The Treasure of Wisdom

Afters yesterdays discussion, Qoheleth’s search for  wisdom! Telling of the importance of knowing the value of God’s wisdom! I got to thinking about Jesus words to his disciples, that has to do with wisdom. He says: “Where you treasure is, there your heart will be also.”(Matt. 6:21)

Qoheleth’s wisdom, in my simple mind, is the  treasure!

The treasure Jesus is referring to, has nothing what-so-ever to do with gold, or silver or diamond or the dollar bill or social standing!  Rather, the treasure is faith!  A faith that offers us a quality of living!  A quality of  life beyond the physical!  Beyond the verbiage, and cultural conditioning, and things that fill up our minds with distractions.  Distractions that keep us from “walking with God!”

The Book of Hebrews talks about how faith — “walking with God” — worked in the beginning. In the days of Moses, Noah and Abraham!

Now to be sure, it was simpler in those days.  No televisions, or computers, or football!  Certainly no nightly news to tell them how awful and evil the world really is.  No stock market reports to cause them consternation.  

No!  All they had to worry about was their land, and a few simple possessions.  And faith!   They had a faith that, just somehow, knew that God was always with them. 

Doesn’t it make you wonder how they got such a confident faith?   It makes me wonder!  Because the only specific major event, in Old Testament history, was the Exodus.  And event that is still today celebrated, in the Jewish Faith, as a holy time.

Oh, and we know that Moses spoke to God. Whose voice was coming out of a burning bush that was not burning.  It is understandable that Moses had a good reason to have faith.

But what about the examples we read about in Hebrews 11?  Interestingly enough Abel was the first to get mentioned.  Able offered God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain. Abel and his brother Cain were Adam and Eves sons. Cain killed Abel because he was jealous of God’s favorable attention to Abel’s sacrifice rather than Cain’s. 

It is unclear why God favored Abel’s offering over Cains. A great reason to kill a brother!  Right? What we are told is that behind Abel’s, “finest lamb offering,” was “the faith” — the desire — to honor God’s place in his life.  By offering the very best of what he had.  Cain, on the other hand, whose heart was “not right with God.”  Offered less than his best!  

It is helpful to understand that Cain and Abel represent, so-to-speak, the way Gods people would, throughout history, respond to God.  That is, the very beginning representation of the human character.

The second person, we read about in Hebrews,  is Enoch.  Not too many people know about Enoch.  His story only takes up a very small paragraph in Genesis 5.  What we are told about him, at first seems equally small.  It says:  “He walked with God.”  In a paragraph, that is just four sentences long, we are told twice “he walked with God.”

According to the “experts” this little paragraph, about Enoch, is the beginning of public worship.  You see, of Adam’s long line of descendants, Enoch was one of the few whose life was lived in Worship to God.  Which tells us that it was an extremely important detail. 

And anyone who is familiar with the people of the Old Testament, would know that there were only a small number who lived as Enoch was reported to live.  So his short paragraph in history was well worth being mentioned in this Hebrew discussion on faith.

Abel had a faithful heart.  But was too close to “The Fall” to make much of a difference.  Enoch was Adam’s great, great grandson.  And, it is suggested that, God took Enoch’s willing heart and established, through him, a renewed relationship with his human creation.

Now enters Noah!  Just one chapter later in Genesis; but most likely hundreds, if not thousands of year later, we read the story of Noah.  Probably one of the most famous stories in the Bible!

To keep it simple!  God had become very disillusioned and discouraged with his human creation.  Mostly because they were wicked, faithless and evil.  God found himself regretting having ever creating humanity.  So he called Noah!   Who we are also told “walked with God.”

God said to Noah “….Blot out from the earth the human beings that I have created…” (Gen.6:6)

And the Ark was built!  

Hopefully you know the rest of the story!

After the flood God tries once again to establish a new, and better, relationship through the decedents of Noah. Promising never again to destroy creation with a flood.

That hope didn’t last all that long either!

Abraham now enters the list of faithful characters.  He was called the “Father of Nations.”  He also “walked with God.”  It says: “by faith” he obeyed God’s call to “go.”  God told him to “go” into a strange land he knew nothing at all about.  But God told him that he would receive his inheritance in that strange land.  So he uproots his life and family and just goes!  Goes by faith!  And he lived by this faith facing a new hope — an invisible promise — just because God said to. 

WOW!  Think about that!

With the exception of Noah and Abraham we are not told a whole lot about the other characters.  Yet we are told enough to make a profound discovery.  At least in my small mind!  See if you catch it!

All these stories are about what happens when people “walk with God.”  The point that is being made, by the writer of Hebrews, is reminding us that those who stand with God — walk with God — make it through.  For sure it was not always easy.  But they made it! 

That is what I hope you hear!  

I hope you hear, because of their stories of faith, we also can gain some perspective for todays life of faith In the same God who guided those who lived before us.  And not just the people that we read about in the Bible.  I also want you to think about those who we have, or had, in our own life time.  Those who have witness the strength of faith in their life.  

Are names and faces popping into your mind!  They are in mind!  Herold Metcalf!  Pearl Ludwicson! Anna Johnson! Harry Tobias! 

We have all had those people in our lives who have shown us what it is to live by faith.  People who have spent their lives “walking with God.”  Their treasure has been their faith.  That is what they gave us, a picture of what it looks like to have faith.

Faith always has, and always will be, comprehended and understood through the bigger picture.  A full history that reaches back to the very beginning when “God said…”  To the Israelites that first trusted Moses.  To Noah, Abraham and Joseph (A blog of its own) who all trusted in an unknown future.  An invisible promise!   Believing, having faith, that God would lead them on the best path as they walked with him.

The song puts it this way:  “Because he live we can face tomorrow.”  No matter what tomorrow brings! 

1 Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. 2 This is what the ancients were commended for. 3 By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible. 4 By faith Abel brought God a better offering than Cain did. By faith he was commended as righteous, when God spoke well of his offerings. And by faith Abel still speaks, even though he is dead. 5 By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death: “He could not be found, because God had taken him away.” For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God. 6 And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. 7By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that is in keeping with faith. 8 By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. 9 By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. 10 For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.11 And by faith even Sarah, who was past childbearing age, was enabled to bear children because she considered him faithful who had made the promise. 12 And so from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore. 13 All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. 14 People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own.15 If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. 16Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.(Hebrews 11)