(Further reflections on “Unshakable Confidence”—Sunday 31-July-2022)
Wisdom asks, seeks, and desires God’s word. Foolishness does the opposite. It doesn’t ask, but it assumes. It doesn’t seek, but it self-fulfills. It doesn’t want to know God’s will and plan, but it is happy with its own choice according to its own eyes.
We saw this in Joshua (chapter 9). Although he was a strong and gifted leader and at one moment of perhaps having self-confidence in his successful ‘track records, he was easily tricked by the Gibeonites who setup the whole thing to convince Joshua and the Israelites that they were from a distant land. To be fair, they did verify the Gibeonites’ story and evidence though (cf. Joshua 9:14-15), but the passage made it clear though that ‘the Israelites sampled their provisions but did not inquire of the Lord’. Very likely, they somewhat had confidence from the success of bringing down Jericho wall and had the verification process checked. Yet, they did not ask of the Lord. Right here, foolishness is not having low or lack of IQ (Intelligence Quotient). Foolishness does not seek God and His word. Foolishness takes confidence in its self-knowledge and understanding in its own view. The word “confidence,” biblically speaking, relates to trust. In other words, anyone who has self-confidence is basically trusting him/herself more than God’s word. We saw Jesus- God became flesh (fully God, fully man), who was clearly all-knowing and all powerful, resisted the Devil’s invitation to ‘show-off’ His power and ‘You-know-who-I-am’ thing and enticement to own the whole world (cf. Luke 4:3, 9) saying “If/since you are the son of God;” Luke 4:7, “If you worship me”).
We saw this in Samson (Judges 16), who was like a Marvel or DC ’superhero’ figure. He was given super strength by God to deliver the Israelites out of the enemy’s oppression. Unfortunately, Samson relied on the given strength (even though it was from the Lord) and not on God’s word. He was lured and trapped. Samson was spiritually blind, arguably due to his ‘super-strength-confidence’, ‘before he was literally blind (eyes gouged). Samson did not seek the Lord in all his attempts/endeavors even perhaps in his mind, ‘He was doing what the Lord called him to do’. His self-reliance and self-confidence made him to be easily lured, tricked, trapped, and incapacitated. The good news was that at the bottom of his physical weakness, Samson’s death had achieved more than when he was alive (cf. Judges 16:30).
The word “confidence” (Hebrew: “kesel”) has other nuances which is rendered as “flanks” (Leviticus 3:4, 10, 15; Psalm 38:7). This is metaphorically interesting. When people have confidence in wealth/power/self, those things are on their sides (flanks) and God’s word was set aside. This is foolishness. On the contrary, wisdom seeks, asks, desires God’s word and the Lord will be on our side. This is wisdom. Now we may or may not feel that the Lord is on our side all the time, but the truth and the promise of the Lord is that He will always be on our side when we put our ‘confidence’ in His ‘flanks’. All God-given gifts/talents/strengths are not meant for self-confidence or self-glorification, but God-confidence and godly-character-formation. King Solomon asked for God’s wisdom. He got that as well as wealth. But sadly, the wisdom that Solomon received from the Lord did not translate into godly character. So foolishness and destruction were the natural outcome.
The line between self-confidence and God-confidence is very thin as foolishness and wisdom are just “flanks” away. So where are your ‘flanks’?
—
Pastor Lap
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