When Knowledge Isn’t Enough | Ecclesiastes 3:1 | N.T. Wright Online
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- čas přidán 15. 01. 2023
- Wisdom isn’t about understanding everything. Wisdom is about recognizing that God understands everything.
This famous passage means a lot to a lot of people. Prof. Wright reflects on the story of his father’s life to show why this verse can be so encouraging. The gritty wisdom of Ecclesiastes reminds us that we can’t understand everything beginning to end. Seasons will come and go, and our task is to be faithful to God’s purposes, even when we don’t understand them.
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A beautiful story and understanding of a verse that is deeply spiritual and a revolt against the overt comfort of the modern world.
Thank you so much, I needed to hear those words of wisdom. Thank you for sharing the story of your father’s life. What a good and brave man he was. He must be very proud of you as he waits to meet with you in the new heaven and earth.
We appreciate your heart-felt words. While N.T. Wright does not personally monitor this channel, we're grateful to hear how impactful his message has been for you. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and for being part of our community. We're honored to have you here. --NTW Online Team
There's great comfort in the Words of God ,given God gave Solomon the wisdom he had to write.
This scripture has been significant throughout my life , in the Byrds song and in poetry i stumbled across as a young person, even before I came to know and believe in a Living God , the God of the bible and His son. I'm always encourage by the testimonies of believers. God bless. I also love what you said about reading Gods word in public, that is so true and so powerful. Amen
Thank you for sharing your journey and the impact of these moving scriptures in your life. Your testimony is lovely and encouraging. --NTW Online Team
Thank you for sharing this message, much appreciated. I think God sometimes needs to allow this world to brake us, in order to make us
Thank you for your reflections.
We follow the way of the cross, being present in and for a suffering world. You may also be encouraged by this video:
czcams.com/video/Ih_gQFgYrQA/video.html
~Charleen at N.T. Wright Online
Me, hearing in tea time, love this five minutes of wisdom series😊😊
It's wonderful to know that you find wisdom in these moments of reflection and learning! ~Charleen at N.T. Wright Online
@@NTWrightOnline Thankyou for your response, please convey my regards to NTWright Sir. Thankyou once again.
Indeed we cannot know everything except God. This message & passage reminded me of my own late father who buried four of my brothers three as toddlers and my own direct follower. My late father could not understand why but reminded himself constantly that only God knows. In our struggles and difficulties allowed God to speak to you, God time is the best.
Tremendous sadness and loss for your family.
We are blessed by you sharing and the reminder that God knows and cares about our grief.
amen.
In the midst of great pain and loss, when for me the whole cosmos broke apart in so many dimensions, I began an exploration of the meaning: everywhere in this world, God has placed doors for us...to transition into and enter, and to see more than ever before of the healing and the newness of God. For the first time, I'm connecting how Ecclesiastes--a time for all seasons--speaks to the doors I trust God has placed everywhere...towards God's mercy, justice, and lovingkindness.
The sharp pain of shattering loss can be so disorienting. Thank you for your reflection of God's gentle invitation to open new doors.
Thankyou
Such wisdom is found and Ecclesiastes. I can't imagine the WISDOM your Father received from the Holy Spirit's teachings!! 🙏 HALLELUJAH he lived through the war & kept his sanity (thank you Lord) I love & appreciate you sharing your family stories with us. God Bless you with more of Him!!! ❤️💖💞
Glory To The Triune GOD
I love the personal story of his father that contributed to the meaning and example of this passage.
I loved that meditation. I cannot understand it all, but I can keep moving forward knowing that God has the knowledge of many situations and he calls me to be faithful.
I so appreciate these times of scripture sharing and insight … thanks for the story of your father and his understanding of Ecclesiastes.
Glad you enjoyed it.
Perfect for a somewhat impatient friend…and me, obviously. Thanks so much for this, NTW.
Glad it was a timely message!
Thank you so much. I also love Ecclesiastes. Suffering draws you to the quiet wisdom of the book. God bless your work Mr Wright
Thank you for sharing the family past. People brush the past under the carpet and are affronted when serious setbacks happen to us. We are angry rather than patient and reassured in hope.
Thank you for sharing your reflections with us. Trusting God with our past, present, and future gives us reassurance and hope and it takes active faith to embrace. ~Charleen at N.T. Wright Online
It may be that as we get older it's no longer as important as it once was to know and understand everything. This is like putting down a burden. It is the presence of God that becomes more important and being open to and recognising that presence.
For me, this passage has been about discerning the right season. Timing is critical. If you do the right thing at the wrong time it can have the opposite result to that intended. But when you discern that the season is right then you cannot hesitate. You have to act.
I read Ecclesiastes again in the aftermath of Covid. I think many people are wary of the world-weary air in much of it but it spoke powerfully to me at that time. Timing. The right season. All of God's Word has a purpose.
Ecclesiastes my Second best chapter in the bible
What comes in first for you?
God Bless you Dear Pastor Wright, thanks for your preach. Best regards from Bolivia
Thanks for listening. Warm greetings from UK and US!
Thanks a lot for this story! I enjoy embroidering and you inspired me, this passage will be my new project. All the best to you!
Creating beauty through your embroidery can be one way to build for God's kingdom!
@@NTWrightOnline Thank you so much for giving meaning to what I love to do!🌟What if it could make a difference? What a wonderful thought! I will start immediately!
Bless you!🌼
Wonderful!
So Good.
I just finished reading Ecclesiastes today and I fell in love with it and it’s meaning.
In understanding our end day is unknown. Enjoying Gods Gifts to us in a non sinful manner is of upmost importance.
This book spoke volumes
Thank you for this timely word.
Also my favorite book
Amen!
Are you know you did this several months ago. However, I have just had the opportunity to watch It.
As always, Gods, timing is absolutely perfect. TYVM🙏🏻🕊
Love this. Ecclesiastes is one of my favorite books too.
❤May God bless us on our journey ❤
Well said Tom…and so true.
A reminder to us in these times of instant gratification or rather demand that an instant wish eb fulfilled instantly! Gardeners know that there is a time for everything, and gardeners have learned to e patient. Perhaps another verse is also appropriate for our times: Ecclesiastes 1 : 9. we humans truly haven't changed in the millennia since these verses were written.
A good reminder of the role of patience and that waiting isn't 'doing nothing'.
I am happy to see and hear you in amazing shape. Your talks and your conversations with Justin and others have become most meaningful to me.
This book Ecclesiastes has often been of great comfort to me. It shows (like Paul's and so many texts and letters) that God's wisdom is physiological and humane and true in the best sense of these words. One realizes that you have come to live it: the coming of new heaven and earth, together in renewed creation which we are awaiting any time.
Amen..hallelujah.
Thank you, Prof Wright. I love listening to your wisdom or reading it. The Bible is a book of wisdom and you shared some of that will us here. God bless you as you serve the body of Christ all over the world, even here in New Zealand
Warm greetings from the UK and US!
It's my husband's favorite book too. =)
Loved this.
Thank you sir.
How do you make something so seemingly familiar so fresh and new? Thank you.
Perhaps the wisest man ever to be born into this world and to be allowed to be the wisest against a backdrop of a world that didn't and doesn't want God to be anything more than a genie who grants all wishes if humanity.
Yes, wisdom can be a goad that is often resisted.
This was quite a beautiful teaching... Thank you 🥰
Glad you enjoyed it!
One of my favourite books, too. We’ve just started a series journeying through Ecclesiastes at our church (Metro Christian Centre, Bury). The series is called VAPOUR? And it’s on CZcams, for anyone to check out.
Thanks for sharing!
I have come to the conclusion that asking “Why?” is one of the most toxic things that I can do. When I ask God such a question, or even a friend or peer, I don’t really want to know the answer. I really want to hear a certain response that will somehow appease me, or ease the situation I happen to be in. In my most patient moments of what I like to call “accidental faith” 🙂, I think or meditate on these verses.
As a follower of Yeshua, I understand His Scriptural will for me, but in that no-man’s-land between the Flesh and the Spirit, even though I am not asking “Why?!“ but am acknowledging Him sovereign and the forces at work in my Flesh as death, I still feel mired in the mud of Romans 7:14-25’s deep irony. It is then that I turn to verses like these in Ecclesiastes not so much for hope in a better tomorrow but for the patience beyond myself to knowingly endure living in the circumstances of a fallen world/situation.
Adonai bless.
A good reminder of the patience needed for living in liminal space between seasons and times.
I love learning from you! A great boost to my day. I really enjoyed this talk today. Very relevant for my life.
Glad you enjoyed it!
I just watched your video here from Brazil. Thank you so much, Dr. Wright for sharing this pill of wisdom with us through CZcams. I used to think that these verses were meant for us to understand what our time is demanding on us (for every proper stage of our lives). But even knowing this is hard oftentimes, so the best we can do, if we don't undertand our own time and circunstances, is to cast all of these cares unto God. He's got it all in control.
Warm regards and blessings
Glad it was helpful! And warm greetings from the US & Uk!
I listened to a message from Richard Rohr about this very topic and nonduality. He was basically saying that our current religious culture argues that we must choose a theology and then argue for that theology. That our theology is right and we must sway others to believe the same way so they too may be saved. Rohr concludes that instead that we should have a nondualistic attitude when it comes to faith. We aren't to worry about who is in and who is out because such matters are too great for us. Instead our focus should be on the here and now, learning not only through logic, but also in through the natural world around us. Letting our experiences shape us by apathetic thinking, or "knowing by not knowing". The "my denomination is right, yours is wrong" way of thinking puts ego center stage, where the focus of spirituality becomes belonging to a tribe rather than becoming a transformed person.
We are told in Isaiah chapter 2 that "My people are filled with influences from the east." The same statement is true today. Knowing by not knowing is eastern mysticism. Taoism, Buddhism, and Hinduism all bend in this direction. God says, "Come let us reason together." Our faith is reasonable and provokes us to use our minds and intellects and opens itself to questions and rationality. Our faith is the only reasonable faith.
@@walterz.9564 Christianity originated in the East. We must use both logic and spirituality in order to grow.
@@ZaneTrain92 The mid-east, not the east. The writers for the most part are Hebrews. Isaiah 2:5,6 " Come, house of Jacob, and let us walk in the light of the LORD. For thou hast abandoned Thy people, the house of Jacob, because they are filled with influences from the east, and they are soothsayers like the Philistines, and they strike bargains with the children of foreigners." Eastern mystics have infiltrated God's people for millenniums, and the interfaith mixture was not good then and it isn't good now. The Old Testament is not only fulfilled by God's People then but it is being fulfilled by God's people today. To know what is wrong with the church in the west is to understand what Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Jeremiah were burdened with.
@@walterz.9564 the Bible itself had influences from surrounding cultures and ways of viewing the world. We have to take into account what the original authors had in mind when writing these texts. They did not just want us to read it literally but emotionally. Ancient Jewish Hebrew paints poetic images and even uses rhythm to get us to “feel” as well as think. The reason for the Church’s division today is because of the misplaced focus of Biblical understanding. I’m definitely not implying there aren’t foundation truths, but our tendency is to argue “our way is the only way” rather than growing spiritually. God bless you brother
@@ZaneTrain92 I would agree with you if you were able to find a man of God in the bible that speaks like that.
This is a powerful message. I also like milk/cream in my hot tea.
🤣🤣🤣
Glad you're here.
Milk/cream first or last?
@@NTWrightOnline last of course.
What Bible do you have there, if you don't mind me asking? It looks like a paperback edition.
OT readings are from the New Revised Standard Version. NT readings from the Kingdom New Testament.
True wisdom is not understanding all things or thinking we have it mastered. It is accepting the mysteries of life, even the hardship, and trusting that God understands and is in charge. I am reading Isaiah 9: 1 - 4, and Matthew 4, and my insight is God looks for those who trust. Ahaz did not. This led to incredible hardship and darkness; however, God uses even our sins and hardship to fulfill his glory.
Thanks for sharing your reflections.
Trust is key, yet can be a struggle for some. How have you observed trust forming or taking shape in your life?
Sorry, Bishop, but please make mine coffee...
Yes. A time for coffee and for tea!