The Treasure of the Wisdom Literature
Benjamin Kreps:
Welcome to the Mark Prater podcast, where our aim is to connect our global family of Sovereign Grace Churches with our Executive Director. Mark, those who fallow along with the podcast will likely remember that a few episodes ago you shared about your practice of reading a commentary with your devotional Bible reading as you worked through each book in the Bible. And you talked about how you read through Ecclesiastes and a helpful commentary that you commended to help with reading and understanding Ecclesiastes. And then, coincidentally, at the conference a couple of weeks ago, we had a breakout session on wisdom literature that Josh Blount taught. I heard wonderful things about that breakout. And you wanted to commend that breakout to us. So, well, what do you want to say?
Mark Prater:
I do want to commend that breakout to you. I just actually finished listening to it myself. It was greatly edifying. In fact, I want to listen to it again. It was so good. The title of that breakout session is, “The Untapped Treasure of the Wisdom Literature for Pastors.” However, if you're listening to this podcast or reading this podcast, this is not just for pastors. I can promise you anyone will benefit from Josh's breakout session. By the way, Josh Blount is a pastor at Living Faith Church in Franklin, West Virginia. And we asked him to teach this particular breakout session for a number of reasons. First, he had already taught material like this at our Ethiopian Pastors College, and we got a lot of good feedback. Second, most guys that know Josh know that he's just got a great theological mind. And then he says in the breakout session that the book of Ecclesiastes is actually his favorite book in the Bible. So, you want a guy like that teaching on his most favorite book in the Bible. We thought Josh is our guy. And he just really does a great job with this breakout session.
First of all, just explaining why the wisdom literature, and he gives a pastoral reason and a theological reason. The pastoral reason is that the wisdom literature speaks into real issues of life. And you see that in Proverbs and Job and Ecclesiastes, for example. But also, the theological reason of why God gives the wisdom literature to his people is that the wisdom literature shapes God's people. And you find that throughout the wisdom literature as well. And then he kind of moves on to just giving a framework for how to read through the wisdom literature. He then takes that framework and gives a quick example from the Book of Proverbs, a quick example from the book of Job, and then he spends the bulk of his time on Ecclesiastes. And it's just wonderful listening to Josh unpack Ecclesiastes and many of its major themes. He brings some application to pastors, obviously, but again, anyone that looks at this podcast will benefit from this breakout session. So I couldn't commend it more highly. I would encourage you to give it a listen.
Benjamin Kreps:
We'll definitely do that. Looking forward to hearing it. Why do you think this is important for us?
Mark Prater:
It's important for us because Ecclesiastes is a very unique book in the Bible. It's not the easiest book to understand so we can shy away from it. And if we shy away from it, we will miss the treasures that are in there. And one of the ways that Josh approached it is by just using that Hebrew word for vapor, which is “hevel.” The ESV translates it as vanity. And so, he just puts his teaching under three points: joy in a hevel world, the Christian life in a hevel world, and then pastoral ministry in a hevel world.
And so, there's really a lot of practical application in the book of Ecclesiastes that really speaks into our lives. And in a book that talks a lot about life being a vanity, you know the vainness of life, there's actually this theme of joy that Josh unpacks so well as one example. So those are just some of the reasons it's good to study the book of Ecclesiastes. I would begin doing that by listening to Josh's breakout session. Also, I’d commend the commentary I mentioned a few episodes ago. That’s
Craig Bartholomew’s commentary is very good on Ecclesiastes. I couldn't commend this breakout session more. And, by the way, if you're listening or reading this podcast, what we're going do is we're going to put a link for Josh’s message into this podcast. It'll be in your email when it comes. I think we'll have this up on my podcast website as well. And if you click on that link, you can access all the messages, main session messages and breakout session messages from the Pastors Conference. And I believe through that link you'll be able to listen to them via Spotify or Apple as well. So just another way to serve our listeners and to benefit from the resources that are there for you from our Pastors Conference.
Benjamin Kreps:
Excellent. Well, we'll be looking for that link connected to the podcast if guys haven't seen the link that's been shared elsewhere to those messages. I remember reading some time ago that how J.I. Packer said that Ecclesiastes taught him how to live joyfully. And so that strange book of wisdom has much for us to benefit from. So, thanks for your recommendation, Mark. Thank you, Josh, for teaching at that breakout. Thank you all for watching or reading. We'll see you here next week, Lord willing. Bye for now.
To Listen to Josh’s Breakout Session, click here.