Yesterday we talked about the question; why should we trust the wisdom of this God? Today we’re going to ask the question why we should want to be wise.
Read Matthew 10:16 and journal your thoughts
Does it catch you a bit off guard that Jesus tells us to be like serpents? For us in our time, this saying may seem a bit strange, but to a Jew in the time of Jesus this makes a lot of sense. You see, the phrase innocent as doves but wise as serpents comes from the Shir ha-Shirim Rabbah which is part of the Haggadic midrash. To us, it’s essentially a collection of wisdom of the Rabbi’s.
Basically Jesus is sending his disciples out and gives them this piece of advice, that the very world he is sending them into is going to do everything it can to betray them. So they need to be wise as serpents, which did everything they could to keep themselves out of trouble.
While the disciples faced a very real threat of facing courts and persecution for what they were saying, we more often than not, do not face this type of thing. Generally speaking, we live in a fairly open and free society which exposes us to a lot of things that could pull us away from Christ. So the call for us is the same as the call of the disciples to be wise as serpents to not get lured into the traps of this world while still engaging and restoring it.
Today pray that God would give you the wisdom see the things that would pull you away from Him.
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