Fall 1981
Wisdom
Sunny Torres
Pinecrest Graduate

“Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:29, 30

A beautiful rest is promised to us in this scripture in coming to know the Lord. Yet this promise is conditional, in that we must also take His yoke upon us for He is “meek and lowly in heart.” One would think that merely learning of Him would bring rest to our souls, but this strategically placed phrase, “for I am meek and lowly in heart,” has great significance concerning our being “equally yoked” with the Lord and resting under His light burden. How impossible it would be for two oxen yoked together to bear a burden successfully when one was docile and quiet and the other was full of spunk and snorting! The “rest” which the Lord speaks of here lies in the meekness and lowliness of our own souls within the yoke of learning as we walk along with Him.

When we grow in knowledge of any sort, there seems to enter in different types of danger. Our souls are still mightily tempted to lean toward the tree of the knowledge of good and evil instead of the tree of life. Although we may be aware of the right and wrong of a situation and want to “call fire down from heaven” to remedy it, the Lord may have to rebuke us for knowing not “What spirit we are of.” Even knowledge of the truth when once tainted with wrong attitudes or a condemning heart becomes a damaging factor in the Body instead of an edifying one. Knowledge of good an evil standing alone without the character or love of God is empty and lifeless. If we are truly eating of the tree of life as we learn of the Lord, we should progressively be growing into His likeness—in His meekness and lowliness.

“ . . We know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffeth up but charity edifieth. And if a man think he knoweth anything, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know” (I Corinthians 8:1, 2).

Pride is certainly a persistent snare to our souls when we feel we know something or have a revelation from the Lord. In his epistle to the Corinthians, Paul had to write, “Through thy knowledge shall thy weak brother perish for whom Christ died?” Even today we see the results of “unyoked” knowledge where pride has caused variance (discord, disagreement), emulation (ambition, rivalry), wrath and strife in the Body—all of which are classified as works of the flesh (Ephesians 5:20), and many weaker brethren have stumbled and fallen away because of doctrinal divisions and strife in the church.

What will bring us into this rest which the Lord speaks of as we learn of Him? In James 3:13, we find “meekness of wisdom” as the positive outworking of the knowledge we have been given.

“Who is a wise man and endued with knowledge among you? Let him show out of good conversation his works with meekness of wisdom.”

Where our knowledge only consists of the scope of our understanding and information, wisdom far excels in that it shows a depth of understanding and discernment, and sound judgment proceeds of it. It is no coincidence that meekness and wisdom are coupled together in this scripture, for the following verses describing this wisdom also depict the very nature of the Lord Himself.

“The wisdom from above is first pure” –free of strife in proving who is right or wrong or the subtlety of defending one’s pride, “then peaceable” –not proceeding out of heated arguments and discord, “gentle, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, without hypocrisy” (James 3:17).

This is the wisdom we can obtain under the yoke of the Lord. If we will avoid the tree of knowledge and eat from the tree of life, keeping a wary eye on our pride seeking to infiltrate each bit of revelation the Lord may give us, we will be able to share these truths with others and see the resulting fruits of righteousness that have been sown in peace (James 3:18).

“If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all liberally and upbraideth not, and it shall be given him” (James 1:5).