The song of wisdom after the fact

There is certainly no lack of helps for this week’s Explore the Bible lesson from LifeWay, which encourages us to “Look to God for Wisdom” and is taken from Job 22:1-28:28. Due to the previous, similar Family Bible Study lessons from Job, you can find lesson commentary on “Look to God for Wisdom” from Mark Dunn, Wiley Richards, and Jim Perdue. Steve Armstrong offers a lesson plan. SonShine at Bible.org offers new study questions for the ETB lesson, as does Decatur Baptist. You can visit the links on the right side of this page to see lesson commentary from multiple sources—Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Texas.

To get started, ask members, “How do you define wisdom?” and note their responses. Jim Dobson says that wisdom is seeing a matter from “God’s point of view.” How to get wisdom and follow it is the focus of this week’s lesson. Paul Simon says, “you do eventually get wisdom. But unfortunately it occurs too late.” I guess he also sings "the song of wisdom-after-the-fact".

Over the weekend, I commented on Scott Hill’s example of “Acknowledging that Life is Unfair” by noting that I see a difference between demonstrating knowledge and exercising wisdom. Yes, some people may conclude that Scripture allows for drinking, but you’d be hard pressed to argue that Scripture teaches that it’s wise to do it. And yes, I’m Southern Baptist, but I’m not mad about it.