Some theologians have grown accustom to speaking about natural revelation as if it were just a faint and unclear whisper. If you listen hard enough and think through things logically perhaps you’ll be able to discern that something like a god exists somewhere out there. But your conception of this god will remain fuzzy until you read the Bible.
What if God isn’t hiding from you? What if clear and loud revelation were a public thing? Proverbs gives us an interesting picture of natural revelation she’s called lady Wisdom. She raises her voice. However, the saddest reality of all is that, for all of her crying out, the majority of people simply won’t listen to her. Their want for listening to wisdom isn’t for lack of making her voice known.
“Wisdom cries aloud in the street, in the markets she raises her voice; at the head of the noisy streets she cries out; at the entrance of the city gates she speaks.” (Prov.1:20–21).
Far from being silent, or even speaking softly, wisdom cries out loudly—loud enough for all to hear! The word for “wisdom” is actually plural in the Hebrew text. You could translate it “wisdoms.” It’s not that there’s more than one speaker, but that wisdom is thought to be such a comprehensive and all-encompassing speaker. The sound of her voice is far reaching and has application into every sphere and facet of life.
Notice that the call of wisdom rings out in various public venues. Wisdom is not just for societal elites and the ivory towers of the intellectuals. Quite to the contrary wisdom calls out to everyone and is in every place. The gates of the city in ancient Israel and in many ancient cities were at the centre of the judiciary system. That’s where issues of justice would be decided by the cities top minds. If you had a legal problem, or you were entangled in some kind of dispute, you could bring it there before a council of men who’d preside over it with furrowed brows. The market place would have been the place of common business and daily social life, while the streets were considered the place where children played. Wisdom cries out to people in each place, from the societal elites in seats of authority to simple children running in the streets. Wisdom cries out in the public sphere of our human experience. Are you listening? That is the question of this text.
In our culture, we’ve grown accustom to thinking of wisdom as though it were standing aloof from us—as if it were that proverbial pot of gold discoverable only to the particularly gifted and intellectually elite people of society after slugging their way through eight years of post-secondary education and perhaps earning a Ph.D in one of the ivy league institutions of our day. That’s how we tend to think of it in the West. The Eastern mind is similar in that wisdom only goes to the sage who has gone on some mystical pilgrimage and, through various means, has reached enlightenment. Whatever the case, the idea is that we begin quite simply and then attain wisdom that is somewhat elusive and at the end of a long journey upward brick by brick on our little tower of Babel that will one day reach the heavens.
The Bible here paints a very different picture. There is this great and gracious downward movement of wisdom. Wisdom gets off her heavenly throne, comes down to us and speaks. She invades our little lives from the outside and offers her treasures to all. In creation, God has stamped wisdom on everything he has made. Everywhere you go you are confronted with God’s wisdom because he’s etched it upon the surface of all that he has made.
“The LORD by wisdom founded the earth; by understanding he established the heavens” (Prov. 3:19).
Every fact of the universe is evidence for God. Every fact speaks of him. All of creation bellows forth the wisdom and majesty of God. More than this, he has not left us to our own devices to figure it out. No, he’s revealed himself to us in Scripture. The Scriptures contain the wisdom of God and help us see and interpret the wisdom of God that is out there in the world rightly. Natural and special revelation were meant to function in an inseparable organic unity. They are mutually interdependent.
So, if wisdom is so clear and so accessible, then what’s the problem? Why do so many of us miss it? I want to suggest to you that the problem is not that wisdom is playing some cosmic game of hide and seek. The problem is found in the next few verses. Wisdom speaks in v.22, “How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge?” Listen, the heart of the matter is a matter of the heart—what the heart loves, delights in, and hates. This matter of wisdom is inseparably tied to the affections. The mind is filled by that to which the heart is inclined. The problem isn’t that things are unclear out there. The problem lies with us!
The Apostle Paul picks up on this in Romans 1:
“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things” (Rom. 1:18–23).
Paul here says that everyone has immediate knowledge of God. Paul can’t be talking about a process if rational discourse. We were created to relate to God and God has implanted a sense of divinity within each of us. From the moment we open our eyes we recognize God, yet because of our fallen condition and the sense of our guilt, we suppress and deny what we know. Our hostility toward God causes us to engage in a large scale project of reconstructing a universe that is safe for sinners. Some people come up with intricate and complex explanations, like the great philosophers of the world. Others don’t put as much thought into it, but in the final analysis, regardless of the complexity, each of these reconstructions are nothing but futile attempts to hide from and alleviate something that we all know deep down inside: that we are guilty before God. In this way they are like Adam and Eve who used leaves in the garden to cover their nakedness. Perhaps, the problem is not that wisdom is not speaking; it’s that you won’t listen to her!
To the simple, scoffers, and the fools the question remains the same, “How long?” (v.22) How long are you going to go on stopping up your ears to God’s wisdom.
Wisdom says turn, “If you turn at my reproof, behold, I will pour out my spirit to you; I will make my words known to you” (v.23). To turn here means to finally open up your ears to wisdom’s reproof, to turn away from your former ignorance and foolishness and toward her in love. In means casting aside your old twisted perspective and grabbing hold of a completely new construction. This is nothing short of repentance. Cornelius Van Til called it the intellectual challenge of the gospel. Christians are those who have been placed on a new foundation and are undergoing a renewal, a reconstruction, of their minds (Rom. 12:2).
We don’t generally like being told that we’re wrong. We’re far more comfortable with the thought that we’ve got everything wired. That’s a fun thought, but the fundamental presupposition of the book of Proverbs is that we are foolish by nature! And if we are left up to our own devises, our lives will go off the rails. Unless we are interrupted in our folly by God’s grace, we will soon enough take our place in the seat of scoffers.
We need to come to an end of ourselves, to recognize our simplicity, and turn to the God. The text says, he will pour out his Spirit on us, and then we will see and understand his word. Repentance is the key that unlocks wisdom. And if repentance is like the key that gives us access to the word of God, then the word of God is like a new set of glasses through which we are able to see and understand the world around us. The eyeglasses of the word of God, as Calvin says, help to correct our blurred vision of God, the world, and ourselves.
It’s not till the wisdom’s sweet calls of love are rejected that she switches her tone. Wisdom, who once called out longingly to every passerby, now thunders at those who scorned her:
“Because I have called and you refused to listen, have stretched out my hand and no one has heeded, because you have ignored all my counsel and would have none of my reproof, I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when terror strikes you, when terror strikes you like a storm and your calamity comes like a whirlwind, when distress and anguish come upon you. Then they will call upon me, but I will not answer; they will seek me diligently but will not find me.” (Prov. 1:24–28)
Today she raises her voice, but she won’t wait forever. Somebody once said, “Hell hath no furry like a woman scorned.” And while that may not be true in every case, it’s certainly true here. It’s not safe to scorn such clear wisdom.
Why do the wicked meet this terrible end? We see the answer in vv.29-31,
“Because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the LORD, would have none of my counsel and despised all my reproof, therefore they shall eat the fruit of their way, and have their fill of their own devices.”
To hate knowledge is to reject God, and to reject God is also to hate knowledge. Of course this doesn’t mean that unbelievers are intellectually dense. However, we must keep the central point of the book of Proverbs in mind found back in v.7,
“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction” (Prov. 1:7).
Foolish unbelief will work really hard to make you think that it has things wired and that it has all the answers, but at the end of the day, despite all their objections, fools truly hate knowledge, because in hatred of God they cut themselves off from any hope of true understanding. They continue to and cling to a distorted perspective of reality. Through common grace God allows them to know certain bits of the truth, but as soon as they learn about it, they twist it up and reconfigure it in order to make it fit into their overarching unbelieving framework. This is the pattern of all unbelief. This is the natural theology of the fallen man and the final product is always idolatry, or what has been called theologia falsa. For this reason they are made to eat the bitter fruit of their way. Unless our natural knowledge of God is joined to special revelation by faith, what we know about God is only sufficient to condemn us.
The problem is not that wisdom speaks softly, the problem is with us. We need new ears!