Job 28:28 Commentary and Bible Study

God then is the teacher of man, and wisdom is the great gift that he has to impart to him. God is the perfect teacher and he is able to do better than any other teacher what all teachers must do: to compress a great subject into a small compass, to encapsulate a complex subject into a single focused idea. How can finite man – how can sinful man grapple with the infinite wisdom and understanding of the Lord and hope to make any progress? The task seems to be just too enormous, too vast to be able to know where to start. But God has summarised all perfectly for us in two clear precepts: ‘Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to depart from evil is understanding.’ In inviting us to obtain wisdom God is inviting us to come to him, for wisdom is found nowhere else but in him. We are faced with all the complexity of God’s created world in which wisdom is embedded because it played such a major role in its construction. To obtain wisdom do we then have to understand all mysteries? Can we not say that we have gained wisdom until we have examined and got to the bottom of all of God’s workmanship? No, there is another way, based on trust and on a proper relationship with our Creator; the source of that wisdom is the person of Christ. We must come to him as our Lord and King and submit to his dominion. In this properly restored relationship is the foundation of wisdom, not in studying his works detached from him. Until the Lord is our God and we have bowed before him in adoration, there can be no wisdom for us. Wisdom is not to be found outside of God as if we could bypass the task of relating to him, and obtain it from outside him. Wisdom is in him alone, and he will give it on his terms and not on ours. Wisdom starts with reverence for the one in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge: the Lord Jesus Christ. It was the severing of this relationship that first brought darkness upon our minds and it must be restored before we can regain wisdom.So then, wisdom lies not in storing up all manner of facts about the world, or increasing knowledge through education which only puffs up, but in bowing before the Lord God Almighty, and trusting in his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ as the one whom God the Father has sent into the world to save us from our sins. This is why the simplest child of God has far more wisdom than the most prestigious university professor who does not believe in Christ.Unbelieving mankind does not connect together wisdom and righteousness, but the word of God teaches that the two are inseparable and therefore, ‘to depart from evil is understanding’. Our real problem is not lack of knowledge but lack of righteousness. Knowledge comes from the Lord, but he will not give it to those who continue in their rebellion against him. Knowledge is for the humble and the lowly. It starts with the knowledge of Christ and it leads to the knowledge of ourselves and of our sinfulness. Repentance is therefore the first word of the gospel.