A wise man scales the city of the mighty and brings down the stronghold in which they trust. Proverbs 21:22

When the Greeks could not defeat the Trojans, crafty Odyssus is supposed to have suggested leaving a giant horse outside the city with one soldier. The Greeks would sail away and the “abandoned” soldier would tell the Trojans the horse was a gift for the goddess Athena. Inside the horse soldiers would be hidden, and when, as expected, the Trojans hauled the horse into the city and the Greeks returned, the soldiers inside would pour out and open the gates. The strategem worked.

Many people make a stronghold of something which is not really a source of strength. The walls of the Trojans became their coffin. God does us a favor whenever he exposes the weaknesses of our vaunted positions.

Perhaps this proverb was based on the exploit of Joab, who broke into Jerusalem by leading his men up a water shaft which the Jebusites no doubt would have considered one of their chief assets in a seige.

Christ also scaled the fortress of Satan in a sort of Trojan Horse move, descending to the bottom, subjecting himself to death and apparent defeat that he might ascend to the highest eminence in the universe.

Bud Robinson

When Bud Robinson became a Christian he was a stammerer and could not even write his own name. He felt called to preach, telling others of the liberation he had experienced in Christ, and stood up before the rough ranchers he worked with in Texas.

Here was fun! The men gathered around, taunting and mimicking the stutter they anticipated. They fell silent when Bud began to warn them of coming judgment and point them to Christ. His stammer completely disappeared. That this was a supernatural work of the Spirit was evidenced by the fact that as soon as he had finished preaching, his stammer returned.

Aided by Sally, his godly wife, Bud Robinson eventually overcame his stammer, learned to read and write, and went on the become a holiness leader in the Nazarene church and editor of its paper, for which he wrote hundreds of thousands of words. During his life, he won thousands to Christ.

The wisdom of Christ had taught his mouth to speak and given his lips power. It was the same wisdom that Christ demonstrated when he walked the earth: powerful, well-considered, and so persuasive it reaches across the ages to touch other lives like Bud Robinson’s to this day.

Cardinal Beaton, a man of much ability—and pride.

A few years ago I attended a banquet at a local lodge in appreciation of several honors students. Tension was thick between the leaders, evidenced in surly remarks, butting in, and talking over each other. Clearly they were vying for precedence.

It reminded me of a notorious scuffle between two churchmen in Glasgow. Cardinal David Beaton and the Archbishop of Glasgow were at odds, and arriving at the door of the church simultaneously, each claimed precedence to enter first. Their men soon were shoving and tearing at each other. The pride of these grandees brought nothing but strife.

How different the spirit of Christ. Greatest in heaven, he stooped to become the lowest on earth, basing his whole life on the word of God. In this and his subsequent elevation to the highest place at God’s right hand, he demonstrated that the foolishness of God is wiser than the greatest wisdom of man.

Quarreling men

Christian astronomer and apologist Hugh Ross tells that following one of his talks, an angry man, who had avoided the lecture itself, began ranting at the start of the question and answer period. The tension in the room rose as this man, who described himself as an atheist, gushed hostility.

By calmly and prayerfully answering with facts, Ross deflected the man’s antagonism and was able to share the gospel.

Christ also deflected antagonism by remaining calm. There were times when his enemies tried to trap him; he answered wisely and then left them speechless, and the argument was at an end, when he posed questions to them that they could not answer.

However, one of the most astonishing incidents did not develop as Christ’s enemies expected. The Jewish Council had sent soldiers to arrest him, but the men returned empty handed. Asked why, they replied simply, “Never man spoke as this man spoke.” Contention was deflected because the Lord had calmly proceeded with the work given him by the Father.

Denarius with the image of Tiberius Caesar.

If you are like me, you think of the perfect reply long after you need it. Then you kick yourself and groan, “That is what I should have said.”

Some people seem to always have an apt reply on their tongue. Francis Bacon used to study clever retorts in advance so that he might drop them when predictable topics arose.

My own appreciation is reserved for those who deliver their retorts more spontaneously. One slam-dunk that sticks in my mind is that of the sparkling Quaker girl Mary Pryor, who, when pressured to marry a rich old man, was told, “Why, you could eat gold!” She replied, “But I would find it hard to digest,” and married a poor but honest fellow-believer.

One of the wittiest replies of church history was that of Erasmus when Frederick the Wise asked him if Luther was in error. He thought a few moments and answered, “He has erred in two things: He has attacked the pope in his crown and the monks in their bellies.”

Neither of these examples shine like the replies of Jesus. For example, when a broad hint was dropped that he was illigitimate, Jesus did not protest his mother’s innocence, but in his reply pointed his detractors to the more relevant question, “Can any of you prove me guilty of sin?” (John 8).

When the Pharisees and Herodians buttered him up (Mark 12) in an attempt to trap him with a question about taxes, he responded, “Why are you trying to trap me? Bring me a denarius and let me look at it.” They brought the coin, and he asked them, “Whose portrait is this? And whose inscription?”

“Caesar’s,” they replied.

Then Jesus said to them, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”

And they were amazed at him, as we also should be. His replies were indeed apples of gold in settings of silver.

On his death bed a man I know of became uneasy. I learned later that he began to fear the eternity he had scoffed at all his life. He had reared his daughter without fear of the Lord, and was now in her hands. When a relative suggested that a minister should be called to speak with the man about his soul, the daughter flatly refused, saying that he had never wanted anything to do with Christianity while he was healthy and she wasn’t going to flout his wishes now that he was faltering. This man brought his own doom upon himself and died without solace.

Jesus warned the people of his generation again and again, and his word still speaks to us today. What is our answer to his claims on us? The day will come when the stone the builders rejected will crush them.

Jan Amos Comenius, innovative educator.

In one of her poems, Emily Dickenson wrote, “Tell all the truth but tell it slant.” I always interpreted this to mean to tell the truth but through simile, metaphor or other artistic devices that make knowledge more memorable and palatable—sweet lips that increase learning.

Centuries before Dickenson, the notable Christian educator Jan Amos Comenius had adopted a similar principle. He developed the first graded textbooks. These included pictures to make their content more memorable, a tactic followed by educators ever since.

Jesus also used the “slant” technique. He spoke in pithy parables and word illustrations, sarcasm, hyperbole, parallelism and other literary devices aimed to help his learners retain his word, including similes and metaphors. The results are some of the most memorable statements in all of literature, showing great wisdom and vividly illustrating the truths he wished to impart. He was the master exemplar of this proverb.

Stephen Hawking in a NASA photo.

I hope I never forget the thrill of insight I experienced as I read Stephen Hawking’s Brief History of Time. Hawking was one of the great physicists of our age. In Brief History he showed that just a tiny bit of matter less and our universe would have blown apart at creation. A tiny bit more, and it would have collapsed on itself. The amount is so tiny that Christian astronomer Hugh Ross holds up a dime to demonstrate how much we are talking about. Imagine—one dime’s worth of matter is all that stands between a habitable and inhabitable universe. My thrill was because I recognized God at work.

Likewise, science is showing us that many, many things must be just right for the earth to support human life. It has to be the right size, with the right orbit around the right kind of star, in the right region of the right kind of galaxy, with exactly right proportions of carbon and water, metals and gases. Two hundred or more factors are now known which have to be right for a planet to support carbon-based life (the only possible kind in our universe). The discovery of over three hundred planets around other stars in the last decade has shown us just how difficult it is to find those “just right” conditions together in one place at one time. Truly we see God’s wisdom at work in fashioning our world.

This is Jesus’ doing. Scripture is unequivocal that everything we see was made through Christ and for him. Indeed, it is he who is speaking as wisdom personified in Proverbs 8:22-36. The lesson of this is that if anyone of us is not living for him, we are out of synch with the purpose of the universe we live in.

Charles Simeon trembled to take the Lord's Supper without repentance.

Many of the people we admire as great historical Christians went through severe distress before their conversions, fearing God and his judgment. Perhaps best known of these was Martin Luther, whose agonies have been well documented. But David Brainerd, George Whitefield, John Wesley, Charles Simeon, John Bunyan, Charles Spurgeon and dozens of others might also be cited as examples. Perhaps God permitted them such anguish of soul that he might awaken in them a desire to rescue others from spiritual danger.

Charles Simeon’s dread fell upon him when he learned he was absolutely required to take communion at Cambridge. He knew that anyone who eats and drinks unworthily eats and drinks damnation to himself. Many of the godless students did so without regard to their spiritual danger. Simeon quaked at the thought. “Conscience told me that, if I must go, I must repent and turn to God.” That act of repentance was the beginning of a walk with the Lord that led him by degrees to become a zealous college chaplain who captured the souls of many of England’s upper class students.

Jesus exemplified the fear of the Lord more than any person who has ever lived. Absolutely determined to obey God with his whole heart, he refused to cut a single corner or escape a single detail God had planned for him. He accepted hunger, thirst, rejection, cold, and even a cruel death rather than defy God by so much as a thoughtless word.

Among his notable sayings was this, “Do not fear those who kill the body, and after that can do no more. But I will show you whom you should fear: fear Him who, after the killing of the body has power to throw you into Hell. Yes, I say, fear Him.”

Abraham Lincoln, whose Gettysburg Address is a masterpiece of brevity.

The more we talk or write, the more likely we are to say something stupid, false, or harmful. Josephus is an example. His lengthy histories, which were written to ingratiate the Romans, reveal him as a schemer, boaster, and a traitor to his own nation. As his biographer Bentwich says, “Hard circumstances compelled him to choose between a noble and an ignoble part, between heroic action and weak submission. He was a mediocre man, and chose the way that was not heroic and glorious. Posterity gained something by his choice; his own reputation was fatally marred by it.”

Short speeches and writings often have power completely out of proportion to their length. Consider Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. He spoke so briefly that the professional photographer did not have time to complete the adjustment of his old-fashioned equipment. The other lengthy orations of that historic occasion have not been remembered, but what an inspiration the president’s few words became to the United States!

Jesus also couched almost all of his most memorable teachings in just a few, well-chosen words and images. Such were the Lord’s Prayer, the Beatitudes, all of the parables, and most of his answers to questions. Only the Sermon on the Mount, the Olivet Discourse, and his final instructions to his disciples before his crucifixion approach lengthiness. He knew the power of succinctness and showed an absolute mastery of his tongue that we would do well to emulate.