Message from Chuck Allen on August 10, 2022
In this episode of the weekday podcast, Pastor Chuck Allen reflects on the importance of wisdom, insight, and plans, using Proverbs 21:30-31 as a guide. He explains that while technology can solve many practical problems, it can’t provide the moral guidance we need. True wisdom comes from God, and relying solely on technology can depersonalize relationships and create traps that take us away from what really matters. Pastor Chuck reminds us that, just like in the past, victory rests with the Lord, and encourages listeners to turn to God for the wisdom to navigate life’s challenges.
I want us to talk about wisdom, insight, and plans. Wisdom, insight, and plans. Over in Proverbs chapter 21, beginning of verse 30, the text says, "There is no wisdom, no insight, no plan that can succeed against the Lord. The horse is made ready for the day of battle, but victory rests with the Lord."
Back in the day, and in the days in which Solomon would have been riding this to his son, he's riding this because horses would have been considered high technology. This would have been like really advanced technology that made foot soldiers almost obsolete. So the Proverb is warning us against being overconfident in the power and technology of today's modern world.
Today, there's so many who believe in technology is the answer to every problem, but I've discovered that technology is only as good as the relationships that you build around it. While science and technology can tell you what can be done and how to do it in the most efficient and oftentimes effective way, it cannot tell you whether you should do it or not.
They can't tell you if something's good or bad for human life because those things aren't determined by technology, they're determined by wisdom. So without wisdom, godly wisdom, when all of a sudden all things like cost-benefit analysis becomes ultimate and economic profit and efficiency can become the ends in of themselves, but the fact is those things are traps that take us as individuals and depersonalize and turn bureaucratic systems into what could be meaningful personal relationships.
You know, technology, as wonderful as it is, as much as I love it, it will never solve all of the human problems because we are more than matter. The wise in this world know that our lives are in the hands of the potter, God, the potter, we, the clay. And remember that an untrained, ragtag group of men and women believing in Christ turned the mightiest human civilization in history upside down, and that victory rests with the Lord just as yours does today.
The question for us is, where are we allowing mere technology and data applying so much in our human problems that we're in desperate need of moral wisdom? And if that's you, like it is me, then we need to turn to the Lord God. God, you are a personal God who created a world of people in your image that we might lean and learn in you and from you all day, every day.
Thanks so much for joining me on today's weekday podcast.
