Proverbs 8:1-3 (The Call Of Wisdom)

Thank you for subscribing to the Shepherds Church podcast. This is our Lord's Day sermon. We pray that as we declare the word of God, that you would be encouraged, strengthened in your faith, and that you would catch a greater vision of who Christ is.

May you be blessed in the hearing of God's word, and may the Lord be with you. Well, over the last couple weeks, we've been in Proverbs 7, and we've been looking at the adulterous woman of Proverbs 7, and we've been using that chapter to show us many things about sexual sin.

Lady Folly, Lady Wisdom, and the Two Voices Calling Us

And in that chapter, we've looked at both male sin and female sexual sin, and we built an autopsy report that will help us avoid the pitfalls that lead to sexual ruin. Well, today, we're in Proverbs 8, and a new woman emerges.

Today, we're greeted by a new woman, and this woman is not Lady Folly from Proverbs 7. This woman is called Lady Wisdom. And in a way, we can recognize that Solomon is not necessarily describing two flesh and blood women.

The woman in Proverbs 7 is not an actual woman in Proverbs, and the woman in Proverbs 8 is not an actual woman, but they stand for categories. They stand for something. They're metaphors of both foolishness and righteousness.

Lady Folly stands for the appetites that lead to death, the carnality, the sin. Lady Wisdom stands for righteousness, that if you will listen to her, that if you'll follow her, then you will have wisdom and you will have life, but if you follow Lady Folly, you will follow her down to death.

And in that sense, Solomon is telling us that there are two voices that are always calling out our name. There's the voice of Lady Folly, and there's the voice of Lady Wisdom. And as we learn, Folly is the one who waits in the shadows and speaks with us with honey-dripped poison, the one whose bread is sprinkled with myrrh.

Her promises seem like silk, and yet they're infested with worms. She's loud, she's seductive, she's persuasive. She is death-dressed in a pretty dress, and she hides in the dark corners and whispers to us through our culture, through our screens, through our secret hidden desires, calling us down into death, telling us what we want to hear, but never telling us the cost.

That is Lady Wisdom, who calls us like a spider to her web. And today, we're looking at Lady Wisdom, who is the exact opposite of Lady Folly. Lady Folly stands in the dark, Lady Wisdom stands in the light.

Lady Folly is in the hidden recesses, and Lady Wisdom is on the top of the hill, screaming to us. Not with tricks, not with flattery, not with hidden fees, not with words that tickle the ears, but with her words that are righteous.

Her invitation is not private, it is public. Her promise is not death, it is life. She doesn't seduce you, she summons you. She doesn't pray upon you, she leads you to pray. She pleads for your wisdom.

Her name is Wisdom, and her house is Heaven. And in that sense, these two women represent two great kingdoms. One is Babylon, and one is Zion. One is the flesh, and one is the spirit. One is death, and one is life.

One says, come and lie with me, one says, come and live. One flatters, one warns. One leads you to ruin with a kiss, one leads you into glory with a call. And in that sense, it is a matter of eternal consequences which voice that we listen to.

If we listen to Lady Folly, we will go down into death. If we listen to Lady Wisdom, we will go unto life. And I'm reminded this morning of what a seminary professor once told me about what a good sermon is.

I'm not gonna tell you that this is a good sermon, that would be presumptuous. But I am gonna tell you that the outline, at least, follows his pattern. A sermon should tell you what you must do, and then it must tell you why you can't.

Then it must tell you what he has done, and then it must tell you who you are in light of it. And that will be the sort of overarching outline that we work through today as we talk about the voice, the call of Lady Wisdom.

What does it mean to be called by Lady Wisdom? What does it mean to chase after the call of wisdom? What does it mean to, in the end, find wisdom and find life? Those are the things we're gonna be talking about today.

And we're gonna look at the call in five different ways. Number one, her call is clear. Number two, her call is urgent. Number three, her call is strategic. Number four, her call is public. And number four, her call is deeper and better and sweeter than you could imagine.

So if you will, turn with me. We're only gonna do three verses today. Proverbs 8, one through three. I will read them to you. We will pray, and then we will begin. Proverbs 8, one through three. This is the word of the Lord.

Does not wisdom call and understanding lift up her voice? On the top of the heights, beside the way, where the paths meet, she takes her stand. Beside the gates, at the opening of the city, at the entrance of the doors, she cries out.

Let's pray. Father, we thank you so much for all that you've done for us. We thank you that we have this great example in Proverbs 8 of Lady Wisdom who calls to us, not with whispers, but actually with shouts.

Help us, Father, as your people, bought and paid for by Jesus, indwelled by the Spirit of God. Help us to heed that call and to live a life of wisdom, to the glory of God for our good and for the good of your church.

It's in Christ's name we pray, amen.

Amen.

The Clear, Urgent, and Obvious Call of Wisdom

Now, it's been a little while since we talked about Lady Wisdom. Who is Lady Wisdom? Well, she's not a literal woman, but she is a literary masterpiece. She is Solomon's definition of what a righteous life looks like, what it walks like, what it talks like.

She is the voice of clarity in a world full of chaos. She is the counselor that stands in the streets. She is not in the shadows like the woman of Proverbs 7, but she offers her truth in the life, in the light.

She offers correction without cruelty. She offers instruction without insult, and she offers truth without apology. She is everything that the Proverbs 7 woman is not. She is pure instead of polluted.

She is life-giving instead of the death-giver. And in this, we see that she is a glorious literary addition to Proverbs 8. And she not only stands in juxtaposition with the woman in Proverbs 7, she stands in the high places of the city and calls your name.

Not to trap you, but to teach you. Not to seduce you in the midnight hour of your sin, but to save you from your darkness. And that's why we must follow Lady Wisdom. That's what we must do. We must follow Lady Wisdom, the one who cries out, the one who calls to us, the one who teaches us the word of God.

We must answer her call. And how do we answer her call? Well, we must know what God says. See, the call of wisdom is a call to know what God loves and to do what God loves. That's a wise life. If you know what God loves and you do what God loves, you have wisdom.

So the call of Lady Wisdom is a call unto God to do what God says, to love what God says. And her call comes in five different ways to us. It comes to her as, or comes to us as life for us, urgency for us, it's, I'm not gonna say strategery, like George W. Bush.

It's public and it's deeper. So let's go to first, wisdom's call for us is life. Lady Folly is a picture of sin and death. She's the one whose must lead us, or our must lead us into carnality. She's the one that seduces us, deceives us, and destroys us.

She's the one who whispers to us in the dark, and she is a metaphor, and she is a picture of what sin is. Because what does sin do but whisper to us in the dark recesses of our own soul? What does sin do but come looking for you?

It says in Proverbs 7 that she went out looking for the man, just like sin comes out looking for you. She's the one who speaks in honey-dripped phrases. She's the one who promises poison pleasure, just like sin.

Sin promises you a kind of pleasure, and yet when it is fully born, it leads to bitterness and death. And one aspect that we didn't talk about is how this woman takes the man in Proverbs 7 and feasts upon him until he is dead, and then she feeds him to Sheol.

It's kind of like a black widow. Have you ever learned about what a black widow does? A female black widow will, after she is pregnant, eat the male and dispose of him. That's a picture of sin. When you have messed with it, and then you have been devoured by it.

This is sin's devouring nature pointed out by this woman in Proverbs 7. But now we have a new woman, a new picture, a woman who is not lurking in the street corners, but a woman who's in the public and who's in the light and who's bringing us life, speaking with a sweeter voice, a more subtle voice and yet a louder voice, calling us to pay attention, because if we do, it will lead to our life.

Let me say it this way. If you pursue sin, you will end up in Lady Folly's bed, and the more you sin, the louder its screams will become. Have you ever noticed that? There's a principle there. The more you sin, the louder sin screams at you, the louder sin clings to you, the louder sin holds you or the tighter it holds you.

Sin actually loves to begin subtly and then to multiply. That's why people who get caught in sin end up going deeper in sin, because sin has a plan to bring you down into the depths. That's why a pornography addiction ends up in all kinds of sexual ruin, because sin has a plan to bring you deeper and deeper.

That's why a lie ends up with more and more and more lies on top of it. You can do this with any sin. Sin's goal is to get you stuck and then to get you eventually devoured by it when its main goal is to bring you down to death.

It's to rob you, to steal from you, to wither you, to cripple you, and to rob you of your vitality. That's why sin is so dangerous, because for a small pleasure, you drink a cup of wrath, you drink a cup of withering, you drink a cup of being brought down until you're paralyzed.

That's why Psalm 1 says,.

Don't walk, and then don't stand, and then don't sit in the seat of scoffers. You see the progression? When you begin with sin, you are walking until you can't walk anymore, and you're standing until you can't stand anymore, and then you're paralyzed in your sin, unable to even move.

That's the progression of sin. And here, Lady Wisdom calls to us and offers us the promise of life.

Which by, just by common sense,.

We ought to follow her, right? If somebody said, hey, take the left path, it leads to life. Take the right path, it leads to death. You'd be dumb if you went down the right path. And yet, how often do we go down the path of Lady Folly?

How often do we choose death over life? What Solomon is laying before us is two women and two destinies. You're either going to be in the bed of sin or you're going to be embraced by righteousness, embraced by this Lady Wisdom.

You're either going to cave into the saccharine sighs of Lady Folly, or you're going to follow the holy screams of Lady Wisdom. Her call leads to life. That's the first thing. The second thing is her call is urgent.

Solomon says, does not wisdom call? And understanding, lift up her voice. A idiomatic translation of that would be, does not she scream? Doesn't she shout? Here she's crying out, not in calm, lady-like tones.

Not in the little pinky up drinking her tea, her black tea, with a little orange spice on the, oh, so good. This is not her. She's screaming because she's urgent. And why is she urgent? Because the need is actually really important because she thinks that we have the possibility of going down to death.

So she screams at us like a woman screaming at a child.

Don't go in the street.

In that moment, you probably don't even say that. You probably just scream their name because you're trying to get their attention so quickly. Imagine Lady Wisdom looking at you and screaming your name.

Kendall, don't go there.

This is not a text. This is a siren call. This is like the bat symbol, if you know anything about Batman. You don't light that thing up for nothing. You don't light that thing up and he comes and he's like, what's the problem?

Ah, I've got a hangnail, sir. Can you help me out? Liable to get punched in the face by Batman if you do such a thing. You light that thing up when it's dire. When the same way, Lady Wisdom is lighting this alarm because the situation is urgent.

Because she doesn't want you to go to hell. She doesn't want you to follow your sinful nature to your grave. That's what we learned in Proverbs 7 is that you follow it, you'll end up dead. Not just physically.

That would be bad enough. But a kind of death where you'll never be with God. Separated from him for all eternity. That's the stakes. That's why she's screaming. That's why she's yelling. And that's why I want everyone here to think about this.

She's not just screaming something abstract. She's screaming your name. Your name is what's being yelled out. Your name is what's being shouted. Your name is what's causing her vocal cords to become coarse.

My name. But how few actually heed the call of Lady Wisdom. How few actually answer her call. How few reach out and grab the life ring that she is throwing. And instead float down into the depths of death.

How do you pursue God? How do you cling to this call? Well you have to flee your sin. You have to pursue the things of God. You must immerse yourself in the scriptures. You must know what God loves. You must love what God loves.

You must hate what God hates. You must follow him where God is leading you. And you must have a different kind of craving than the filth that your flesh is craving. You have to let scripture guide your direction.

You have to put away your appetites. You have to begin living by these different cravings. You have to no longer sin and be pursuing the things of God. Lady Wisdom calls out her voice to you to warn you, to alarm you that you are on your way to death.

And she does that because she doesn't want you to. She wants you to live. If you would pursue the things of God, Lady Wisdom will be a compass for you. She'll be a north star for you. And her message is loud because most of us are hard of hearing when it comes to the things of God, right?

She's the one who when you're on the precipice of sinning, she says, don't go there. Don't do that. That leads to death. Don't click that. Don't speak that. Run away from that. Obey God in that. Fight that.

This is how you live. That's what she says. Because the more you pursue the things of God, the louder this voice will come. Isn't that good news? Because the more and more and more and more you sin, the louder sin's voice becomes.

But the more you pursue the things of God, the louder her voice becomes. Or the more attuned your ear becomes to hearing her screams. Her clarity is unavoidable if we will listen. She doesn't just shout in the storm.

She stands in the open. She doesn't just plead in the darkness. She posts up on the hilltops. She doesn't just whisper in the quiet places of your conscience. She blares through the chaos to say, don't go down that way.

And her clarity demands our attention. That's number two. Her call is urgent. And her call is urgent because our situation is urgent. The third thing is that her call is obvious. Solomon says, does not wisdom call on the heights beside the way?

So it's not just that her call is urgent. She's making it abundantly clear that she wants you to hear you. She's went to the highest point of the city.

And said, hello!

Stop it.

And I love this because it tells me that God wants us to hear his truth and he doesn't want us to be hidden. He doesn't want it to be hidden from us. God doesn't want us to be confused. He tells us things in very obvious ways.

If you're pursuing the things of God, if you're opening up the scriptures, if you're soaking and bathing in the word and walking by the spirit, and by the way, isn't it interesting that those simple things are the things that your flesh and the enemy attack most ferociously?

It's not the big things. It's usually the small things that get attacked most ferociously because if your foundation is corrupted, then what can you do? But if you do those things, you will not be left in confusion.

You will not be stuck in guesswork. You won't be sitting at home rolling the dice, wondering what it is that you're supposed to do because God actually wants you to know what you're to do. God wants you to have wisdom.

God wants you to know what he wants in a situation. That's why Lady Wisdom is screaming out to you. She doesn't want you going down the path of chaos. She wants you going down the path of clarity. She wants you to know in every situation of your life, what would God have you do?

Isn't that amazing? Like how many of you have, like me, got to a situation and you said, I don't know what God wants me to do. Lady Wisdom wants you to know that. And she doesn't want you to know that by any kind of mystical Gnostic divination.

She wants you to know that by knowing God, by knowing what God says. And listen, if you know what God says in his word, the overwhelming majority of things in your life will be made clear. You'll have a chapter and a verse on what it is you're supposed to do.

I've heard so many Christians ask questions.

That are clear in the Bible.

Lady Wisdom is calling, open it up. Should I forgive my dad?

Yes.

Why?

Because he forgave you. Doesn't mean you need to trust him. Doesn't mean you need to let him keep hurting you over and over again. But should you forgive him? Yeah. Christ forgave you. Should I sleep with my boyfriend?

No.

Says flee sexual immorality. Don't follow Lady Folly down into the pit. Should I go to church?

Yeah.

It says don't forsake the gathering. So if we break down that sentence, don't, do not forsake the gathering. So come. That's the positive. You must come. And why must you come?

Because God is worthy.

We can sit here and we can list out all of the different things. Oh, you're gonna be blessed. Other people are gonna be blessed. It's gonna be good for you. Of course those things are true. But at the end of the day, he is God, you are not.

He said come, you must come. That's the simple logic of it. So there's many things like that we could talk about that are clear in the Bible that you don't need to ask, should I? Don't repeat with Eve, or sorry, with the serpent.

Did God really say?

Just go look and see what God said. Almost 99 of the things that you go through in life will be cleared up if you just go to the scriptures. Lady Wisdom is not calling you to guess. She's calling you to read, to study, to meditate, to know.

And her voice will cut through the fog of almost every situation in your life. And her presence will be a compass to you in a world full of counterfeits. That's why when you come to crossroad moments in your life, that's why when you come to the fork in the road, it is so important before you make a decision that you just see what God has said.

Whether it be explicitly in his word or implicitly in his word, or by good and necessary consequences in his word, you can almost entirely figure out what it is that God wants you to do so that there is no confusion.

That's wisdom.

Finding out what God wants and doing it. And there's a simplicity and a beauty in that. Doing the will of God and you will be wise. That's the simple formula for a life well lived. That's the tagline underneath, yeah, right there.

That's the tagline of our sermon series, A Life Well Lived. Because if you just know what God says and do what God says, you'll have a good life. Because he didn't give you these commands.

To give you a bad life.

He gave you these things to bless you. He gave you these things to work into you righteousness, which means that you will be blessed. The people around you will be blessed. You'll have an inheritance.

That's why Proverbs is so lavish in talking about that your children will be blessed. Your children will rise up and call your wife blessed. Your children will have an inheritance because you were wise.

There's so much practical wisdom in this book that if you would just do it, you would be blessed. And in that way, it's obvious. That's number three. But there's 1 of the time, and that's about it, where we come to decisions that feel so complex that don't feel like black and white but feel really gray.

This is after we've searched the scriptures. This is after we've went to pastors or elders and asked, hey, does the Bible talk about this? I'm not seeing it. There's about 1 of the time, I don't know if that statistic's accurate.

It's a number that I'm saying not a lot.

That's my point.

There's about 1 of the time where you're not gonna know what to do. And in that way, wisdom's call is also strategic. Solomon's next line says, doesn't wisdom call where the paths meet? She takes her stand.

Solomon is basically saying,.

Doesn't wisdom speak at the fork in the road? That's what he's saying, where the paths meet. Where I could go left and I could go right and I'm not sure which way to go, wisdom speaks there as well. Wisdom speaks at the crossroads, the true crossroads of your life.

Should I stay in North Carolina and serve God here or should I move to New England and go to seminary there? That was a situation where I was like, well, I don't have a Bible verse about it. I don't know exactly if there's a good and necessary consequence for it, but I know that I'm supposed to make a decision about it, so what am I supposed to do?

And when you pursue the things of God, then God will provide wisdom. And you can ask yourself questions like, if I stay or if I go, which one will bring most glory to God? Which one will kill my flesh more?

Which one will cause me to trust God more? Which one will cause me to love God more? Which one will cause my family to grow more? Which one will cause, and you can keep going on and on. And if at the end of it, you truly don't know the answer, you can flip a coin and go to sleep.

Because if you can glorify God in both, if you can love God in both, if you can submit your life to God in both, if you can repent in both, if you can grow in both, if your family can be blessed in both, have freedom, make a decision and go to bed.

Wisdom speaks in those moments. Wisdom shares her voice with you. Wisdom guides you through nuance. Wisdom gives clarity. That's why James says, if any of you are lacking wisdom, ask God and he'll give it to you.

Because wisdom doesn't want us confused. God doesn't want us confused. A confused Christian is a contradiction in terms. It is a Christian with an identity crisis, right? That's the fourth thing. The fifth thing is that wisdom's call is also very public.

Wisdom’s Public Call and the Life of the Church

I love this because the call of Lady Folly is so private. Isn't it interesting that sin often takes us into places where we are not known and where we are isolated and where we are clinging to things in the shadows.

And yet Lady Wisdom calls us into the light, out of our privacy and into community. Lady Wisdom calls us into the public. It says, does not wisdom call beside the gates at the opening of the city, at the entrance of the door?

She cries out.

She cries out and says, come out.

Come out into the light. Come out into the world.

Come out into the community of God.

She preaches at the gates. And in ancient Israel, the gates were the place where the elders ruled, the place where the men defended, the place where conversations and the place where culture and the place where everything in the city happened.

And in some ways, air conditioner has ruined this.

You're like, where did that come from?

Well, when it's baking hot inside of your clay oven house, makes a lot of sense to go outside and fellowship. Makes a lot of sense to be out where the breeze is blowing. In some sense, our modern conveniences have caused us to be isolated, where we sit in air conditioned rooms, watching glowing screens, and we are more alone than we've ever been.

You go to third world countries and they don't have anxiety like we have anxiety. They don't have depression like we have depression. They're not on medicine and it's not because they don't have access to it because the West finds ways to pump pharmaceuticals in every country on earth for their own financial gain.

Whole nother topic there. But my point is they don't have the issues we have because they're around people. There's something uniquely innate in our nature that makes us more human when we're around humans.

And we're actually more awkward, more weird, more mangled, when we're by ourselves all the time. And I'm an introvert, I'm admitting that to you. I need people and so do you. Wisdom calls us out into the light, out into the public.

She calls us to live our faith publicly. She calls us as men to live our faith in culture with courage. She calls us to raise our children with courage. She calls us to speak truth at work. She calls us to be shaped by wisdom in every aspect of our life so that it guides the way that we post, the way that we have discipline, the way that we run our schedule.

She stands in the gates because she is not, she's not calling us to bow down to the idols of our age but to with courage have a public obedience against those things. The Bible, a point, is the Bible is not meant to live and die between two cow-hided covers.

It's meant to come into you and to change you and to shape you and to send you. That's why the Christian service begins with the call. We're called in, we are prepared, we are then commissioned. The point is is that we're being sent out into the world.

The call is not for you to go back to your living room. The call is to bring the gospel to all the nations, every tribe, tongue, and nation under heaven. The call is for us, the church, to equip the saints for the work of ministry.

What's the ministry?

It's out there in every town that we're represented, in every neighborhood that we're living in, in every school board, whether you have your kids in school or not, we should care about the way that they're mangling and mutilating children outside of the Planned Parenthoods to our neighbors and friends.

We're not called to live privately, we're called to live publicly for Jesus Christ. So in those moments where you're tempted to be quiet,.

Don't.

I remember when I first started doing this, it's the silliest thing, I feel so much, I feel so silly for it, but I was in Alabama on a trip and I kind of quietly closed my eyes to pray for my Chipotle.

I really like Chipotle, except, nevermind. And I felt like the Lord put on my heart the verse, he who is ashamed of me I will be ashamed of. And I was like, okay, what does that mean? And then I just, I remember very nervously putting my hands together like this and just folding my hands and closing my eyes and bowing my head and looking as if I'm praying.

And I remember I was trembling, I was so scared, I was so nervous to actually let anybody know that I was praying. And I walked out of there a nervous wreck. But you know how many times that people have came up to me now and said, hey, I saw you praying, will you pray for me?

My mother has cancer. I'm not wearing a clerical collar, I'm not wearing a tie. I don't do that except on Sundays. But they saw me praying, they knew that I was a Christian and they came and they asked me for help.

And I was like, okay.

Have faith and confidence that the Lord will use you in so many different ways, just by being authentic, by being who you are, you're a Christian. Let your light so shine among men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.

Don't hide it, and don't live in a bush, don't cover it with a bushel. That's the fifth thing. And what we notice here in all of that, if you're paying attention, is that we don't do it. We don't live these things.

We don't listen to the call of wisdom. We don't follow the things that she says. We don't chase after the things of God. We don't. And in case we think we do, Paul would say there's no one righteous, not even one.

There's no one who listens to God. There's no one who obeys. All have fallen short of the glory of God. All have sinned. For the wages of sin is death. And on and on and on we could go. You and I are not righteous.

You and I have not followed Lady Wisdom. And here's the point. At the end of the day, if there are two voices that are that are calling us, every one of us have ended up at Lady Folly's house. There's not a single one of us that obeyed Lady Wisdom in her shouting and ended up at her house.

We all ended up at Lady Folly's house. If we would have followed Lady Wisdom's counsel, what we would have seen is that when we got to her, she wasn't standing anymore. She was bowing. What we would have seen, it says that she's screaming on the tops of the hilltops.

What we would have seen if we climbed to the top of the hill is not a woman. We would have seen a man. A man hanging on a cross. And the point here, I think, is that Lady Wisdom calls to us who cannot answer her in our sin as a picture of what Christ is going to come and do because he's the one who ascended the hill.

He's the one who screamed from the hilltop, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And what we see in this passage is that there's two voices, but there's actually a third that's sort of growing in volume underneath the text as Solomon is looking past Lady Wisdom to Jesus Christ.

And in that sense, I think that this whole passage is about Jesus because you and I, like I said, we cannot actually obey what this call is. We're not righteous, but yet if we look to the one who was righteous, if we look to the one who did what we could not do, if we look to the one who did obey, if we look to the greater Adam who didn't listen to the voice of folly, if we look to the greater Solomon who didn't give himself to the Lady Folly, isn't it interesting that the one who wrote this book is the one who gave himself to Lady Folly hundreds and hundreds of times?

That's not hyperbole. Solomon had hundreds of wives and concubines. He gave himself over to sexual sin. He gave himself over to all kinds of misery. And at the end of his life, Solomon is bowing down to every idol under every tree.

And we're like Solomon. We're no different. The wisest man in the world was crippled by Lady Folly, and so have we. So the point of this text is not pull yourself up by your bootstraps. The point of this message is not go home, try harder, follow wisdom, do the right thing, because you can't.

You won't. You'll get about five inches down the road like I did. You'll hit a pothole, you'll break your leg, and then you'll wither there in your own misery. That's what we all do. So the point is that we have to have another voice.

You're either gonna listen to the voice of Folly, you're not gonna be able to listen to the voice of Wisdom, or you're gonna say, I need Christ. And the one who screams at the top of his hill will now bring you to Lady Wisdom's hill, because he trades places with you.

Because in your sin, he became sin. In your curse, he became curse. In your folly, he is the wisdom. And he traded places with you, so that you no longer have to earn your status and earn your place. It's been earned by Jesus, so rest in him.

So the point of this passage is, here's what you're supposed to do. Here's the recognition, we haven't done it. But look to the one who has, because if you rest in him, by his spirit, he'll bring you back to Lady Wisdom's hill.