The first principle of wisdom is faith in God Ceilon Aspensen, March 12, 2024March 12, 2024 The most important message I picked up from today’s readings overall is the first principle of wisdom is faith in God. My primary takeaway from each of the passages was this: Numbers 25 & 26: The Israelites have short memories, and sin against God, again. Another census is taken. John 3: Nicodemus, a Pharisee, has a deep conversation with Jesus. Psalms 71: A prayer for help in old age. Proverbs 9: The first principle of wisdom is faith in God. During the time that the Israelites wander through the desert looking for the Promised Land, they spend an awful lot of time complaining, losing faith in God, falling prey to local customs which are abhorrent (child sacrifice, prostitution, etc.). Here we find that after they win the victory against Moab, they fall into practices of prostitution with the Midianites. This makes God angry and causes him to send a plague. They have to cleanse the camp of all who partook in the sinful practices before the camp can be cleansed of sin. Then they take another census. Stories such as these are designed to describe the short memories and flip-flopping nature of humanity, and in this case in particular, the Israelites. When things are going well, everyone is grateful and praising God. But if people go too long left on their own, without strict adherence to practices of prayer and thanksgiving, they tend to forget and start to drift and slip. The Israelites are no different than the rest of us. If I find myself getting too busy to do my morning prayers and meditations for very long, I find myself drifting into ingratitude, depression, and things start to feel like they are getting beyond me. If you’ve ever read the Hobbit, you may recognize the metaphor of Mirkwood, where Gandalf (a kind of Moses) warns the Hobbits, “Don’t stray from the path!” They do stray from the path and find themselves falling prey to giant spiders and then the wood elves. For the Israelites in the desert, it was the temptations of cultural practices that violated the ten commandments. For me it’s a simple case of inattention to simple daily spiritual practices that keep me centered. What is it for you? When we find ourselves having strayed from the path, we don’t have to go so far as killing everyone in the camp who strayed (old testament stories can be bloody and brutal, and remember–they were written thousands of years ago in a different time and place, for a different culture practicing different moral and legal traditions that, if you practiced them today, would get you arrested and imprisoned). All we have to do is return to the good practices. Pick up our Bibles and begin reading where we left off. Resume our daily prayers and devotional practices. Make small course corrections. Before you know, it you’ll be back on the path. But the best practice is to not let them slip to begin with. In John, we see Nicodemus, a Pharisee, having a deep conversation with Jesus about the revelation of the Spirit. Nicodemus is a rare (and perhaps singular) Pharisee in that he recognizes that Jesus is teaching directly from the heart of God, and he wants to know more. It is evident that Nicodemus doesn’t understand everything that Jesus is teaching, but he receives it, and is converted. We know this because Nicodemus is present after the crucifixion of Jesus and assists Joseph of Arimathea with the preservation of the body by providing the necessary spices for burial. In the conversation with Nicodemus, Jesus first uses the term “born again.” He is, of course, speaking of a spiritual birth. We are born physically into this world from our mother’s womb, and if we receive the teachings of Jesus, we are born again spiritually into the life God intends for us. Later, in II Corinthians 5:17, Paul further explains this phenomenon: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” This is what the Israelites in the desert had so much difficulty grasping. They did not experience a spiritual rebirth. God kept rescuing them and they kept returning to their old way of doing things. Nothing had become new. Whenever there was a large group of people worshipping a golden calf, or cursing God for the lack of water or the bad food, or participating in child sacrifice or prostitution, God just wiped them out. They didn’t have Jesus and the Holy Spirit to help them be “born again.” There was no forgiveness. As Joseph Campbell so astutely reserved, the old testament was full of a lot of rules and no mercy. Jesus is all forgiveness and endless mercy. In Psalms 71 we have a prayer for mercy and refuge in old age. As we age, we slowly regress to a state of relative helplessness, similar to that from which we originated as babies. Our bodies begin to fail, we can’t work as long or as hard as we did when we were younger. People become impatient with our inability to catch up. Psalms 71 reminds us that God is there to help us and protect us from those who might take advantage of us, if we just call on him. Proverbs 9 provides us with yet another portrait of wisdom, as well as its opposite, foolishness. In this proverb we read that “The first principle of wisdom is the fear of Yahweh.” Faith in God is our first step towards wisdom. Recognizing a higher power, that there is something bigger than ourselves, is the first step towards wisdom. Recognizing that we don’t have all the answers is essential. When we find ourselves in difficult circumstances, recognizing that we have access to the deepest and greatest of all mysteries through prayer and faith in God can lift us out of the depths of our despair and give us hope. If we have nothing, and no resources, and we do not pray and put our faith in God, then there is no hope because we are relying entirely on ourselves, and we’ve already recognized that we have nothing. Putting our faith in God acknowledges that we don’t have all the answers and are open to receiving help outside of our own limited imaginations. That’s what I got out of it. What did you get out of the readings today? To participate in a discussion about the posts, please join us in our private Facebook group that I set up specifically for sharing what we take-away from the readings each day. If you haven’t gotten the FREE “Read the Bible in a Year” worksheet yet, you can download it here. It is not necessary for you to start on January 1st–you can start from the beginning on whatever date you get the worksheet. Join us! Learn more about why I read the Bible all the way through every year, and feel free to share with anyone you think could benefit. This post is part of the series, “Read the Bible in a Year.” To see other posts in this series, go to the Chronological Index of Read the Bible in a Year Posts. Please follow and like us: Read the Bible in a Year Spiritual Practice changechange for the betterchristianchristianityencounter with Godpositive changeread the biblesacrificespiritual