Idolatry (Part 9)

9-5-10

The views expressed in our corporate gatherings are those of the Pastor and should not be attributed to the leadership, the community at large or his wife, Lynette. Please be assured that Phil’s derisive comments on 8-29-10 concerning the name “Arthur” are mostly a reflection of his own insecurities, and are in no way an expression of a collective bias or preference.

Also, “Any rebroadcast, retransmission, or account of today’s teaching, without the express written consent of Major League Baseball, is prohibited."

“Captain Obvious” (Urban Dictionary)- a way of referring to someone after they have stated an obvious fact; the captain of obvious.

● We have been attempting to discover how life really works. Not just by observing all that surrounds or influences us, but by asking ourselves if there might be something more, something else?

● A person who is considered “wise” is a person that we would identify as being “in touch with reality”. Someone whose very approach to life suggests that they are pursuing the way things really are and are adjusting their lives to accommodate such a reality.

Conversely, the person who we would consider a “fool” is someone who we might say has “lost touch with reality”. It is the person who either arrogantly denies the existence of God, or chooses simply to ignore him.

● I guess we must first broach the question: “What is real?”

            From the perspective of the Proverbs (3:19-20)…

The word “by” informs us as to the means of accomplishing a particular task (“Oh, how did you get here? I came by car.”)

            Therefore, the Proverbs are saying that wisdom is inter-woven throughout all of creation. It was the means by which God fulfilled his intentions for creation.

Proverbs 8:22-31 (read)

            In this passage, wisdom is once again “personified” as the “architect”. Architects “design” things; they establish “plans” which the builder then uses as direction for building a specific structure. The architect is seen as remaining alongside the builder in order to ensure that things transpire as “planned”. Architects must remain keenly focused on “functionality” How will the design either contribute or detract from the way the structure is meant to be utilized.

Wisdom is directed toward how things “relate”; how they relate determines how they “function”.

So, the parallels are obvious. Wisdom is seen as the architect alongside of God during creation. Not as the one who executed the plans, but as the one who delighted in all that was made. Especially at how happy she was for humanity.

Therefore, if you are going to experience life the way that it was meant to be lived, it will be necessary for you to familiarize yourself with the design and then re-order your life to accommodate it. To ignore such reality is “foolish”.

Those realities (functions) are not subject to our own preferences or ambitions.

            To defy it, then, is to realize the painful consequences. It would be like climbing atop the bridge because I long to fly. No one would argue that this pursuit if not going to end well. One reason… the consequences for violating the reality of “gravity” are so immediate and relevant (“come to bear on your situation”).

● But, sometimes the consequences are not immediately identifiable. The “interval” often appears as if you have defied reality.

            Sometimes “falling” feels like “flying”. For a brief moment, it appears that I am flying, when, in fact, in reality, I am falling (e.g. impulse buying seems great at the moment, but fails to support reality when the bills start rolling in. Co-signing a loan seems admirable, at the moment, but enslaving once your friend defaults.)

Wisdom is the capacity/skill to navigate through life when the Bible proves less than definitive; when it doesn’t say “Thou shalt”, or “Thou shalt not”.

This will likely involve most of our eating, sleeping, working, recreating, walking around lives.

            “Who to marry? What career to pursue? Questions for which there may be no direct revelation, but situations in which you will still need to respond “rightly”

It is the reason that God desires an intentional/thoughtful approach to life because the momentum of life always moves toward foolishness.

            So, wisdom is about interrupting the momentum and re-directing our lives.

Repeatedly, wisdom literature offers us life as a “ path” or a “way”. Those paths are identified as either “straight” or “crooked”.

2:20 Thus you will walk in the ways of good men and keep to the paths of the righteous.

4:10-14 Listen, my son, accept what I say, and the years of your life will be many. I guide you in the way of wisdom and lead you along straight paths. Hold on to instruction, do not let it go; guard it well, for it is your life. Do not set foot on the path of the wicked or walk in the way of evil men.

Here’s where the “Captain Obvious” part comes in…

►Where you eventually arrive will be determined by the direction that your path takes.

Wisdom knows that people end up in all sorts of painful circumstances, none of which they pursued intentionally (“I never planned for this to happen”, they say, but, in a sense, you did.) Meaning, you will arrive not where you “intended” to go, but where you “chose” to go.

Your deep-heart-passions will always trump your good intentions.

►We navigate the path in incremental movements.

4:18-19 “The path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn, shining ever brighter till the full light of day. But the way of the wicked is like deep darkness; they do not know what makes them stumble.”

            The myriad of daily choices you make are determining who you are becoming and where your life is going.

● What becomes obvious is that life provides us with a dot that says “start” and a dot that says “finish”, and it’s how you connect all of those other dots (events in your life) that will ultimately determine the shape of your life. It’s the art of living well!

►Although the way of wisdom is always an alternative, always an option, no matter how far down the path of folly you find yourself, the best possible place to choose the right path is at the trailhead.

This is why wisdom is predominantly directed at the young. The decisions you make in your teens and twenties are exponentially more consequential than those you make in your forties, fifties and sixties.

Wisdom knows that life does not typically “soften us”.

Life just allows more time to become set in our “own ways”. There is a despair associated with folly; a hopelessness that too often defines and limits us. “It is what it is.” Folly depletes us of hope and masquerades as “normal”.

The very worst form of hardening… over-exposure to truth with no life-response.

Fortunately, the gospel is much bigger than just “unconditional love” (not a ‘co-dependent’ relationship with God].

            To say that God loves you despite your brokenness is only partially true. To say that God loves you despite your brokenness and will not be content until you are whole, is still only partially true. To say that God loves you despite your brokenness and longs to transform you so that you might embody his healing, restorative love to a broken world… that’s the gospel.

 It is the empowerment to return to the kind of life that we were always meant to live.