Wise Maker, Wise Savior—Proverbs 8

Imagine you’re at the bottom of a deep, dark pit. It shouldn’t be too hard, because, spiritually, we’ve all been there. Maybe you’ve never been anywhere else.

Now imagine someone lets down a rope to you. “Just grab on and I’ll pull you out!” he yells. But when you are about to grab the rope, a thought hits you. What if the rope isn’t strong enough? What if it breaks when you’re almost out of the pit? The pit is very deep. You would break bones in the long fall back into darkness. But if you don’t grab the rope, you’ll never get out.

It’s a bit like that with Jesus Christ. If we are utterly convinced that he can save us, then we will trust in him, follow him, obey him, love him. We will grab the rope, and (he says) we will be saved from the pit of sin. But if we don’t believe that he can save us, then, when the moment of decision comes, we’ll choose to stay in the pit.

My goal is to convince you more than ever before that Jesus Christ is worthy of your trust. Grab onto him: the rope will hold. With Proverbs 8 in mind, the specific lesson I want to drive home is this: Jesus, whose wisdom created the world, is wise enough to save your soul.

We can break the chapter’s teaching into three points. First, Wisdom is calling. Second, the Wisdom that made the world can save your life. And third, the love of wisdom is true self-love.

So, first, Wisdom is calling. If you remember Proverbs 7, you remember that there was an adulteress out roaming the streets, looking for a young man, seeking to seduce him. But now we hear about another woman out in the streets: Lady Wisdom. She’s looking for young men, too, but not to seduce them into immorality. She’s competing with the seductress because she’s on the Lord’s side. She loves what he loves, and she hates what he hates. “The fear of the LORD is hatred of evil,” she says, “Pride and arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech I hate.”

And she’s good competition for the adulteress. She’s better than silver, better than gold, better than jewels. Does the young man want to be someone important in life? She’s the one by whom kings reign. She gives true riches and honor -- not the kind of riches that the world offers, but something “better than gold.”

But if that doesn’t convince, she has more to say. It’s by her that God made the world. The second point of the passage is this: The wisdom that made the world can save your life.

“The LORD possessed me at the beginning of his work,” she says, “the first of his acts of old.” She was there when God made the world, and she wasn’t just watching: “I was beside him,” she says, “like a master workman.”

Now, some Christians have thought that Wisdom, in this passage, must be code for Jesus Christ. After all, the New Testament says that Jesus is the wisdom of God. And they aren’t far off, but it isn’t quite that simple. The Bible uses the word “wisdom” in several different senses. One sense is simply as one of God’s attributes. God is wise -- eternally wise. Another sense is in reference to Jesus. Like the Father, Jesus is eternally wise, but he also became the embodiment of God’s wisdom for our salvation, as Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians.

But Proverbs has been developing its own special use of the word wisdom, designed to appeal to the simple young man the book is written for. This is Lady Wisdom, a poetic personification, like a character in a parable, who competes with adulteresses and Lady Folly for the young man’s affections. And the point here is that the young man should accept help from Lady Wisdom. Men are notorious for refusing to accept help or ask for directions. Lady Wisdom may have gotten the young man’s attention, but perhaps he isn’t ready to depend on her. Now, the point of these verses is that you can depend on wisdom, because it’s by wisdom that God made the world.

Think of it this way. A lot of Christians have doubts. Is there really such a thing as eternal life? If I trust in God, will I really be saved from eternal death? Proverbs says you don’t have to stuff those doubts back down into some hidden recess of your soul. Instead, look around you. Look at the world and think about who made it. The Lord made the stars; he made the seas; he made the mountains; he made men and women. And now, he says, the wisdom by which he did these things is held out to you to save you from temptation and sin and death. And you need it. Humble yourself, and grab ahold of wisdom. It can save your life.

The passage concludes with an ultimatum -- listen to wisdom! -- and a final punch: love of wisdom is true self-love. A lot of people these days talk about loving yourself and caring for yourself, and a lot of what they say is really pretty poisonous. Jesus came not to be served, but to serve, and his people should do the same. But there is a godly sort of self-love, which is choosing what God says is good for you. Choosing wisdom is good for you. It isn’t self-pampering, but it’s true self-love. Rejecting wisdom, however, is self-harm and self-hatred, even if it feels good in the moment.

So - God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit made the world by wisdom. And then they took all this perfect eternal wisdom and applied it to the work of saving the world. And they hatched this plan. The plan to make the world was effortless, smooth, beautiful, untroubled: “Let there be light, and there was light.” The plan to save the world would involve suffering, bloodshed, and death -- the death of the Son of God himself. Nothing else would do to pay for the sins of his people and ransom us from the power of sin. When Jesus told his Apostles the plan, they rebuked him. They told him, basically, “That’s crazy.” But he knew it was crazy enough to work, because the foolishness of God is wiser than men. The same wisdom that made the beautiful night sky was the wisdom that said that Jesus has to die on the cross for us to be saved.

Pastor Nate Jeffries