"The words of the wise are like goads, their collected sayings like firmly embedded nails - given by one shepherd."
Ecclesiastes 12:11 (NIV)
When I get to Luke 7:24-35, I wonder what happened to Luke, for it has been extremely easy to follow his train of thought, but this passage seems to be disjointed and hard to connect and hard to understand. I have to remind myself that this is a connected series of wise sayings. Wise sayings are designed to stick sideways in our heads. Solomon calls them goads. They sit sideways and poke and irritate us and therefore they are hard to integrate into our thoughts. You can’t come up with an easy application, instead we have to puzzle over them and allow them to do their work in our minds and heart.
Wise sayings do the work for us, all we have to do is be willing to allow them to penetrate our minds and then examine them from as many angles as we are able to. It isn’t a memorization technique, it is a willing surrender to God’s Word; it is a step of trust in the Holy Spirit, and it requires patience. But the reward is tremendous, for when we submit to the Spirit, trusting that these Words of Jesus will bear fruit in our lives, He will show us the application and we will remember it better than any other lesson, for the Holy Spirit will have firmly embedded them into us like nails into wood!
So here are the wise sayings. May God do a great work in us as we allow Him to embed them into us:
“Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me.” (Matthew 11:6)
“I tell you, among those born of women there is no one greater than John; yet the one who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.” (Luke 7:28)
“They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling out to each other” (Luke 7:32)
"We played the pipe for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not cry” (Matthew 11:17)
“But wisdom is proved right by all her children.” (Luke 7:35)
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