The wings of the ostrich wave proudly, but are they the pinions and plumage of love? For she leaves her eggs to the earth and lets them be warmed on the ground, forgetting that a foot may crush them, that the wild beasts may trample them. She deals cruelly with her young as if they were not hers, though her labor be in vain. Yet she has no fear because God has made her forget wisdom and given her no share in understanding.
– Job 39:13–17
How about this picture of the ostrich in Job 39 basically being foolish and even the care for the ostrich’s children? And why is that? Why is the ostrich so not smart? Because verse 17 says, “God has made her forget wisdom and given her no share in understanding.”
Job 39:13–17 teaches that apart from God’s gift of wisdom we are all foolish.
This verse, this passage is a potent reminder that apart from the gift of wisdom from God, everything in creation, including ostriches, and you and me, would be totally foolish. We need wisdom. And God alone is the author of it. The book of Job has made that clear over and over again, it’s why it’s called wisdom literature in the Bible, because it’s a picture of how God is wise and we are not.
This means if we need wisdom, if we want wisdom, we must seek God for it. We must find it in relationship with God. Now, yes, he will buy his common grace bestow wisdom in different ways at different times on different people who are not seeking him. And he does this graciously, common grace is the right way to describe this because if he did not, the world would be 100% foolish and everybody in it, just imagine that. Praise God for wisdom that he gives to all people at different times. At the same time in your life, in my life today, let’s seek God for wisdom in a Solomon-like way to say, God, we need this today in everything I do, in every interaction I have and every decision I make.
Job 39:13–17 encourages us to beg God for wisdom.
Well, let’s just pray. God, we pray for wisdom. We pray for wisdom in all these ways, in all of our thoughts and our perspective on different things today. God, that by your wisdom you would guard us from fear and discouragement and anxiety and worry. God, we know if we are thinking wisely, we will not have those things. So we pray for your wisdom. We pray for your wisdom to turn from sin, to resist temptation today. God, keep us from foolish thinking, foolish, desiring, foolish speaking, foolish acting, decision making. Help us God, walk wisely today, transform our thoughts, our desires, our words, our actions to be wise. Help us to be wise in relationships. We just think about all of our different relationships that we have with different people will interact with today. God, help us to be wise in our relationships.
Oh God, we know that the fear of you is the beginning of wisdom. So we pray you would help us to be wise out of the overflow of living today and the worship of you living today to glorify you. And we pray that just as you promise you would grant us all the wisdom we need all day long in small decisions and in big decisions we’re making. Today we pray for wisdom. We praise you, Jesus, for your Spirit in us, the Spirit of Wisdom. We praise you for the cross on which you died, which demonstrates the wisdom of God, 1 Corinthians 1.
Prayer for the Kheng People
And God, we pray for people who’ve never heard about your wisdom in Jesus, for the Kheng people of Bhutan, this small people group of 36,000 Tibetan Buddhists, for the few Kheng brothers and sisters in Christ among them. God, we pray for your wisdom over them, for your strength over our Kheng brothers and sisters. And we pray that by your grace, the gospel, Jesus, the wisdom of Jesus would spread through them among the Kheng people of Bhutan. We pray all of this to you, the Author, Creator, and Giver of Wisdom. In Jesus’ name, amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
