We don’t learn things just from God (although all things are under His providence): we can learn from what he has made, “day unto day they utter speech” (Ps. 19:1ff). Some don’t listen to what creation says, but they are without excuse (Rom. 1:20).
When I worked on a seismic crew I became familiar with “The School of the Air” which is a pretty exclusive sort of school. No worry about class size there. But we are all in the school of life, yet many do not learn some of the important things of life. In the school of life do we learn our lessons? Do we learn from our mistakes? Who had parents who would say “I’ll teach you a lesson!”? Did we learn? They are our first source of learning.
God told children to obey their parents (Eph. 6:1-3). Do you want to live? Your parents have outlived you and know more about life than you do. Some of this education is very basic: “Don’t play on the road”; “don’t touch the hotplate”; “don’t stick things in the electrical outlets”. Some of it is practical tips. I remember my father teaching me to blunt a nail before driving it into splitty timber. But it goes beyond self-preservation and ‘tricks of the trade’ into the world of “oughtness”:- how we ought to live before God and in the communities in which we live. Some of this is plain direct teaching, but sometimes learning takes place in other ways such as by example. Some of these stay with you all your life. I remember an example of my father keeping his word to a service station owner when all others had ceased to do so. My mother had a lot of one liners such as “If Johnny wants to put his head in the fire do you?” She also had a way of asking for favours: “How would you like to pass your tea-making badge?” (I was in Scouts) I always responded better to that than if she had said. “Make me a cup of tea”. Indeed a soft answer turns away wrath.
You can learn from your spouse. There is nobody who has greater influence in your life than your spouse. That’s why it’s important for Christians to marry Christians. You need to marry someone who is going to help, aid, assist, and encourage you in your walk toward Heaven. Solomon is a classic example of a man, yea even a wise man, who was led astray by his wives. Life has enough obstacles without choosing to add more. I have a habit of tending to assign what I consider to be an appropriate time for a job. Often times a “five-minute-job” turns into hours and I’m annoyed. My wife has counseled me not to set times but rather just do the job. And who knows, maybe wives can learn from husbands. My wife admits to learning how to accomplish things before breakfast from me!
We learn from friends. David and Jonathon were great friends, and it’s true we can develop greater friendships with outsiders than with siblings (Prov. 18:24). We can learn bad habits or good (1 Cor. 15:33; 2 Sam. 13:1ff (note v. 3 ….but Amnon had a friend…). How many times has that story been repeated? Our friends will either lead us away from God or toward Him. I was raised not to drink but I was encouraged by friends to drink. Same with smoking. You can learn good habits too. A fellow named Gary Smith taught me something about honesty but he didn’t know it. I learnt that sometimes honesty is unexpected, even though we believe in it.
We can learn from the rich and famous. It’s somewhat easy to follow the lives of the rich and famous because they dominate the media, and, I suspect, their lives are so different in circumstance than ours that it’s a form of curiosity, I have learnt that the proverbs are true by their collective example – Prov. 13:7; 28:20,22; Matt. 19:23. It can all be summed up in a statement from John Lennon:- “I’ve got it all, folks- and it’s nowhere”. I’ve also learned that the rich often find it hard to give it away.
You can learn from the poor and lowly too – Eccles. 9:14,15. Wisdom is where you find it. To get the most out of life resides upon many things. One thing is to have an achieving mentality, not a victim mentality. I guess I’m speaking along the .lines of “seize the day”, rather than just drifting through life. We are to redeem the time (Eph.5:16). I learnt a lesson on objectivity from an AIDS sufferer I read about. This particular fellow had to deal with a number of issues:- his sickness caused by the disease; the sickness produced by his medication; the mental depression brought on by being sick and knowing he was dying. Despite all this he wanted to make the most of his life. He wanted to make each day count, but each morning he was faced with the dilemma of deciding whether he was feeling sick because he truly wasn’t well and should rest, or whether he was feeling sick because he was depressed. Have you ever noticed how hard it is to be always objective about whether you should get up with the alarm in the morning? I’ve noticed that the darker, windier and colder it is, the less objective I am as to whether I should get up. There’s always good reasons to roll over and go to sleep. So this AIDS sufferer hit upon a plan of action: he would get up and walk down to the local corner store and get a copy of the local paper, walk home, and sit at the kitchen table and read it. After doing that he would make the decision as to whether he should go on with his daily activities or whether it would be better for his health that day to go back to bed.
Lessons can be learned from anything. If you’ve driven from Broken Hill to Adelaide you will have noticed deserted farm houses in the wheat belt along the way. Apparently when settlers first went there there was a really good season and so they built their fine stone and brick houses, not knowing that most seasons were very dry and would not produce a crop. Prov. 24:27 counsels to establish the farm first, and then the house. Wise farmers have lived in hovels and sheds whilst they got their farm up and running.
Lessons can be learned from nature. Prov. 6:6 tells us to go the ant, whilst 30:24ff draws our attention to the ant, the badgers, the locusts, and the spider. Why do we live in a natural world? God made it. Why do we share it with animals and other creatures? We can profit from them – transport, clothing, food, and wisdom. Jesus told us to consider the lillies of the field. The fact that animals share the same sort of natural body and live in the same environment means we can learn from them in a number of ways such as medical research. For example, there is a frog that gives birth out of its mouth and so it is being researched for help with peptic ulcers. Sharks don’t get cancer, Koalas drink little water, etc., raising further areas of research. Is it okay to experiment on animals? I believe so, just as I believe it’s right to kill them for food, clothing and self-protection etc. (2 Pet. 2:12). Francis Bacon said that Science is thinking God’s thoughts after Him and copying nature is a blossoming area of research. Winglets on the latest generation of Passenger airlines comes from the eagle; the nose shape of the bullet train comes from diving birds and so on.
We learn many things from many different sources: many that haven’t been mentioned such as books and school-teachers and lecturers. How do we know what is right and what is wrong? What should be accepted and what should be rejected? Because a person is a school teacher doesn’t make them an authority on life. I had a school teacher who promoted promiscuity; I had a Scour leader who told dirty jokes. What objective measure is there to plot our path in life? We learn from the Scriptures – Col. 2:3 describes Jesus as the treasury of wisdom and knowledge.
Jesus told a parable of a man who found treasure buried in a field. That may seem quite unusual to us who are used to banks, safety security boxes etc., but for those who heard the parable would not have thought it strange. It was an acceptable and common way to hide treasure. Not just then, but even in recent times it is still popular in certain places. We’ve all seen old western movies where the outlaws would bury their treasure in the dirt, and make a map to be able to relocate it at a later time when the posse had given up. Considerable time and effort was given to looking in the earth for Sadam Hussain’s WMDs.
So in Col. 2:3 Paul is saying that in order to find God’s spiritual wealth, the seeker must search where God has hidden His treasure – in Jesus Christ. All we need is the map of God’s word to bring us to Christ for the treasure of wisdom and knowledge hidden in Him. Christianity is a conundrum in that it is an open secret. How many homes have an unread Bible in them? Christ is the inexhaustible storehouse of God’s supplies for man’s higher nature.
A truly wise man would rather lose his money than this knowledge because it has advantages over other possessions. It cannot be stolen; it is not lessened by sharing with others; it does not suffer corruption; and it is a pure, calm, and elevating source of delight. The knowledge of Christ is the thing by which all other things are measured and weighed in the balance to determine their truth and value. Read Phil. 3:8-11: Now, that’s a lesson worth learning.