“Choose Wisely”

Indie and Walter Donovan are standing in the inner chamber with the Templar Knight who was left to guard the Grail.  They are both challenged by the Knight to choose the Grail from amongst several other chalices and cups on display. Donovan chooses an ornate bejeweled golden chalice, dips it in water, and drinks, thinking that if he chose the right one it would bring him eternal life.  Within seconds he begins to age and decay and die, the exact opposite of what he expected!  The Knight notes that he had chosen poorly.

Indie goes to the cups and looks for his choice.  What would be the carpenter’s grail?  He chooses a common-looking wooden chalice with the exception that a rich gold leaf interior graced the bowl of the cup.  Indie dipped it in the water and drank!  The Knight exclaimed that Indie had chosen wisely! He immediately rushed to his wounded father and the water from the chosen cup healed his father’s wounds! That cup, that Ilsa was trying to steal away, was then lost in a chasm that had opened up in the Templars’ lair. Neat story, purely fiction!

Life is made up of abundant choices.  Poorly or wisely – choices are made for good or ill... so, there will be consequences for our benefit or our demise.

Wisdom – “having or showing good judgment; prudent, discreet…”  “It implies the ability to judge or deal with persons/situations, rightly, based on a broad range of knowledge, experience, and understanding.”  So says Webster!

Then, what is a fool?  In Proverbs, Solomon offers a number of examples.  Someone who never learns his lessons from life, you can just tell him and tell him, and nothing sinks in.  He just stares back blankly.  He falls in one pit after another, if he survives the previous collapse.

Solomon says: “A man speaks few words and is thought to be wise but a fool speaks often and proves he is a fool.”  “A fool has no delight in understanding but in expressing his own heart.”  “A fool says in his heart, there is no God.”  “A fool’s lips enter into contention.”  “Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”  “A wise man stores up knowledge, but the mouth of the fool is near destruction.”

You can go back to Solomon’s days and find what the Bible describes as the premier example of wisdom.  The first is his request of God to meet his needs to rule.  He asks for wisdom and not power or honor or wealth.  And the Lord gives him all of that! 

Secondly, he shows great insight when two contending women come to him for judgment about which one is the real mother of a fought-after child.  The one who thought that saving the life of the child was utmost rather than winning, Solomon determined was the true mother. This decision has been commended until this day as true wisdom and justice.

Perhaps you can think of everyday examples of wisdom and foolishness. Parents and children sometimes go through such wise/foolish trials.  All parents wish to prepare their children for life, based on their experience.  It scares us, then, to see our kids heading for the same pitfalls as we did when we were their age.  The continual parental complaint is that their children just won’t listen.  But we know that the lesson will finally be learned when things go so wrong or when our kids have kids of their own. 

I might ask you… what is wise and what is foolish?  To live in line with God’s revealed will found in the prophets, apostles, and from the mouth of Jesus… or to live only to seek our own desires, pleasures, and ambitions?  To live seeking to be closer to the Lord or to the world?  To live in pursuit of truth and finding it in the Bible, or to live always seeking truth and never finding it!

Wise or Foolish?  To place your life in every respect in the hands of others, whether they be those of power and influence, family, and friends… or to be found in the everlasting arms of our heavenly Father who loves us with a never-failing love?

What do you think of a person who wakes up every morning, saying, “Lord, if today is the day, I’m ready!”  This is a person who always looks heavenward; knowing in his heart and mind that some time he will look up and on the clouds, he’ll see His Lord!  This same person doesn’t count this life as nearly as important as the life to come.  Is he wise or foolish… sane or insane… Religious or fanatical?

What do you think of a person who spends more time in prayer and the study of God’s Word than at a restaurant sipping coffee, gossiping about one’s neighbor, reading the paper, or watching TV?  Wise or foolish?

What do you think of a person who believes so firmly in God’s leading and promise that he’d build a huge boat far from the nearest body of water.  Wise of foolish?

What about someone who believes that he and his wife would be the ancestors of countless numbers of natural descendants while they themselves are childless and now in their nineties?  Or that the son born of old age must be sacrificed because he believes that God has told him to do that!

What about a guy who does what a bush tells him to do albeit a burning bush?

What about a virgin who believes she is expecting the birth of a child despite what nature and experience would otherwise tell her, simply because an angel said so?

A group of eleven men believe that someone they saw killed, was now alive again, and for Him they were ready to suffer and die in order to bring the message of love and pardon to a lost and condemned world in the name of that Risen Christ.  Is their new vocation a wise or foolish one?

In what promises of God have you placed your trust?  On which Word of God are you building your life?  What in the Scriptures have you judged as wise or foolish? To what do you cling or what have you rejected, and what makes you think that you are wise enough to make a distinction between which is right and what is wrong?

We must be ready, at all times, for either the return of our Master and Savior when He comes to judge the world and to gather His flock, or we must be ready for our death.  Whatever comes first, we must be wise enough so as not to be found falling short or left wanting.

The words we do not wish to hear from our Lord are, “You wicked and lazy servant; cast this unprofitable slave into outer darkness.”

Then, are we wise enough to be confirming in every moment we have left, that our salvation is sure and certain?

Do we have enough of that God-given oil of gladness and faith that should our Master return later rather than sooner we will still be able to enter and feast at the heavenly banquet table?  You cannot enter in on someone else’s faith – so you must possess sufficient faith of your own.  Children will not enter in on their parents’ faith, nor vice versa.  So, do you think that you are walking along on a wisely chosen path?

Jesus was wise.  Whatever He had to face He knew He could face it with His Father sustaining Him.  Even when He had to trudge down the path of the cross and take on all of God’s anger for man’s sin and suffer hell for the likes of us!  God had promised life would be His on the other side.  He knew, that is, Jesus knew, that His heavenly Father would come through and keep His sacred promise to His beloved Son.

Because that promise was kept, we, who are wise by God’s Spirit and His Word, have no reason to doubt that our sins were paid for, our punishment was borne by another, and heaven’s gates were opened to all.  God says so and the wise know its true and their life, in turmoil and tempest, in glory and glee – is on an upward track.

The way to wisdom and the way to be ready for that unknown hour is to cling to Jesus and the hope He established by His sacrifice of blood.  It is to be moved by His unlimited and unselfish love, and in turn to love Him; and the wise, believing that He is our Deliverer, cling alone to Jesus as their only confidence in this life and their only hope in the world to come.

The wise come to church not as some unthinking habit but rather to hear again and again that God did not abandon us as condemned creatures but in His mercy, He saved us, redeemed us by the merit and righteousness of His Son. We come to hear about all that the Lord has done for us and that He continues to do to keep His flock intact until we enter the sheepfold above.  We come to be assured that God really means what He has said and will always keep His promises even if it takes 2000 – 3000 – 4000 years.  We come to be refilled with the oil of God’s love and His holy and eternal wisdom in Christ Jesus.

We also come as wise men and women to worship the triune God who has done all this for those who otherwise would be lost forever.  Yes, He did this all for a fallen and foolish world of which we are a part!

The wise of this present age are those who look heavenward and long for this world to end and for eternity to begin.  The wise have nothing to fear!

The wise are ones who believe that God kept a 4000-year-old promise to bring His Son into the world as our Savior and at the appointed time it was done. The wise trust in that baby who was God and who took on poverty, who suffered injustice, and most importantly took away the world’s sin and died for it and rose again as sins’, hell’s, death’s, and the devil’s conqueror.  He defeated them all for us!  Wisdom demands that we believe that and in Him.

The wise are ready for the fulfilment of the promise of His return. We are continually aware that He is coming again… and really soon!  So, are we wise or are we being foolish… are we following along on the chosen and rightful path ahead wisely or poorly?

God wants us all to be wise and has given His Son into death for us and by the Holy Spirit we have been brought to the threshold of wisdom, to trust in this blood-bought redemption. 

Grab hold of God’s precious wisdom, personified, and epitomized in the person of His Son, and never let go!  Don’t lose out by a lack of respect for God’s Word, or through a lack of proper preparation in line with our desired heavenly outcome.  Your life, now, and forever, depends on relying wisely on Jesus!  The Father wants you to trust in His Son.  The Spirit testifies that Jesus is our wise hope and makes faith reality! Jesus is life!  And such is the wisdom of God by which we live!