The Way of Wisdom

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

Well, good morning, church. How's everybody doing today? Good. Well, they let me back, so I guess I didn't do too bad last time or offend anyone, so that's good. This morning, we're going to be in Proverbs chapter 2. Since last week, we went over chapter 1, sticking kind of with the same theme of wisdom. And while you guys are flipping there, I'd like to share a couple poems with you guys. Each one is titled Wisdom, but they're a little different. The first one is by the American Poetry Society. It was a night of early spring. The winter sleep was scarcely broken. Around the shadows in the wind listened for what was never spoken. Though half a score of years are gone, spring comes as sharply now as then. But if we had it all to do, it would be done the same again. It was a spring that never came, but we have lived enough to know that what we never have remains, it is the things we have that go.

The second is written by a lady named Sarah Teasdale. When I have ceased to break my wings against the faultiness of things, and learned that compromises weight behind each hardly open gate, when I have looked life in the eyes and grown calm and very coldly wise, life will have given me truth and taken in exchange my youth. Now these are two very conflicting poems. One talks about how as you grow older you gain wisdom but lose your youth, while the other, the first one, states that the older you get the more you forget and lose. Both of these are true, however, because the older you get the more you grow in the way you will trust people and you will view people while the older you get the less you choose to trust people because we have lost that childlike faith. Last week we talked about wisdom and knowledge and we left off with a question and a challenge

of are we a people who will sit and listen to wisdom as she calls out and not answer or will we answer and fear the Lord. This time we are going to be talking about the effects of choosing wisdom and choosing to fear God because the question throughout history has always been what does that do for me. What is following God and choosing Him actually do? What is the benefit? You see we as humans live on a benefit and consequence system. Everything is weighed through this whether we realize it or not. We do it in our subconscious and we weigh every day. Those who don't do this usually end up in a place that my father works known as the Texas Department of criminal justice. An example of you and I doing this goes like this. What is the benefit of me choosing wisdom and knowledge instead of what the world says? Which one is best for me in the circumstance that I am in right now?

Did you know that the first real wisdom that we gain, godly wisdom, is when we accept Christ? And I bet you guys are like me that before you accepted Christ you had a couple moments of, is this really real? What is the benefit of me actually choosing this? I've heard the stories of persecution. I mean, can God really be that good? By the way, for those of you who haven't accepted Him yet, it is that good. It is that great, because so many of my lost friends look at the Bible as a book of don'ts. However, it is actually a book of do's. Now, this seems like an oxymoron, right? And an oxymoron is one of those five-dollar college words that you spend a ton of money on just to learn. What does it mean? Webster defines it as a figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction. Like up the street, the soldiers march down. But in our Christian walk, we have this same type of paradox when we say that we trust

God, but then continue to wonder if He will actually do what He says. We begin to ask this in almost every situation of every day. We allow that, what would Jesus do question to come up? Would this benefit God? Or would it just benefit me? Would it help me in my mental state or physical state at the moment, but would it hurt my relationship with Jesus? And there are multiple times in a Christian's walk where we stop and we say, I've accepted Christ. I know at that moment it seemed real, but I haven't heard God in a while. I haven't seen Him work in my life in a while, so is this really real? Does He actually love me? We usually ask this in a time of struggle, a time of hardship, when we watch something on TV that makes us question our faith, and we begin to wonder, is my faith strong enough to endure the trials of this world. Am I really doing what's right?

Is this Christian life what's right for me? Can I get more satisfaction doing that which the world offers me? Or do I get more eternal satisfaction from following Jesus? Those questions, my family, are very important and are what we will aim to answer this morning. Look with me at Proverbs chapter 2 verse 1. My son, if you accept my words and store up my commands within you, turning your ear to wisdom and applying your heart to understanding, indeed, if you call out for insight and cry aloud for understanding, and if you look for it as for silver and search for it as for hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. For the Lord gives wisdom from his mouth come knowledge and understanding." So these six verses, they're not an answer to our question yet, however they are a prerequisite, because we cannot know what wisdom will do for us if we do not know how to gain wisdom

in the first place. We actually have to want it, is what Solomon's saying. God is saying before you can gain the answer of what will wisdom do, what will it give me in this life, you must first have a relationship with Jesus. That is the first step. This is done by repenting from our sins and turning the opposite way. So what is verses 1-5 saying? Well it's pretty simple, it's pretty straight forward, right? If you want to gain wisdom, you have to store up the commands that God gives you in your heart. Turning your ear to wisdom and applying your heart to understanding, calling out for insight, crying aloud for understanding. And my favorite is verse 4 where Solomon says, you have to look for it as for silver and search for it as for hidden treasure. My grandfather, when he used to preach, would use a sermon illustration when he would describe somebody wanting to find God and no more in

depth about him. He would say there was a young boy who came home from school one day and his friends had talked about God. And he asked his mom, mom, how do I find God? How do I know more about him? And her mom said, well, that's a really good question, but I don't know. Why don't you ask your dad when he gets home? So the boy waited, and when his father came home, he ran out to the driveway and stopped him and said, dad, how do I find God? And he said, I don't know, but I know there's this old holy man that lives down by the river in town. Why don't you go ask him? I'm sure he'll have an answer. And And so the boy runs down to the river and he meets the old man and the old man says, what can I do for you son? He says, well, I want to find God. I want to know more about him. He says, you really want to find him? He said, yeah. He said, okay, follow me.

The old man walks out into the middle of the river and stands there. He tells the boy, follow me. So the boy walks out into the river and stands there and the old man says, okay, you sure you want to find him? He said, yeah. The old man grabs the boy and shoves him under the water and holds him there. The boy is kicking and thrashing and fighting, and out of desperation he yanks away from the old man and stands up and gasps for air. The old man looks at him and says, when you want God as bad as you wanted that next breath of air, then you will truly know him. You really have to desire to know more about God. We can accept Christ, that is the first step, but if you actually want an in-depth relationship, We have to put in work. There are these seven people sitting on a beach, seven strangers who have never met each other. And they sit across from each other, not paying attention to one another, and all of a sudden

this green bottle washes up out of the water. Girl around the age of 24, she picks up the bottle and she opens it and she pulls out this letter that she found inside. As she turns it over, her mouth drops. the people sitting around her begin to wonder, hmm, I wonder what she found. So they one by one make their way over and they stand there and as they read it, they all laugh. As it states that this is a map drawn by a pirate from the 1500s leading to a treasure that he has hidden that can amount to more than any money in today's society. They all laugh at one another and go sit back down. But one by one, they begin to look back at each other and look back at the bottle and wonder what are the chances that's really real? So they reconvene and they all think, well, we all have the day off, we're all here, why don't we just follow the map by chance that it turns out to be real?

So they began to follow and walk along the beach and that day soon turns into a couple days off from work. And then a couple weeks off from work. quit their job because as they follow the map, they end up in a forest and the tall section of trees that are drawn on the back of the map are actually real. The cave hidden by vines is actually real. The pathway leading through the mountains is actually real. So they begin to get excited. As they continue on, they come upon a structure that is said to be a Viking pole with an eagle on top of it. They stand there and they look at each other and they go that means just two miles up the way There's the treasure It's supposedly by this old oak sapling that was planted years ago So they travel up the hill and they get there and there's this massive tree hundreds of years old and they soon realize this is it This is the tree that was planted and shown on the map

That means 15 paces down on the south side of the tree is where the treasure is So one of the men grabs a shovel and he goes down and he digs and he fights the rocky soil and he gets down and he Hits something But it sounded like it shattered So he moves the dirt aside and it's a bottle with another note in it and it reads finders keepers losers weepers

Somebody had beaten them to it What would it look like if we searched for God as intently as they search for that treasure What if we realize that our map doesn't come from some bottle that washed up on a shore that says, trust me, but it came from the living God who set the stars in each of their places. And verse 6 says, to desire God, all we have to do is to learn more about Him is ask Him for it until we truly want it than we will never find it. And our treasure map is the Word of God. And I believe that this view of God being worth more than anything, any amount of money has been lost in our country and even in some of our churches as we make it more about the experience of the service than the one who the service is for. I think if we truly understood the importance of our quiet time and our studying of God and His Word, what it had towards our eternity and the eternity of those around us, we would

have some very different priorities than we do right now. What would it be like if we actually grasped the truth of how valuable God actually is? What if we wanted to spend more time with Him than we did on video games or TV shows or romance novels? My grandfather used to say, tell me how much time you spent watching TV this week and tell me how much time you spent in God's Word and I'll tell you how much you love Jesus. Now that stings when you hear it. Do you think there will be a prize for watching the most episodes of The Walking Dead when you get to heaven? Do you think there will be a prize for reading the most novels when you get to heaven?

What I hope we begin to get from this is we need to get back to the basics of life as Christians We need to focus on who it is Not what it is Look with me at verse 7 He holds success in store for the upright. He is a shield to those whose walk is blameless, for he guards the course of the just and protects the way of his faithful ones. Then you will understand what is right in just and fair every good path, for wisdom will enter your heart and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul. Discretion will protect you and understanding will guard you. Wisdom will save you from the ways of wicked men, from men whose words are perverse, who who have left the straight paths to walk in dark ways, who delight in doing wrong and rejoice in the perverseness of evil, whose paths are crooked and who are devious in their ways. Here is where we begin to see our first tidbit of wisdom, the answer to our question, what

will it do for us? And it says that God will give us protection from the bad things in this world. However, it doesn't mean that bad things won't happen in our life, but it means that He will shield us through them. There's an old song from years ago called The Lonesome Valley, written by Woody Guthrie, and it says, you gotta walk that lonesome valley, you gotta walk it by yourself. Nobody here can walk it for you, you gotta walk it by yourself. Can I tell you something? If you were a Christian this morning, that song is a lie. You see, there's a difference the way the world walks through struggle and hardship and the way Christians walk through it. The world looks at everything that's difficult as, I have to get through this. I have to deal with this. I have to do it. While on the other hand, God looks down and He goes, I know you can't. So I'm going to be with you through it.

I'm going to place a community around you to help take some burdens off of you so that you can deal with it. At least that's the way church is supposed to work. them will tell us the right path, what is just and fair, every good path we should take. When we need guidance, we will have it. We will have a better understanding of the things that take place in our lives. We will be able to learn from the trying times. Instead of just surviving them, we will be able to thrive in them. Now do you all remember last Sunday when we talked about those who go out for ill-gotten gain who lie in wait for their own blood. Wisdom will protect us from them because we will be able to see their true intentions before they make them known. Wisdom, godly wisdom, allows us to see someone's heart, who they really are deep down what kind of character they have and usually it will show us why they are like that. My grandmother was like

this, she had a sixth sense. And when my grandfather, the man who wanted to save the world, who wanted to share Jesus with every person and just give away everything, she would stop him sometimes and say, you were doing God's work. But you need to be careful because there's something about that person. She didn't do it very often, but every time she did, it came true and she was right. Look with me at verse 16. Wisdom will save you also from the adulterous woman, from the wayward woman with her seductive words who has left the partner of her youth and ignored the covenant she made before God. Surely her house leads down to death and her paths to the spirits of the dead. None who go to her return or attain the paths of life. In our society today, we have more access to lustful content than we ever have before, And I fear it will only get worse as technology advances in the world becomes more connected.

Let me explain something to us though, ladies and gentlemen. Something that it took me years, even though I'm only 22, years of struggle and steadying to learn. What you put in your mind is what will come out of you. What you fill your head with is what your desires will be. What your actions will reflect. The reason Solomon talks about truly seeking wisdom in God is because when you finally reach the point where you know that you are tired of all the fake hopes and false promises that this world offers, you will begin to fill yourself with Christ. And then you will be able to see more of Him because that is what your mind is full of. Those around you will be able to understand that you actually are different because your actions will reflect what you put inside of you. This means your thought process, your desires, because that is what you are filling yourself

with, and that is why God will protect you, because you will be able to be filled with Him instead of what this world gives you. When we finally do reach this point of choosing God and His wisdom over the world, we will be protected and guided and shielded during troubles. We will have a better outlook on our lives, and we will have more knowledge and a deeper understanding of who God is in the purpose that He has for our lives. Look at verse 20. Thus you will walk in the ways of the good, and keep to the paths of the righteous. For the upright will live in the land and the blameless will remain in it, but the wicked will be cut off from the land and the unfaithful will be torn from it. When we choose God and His wisdom, not only will we gain these things that we have talked about, but we will finally begin to live as though we are a part of and co-heirs with

Christ to the Kingdom of God. And that is a greater benefit than anything that this world can ever offer. Now I could end here and we could go home, but there's something else that we must talk about. You see, when many pastors cover Proverbs or Solomon, they fail to mention that Solomon, So he was the wisest man in the world, came to conclusions that may seem contrary to that which he wrote in Proverbs. Solomon, even though he was the wisest man, fell away and chose things opposite of that of the man of God we know, led Israel and wrote Proverbs. Why? Because he began letting little things slide. He began allowing certain things in his mind, which then clouded his mind and blocked him from the godly wisdom he possessed. But he was so wise. Shouldn't he have seen this coming? The women that he went after that caused his fall, that he built false idols for, shouldn't

he have seen their true intentions like you just talked about with wisdom? He should have. But because he filled his mind with other things, the wisdom had no chance. Solomon's second book is called Ecclesiastes. It lies right after Proverbs, and it is known most for the first couple of verses that state everything is meaningless. Even the pursuit of wisdom, Solomon says, is like chasing after wind, because everyone, wise or fool, dies in the end of this life. However, if you realize that this is more of a self-reflection of Solomon on his past you will see that it is because he chased wisdom more than he chased the one who gave it. That's where the problem came in. Because he chased other things and filled his mind with other things, that's when his life began to fall apart. So as we walk with Jesus and we receive this wisdom from God and we chase after

knowing more about him and who he is, a word of caution as it can become more about us than the one who gives it. We will not be perfect, not until the day that Christ comes back and takes us home. And praise God, we have a gracious God who notices that and realizes that. That's why he came and died and paid the price for our sins, but he rose again because he didn't want eternity without us. So here are our questions, church. What are you going to fill your mind with? And And it's an eternity with a loving God in a never-ending kingdom enough of a benefit for you. Pray with me. Heavenly Father, we come before you this morning. And we thank you for the godly wisdom that you give to us. Lord, we ask that you give us the desire to choose it and to seek you, and want you more than anything that this world gives. Lord, I ask that you allow us to see people's true intentions,

to see the things this world offers are not true and desire only you, in Jesus' name. and I I pardon an empty man is there to kill my soul because he lives tomorrow because he lives he is God He holds the future Just because he lived How sweet to hold me And feel the pride and joy he gives A greater skill A promissure of its A list of can't face absurd dimes Because he is Because he lives In the sky because I the future Across the river I'd like spot the pain And then as day And to go to I'll see the lights of glory And under Because he lives in the future And life is worth the lift Because he lives, because he lives I can face to my Because he lives Fear is gone As I know He holds the future Life is worth a living Just because he lives