Clough Proverbs Lesson 47

Wisdom and Creation II – Proverbs 8:22-23

 

We are in the introduction or the exhortation section of the book of Proverbs.  I assume that we have one more time in this section before we’ll deal with the proverbs proper which begin in Proverbs 10:1.  So far every chapter in the book has been an exhortation to get with it and motivations and reasons why one should get with it.  In Proverbs 8 last week we began verse 22.  And once again, to orient ourselves to the text, remember that Proverbs, in this section, is written with an instruction, which can be found by the imperative mood of the verb, and then follow that with what we will call motivation.  And this is usually introduced with the word “for,” do this for such and such to follow.  And that is the literary format of Proverbs 1-9.  It is the format that the father would use teaching his son chokmah or wisdom. 

 

In Proverbs 8 the last command was given in verse 10, “Receive my instruction, and not silver; knowledge rather than choice gold.”  And the point there is that to pursue the monetary gains is not illegitimate, the point is just priorities.  A person who is always worried about monetary gain is a person who inevitably places these things first in his life and wisdom should be placed first.  We might say in paraphrasing verse 20 for the contemporary situation, and for the younger people, and some of the older people, that it’s not receive my instruction, and not silver, but receive and not, in some cases formal education.  Again, nothing wrong with formal education but remember a formal education is grounded on certain presuppositions and if those presuppositions are not Scriptural, then the content and long-term benefits of the education are minimal, and therefore we have to go back once again to Scripture and point out that it is chokmah, and not just (quote) “education” (end quote). 

 

We have a lot of people in this country, particularly people who have never had a chance to get an education who worship at the throne of education, and as I have said repeatedly, not to discourage education, but to simply put it in its proper perspective, modern forms of education are not the highest goal in life.  And people are finding this out; we’re having a number of PhD’s on the east coast that can’t get jobs because they have degrees.  It’s very interesting to watch this because when I went to college they said get a degree because you can get a better job.  It’s precisely the other way around.  People with the higher degrees can’t get good jobs because they’ve got higher degrees.  So the idea of worshiping at the throne of education is another form of 20th century idolatry and verse 10 should correct our priorities. 

 

“Receive my instruction,” wisdom says, and then the first motivation is given in verses 11-21, and the emphasis in verses 11-21, the reasons why wisdom should be gained better than silver and gold is simply that wisdom can practically deal with the everyday details of life.  And the emphasis throughout verses 11-21 is all on practical things.  This is why in verse 15 it says, “By me kings reign, and princes decree justice,” that is the practical every day chokmah or wisdom.  And then in verse 17, the feminine image of wisdom, “I love them that love me, and those who seek me early shall find me,” showing that the believer has a personal relationship to this kind of practical wisdom. 

 

We want to notice two things before we head into the more difficult second motivation section which begins in verse 22 and extends through verse 31, and the two things you want to notice is number one, this is not theoretical wisdom; this is practical wisdom.  It would include the normal skills of life, from carpentry to metal work to tailoring, to anything else, ruling.  This is all what we call practical knowledge.  That is what the Hebrews is talking about when he used wisdom or chokmah.  He’s not talking about theoretical knowledge necessarily, though theoretical knowledge is included, that is not in the forefront of the use of chokmah.  That’s the first thing you want to remember about chokmah.

 

The second thing you want to remember about it is that this particular word has a feminine nuance and it was to express the believer’s relationship between himself and wisdom, in that the believer is pictured here in an unusual way.  Most of the time in the New Testament the believer is pictured as the feminine type and Christ as the masculine type because of grace.  The point of these images is to show that the believer is responding to grace.  God initiates the love, the believer responds.  But in this particular section of the Bible the believer is now cast in the male form and the believer in the female form, showing here the fact that the believer has to exert himself to gain wisdom.  And wisdom will gladly respond but it requires initiative on the part of the believer and there is no way under the sun of gaining biblical chokmah without putting out.  There is no other way, there is no easy way; this comes simply by the believer wanting and desiring the will of God, of getting the big picture, of creatively following the Lord in the details of life and so on, learning from mistakes, etc. 

 

Now in Proverbs 8:22 we have the second motivation and I said last week, verses 22-31 are some of the most difficult, is one of the most difficult passages in all of the Old Testament.  This verse, this section, this passage, comes the closest to revealing and expanding the heart of the Godhead of practically any other passage in the Old Testament.  It is this passage that historically was used and led through that famous prologue in the Gospel of John.  But John’s Gospel was developed some ten centuries after this was revealed in Proverbs 8:22.  So this is the beginning of a progress in revelation that’s going to point eventually to Jesus Christ and the Trinity, but we can’t get into the Trinity too fast.

 

Last week we spent the entire morning on verse 22.  By way of review, here are the points on the words in verse 22, “The LORD possessed me,” Yahweh is the word used for God, and shows the subject of the sentence refers to the national God of Israel.  This is important because it shows that they are not talking about God in a general sense; they’re talking about the God of Israel, He is superior.  This is a nationalistic claim that would have been highly offensive to the people of Solomon’s era because of his claiming that Yahweh, and not the other gods of the other nations has claim to this position.  So “Yahweh has possessed,” the word possessed is qanah, and the word means to acquire.  And so we have some points on the use of wisdom and acquire. 

 

Point 1 is that wisdom here refers to the wisdom of God visible in creation.  The kind of wisdom is not some esoteric mystical knowledge.  The kind of wisdom meant in verse 22 is the same kind of wisdom meant in verses 11-21, practical everyday wisdom. 

 

Point 2, the word “acquire” means to acquire by birth, that’s Genesis 4:1 compared with Proverbs 8:24-25.  It means to acquire by birth.  Yahweh is revealed in His relationship to wisdom as wisdom’s father.  Yahweh here is cast as the father of chokmah, the father of wisdom, and wisdom is cast as the child of Yahweh.  By the way, notice not wisdom is fluctuating back to a masculine.  It’s now the son of Yahweh.

 

Point 3, this wisdom is not part of the act of creation because the act of creation begins in verse 23; before creation began this acquisition of verse 22 occurred.  So wisdom precedes the act of creation. 

 

And the 4th point would be: therefore wisdom is a revelation of God’s character, not creation.  That wisdom is a revelation of God’s character itself, not a creation; creation wasn’t around when wisdom was shown forth, so the shining forth precedes the act of creation, therefore every day wisdom is not separated from God.

 

The 5th point is that this is a fore view of Jesus Christ who is called the wisdom of God.  It is a fore view of Jesus Christ who is called the wisdom of God.

 

Now, the final and last point or the 6th point about this is the practical effect of all this.  This shows and should explode in your minds an image that believers often carry, and that is that there is such a thing as being practical and having what most people call common sense.  And then we have the idea of spirituality, as though spirituality and spiritual maturity is divorced from common sense, and the modern man is very accustomed to making a tremendous difference between so and so.  You’ve heard the saying, “oh yeah, that’s the way the Lord works, but to be practical we have to do it this way.”  The implication, of course if that really is the case is that what we’re learning in the Bible has nothing to do with the structure of the world; has absolutely nothing to do with the structure of the world.  Now this doctrine of verse 22 should completely collapse that view.  What verse 22 is saying is that there is no such thing as a barrier.  What verse 22 is saying is that a person who has spiritual wisdom has common sense and vice versa.  A person who has a maximum common sense is very close to spirituality. 

 

Now this may completely cross the grain of many of you but let’s take some examples to show you how this works out.  Let’s take in one area, let’s take education.  A person who has common sense in the field of education recognize the principle you can’t teach without authority, and recognizes the fact that you have to have authority in the classroom in order to teach.  And if you don’t have authority in the classroom you can dismiss the class after the bell rings in the first part of the period because you’re never going to do anything without authority in the classroom.  So you would say that so and so teacher who does a good job in her class because she has class authority in the classroom and the students respect her authority, she can do a tremendous job.  You say well, that’s a good teacher, she has common sense, she uses her head, she isn’t all screwed up with some certain versions of modern theories; she has “down to earth” we say and she has her feet on the ground.  Now the point is, that teacher may be an unbeliever; that teacher may be on negative volition, but that teacher has picked up chokmah; chokmah can be a possession of unbelievers as well as believers.  

 

And let me show you why chokmah often, in many areas, is possessed more by unbelievers than by believers, and here’s why.  The unbeliever is on negative volition; the unbeliever has picked up chokmah say, in the area of teaching.  The unbeliever could care less about God in many areas of life but the unbeliever has recognized that in the classroom there is a law, or a rule, or a principle that he must submit to in order for successful teaching to occur.  So the unbeliever, not recognizing that the law itself or the principle itself is there because of creation, he doesn’t care why it’s there but he’s submitting himself to it.  There’s a certain divine principle that’s been established.  He doesn’t recognize it’s a divine principle but he does recognize it’s a principle, and so therefore he says all right, in order to do a job of maximum effectiveness in teaching I have to conform to these principles. 

 

So actually you have a very ironic thing; you have the unbeliever submitting, bowing his knee to these principles in creation and becoming very successful in bowing his knee to these things.  And if you will compare him, say with another person who has, say, taken a lot of theoretical education courses and he knows all about the psychology of education, etc. etc. etc. and he walks into that classroom and completely blows it because he has been taught over and over and over again there’s no such thing as authority; there shouldn’t be any authority, you have no more right to authority than your students have.  What you should do at the beginning of the semester is get all your students together and say now ladies and gentlemen, you decide what you want to learn this semester.  And of course, any professor that does that is obviously admitting that he knows less than the students do.  So in this situation you have a violation of authority and the whole thing comes crashing down.

 

All right, then you take another person out here, say in the service, and in the service you can read the training manuals of the Navy, the Air Force and the Army and they all have the old fashioned lecture method with drill and with repetition.  Now why do you suppose the military services have held on to this thing?  It’s not because the military people are archaic in their thinking; that’s not it at all.  It’s just that military education has a very fantastic feedback that if the education procedure doesn’t work out people get killed.  In other words, they know whether they succeed in their teaching technique or not by how many people survive in battle, and this has acted to maintain sanity by believers who are teaching in military environment who may themselves be unbelievers.  They may be believers or unbelievers but they are forced to conform to the principle of creation. 

 

Now when you see an unbeliever who is highly successful in life you are looking at somebody who has mastered some areas of chokmah, some areas where he recognizes there’s an authority structure built into my existence and to which I must conform, and he knows it.  Now along comes some smart aleck believer and he has gotten on positive volition, a little bit, and he’s gotten started in the Christian life.  Along came something in his life and he went on negative volition and the first thing he started doing was knocking Bible teaching.  The first thing he started doing was going over to experience, we need more experience, we need more groups outside the local church, we need this, that and the other thing, but we’re not about to submit to God’s authority structure for the church. 

 

Remember how we said that all of creation is divided up in to certain areas of institutions and you break these institutions at your own risk.  The first divine institution is volition or responsibility.  It’s there, you can’t change that.  There’s no way you can change it, you can pretend you’re not responsible, you can pretend somebody else is not responsible but that doesn’t change the fact.  So if you operate on the point of individual responsibility you will have certain views of economics and labor, for example.  And they come about, not because necessarily you’ve read Scripture but because you recognize as a principle of responsibility, I’m responsible for what I produce and I have the right and the freedom to spend my money the way I want to.  And Uncle Sam doesn’t have the right to butt in and take my inheritance away; he doesn’t have the right to regulate what the father gives his son and so on.  So you’ll have certain views of laws of economics that proceed out of your biblical understanding of the first divine institution. 

 

You come to the second divine institution and you recognize there are certain principles here involved, and unbelievers can recognize it.  There’s not one of these things, except the church, that the unbeliever can’t perceive himself, and sometimes do a far better job than screwed up believers.  I’ll show you how the believers do such a lousy job.  Let’s take an unbeliever, he recognize the first divine institution, responsibility.  He recognizes the second one, marriage.  He recognizes the third one, children.  And he recognizes that authority has to begin in the home because this is where authority is first encountered, in the home.  And children who do not understand authority in the home find out when the policemen nabs them on the street that authority is learned here.  The fourth divine institution, which was given after the fall, is justice, law and punishment, and this we recognize was not part of the original divine institutions but it is one that God brought in as of the Noahic Covenant.  We recognize the fifth divine institution, the problem of international diplomacy, war, peace and so on.  We recognize, therefore, that just war is valid for the Christian and for the unbeliever in world history.  We recognize under the fifth divine institution that a nation that is weak militarily is a nation that is asking for war. 

 

And then finally we come to the last institution, which I haven’t labeled as a divine institution, it’s the local church.  And here is where the believer, not the unbeliever, the believer begins to get off base.  The believer realizes first, when he comes to Christ, that Bible doctrine is being presented at the point of gospel hearing.  He recognizes also that Bible doctrine should be presented by pastor-teachers in a local church.  And where Bible doctrine is not, then there’s something wrong.  But suddenly he comes face to face with this and he says oh-oh, this is the structure; this is the structure, like over here I had the structure of responsibility that I can’t avoid, I can’t avoid the local church’s existence.  I can’t avoid the principle that it is the job of the pastor-teacher to teach.  So therefore what I will do in my carnality is that I will violate that authority and I’ll rebel against it and so on.  So you go with a believer who starts to get off the track in the authority of the local church. 

 

And when he begins to go on negative volition he rejects God’s established order over here, and the interesting thing is once a man rejects God’s established order in one area he is going to reject it all across the board.  And this is why you will have believers, then, that go on to deny the first institution, the second institution, the third institution, are screwed up all over.  Why?  They got off over here in the area of the local church.  They violated God’s authority and God’s creation order and this led to a complete lack of wisdom in every other area.  And they walk around and they say how come, why is it that I as a believer fail, I fall on my face all over the place, and yet the unbelievers around me are successful, and it’s because you’ve gone on negative volition to some area and it’s carried over. 

 

Now Proverbs 8:22 and following is the reason why all what I just showed you is true.  Beginning with verse 22, “The LORD acquired me by birth in the beginning of His way, before the works of old.”  Verses 23-26 deal with that which came before creation.  In other words, verses 23, 24, 25, and 26 are saying that what we see as practical wisdom came about first, before creation.  Said another way, to make sure you get the point, on a time scale, if you want to look at it this way though this is not strictly kosher to do with time but here’s creation, going that way.  Here’s the point of creation.  Before creation God has chokmah or wisdom.  And since He has chokmah or wisdom it means that the first institution, the second, third, fourth, fifth, and the church are on His mind.  And those ideas and concepts that are on His mind precede the actual setting up over here in creation.  So when you violate, when you see later on inside creation a principle over here that says I am responsible, you say I don’t like that, what you are rebelling against is not the creation; what you’re rebelling against is the principle that preexisted the creation.  You are rebelling against the ordered thought of God Himself when you are rebelling against the first institution, the second, the third, you are confronting the authority of God and you have to decide whether it’s going to be your authority or God’s authority.

 

Proverbs 8:23, “I was set up from everlasting, [from the beginning, or ever the earth was]” “I” is a personal pronoun signifying that wisdom here is taking on personal aspects again.  “I was set up,” that means I was established and functioning; notice it is in the passive voice, so again you have the relationships of the First and Second Person of the Trinity.  The First Person begets the Second Person, the Second Person is passive voice, I was set up, not I set myself up, “I was set up from everlasting,” this means from eternity, before the world was.  So this is the point that wisdom preexists creation. 

 

Proverbs 8:24, is another way of saying the same truth, repetition.  “When there were no depths, I was brought forth—” that’s the verb which means to give birth, “I was brought forth—when there were no fountains abounding with water,” speaking of the antediluvian era and the primitive watering system of that. 

 

Proverbs 8:25, “Before the mountains were settled, before the hills, was born,” or “brought forth,” notice again passive voice, wisdom is brought forth by Yahweh.

 

Proverbs 8:26, “While as yet He had not made the heaven, nor the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world,” the word “earth” here is a word which, when used with “field” means the land inside the village walls.  The word is eretz, and this word, when coupled with the word field is a word couplet that refers to inside and outside the walls of the village.  So as the person would read this it’s saying before you had cultivated fields, before you had the very ground on which you built your homes, before all this existed, then I was, I was brought forth.

 

All right, verses 23-26 then clearly establish we are not talking about wisdom as some part of creation.  This way of expressing itself in verse 23 and 24 is common to the ancient near east.  If you were to study, for example, the Babylonian mythology, you would find a passage like say, in the creation epic, and I’ll just read a passage so you can see how verses 22-23 fit into the ancient world, and I want you, as you listen to this passage and listen very carefully because though it sounds like Proverbs 8, there’s a very critical difference, so you listen carefully as I read these two lines and think, how does this parallel Proverbs 8 and how does it differ from Proverbs 8, and the difference is going to be between divine viewpoint and human viewpoint in the area of origins.

 

This comes from the Babylonian materials, the creation epic.  “When on high the heaven had not been named, firm ground below had not been called by name, nothing but primordial Apsu, their begetter, and Mummu Tiamat, she who bore them all, their waters co-mingling as a single body, no reed hut had been matted, no marsh land had appeared, when no gods whatsoever had been brought into being, then I was.”

 

Now that sounds like it’s Proverbs 8, and liberal critics of the Bible have said see, there’s a parallel.  But in human viewpoint there is a radical divergence.  In human viewpoint you always have minus creation.  There always has to be something there before and here it is Apsu and Tiamat; Apsu is the man; Tiamat is the female; notice there is no male/female in the Bible preexisting creation.  You also have a feminine imagery; it has been dropped here; you have the male and the female.  What is Apsu?  Salt water.  What is Tiamat?  Fresh water.  And so what this is saying in our lingo today is that the universe came from a chaotic mass of water.  But one has to ask, then where did the water come from?  And we’re off to the races because in the human viewpoint basis there is no way of getting back there.  There is no way.  But what has happened in all of this?  Who are Apsu and Tiamat?  What have they become?  Are they now just salt water, and fresh water?  No, in this epic Apsu and Tiamat have become more than salt and fresh water, they are the primary deities.  In other words, fresh and salt water is the basis god of the Mesopotamian culture here. 

 

And so by going back to origins we can study, then, how this thing works out.  Now we’ve constructed a chart here to show a little bit about when you take the human versus divine viewpoint in various areas it is going to have repercussions.  If you take it in one area, and we haven’t got time to deal with all of the details, human viewpoint basically is hatred and repression of God’s historic revelation.  That’s a summary of human viewpoint, that’s basically what it is; man hates the revelation that God has placed; man doesn’t like Genesis, not because of intellectual difficulty, because he hates the conclusions.  And so human viewpoint basically is a presuppositional hatred for God.  Divine viewpoint on the other hand is submission to God and we have at least four areas here, we’ll deal with one, creation.  Under divine viewpoint if you have God creating the universe at a point in time you can have a personal God, a God that is separate from that which He creates.  He is not part of the universe; there was no part of the universe existing when God created. 

 

Now, on human viewpoint, since you can’t have this because you don’t have creation, see, here’s your revenge, no creation, so let’s knock creation out of the picture and say we never had creation, just knock it out.  What are you left with?  What must you be left with?  If creation never occurred, the only thing you can have is a universe that changed itself, salt water became air, air became earth, earth became air, air became water, it goes back and forth, back and forth, and that’s the only thing, we only have some form of eternal process.  And on a human viewpoint basis, in spite of those of you who care for evolution, that’s all you’ve got for your god.  And I’ll challenge you any time, any where, to show me how on an evolutionary base you can have anything but an eternal process, an eternal impersonal process.  You cannot have a personal God; there is no way you can have it.  All right, you take people, then, today who say well, I believe in creation and evolution.  No way, you’re dealing with two entirely different realms, two completely different systems and you can’t mix them any more than oil and water. 

 

Proverbs 8:23-26 deals with what happened before the point of creation.  Now Proverbs 8:27 is what happens during and after creation.  So let’s look a little bit at verse 27 and following.  “When He prepared the heavens, I was there; when He set a compass upon the face of the depth; [28] When He established the clouds above; when He strengthened the fountains of the deep; [29] When He gave to the sea its decree, that the waters should not pass His commandment; when He appointed the foundations of the earth, [30] Then I was by Him,” now this involves a tremendous amount of detail. 

 

Let’s start with verse 27.  “When He,” that’s Jehovah, “prepared the heavens, I was there,” this points out to the fact that creation is a product of wisdom; notice this process.  Wisdom leads to creation but creation does not lead to wisdom.  Now here’s another difference between divine viewpoint and human viewpoint.  No matter who you are, if you are operating this morning apart from the presupposition that Scripture reveals to you that God is who He claims to be, this morning you are in a mess because what you’re doing is saying that everything you know, all of the laws, all of the principles of life, everything are a result of creation, that you’ve got to say that.  But the Bible says yeah, that’s fine but where does creation come from?  Is there chaos?  This is the dilemma.  We’ve had some students here in the congregation that have finally woken up to this and have been able to challenge their teachers on this point.  Where does it come from?  You are asking me to believe that order comes out of chaos; that pure sheer chance leads to design?  How does this operate?  No, it must be wisdom precedes creation. 

 

So, “when He prepared,” “When God prepared the heavens, I was there, when He set a compass,” this means the horizon, it’s a circle, the optical horizon, “when he set the optical horizon upon the face of the deep,” turn to Genesis 1.  When God began to create in Genesis 1, by the time the Genesis text picks it up a lot of things have happened.  Genesis 1:2, “And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.  And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.  [3] And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.”  On the first day of creation, before He made the heavens, please notice, and read the text carefully, don’t read your ideas into Genesis, submit yourself to the ideas of Genesis first.  The first day God made light; this apparently is teaching that the basic creation of God at this point, after matter, because matter is existing in verse 2, at verse 3 God elevates the energy levels of the universe.  We will translate the light as energy; it’s a manifestation of energy, pure raw energy, and please notice that the sun and the moon and the stars are not created on the first day.  They are not created until the fourth day.  So here you have a paradoxical thing that energy, raw, bare energy is prevalent in the universe.  It has not been condensed into any kind of a body or a light (?), this is just sheer energy itself, and that’s what the Bible says and since you weren’t there to contradict this, this is an eyewitness report of what it was like.  And until you can furnish me with another eyewitness report of what it’s like, then I submit to this, because science must always rely upon eyewitness data, not extrapolated data and this is eyewitness material. 

 

So God created the energy and then verse 5 makes it clear it’s a literal day, 24 hours, [4] “And God saw the light, and He divided the light from the darkness.”  Which would also imply that there’s apparently a cosmic pulsing from light to dark, light to dark; obviously this is not due to the sun showing as a point source because the sun hasn’t been created yet.  So this shows that there’s a cyclic pulsing of energy on, off, on, off, on, off, on, off, on, off.  And it just so happens that what we call the day that’s due the rotation of the earth and its various positions and the inclination of the axis and so forth for the sun is simply a mechanical afterthought that reflects this initial pulsing. 

 

All right, then in verse 6 is what we describe in Proverbs 8, the second day, “God said, “Let there be a firmament,” this means an expanse or empty space, “in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.  [7] And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: [and it was so].  [8] And God called the firmament Heaven.”  So here is where God establishes heaven.  Please don’t read into this what you think it says; just relax and look carefully at what it does say.  What it is saying is that you have the surface of the earth and God separates the water from its chaotic… so the entire globe of the earth is covered with water.  He makes the other water, so to speak, go up, so it becomes gas and diffuses.  And where does it stop?  People used to say, the critics of the Bible, oh water vapor is just contained in the lower areas of the atmosphere.  Nonsense!  What do you think make up the rings of Saturn?  There’s evidence that ice is dispelled throughout the entire solar system.  And by the way, the rest of the solar system is not created here either. 

 

There’s only one planet, one body, astronomical body in existence at this point of creation and that’s the planet earth.  And you have water as an ingredient.  Here you have a lot of water near the earth and it just gradually peters out; it’s the old story, where’s the top of the atmosphere?  It isn’t there because the atmosphere just peters out on a curve.  And so the water is just made to go throughout the whole universe.  Obviously, apparently Genesis 1;2 is teaching that at the point God began the earth was here at a central point and it was just surrounded by water, either in liquid or semi-liquid form.  Now for those of you who have difficulty with this, let me just say this.  In the last chapter of the Bible, Revelation, what is the theological center of the universe?  The sun?  No; the theological center of the universe is again the planet earth.  It is no accident that from Genesis to Revelation the earth is considered the theological center of the universe. 

 

Now lest you be swayed by the various pictures in the present galaxy in which the earth finds itself as kind of shaped thing that looks like a flying saucer on the side but actually is a cross section of the galaxy, and we’re located right about here, you say why, we’re not at the center.  You can’t locate the center of the universe; try it mathematically.  See, there’s no way to locate the center of the universe; you’re just saying we’re not the center of this particular galaxy, but who is not to say that we can’t still be the geographical center of the universe?  Spatially, the spatial center.  There’s no way you can contradict this statement; now way you can prove it but no way you can contradict if.  The way you can prove it here is to simply say on the authority of God I say the earth is the theological center of the universe.  And before we become too gung ho about what Copernicus did, Copernicus did not undercut the geological, the geocentric theory of the universe theologically; it is still here in Scripture with us.  Jesus Christ was not crucified on Mars; He was crucified on this planet.  This planet has cosmic significance.  When Christ returns again the angels who are linked with the rest of the solar system and the planets don’t converge on another galaxy; they converge on this planet because of the events that are happening on this planet.  This planet is the center of the universe theologically speaking, whether it implies spatial or not we don’t know.  But at this point we have the earth, and only the earth is in existence, so we have the earth and we have God separating the waters and it becomes heaven.  And we have just one body, one mass, earth. 

 

Next step, Genesis 1:9, “And God said, Let the waters under the heaven,” so after verse 8 nothing more is said about heaven with one exception coming up; the emphasis is now on the surface of the earth.  “Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together in one place, and let the dry land appear,” so now we have orogeny, or the rise of mountains.  And so the earth’s surface begins to take this kind of a shape so that the waters sink down and you have very low lying type hills, which apparently are true for the antediluvian world.  And verse 11, “And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass,” notice there’s no creative act here, the inorganic soil leads to organic compounds which lead to plant life and God considered this as a process that He speeds up here.  And let the organic compounds come about and let there be plant life.  And verse 11, “after their kinds.” 

 

Then Genesis 1:14, now we shift back to the heavens, “And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years; [15] And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.  [16] And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: the stars also.”  The word “star” means light bearer, it means planets as well as what we call stars astronomically.  So here now we have the solar system created, and the sun here, and the earth, and whatever orbit it was originally, which may be not the one it’s in now, and you have the very solar system with the stars around.  But notice, the earth was placed first, and under it these are the things.  And the details, if you want to read the Framework pamphlet we go into the details of this.  But the point is that in Genesis 1 we have a definite logical sequence of acts and in 6-8, when God is dividing the waters from the waters, He is making outer space. 

 

Now turn back to Proverbs 8:27.  I took you to Genesis because I want you try hard and struggle, it’s a tough passage but I want you to stick with me and see as we read this passage what a powerful, fantastically wise image is given here of chokmah, or wisdom, it’s cosmic wisdom.  “When He prepared the heavens, I was there,” you’ve just seen God preparing the heavens, the heavens stretching all the way out to other galaxies.  “…when He set a compass on the face of the deep,” evidently this probably is something to do with gravity because obviously if you had gas and water commingling, gas and liquid commingling, they would respond to the force of gravity differently, the gas you’re going to have going up, the liquid going do, and so when you have this setting the compass upon the face of the deep it means God sets in motion the force we call gravity.  And so He has gravity beginning.

Proverbs 8:28, “When He established the clouds above; and when he strengthened the fountains of the deep,” now verse 27 dealt with something that is clearly creation, but verse 28 does not appear to be creation.  Verse 28 appears to be after the Noah’s flood, for two reasons.  We don’t have rain before the flood and rain comes from clouds.  And so you have the first appearance of clouds in verses 28.  And apparently in the antediluvian earth we had this kind of a situation; we don’t know all the details, but obviously we have the globe, but it’s a different kind of a globe than we face.  We have a spot called Eden, and out of Eden flow for rivers that go and water the face of the earth.  You have an upwelling of water and so the entire earth is watered on its surface like it will be watered in the book of Revelation.  If you’re going to dump Genesis 1 you might as well get rid of Revelation because it comes right back to it. 

 

And so the waters come out of Eden, where Adam was; Adam and Eve were right there, wherever that spot was on the face of the globe.  And you have the waters come out and somehow these waters sink back down into the earth and through some sort of a system that God had created, obviously the water has to cycle, and so somehow against gravity the water up wells again in Eden and you have a very cyclic way but it is all subterranean water supply.  There is a subterranean water supply so that the surface of the earth was a lot different than it is now.  God allowed that system to function, apparently the inclination of the earth’s axis was close to 90 degrees, so we have the earth, north and south poles somewhat like this instead of its present 23 degree thing, so you don’t have seasons, you have a very sluggish environment, very sluggish type thing.  And the earth was in that state in the antediluvian …

 

[Tape turns] It was established on the second day of creation for the antediluvian era.  And Genesis 7:4, “For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights,” now if you just read verse 4 it sounds like the water comes from rain, but in verse 11 it clues you in to what happened.  “In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.”  And apparently you have the planet earth in a tremendous orgasm of violence in which you have possibly from outer space because we know H2O exists in outer space, not only from the earth’s atmosphere but perhaps in a shower from outer space by some sort of planetary encounter you have tremendous amounts of water suddenly into the earth’s gravitational field.  And then this fountain of the deep, which are these four rivers out of Eden, suddenly the earth ruptures and the water just oozes up through the surface, and that was what so terrified the people of Noah’s time. 

 

You see, the people of Noah’s time kept records of this and we have some of these in extra biblical records and one of the interesting records of the deluge is that people were scalded to death.  One of the horrifying facts of the great flood of Noah revealed outside of Scriptures is that people would stand on the earth and steam and violently hot water would erupt out of the surface of the earth.  And people were just scalded to death by the thousands and millions.  And so you have this tremendous violence that rocks the whole planet of the earth.  The only way humanity could have survived was by a floating type of barge.  The reason for this is as the waters accumulated across the face of the globe you have the earth buried under water.  The water saved and the water destroyed. 

 

The water was the instrument of destruction of the earth, but by covering the earth with water what did God do?  He had thermal insulation; He had tremendous violence from the volcanic activity and so on; the water acts as a thermal seal to all of this.  Furthermore, the water also acts as a viscous shield in that the rocks and so on that are thrown upward are retarded in their violence by the viscous medium of the water.  So water formed a tremendous function and that’s why in 1 Peter water is used to picture the resurrection of Christ, that we are saved and men are destroyed by resurrection; some are resurrected to death, others are resurrected to life.  The water, then, covered the whole face of the earth. 

 

What am I leading up to?  Is that the human race never forgot this horrible, horrifying catastrophe.  And down through the years there has been a literal hydrophobia in the subconscious of man.  (?) spoke of the collective unconscious, and it appears that down through history men have always feared this thing; the human race has never forgotten this horrifying, terrifying elimination of water.  And so we are also told that the tower of Babel, according to Josephus, was built with pitch on the outside, so the people would say to God, next time You send water we will go up to the tower of Babel, now send Your flood and see how good it’s going to be.  So the mythologies of the ancient world have Apsu and Tiamat, the source of creation is a violent chaos of water.  In every creation myth you find water.  Why?  Because it is the mythology of the world; men have secretly tried to suppress this, they don’t want to ever think of a horrifying reenactment of a global destruction and so they mythologize it.  Myth is gradually men suppressing the horribleness of history; that’s what myth is.  And as myth develops in Egypt, in Assyria, don’t laugh at the myths; don’t you laugh at these myths, they’re not crazy.  The people who did the mythology of Egypt were mathematicians who knew the Pythagorean formula.  The people who developed the myths were not stupid idiots.  The people who developed the myths of the world were people who were terrified and that’s why they developed their myths.  Myths served them as a function to protect them from insanity, an insanity of fear that this might happen again, and they were in terror.  Men lived for centuries in terror that there would be a flood again.

 

But God, in Genesis 9 promised Noah the covenant, and in the covenant He made a promise.  In Genesis 9:11 He made a verbal agreement, a berith, a covenant, that “neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth.”  And so at least one race preserved this; the Semites, or the sons of Shem, preserved the memory of the Noahic Covenant, and down to Abraham.  So this particular group of people had no mythology; Abraham didn’t make myths; Jacob didn’t make myths; Moses didn’t make myths.  Why should they make myths, they don’t have to, they were released from the terror because God promises no floods.  I don’t have to make myths to suppress the terror of my unconscious.  When the terror wells up within me and I fear there is going to be a flood again I remember the Word of God which says there shall be no more floods.  And so this is a decree that God has placed upon fear upon the waters and it’s this decree that we encounter now in Proverbs 8. 

 

Proverbs 8:28-29, “When He established the clouds above,” that is the present cloud system, “and when He strengthened the fountains of the deep,” that means when He closed them up, after the flood.  And what did He do when He did that?  Verse 29, “When He gave to the sea His decree, that the waters should not pass His commandment; when He appointed the foundations of the earth,” which is an idiom for He established the land surface so there would never be a flood again.  Verses 28-29, I am trying to tell you, are giving you a geophysical covenant that God has made with man and that geophysical covenant is the basis for everything else that flows.  And what does chokmah say: “I was there,” I was there in all this, I, chokmah, the practical everyday thing, who for seven chapters I have been trying to appeal to you chokmah says, I’ve been trying to appeal to the Hebrew young man to listen to me, listen to me, and you never have to worry about being pie in the sky or completely removed from reality, I am the one that was there when reality was made.  I am the one that was there when the flood occurred; I am the one that was there when Noah made his covenant, don’t worry about following me is going to remove you from reality, oh no, following me will make you be more a part of what is there. 

And so in Proverbs 8:30 the inner attitude of chokmah, “Then I was by Him, as one brought up with Him,” “as one brought up with Him” is an archaic translation, it should be, “I was by Him as a master workman,” and it means that wisdom was the means of designing this, “I was by Him as one brought up with Him; I was daily delighting,” not daily was his delight, but “I was daily delighting, rejoicing always before Him, [31] Rejoicing in the habitable part of the earth; and my delights were with the sons of men.”  And here he points out the fact, think of all the cosmic catastrophes; think of the fact of the forces involved in bringing destruction on the entire planet earth; think of the destruction involved in stopping the earth’s rotation in the time of Joshua, and don’t think it’s not physically possible, there’s been a paper written that shows on a theoretical basis of physics an insect could stop the globe of the earth, so it’s not a physical impossibility. 

 

Therefore, this being the situation, you have all of these tremendous physical forces.  You’ve got to see it up against this backdrop, of all these forces involved, and what is wisdom delighting in?  Think of this, think of the thousands of miles of space; when God made the galaxies, I was there.  But where does wisdom her occupation?  With man, on that little planet called earth, with the sons of beni Adam, with the sons of men.  Doesn’t that make man something?  This is something fantastic you’ve got to see in the Scripture, is that beni Adam, the sons of men are the center of the universe.  When God incarnated Himself inside His own creation, He did not incarnate Himself as a Venusians or a Martian, He incarnated Himself as a human, and don’t say that He incarnated Himself on Galaxy 881, no because the book of Hebrews knocks that out.  There’s only one incarnation and when Christ died on the cross He died for the cosmos; it was done once for all by a man, God incarnate as a man on this planet, here.

 

Now we come to the ultimate development of wisdom.  “Then I was by Him… [31] Rejoicing in the habitable part of the earth,” and I want to finish and conclude by taking you to four passages in the New Testament where this concept now grows.  The first one, John 1; you might entitle this is to how big is your Jesus because this is what the real Jesus is.  All this we talked about with the wisdom and the chokmah, now it pays off because we can take all of this that we’ve studied for 2 and 3 weeks and now come to the New Testament and now appreciate what these passages are saying. 

 

Now read John, read it in the light of Proverbs 8, “In the beginning was the Logos,” the Word, “and the Logos was with God, and the Word was God.  [2] The same was in the beginning with God.  [3] All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made.”  Do you get the cosmic flow of that now, after having dealt with wisdom and creation?  Who’s that talking about, “all things were made by Him?”  How dogmatic can you get, “without Him was not anything made that was made.”  John is straining the Greek language to tell us that Christ is God.  He is using every Greek word he can get a hold of, he’s using the Greek word arche, which is a fantastic philosophic term in the ancient world; arche, that’s the word translated beginning.  He’s using the word Logos, which is a word that Plato and other philosophers used; he is pulling out of the Greek vocabulary every word he can get to say Christ IS this God.  “All things were made by Him.” 

 

Notice verse 4 and think what you just read in Proverbs 8:30; what was chokmah’s delight?  Chokmah’s delight was in the sons of man, and in verse 4, “In Him was life; and the life was the light of men.”  Where did John get that?  Oh, I’m sure by divine revelation but I’m sure not independently of Proverbs either.  And then he makes the fantastic statement in John 1:14, it’s that “Word that was made flesh,” THE word, there’s an article, the Word that’s previously referred to in the context, “The Word,” that Word, the Word I just got through telling you about, “was made flesh, and dwelt among us … full of grace and truth.”  Tremendous!!!  That’s the Jesus of the New Testament, Jesus Christ.  Now that’s John, but we have other passages. 

 

Turn to 1 Corinthians; John writes to the Hellenistic Jews of his day and with the Gospel of John; Paul writes to the Jews and to the Gentiles at Corinth, 1 Corinthians 1:30, What is Christ?  Christ “is made unto us” certain things, and these certain things that Christ is made unto us speak of His nature, “But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus,” that refers to our position in Christ; that occurs at the time we become Christians; “Of Him are you all,” plural, “in Christ Jesus, who of God is” that means by God, God is the source, “is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.”  Now there are four nouns there and you’ve probably heard discussion of the last three; you’ve heard that Christ is your righteousness; but you would never claim to be acceptable to God apart from the finished work of Christ; through Christ is completely your righteousness.  And then he says “sanctification,” who is it that’s the model of the sanctification?  Us or Christ?  Obviously Christ, we are predestined to be conformed to the image of Christ.  So again, sanctification by grace.  Righteousness by grace.  Redemption, who would ever think of purchasing their redemption apart from the blood of Christ.  So all the three nouns refer to something God gives us by grace. 

 

Now let’s just take that one step further and look at the first noun: “wisdom.”  Now can’t we apply the same principle?  Who is our wisdom?  It’s Jesus Christ.  When you discuss something in every day life that we say, oh, that’s common sense, so and so has common sense; you are talking about something that was designed, ordained, put into motion by the Lord Jesus Christ.  And the more you get to know Him the more common sense you must have because, to paraphrase, “Jesus Christ has become to us common sense.”  That is not a wrong translation.  Jesus Christ has become our common sense.  It goes completely against human viewpoint here.  Common sense is Christ.

 

Turn to Colossians 2, writing to people who were encountering the philosophic heresy, Paul said in Colossians 2:3, “In Christ are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”  “In Christ are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” 

 

To conclude Proverbs 8 and it’s amplification in the New Testament, there are two basic ways that you can use this truth; there are many ways, I’m going to suggest just two ways.  Just simple things that you can do in every day life that tie this wisdom to Christ, and they go in opposite directions.  The first thing you can do is to study Scripture, systematically, regularly, daily, accumulating understanding of the person of Christ.  The more you understand the Christ, therefore the more you are going to understand the details of life.  You cannot know Christ better and come out with less common sense if Christ has become common sense.  So the more you study Jesus Christ, the more you must increase the area of common sense.  And secondly, it works the other way; don’t be afraid to see in the details of life things that people call common sense the working of the Lord.  When you think of the teacher who has discovered that the theories don’t work and that ultimately it goes back to authority in the classroom, you have a person who has discovered something about Christ because where is the beginning of knowledge?  “The fear of the Lord,” which is respect for His authority.  And what that teacher has discovered in the classroom and what some of you parents may discover in your home with authority is simply that is just but a derivation of the authority that Christ has.  Children’s attitude toward authority is the same as their attitude toward God; there is no separation.  You take a child who disobeys authority of an adult and I’ll show you somebody that has exactly the same attitude to the Lord.  Next week we’ll continue with Proverbs 9 and we’ll finish this area of the exhortation and begin on Proverbs proper.