Understated Wisdom // Wisdom That Works, Part 17

A Different Perspective Official Podcast

Some people - frankly - talk too much. Blah, blah, blah - on and on. In their own eyes - they appear so wise. But you know what I’ve noticed? The really smart people, the wise ones talk less and listen more. In fact the more I see, the more I learn … the more I come to the conclusion that wisdom is, well … understated.

Over the years I've met many a person who promises a lot but as time goes by fails to deliver. Have you ever met such people? I'm sure you have. They talk a lot, they even impress us but when push comes to shove, when it comes time to deliver on the claims and the promises they're nowhere to be found.

They just talk a lot. A lot of hot air too much but light on delivery. Now you may have gathered that my particular gift is to talk. In fact each year I talk rather a lot. Almost 500 separate episodes of the different radio programs that I produce. That's a lot of talking and actually in my life, earlier on, I was something of a talker, too much.

Always ready to share what I thought. Always the first to jump up and give an opinion. One of the things I was fortunate to have was a great mentor. His name was Graham and he saw something in me that he decided to nurture. But one of the things he had to teach me, one of the things I had to learn was not to talk quite so much.

One of the things I had to learn frankly was to zip my lip, to shut up and to listen. Question is, why do we need to learn that?

I trust over these past few weeks you've been enjoying, as I have, spending some time in this Old Testament Book of Proverbs. Discovering Gods wisdom on a whole bunch of things. The sort of wisdom that works. And that's been the name of this series, "Wisdom That Works".

Learning how to live an effective life, a Godly life. A life that honours God and brings blessing to others is something that most of us do in a hap hazard way. Depends on the instruction we have from our parents. Perhaps they were great at teaching us wisdom, maybe they weren't.

To some extent we pick some of it up through our education but then again it doesn't appear to be so much of a deliberate process of teaching the young to grow up. It's more something that, well this wisdom thing that we're supposed to pick up naturally, almost by osmosis.

Very few people seem to have grown up where they've had some deliberate proactive teaching on how to live. How to deal with their weaknesses. How to discover their strengths and make the most of them. How to plan wisely. How to deal effectively with conflict. How to balance our needs with the needs of other people around us.

And I guess one of the things I was really blessed with was this man who I mentioned earlier, Graham. We were business partners together and he was twenty years my senior. One of the wisest men I've ever met. To this day, in fact, even though we sold our business going on ten years ago now and he's well and truly retired and I'm off doing something completely different, I still call him to run things by him. And one of the most important things he ever taught me, listen to this, was to shut up.

Now let's dive into Gods word, to plunder it for another piece of wisdom. Proverbs chapter 12, verse 23:

One who is clever conceals knowledge but the mind of a fool broadcasts folly.

Now that takes some thinking about. Two parts to it:

One who is clever conceals knowledge.

Is the first bit. Now why is that? And the second part:

The mind of a fool broadcasts folly (Or foolishness).

Well let's tackle the first part first. Wisdom is a powerful thing and if you're someone who is wise as my friend Graham was with me, and you meet someone without that same level of wisdom and maturity, that was me when the two of us first started working together. Then the one who isn't as wise just doesn't get it.

I mean they're often not ready to receive the wisdom from the one who has it. When we're immature, when we're all wrapped up in our own selves and our own self importance, when we're proud and haughty and we blah blah blah on about ourselves, are we ready to accept wisdom?

Of course we aren't because wisdom is an anathema. Jesus put it rather more directly than this Proverb from Solomon. Matthew chapter 7, verse 6:

Do not throw pearls before swine or they will trample them under foot and turn and maul you.

Pretty graphic picture and it makes the point well. So if the one who is wise, who has wisdom and has understanding that comes from years of experience, if that one just blurts out all their wisdom and dumps it on the one who isn't wise, it's just not going to work.

No because the one who isn't wise isn't ready to accept the wisdom. Indeed they can't, their mind is hostile to wisdom because they're proud and learning wisdom requires humility.

Remember where we started a few weeks ago, Proverbs chapter 9, verse 10:

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and the knowledge of the Holy one is insight.

And so sharing all our wisdom with such a person is a complete waste of time, it will just stir up trouble. And that's why the one who is clever should conceal their knowledge. It's exactly what Graham did with me. He didn't try to change me in a day. You see I belonged to the second part of that verse:

But the mind of a fool broadcasts folly.

It's not that I wasn't pretty smart, I was. It's just that I was immature. The problem was that I was full of myself. I was puffed up with pride, I thought I knew it all, I thought I knew better than everyone else. How do you begin to change that? How do you deal with someone who's like that?

Well Graham shared his wisdom with me drop by drop. It was a drip feed over years. I remember how he used to coach me coming out of meetings where I'd spoken over the top of people, something I used to do a lot. He'd coach and share and give me a different perspective and guide me.

He taught me to listen, to understand. He taught me to pick up the cues and the clues as he used to call them from other people. So I really could figure out where they were coming from. And you know little by little as he drip fed this without telling me I was an idiot, without telling me I was a fool, without putting me down. By encouraging me and showing me a different way.

What I discovered was that his wisdom actually worked. It was a benefit to me from taking on his wisdom. See he was wise enough to conceal his knowledge. To drip feed it a pace that I could accept it and digest it step by step.

Now there are still things that I don't understand. There are still things I get wrong. The last thing I want you to do is to imagine somehow, because this guy's on radio he's holding himself out as some paragon of wisdom and virtue. No, we're all on a journey, a journey of learning and discovery.

We all know people with much greater wisdom than we possess and people with much less wisdom. And when we're dealing with someone that's not as mature as we are. When we try and tell them, try and show them the right way, try some days to shove it down their throats because we're so frustrated with them and then they don't get it and they rebel and we get all bitter and twisted and annoyed with them.

You know what I'm talking about here, then this piece of wisdom is what works in this situation. Let's go back to it, Proverbs chapter 12, verse 23:

One who is clever conceals his knowledge but the mind of a fool broadcasts folly.

God’s wisdom is gentle and firm and peaceable and pure and encouraging. It's understated yet it's strong. It pulls alongside the one who's mind is broadcasting folly, to the fool, to the less wise. It pulls alongside that person and lovingly serves them. It's a sacrifice for someone to serve in that way.

It was a sacrifice for Graham who was wise as my business partner to spend years pulling alongside dealing with my foolishness and my folly. But he served me anyway. And that's what wisdom is. It's proactive. It's deliberate. It's not a hit and miss thing. It's a decision and yet it's patient and understated. It's progressively revealed at a pace that the pupil can learn.

Now that my friend, that is the sort of wisdom that works.