Wisdom’s Cry

Bill: Socrates - “The only real wisdom consists of knowing that you know nothing.”

Ted: That’s us, dude!”

This scene from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure is one of my very favorites in the entire film. Not only do they talk with Socrates, they quote excellent lyrics from Kansas; All we are is dust in the wind, dude.

When I started this journey of who He Is in each book of the bible, that quote from Bill and Ted really hit home. As much as I have read, sat under instruction, sung songs of praise and prayed, I still really don’t know anything about this mighty God I serve. Rabbi Jadon Sobel made an impactful statement about the word, saying that it “is like an ocean. shallow that even a child can wade in it, but it’s so deep that you could never explore the depths of it.” There is so much that I don’t know, but I long to. It is for this reason that I have begun chasing the word of God at its Hebraic roots.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction. Proverbs 1:7

The Hebraic context revals a deeper revelation than we can even begin to imagine. For instance the phrase, the fear of the Lord, isn’t talking about fear as we would initially think. The way we see fear would lead us to take this to mean, “being afraid of the Lord”, but God hasn’t given us a spirit of fear (2 Timothy 1:7). When we look deeper into the root of the scripture, we find that in Hebrew, this phrase has an entirely different meaning. Yirat Adonai, the fear of the Lord, refers to a reverential awe at the glory of his presence. In other words, acknowledging He is the living God and offering our complete devotion, and knowing that all creation was by His hand alone, that is the beginning of knowledge.

The book of Proverbs is a call and cry for wisdom and is mentioned 54 times throughout the book. When we think of wisdom, we tend to lean to thinking it has to do with cognitive thought and elevated thoughts. Characters such as Yoda or philosphers such as Socrates, depart great words of wisdom. In Hebrew however, wisdom is not just a matter of the mind, but of the physical as well. Hokmah describes skilled laborers as those who have wise hearts.

Wisdom is a matter of application. Talking what we have learned, our head knowledge, skill knowledge, heart knowledge and applying it to our lives. What good is it to learn something and never apply it? That would be like buying an exercise dvd because you want to get in shape, but then never taking it out of the box. It becomes wasted. The same goes for God. He’s given us His word, but what good does it do if we don‘t read it, or if we do read it, not apply it to our lives.

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. Colossians 3:16

When we apply the Word, Jesus, to our lives, we will walk in God’s wisdom and not our own. He says in Proverbs 8:11 For wisdom is better than rubies; and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it. We are to seek after and desire wisdom. And true wisdom only comes from knowing Him.