, “I was brought forth.”
Therefore if this is the context, what meaning does kanah carry in the context?
It carries the third one, to acquire by birth.
Now isn’t this
interesting. Now what we have is, “The
LORD has begotten me in the beginning of His way,” “The LORD has acquired me by
birth at the beginning of His way.” This
is God’s Son that is being given here.
Now you can begin to see some outlines start to take place. This is why I said relax about getting Christ
into the passage. Eventually He will be
there but you’ve got to relax enough to pick up some of these points. “The LORD gave birth to me,” “e acquired me
by childbirth at the beginning of His way.”
Now we’ve got to
ask a question: doesn’t this still say that there was a time when Christ, the
Second Person of the Trinity didn’t exist?
Doesn’t this argue that there was a beginning to the person of Christ,
that at one time there was God alone and then after that point there was God
and His Son? Doesn’t that argue,
therefore, against the eternality of the Second Person? So we’ve got to answer that; that’s a
legitimate question to ask. So we come
back to the passage and look again. What
were those three ways? To acquire by
learning, to acquire by purchase, or to acquire by birth. Since we’re having trouble with this, let’s
go to the first one and see if we can do something with that. If I acquire wisdom by learning, does that
mean that the wisdom never existed before I learned it? No.
Wisdom was there and I picked it up at a point in time but the acquiring
does not mean that it didn’t preexist the time that I picked it up. So at least in that case we don’t have this
problem.
What about
purchase? Did Israel exist before God
purchased her in the land of Egypt? Yes;
God purchased Israel, it had nothing to do with the origination of her in
history, so the acquiring still doesn’t negate Israel’s origin. Israel existed; if God purchased her in 1440
do you suppose Israel existed in 1450?
Of course she did; ten years before the Exodus didn’t Israel exist? Sure did.
So here the idea of acquire doesn’t knock out the idea of prior
existence.
But what about in
childbirth, what about this? This goes
into the concept of Sonship between the First and Second Persons of the
Trinity. We’re going to take a little
trip to Hebrews 1 and we want to study something about Sonship. Oddly enough we have to go into the advanced
revelation of the New Testament to get our categories clear before we can come
back and understand the primitive revelation in Proverbs 8.
In Hebrews 1:5,
God the Father says something to God the Son.
“For unto which of the angels said he at any time, Thou art My Son, this
day have I begotten thee?” The same verb
that we’re finding in Proverbs 8, childbearing, and it says specifically in
verse 5 that the Father, “this day” begot the Son. Now if He had said “I begot Thee,” without
putting “this day” in it we wouldn’t have the tension but we’ve got tension
because we’ve got this: “this day,” point in history, “have I begotten thee.” Doesn’t that, therefore say that Jesus Christ
originated at a point in time? Well, in
verse 3 of the same passage, Hebrews 1:3, “Christ, being the brightness of His
glory,” the Father’s glory, “the express image of His person, and upholding all
things by the word of His power, when he had by Himself purged our sins, sat
down on the right hand of the Majesty on high, [4] Being made so much better
than the angels, as he has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than
they.” That is the context of verse 5,
so let’s first find out what “this day” is?
Is this day the virgin birth of Jesus Christ? No, because the virgin birth isn’t in the
context of verses 2, 3 and 4. So “this
day” can’t refer to the virgin birth.
Well, then what does “this day” refer to, the day in which the Father
begat His Son? It refers to the session;
Jesus Christ, after death, after He rose again from the dead, He walked into
the throne room for a certain period of time, up until the time of Pentecost
apparently, and sat down on the throne on the day of Pentecost. What happened between we don’t know but when
He sat down on the throne of the Father’s throne on His right hand, that is
theologically called the point of the session.
And it is part of the gospel; Jesus Christ died, but that’s not all the
gospel. Christ rose again from the dead,
but that’s not all the gospel. Christ
died, He rose and the third point, He ascended and sat by the Father’s right
hand; that is the whole gospel. That’s
(quote) the “full gospel,” if you really want the full gospel.
So we have the
complete story of Christ’s work, concluding with the final moment of His
seating at the Father’s right hand. But
you say wait a minute, that still doesn’t answer the problem because there’s a
point in time. Okay, let’s look at this
more deeply. At that point in time when
Jesus Christ sat down, Christ’s eternal relationship to the Father did not
change because God is immutable. What
did change at the point of the session was the revelation of the eternal relationship. And get that one down, that’s a very
important point. At the session God
increased the revelation of the relationship between the First and Second
Person; He exposed it further, so that now, beginning at the session, Christ
would be revealed as the Son who has total intimacy with His Father. While Christ was on earth He was not revealed
yet as the One having total intimacy with the Father; partial but not
total. But at the point of His session,
Jesus Christ was now revealed to be the One who has total intimacy with the
Father. Does that mean he didn’t have
total intimacy before? No, distinguish
between two things and you won’t have any problem.
Distinguish
between the eternal truth of God and the historically revealed truth of
God. And if you will make that
distinction you won’t fall into a trap here.
This is a very important distinction.
There is the eternal sense of God that never changes, that was there
from all eternity. But He is taking time
to historically reveal it, point by point by point. Do you know what He’s doing? He’s giving us a private lesson on how to
know Him, and He’s doing it by simple steps.
He doesn’t blast us with a whole wad of revelation; we’d be gasping and
choking if He tried it. He gives us a
piece at a time; He says I’ll give you this much knowledge about Myself, Mount
Sinai. I give you this much more
knowledge about Myself, John the Baptist.
I give you a little bit more knowledge about Myself with Jesus
Christ. And the Second Advent He says
I’m going to give you more knowledge about Myself, then you will see My wrath;
you’ve never seen My wrath in history until the Tribulation and Second Advent
of Christ and when you see that then you’ll see what it means when I say I’m a
holy, just God. No man on earth can
really say at this point He knows God in all of His holiness and
righteousness. We haven’t seen it yet;
it’s coming. But God first wants to lay
the basis for it by giving us now this historic revelation.
Now that is what
the session of Christ has done. Christ
was the Son, locked in a Father/Son relationship for all eternity, but there
was a historical progressive uncovering and laying bear of that relationship,
and at one point in history God said now I open heaven up and now you look at
My Son, look at Him now and where He is.
And if you look at Him now, now you can see something you couldn’t see
before, not because it wasn’t true before, but because God hadn’t opened our
collective eyes to it by revelation. Now
He has, now we can see something we could not see before. So that is historic revelation.
Now that is an
explanation; if you’ll go back to Proverbs 8:22, of what’s happening here. Wisdom is not being created in verse 22,
that’s not the cast… that’s not the case!
What is happening is we are about to go into a passage that’s going to
deal with creation because look at what happens in verse 27, see that’s where
creation begins, in verse 27, “When He prepared the heavens, I was there;” but
verses 22-26 are before the creation, they precede the creation. So you’ve got verse 27-31, that’s the
creation. Fine; that’s the creation from
that point on. But before that, verses
22-26 deal what happened before creation.
And so the Word is not barah
or asah in verse 22, it means to
beget, I acquired by childbirth. Does
that mean He acquired by childbirth in the sense He originated wisdom? No.
This means that wisdom is exposed.
Use that word for (?). Wisdom
becomes exposed; just prior to the moment of creation wisdom becomes
exposed. He must have wisdom exposed
before He starts creation because once God begins creation he can’t have wisdom
then because then the argument can always be that wisdom is not sufficient,
you’ve got to have creation in order to have wisdom there. [Can’t understand sentence]
But wisdom is
exposed prior to the moment of the first creation. Was wisdom already there? Yes, kanah
does not mean wisdom began in verse 22.
It doesn’t mean that God had a baby and the baby started then. What it means is that in the language of
historic revelation this is when wisdom first became visible. Now there was nobody to see it there except
God. There was nobody to see it except
God. How do we know? Because the creation didn’t begin till verse
27. So there’s nobody to see it but God
is saying in this passage if you were there, in existence, you would have been
able to see wisdom. In other words, the
idea is that in the glory of God, think of a tremendous high intensity light,
shining in your eyes and it overwhelms you and you can’t see all of it but if
you could see you would see a diversification, you would see wisdom and God
parting like this, and there would be the light that would divide, like a car
coming to you on a highway, as it gets close and closer and closer and closer
at night, suddenly you see two headlights and not just one, and it would the
idea that wisdom is splitting off from God at this point. And so you have a break in it, so that
wisdom, who was there always eternally is now seen to be separate.
Now further we
must study the subject of the verb in verse 22; we studied the object, “me,” we
studied the verb, “possess” means acquire by child birth, and now the
subject. The subject here is not Elohim,
it is LORD, and this is why the subject is so vital. If we had read the Hebrew word “Elohim,”
which is the generic word for God, if we had Elohim as the subject of the verb
in verse 22 that would simply mean our God, or a God, or the Divine. But by reading Yahweh, which is the private
name of the national God of Israel, that’s His private name as He’s known to
the nation Israel. Israel is now saying
the national God, our God, was the One from whom wisdom was diversified just
prior to the moment of creation, and this places the God of Israel over and
above all other gods. This is (?), John
14:6, if you want to put it that way; this is the Old Testament version of John
14:6, by saying that Yahweh, the God of Israel, is the One who is over wisdom.
Now we have a
hierarchy set up. We have Yahweh, we
have wisdom, and under wisdom we have creation.
Do you see this? Note the
hierarchy. That places Yahweh and wisdom
above creation. Now what does that do to
idols? All the idols are inside
creation. What does that do to
wisdom? It puts wisdom above everything
in creation. Bringing it out in an
illustration maybe this will make it a little bit more clear to some of you;
think of mathematics. Just think of
mathematics; we will use math as an illustration. Suppose we have this idea, here we have
mathematical truth; we have a definite structure. What is this passage saying about
mathematics? Is mathematics part of
creation or does mathematics precede the creation? It is saying that mathematics is a logical
structure that precedes the creation, therefore it can be used as a tool to
study the creation. This is why science
cannot prevail outside of Bible Christianity because all other views must place
math inside the creation. The Bible alone
allows the room to say math is over creation; creation can be understandable in
terms of equations because God thinks mathematically. He is wisdom and part of His chokmah is mathematical chokmah.
Now, let’s finish
verse 22, The God of Israel gave birth, or acquired wisdom at the beginning by
childbirth, “in the beginning of his way,” and this can refer both to the
beginning in time, so to speak, or the beginning in the sense of importance,
the most important part of his way, “before his works of old.” And the rest of verse 22 simply amplifies
what I have said.
To summarize it
I’d like to end by turning to Colossians in the New Testament, Colossians 1
where this is very consciously picked up by Paul; it’s a passage that a lot of
people misunderstand because they do not have adequate background to understand
Proverbs 8 from which it is taken.
Please notice which of the epistles this is. Some of you may understand why Colossians was
written; maybe some of you don’t, but do you realize that this particular
epistle was written for a very particular reason. The church faced a philosophic heresy, and
therefore when Paul goes to present Christ he doesn’t present Him the way he
did to the Romans. He doesn’t present
Christ the same way he does to the Corinthians.
He presents Christ in a different way because he has a different situation;
the situation involves human viewpoint and philosophy and Colossians is written
to combat human viewpoint and philosophy.
Therefore, the part of the person of Christ that is pictured in
Colossians is the chokmah part of
Him, the wisdom part of Him.
And so in
Colossians 1:15-17, look at this astounding claim that is made for Jesus
Christ. “Jesus Christ, who is the image
of the invisible God, the first-born of every creature; [16] For by Him were
all things created, that are in heaven, and in earth, visible and invisible,
whether they be thrones or dominions, or principalities, or power—all things
were created by Him, and for Him; [17] And He is before all things, and by Him
all things consist.” A magnificent
statement about the cosmic dimension of Jesus Christ.
And in verse 15
there is a word called the “first-born.”
In the Greek it looks like this: prototokos
and prototokos is a word that is
proto, first, made, the firstborn of all creation. And you say aha, aha, that shows that Christ
is not God and they’ll major on Colossians 1:15 to show that Jesus Christ is
not God. But not so because if you just
read verse 16 what more comprehensive statement could you have than the say
that he is Creator. “For by Him were all
things created,” doesn’t that say that Christ is not part of the creation? It obvious does. What do we have here then? What does prototokos
mean? The same thing Proverbs 8:22
means, God, the Father, the Son and the creation; the Son is taking the
position, seen partially by wisdom in Proverbs 8:22, and Jesus Christ is the
means by which the Father uses to make… for example, in verse 16, “For by Him,”
the word “for” in the Greek is en,
it’s the instrumental use of en, “by
means of Him were all things created that are in heaven, and that are in earth,
visible and invisible.” Now the last
part of verse 16, “all things were created through Him,” dia plus the genitive; it means by agency of, through the means of,
“and eis,” “for Him,” for means for
the purpose of; “all things were made for Jesus Christ.
And then finally
in verse 17 a very astounding thing that is said. Jesus Christ “is before all things,” and
then, “by Him all things consist.” An
amazing claim. This word is the Greek
word to stand together; think back when I started this morning and I said be
careful, don’t get Christ too fast in Proverbs 8, and what did I say? Watch for the fact that chokmah there is practical things in life; remember we said music,
we said mathematics, we said art, we said all the various things that we would
encounter in every day life, all those things.
Now what does it say here? “By
Him all things stand together.” That means
that Jesus Christ is the One who is upholding the universe this moment. The universe by itself cannot sustain itself. This is an allusion of modern science, that
the universe is like a machine, you have sort of physical laws and it just goes
on like your car engine, but that is not the biblical view of reality. The biblical view of reality is that Jesus
Christ is sitting here holding it.
You’ve seen pictures of Atlas holding the world up? That’s Christ; Christ is holding the world
up.
Now look at it; if
Jesus Christ is the One who is holding the earth together, holding the atoms
together, in other words, the very physical structure of the cosmos, down to
the sub, sub, sub, sub, sub atomic level, all the way up to the macro, macro,
macro, macro, macro cosmic level, if that is really being held together with chokmah, which is but a part of the
character of Christ, what does that do to Jesus Christ? It makes Him kind of an important person,
doesn’t it? And doesn’t it also, then,
make a fool out of us when we don’t trust Him to keep His promises. If the One who is upholding the universe is
really the One who has made the promise that all things work together for good,
“Cast your cares upon Me for I care for you,” “I will never leave thee, nor
forsake thee,” if it’s the same person that’s in both of those chairs, doesn’t
that sort of suggest that He might possibly be able to keep His promises, that
He indeed is the One who is upholding the whole universe. This is the kind of Jesus Christ, you see,
that the Bible says is the only way and the only truth. If you see the kind of Christ that’s
mentioned in Proverbs 8 you’ll say of course, it’s the only Christ who can be
“the way, the truth and the life.”
We have communion
and we’re going to sing a hymn as is our custom…