The Wisdom of the Word

Transcript

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

That's where we're going to be today. We're actually just going to be covering three verses, believe it or not. That doesn't mean it'll be a quick sermon. It just means we're covering three verses. I'm just kidding. It'll be fast. We're going to be in Psalm 119, 9 through 11. Today, I want you to be thinking about wisdom. When we think about wisdom, I know my mind goes to wise sayings, kind of these pithy quotes. So, just here's a few examples. Abraham Lincoln. In the end, it's not the years in your life that count, it's the life in your years. Okay? Lou Holtz, a famous football coach, life is 10%, what happens to you, and 90% how you respond to it. John F. Kennedy, a great source of quotes, says, change is the law of life and those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future. Last one I was saying, Winston Churchill. Winston Churchill says, we make a living by what we get, but

we make a life by what we give. When we talk about seeing God's word as wisdom, A lot of times, that word wisdom, it brings up things in us that sound detached. It's like a wise saying. It's profound, it's quippy, but it's not really at hand whenever we need it. It's more for reflection, but it's not always good in the moment. So when I'm frustrated with something, if somebody starts quoting Winston Churchill to me, I just want to smack him. Okay. I don't... Stop. Stop quoting Winston Churchill. And when we see God's Word or when we talk about God's Word as wisdom, there's some disconnect that can happen.

We think of like a wise sage, you know, up on a mountain with a thousand steps, and we got to get up there like the Dalai Lama. Okay. We think about wisdom that way. but wisdom according to God's word is very different than that. Wisdom is actually a key component in the word of God. And this is what we've been talking about all summer about the word of God. Okay. We've seen that the word of God is a person. The word of God is Jesus Christ, the risen one. Also, we looked at Hebrews 4, how it talks about the power of the word, that the word is living and active. It's like a scalpel that can dissect our lives, our emotions, our motivations. And last week, Steve Herring told us about James 1 and the action of the word, how we are to be doers of the word, not just hearers only, but doers of the word. And so this week, I wanna talk a little bit about the wisdom of the word.

The word of God carries wisdom in a different way. So in the Word of God, it is not a book of sayings, of wise sayings. It's not like Esau's fables, where there's a moral and characters represent virtues. That's not really what it's like in Scripture when you're talking about wisdom. According to the Word of God, wisdom is actually much more complex than all of that. It's much more complex than a quippy, wise saying, or than any profundity that some sage on a mountain's gonna give you, it's different than that. Additionally, the Word of God, it does more than relay wisdom as information. We tend to think of wisdom as information. God's word thinks of wisdom differently and relays it differently. And what we're gonna see today is that the Word of God actually imparts wisdom to us directly. It injects it. It gives it to us. It gives us wisdom. And so to see this better, we're going to be exploring Psalm 119:9 through 11. We're going to look at how

the word of God defines wisdom. And we're also going to look at how the word of God works to actually make us wise. What does that look like? How does that work? So let's read aloud. I'm I'm gonna read Psalm 119:9 through 11. It says, how can a young man keep his way pure by guarding it according to your word? With my whole heart I seek you. Let me not wander from your commandments. I have stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. Okay, there's a lot here, it's kind of packed in. We begin with a question of purity. A question at the very beginning in Psalm 119, how can a young man keep his way pure? This is an interesting question.

We've got a young man, right? So a young man is someone who has this task of making life altering decisions. Someone with a lot of life ahead of them. Someone with a lot of possibilities that are laying before them. And it's not just a young man that has those kinds of possibilities before them, but that's kind of the person that they're choosing here. Also, a young man has a way. How can a young man keep his way pure? His way would be his course of life. It would be his actions, his decisions, his consequences, his rewards, what it would look like, how his actions determine the rest of his life. How is that young man going to keep his way pure? And keeping that pure, this word purity has a couple of layers of meaning, particularly here in Psalm 119, because it carries the idea of innocence, but it also carries the idea of brightness. We're gonna be looking at that a little bit later.

That's gonna make more sense in a second. But first, I just want to look at the question. The question, how can a young man keep his way pure? This is a kind of universal question. This is a question that everyone seeks out, but they're going to state it in different ways. Historically, this question will come out as something like, how do I achieve enlightenment? How do I mature? How do I come into my own? How do I grow? How do I live a life that combines deep joy and significant purpose? Today, somebody might reword the question, how can a young man keep his way pure? It might be that they might ask it, how do I live a life that is good and beneficial? How do I do that? At our church, we describe this way, this pathway, as the spiritual journey. I just talked to you guys about that. And the spiritual journey is a path forward. It is a way forward. It is spiritual growth.

So if we're gonna reword this question for us today, how can I move forward on my spiritual journey? How can I grow spiritually? How can a young man keep his way pure? When the psalmist says that, we can understand it that way. What do I need to do? Because there is a sense of responsibility in it, right? How can a young man keep his way pure? The responsibility is on the young man in that question. And you see it again in the answer to that question, because the answer is by guarding it according to your word.

So we live a good and beneficial life. We move forward on our spiritual journey when we guard that pathway with God's word. And to understand this a little better, we need to understand how the Bible talks about wisdom, which is very different than how you and I maybe think about wisdom. In the Bible, and particularly in the Psalms, wisdom, there's a Hebrew word for this called hokma. Everybody say hokma. That's good. You guys can talk Hebrew now. Hokema is different than what we maybe we think of whenever we talk about wisdom. We think of wisdom as like special knowledge. When wisdom is discussed here in the Psalms and really all over the Old Testament, it carries the idea of winning at life. Okay? It carries the idea of winning at life. So wisdom, as defined in the Word of God, wisdom is a life that leads to beneficial action. So wisdom would be, hey, invest money now and you later will have a good return.

That's biblical wisdom. It might just sound like financial advice to us, but that is included in the idea of biblical wisdom. Biblical wisdom that leads to beneficial action might be that You set boundaries for children now and it will benefit them forever. Okay, this is biblical wisdom. Okay, it doesn't sound particularly spiritual to us, but this is exactly, I mean, you go read the Proverbs, read the content, what it talks about. It talks about your kids, your finances, your land, your workers, your money. It talks about all those things. Biblical wisdom also leads away from harmful action. So with biblical wisdom, you're gonna hear a lot about like the sloth, the fool, the liar. Okay, so it's saying, you know, don't trust a foolish person to relay a message for you, because they're gonna forget, because they're foolish. Okay, don't do it. Don't put up collateral for a liar.

Okay, don't put anything down. Don't give anything to a bank on the word of somebody who is a liar. So this is wisdom, right? And again, it doesn't sound particularly spiritual to us. It just sounds like living your best life now, okay? Truly though, as much as we might like, you know, tease at living your best life, no one, no one alive wants to fail at life. No one does. No one wants to fail at life. We all want to, when we kind of come into our own, we all have desires and dreams to do things that are significant with our lives. Even if other people don't consider them significant, we do.

For example, you know, something that is extremely significant for most moms, right, is they want to care for the physical needs of their children. Not just that, but definitely that. And so when you talk about a young mother with a baby, what does success in life look like? Well, it looks like that baby thriving physically. Not just that, but that's a part of it. Okay, so no and and and that young mom does not want to fail at that I've actually I've actually had a number of young mothers just kind of in in my in my life I've just come across them where they had a baby that was failure to thrive or that was close to that and it really hurt them It really because it made them feel like a failure, right? Which is tough, I mean it is tough to feel like a failure. I have felt like a failure before. I've gone through seasons in my life where I felt like nothing was working out.

I don't like that feeling, no one likes that feeling. No one wants to fail, right? However, even though no one wants to fail, failure still happens. Things still get confusing for us in our lives. We can actually believe that we are chasing something good with our lives when in reality we are destroying it. And that is crazy to think about, but it is 100% true. Happens to us on a weekly basis, I'm sure. We think we're doing the right thing. We look at the decision in front of us and we go, okay, I think I should do this. And then we step into that decision and we look around and we're like, okay, that was a dumpster fire, how did that even make sense? But we couldn't see it because we didn't have, so hindsight's 20-20, but Your oversight is zero, over zero.

We don't wanna fail. And we can think we're destroying our lives. So then what we see in the word of God, what we see in the word of God is that wisdom then protects our way. Wisdom protects our way. It is protected by the word of God as the word of God illuminates and clarifies our pathway. It illuminates and clarifies. Let me tell you what I mean. To do this, I need you to remember that the idea of purity, how does a young man keep his way pure by guarding it according to your word? The idea of purity combines innocence with brightness. Now, those do not seem like they belong together. However, when it comes to a pathway, a beneficial pathway is a pathway that is well lit, right? Brightness and purity are entangled. They are enmeshed when you're talking about a pathway, okay? So a pure path, in other words, is clearly marked out, but a pure path, so it's well lit.

But it also doesn't have robbers around every corner. Does that make sense? So then we have a pure path, but we also have a bright path. Both of those things come together to make a good path. So we are talking about how do we make a good path? How do we have that before us? What does God's word do? Well, it illuminates, right? So first it illuminates what is dark. Look, it is no coincidence that God describes himself as light, that in John 1, the gospel of John, John is describing Jesus as light, right? Jesus is light.

The wisdom then of God uncovers evil. It exposes things that are in the dark. And so when we are, you and I, when we are tempted to lie about finishing something at work, We forgot to finish it. We were asked like twice to finish it. And here we are at the deadline. It's not finished. What's our temptation? Lie. Either outright lie or make justifications or something. Saying, well, I don't know. I mean, you know, I just, I had other important things to do. I had, you know, we just kind of making, we want to sin. In that moment, we want to sin because we love ourselves more than we love the truth. Okay? The wisdom of the word, though, what the wisdom of the word does in that moment is it reminds us of the benefits of honesty. As painful as honesty is, the wisdom of the word reminds us that honesty actually lightens your soul. That honesty actually increases your joy.

That honesty strengthens your relationships. These are things that we are not thinking about in that moment. All you're thinking about in that moment is how can I not look dumb? Right? That's all we want. But what God's word does is it illuminates the path forward and says, no, no, no, look, I know that looks like a good idea. I know that looks like a good road to go down, but don't. And it shines a light and you see all the traps that are there. You see all the mess that's there. You see all the entanglements that will ensue. And the word of God says, remember honesty, how beneficial it is to you. And this is the idea of biblical wisdom. This is hokkma at work. Ok? Hokkma says, live a good life. How do you live a good life? Well, honesty will help you live a good life. Very, very kind of straightforward there. So God's word, the wisdom of God's word, illuminates what is dark.

It also clarifies what is confusing. So when we are in a position in our lives where we do not know what to believe, we are questioning everything. We're even questioning our own motives. We don't know what to do. The wisdom of the word comes in and reminds us of things that do not change, things that we can hang our hats on. Wisdom connects the dots for us. It puts the pieces together and allows us to see through the problem and understand what the Lord is calling us to do. The wisdom of God's word, it illuminates what is dark, but it also clarifies things that are confusing or problematic.

And I think, I think most people, actually, I think even most non-Christians, People that don't even believe that this is God's word, right? Most people are going to agree with that. That wisdom in and of itself illuminates and clarifies, right? That's the good of wisdom. It illuminates and clarifies. But how does it do that? Let's keep reading to learn how the word of God does that. Psalm 119:10 and 11 says, With my whole heart I seek you. Let me not wander from your commandments. I have stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. We see this repeated refrain of my heart, my whole heart. Now, this translated, you know, whole heart is a great translation, but really we would probably describe that today as the center of our being Or with everything we are right. That might be some, some more common phrases that we will use with everything.

I am, I seek you with the center of my being with, with all that I have with everything that I am, all my identity, all of that I am, I am seeking after you. Let me not wander from your commandments. I have stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. We see here that guarding our lives according to the word of God has to do something with with hiding storing God's Word in our heart So that we stay away from sin Okay, the avoidance of sin look The avoidance of sin I understand we're all sinners. Okay. I'm well acquainted with that fact I'm reminded of that fact on a minute by minute basis. Okay? And while sinning is inevitable, okay, there is great, great benefit in working hard to avoid sin. There is great benefit in that. And the benefit isn't that you will one day achieve perfection. That's not the benefit. Okay, that's nowhere in the Bible. Okay, we will be perfected in heaven glory one day when we are in heaven

That will be true until we're there. We will not see sinless perfection Okay, so then what's the use of avoiding sin if we're just gonna sin anyway? The the use of avoiding sin is that what we gain? We gain wisdom Right, we we gain understanding we gain the ability to be a benefit to other people we gain the maturity to be able to handle what life is throwing at us. And when we seek with our whole heart, that means that we are packing down. We are storing up God's Word in our heart so that we don't sin against Him. Now, there's a couple of things I want to notice. First, when it talks about storing God's Word in our heart, heart, the basic assumption is that you will go through a time when God's word will not be as prevalent around you. It will be kind of hard to find. And so when you are in that moment, whenever wisdom is hard to find, whenever joy is hard to find, whatever all those things are hard

to find, the idea is that you have the word of God stored in your heart so that it will bubble up and begin to give life, to give wisdom, to give direction, illumination, clarity, all of those things that we cannot muster on our own. The word of God comes up, erupts, spills out into where we are and saves the day. This is the picture that we see, I store it in my heart. The other thing I want you to notice is that that is very indirect. It's very indirect. In other words, I'll describe it the other way. If it were direct, it would be something like, I have given away my car keys to avoid that party that I might not sin against you. Okay? I have installed the software on my computer so I will block pornography so that I might not sin against you. Okay? These are direct things to do. I have tied my hands behind my back So that I will not make obscene gestures to the guy who just cut me off.

Okay, that would be, these are direct, these are direct correlations. Does that make sense? That's direct. That's I'm physically restraining myself. I'm physically putting barriers up so that I won't sin against you. That makes a lot of sense to us. There's nothing wrong with that. But that's not what it's saying here. It's very indirect. direct, that's saying, I don't want to sin against you, so I hide your word in my heart.

How are those things connected? It's indirect. And so instead of telling you, instead of telling you how it's direct or excuse me, how it's indirect, which is, this is very difficult. I want to give you three pictures, right? Of what it is. Um, and by the way, when it talks about hiding God's word in your heart, that, that's exactly what it sounds like. It is reading, it is memorizing, it is meditating upon the word of God. It is, it is reading it so much that it comes out in your language. It is meditating it so much that it comes up in your thoughts. It is, it is being immersed into the word of God. Okay. This is what it means to store God's word in your heart. It doesn't mean to like think happy thoughts. It means to take the words of scripture and to put it here and here so that when those times come up, it's there. Okay. That's exactly what it's talking about.

It's exactly what it sounds like. But still, that is an indirect process. How does memorizing this meditating on God's word, how does that help me whenever I'm in the middle of temptation? So three pictures, because it's so indirect. I'm going to give you three pictures. First, the word of God is a fire pit. Fire pit. We can sit by God's word and be warmed. Our environment is dark and cold. Not a lot of light, not a lot of heat. When we sit by God's word, we are warmed to the core. The longer we sit, the warmer we get. We absorb the wisdom of God through osmosis. It's really hard to explain, but it's true. You meditate on this, you read this, you memorize this, You will become more wise. I can't diagram that. I have no idea, right? I know it's true. I've seen it. It's here. We absorb wisdom through prolonged exposure to the word of God. This is wisdom by osmosis, and this wisdom protects.

It clarifies. It guards our life. The word of God is a fire pit. The longer we sit by it, the warmer we get. The word of God is also, stay with me here, a pair of glasses, specifically a pair of reader's glasses. Okay, amen if you got your reader's glasses today. Okay. They're reader's glasses in particular because you need to be up close to see them work. You don't see something in the distance. I can't see it very well. Let me put my readers on." Well, that won't help you. Readers help you see things that are right here. God's Word works the same way. It's almost like an invisible boundary, right? You can't see it until you're right up on it.

What Psalm 119 and several other places in the Psalm describe is a journey that is taken one step at a time. In other words, that we're dealing with things right in front of us. That it is difficult to, it's difficult for us to see things way, way, way far down the road. Get fresh wisdom from that and then hold on to it and remember it whenever we're there. A lot of times wisdom happens in the moment at the moment, right? You are in the middle of it and wisdom comes, right? So it's like, how do I honor the Lord with what's right in front of me? How do I deal with what the Lord is calling me to do in this particular situation? Not some nebulous, what if scenario, but where I'm at right now. Right. Uh, my father-in-law was in a wreck, a very minor accident, a couple of days ago. And when I'm asking him, I'm just asking him to recount kind of just what happened.

And he had very minor damage, but the lady's car was kind of broken, right? And so she was not happy, as you can imagine. And so I believe it was her fault. Was it her fault? Her fault. So my father-in-law is a very mild-mannered man. He gets out of the truck and this lady comes out and boy, both. I mean, she comes out with, sorry, I'm not going to use a gun metaphor. She didn't have a gun. She came out firing with cuss words. She was like, you blank and blank and blank. I mean, just cussing him up one side down the other to where my father couldn't even get a word in. Just a fire hydrant of profanity. He couldn't even push through it. So he kind of moved away, did not escalate, and just called the police, you know, just didn't. And then asked her another question, she cussed him out again, right? What I would say is, in that situation, right, we need God's wisdom in that moment, right?

And you could go home and read right now, like, what would I do in that situation? Okay, well, you might not ever be in that situation. But you're gonna be in another situation pretty soon. And the wisdom that applies to that situation might not apply to yours. Wisdom is particular. It needs its own situation to be kind of embedded in. And so what's our application then? If it's a pair of readers glasses, what does it mean? It means that we need to have those readers on. It means that we need to have consistent contact with the word of God so that when temptation looms, we will realize it. I don't know how many times I've been in a situation where I was in the middle of temptation and didn't know it. I was in a situation that needed wisdom and didn't even realize it. Okay, and then later upon reflection, I thought, should have had a V8. You know, I should have done it, right?

Should have seen that. I was not wise. I don't know if you know me very well. You might not, but some people are born with really just a tremendous amount of street smarts. That is not me. It's just not. I'm okay with that. I need to borrow as much wisdom as I possibly can because it's not just going to erupt. I'm not really going to just know what to do. I need to think about things a long time in order to know what to do next. If I shoot from the hip, I usually miss, okay? But when temptations arise, like when I have the word of God on the brain, right? Those reader glasses are there and I can see. I can see when temptation's coming. I can see when I need that situation. I can see it. Wisdom kicks in, in the middle of temptation. And I call a Christian friend and I say, dude, I need prayer right this second. I get my life group on the phone, or I get them on a text and I say,

boys, I need you to pray for me right this second. I'm in the middle of it. I need encouragement. When big decisions arise and you don't have the readers on of God's Word, you are left in the balance hanging between pros and cons. You won't know. You won't know what to do. God desires to meet us in those situations, even if it's which pair of shoes to wear that morning. There are times when God wants to intervene and tell you what to wear. There's times when God wants to intervene and tell you who to talk to in line. I was talking to somebody yesterday, I was at a family union, and one of my wife's cousins, she said, I was riding in the ambulance. I had had a child who broke his femur, so I was just freaking out. And she said, I felt like the Holy Spirit was telling me in that moment, hey, ask this guy if he knows Jesus. And my cousin was like, are you serious?

No, I don't want to do that. I'm not in the mood. I'm freaking out because my three-year-old broke a femur. And then those were like, go ahead and ask him. Go ahead and ask him. And she did. And it was a tremendous blessing to both of them. She could not have foreseen it. But the readers were on. The wisdom kicked in. So the wisdom of God is a fire pit. The longer we sit by it, the wiser we get. It's a set of reader's glasses. It works up close in particular situations. Lastly, the word of God is like a mentor. It's like a person, like a mentor.

The word of God desires to teach you like a mentor would teach you. Sometimes we go through times of temptation or times of confusion and we run to God's word as if it were an answer book or an encyclopedia on whatever problem that we have. The word of God does not work that way. I'm not saying there's no answers here, but I'm saying it's not some set of IKEA instructions that you can go and just kind of figure out, okay? That's not the deal. What we see in God's word is that wisdom is a person.

Again, the wisdom that is in God's word is not information, it's not special knowledge that we just download magically from heaven, okay? It is communion with the word of God himself. It is talking with Jesus, the wise teacher. And this is important because Jesus, whenever you read, I mean read the gospels, Jesus doesn't just go around dispensing wisdom for whoever's gonna hear it. Jesus kind of makes people work a little bit, right? Jesus is not in the business of casting pearls before swine. He is in the business of finding those who were seeking.

God's word gives wisdom slowly on purpose. Let me say that again. God's word gives us wisdom slowly on purpose. That's why you've never met a wise 10 year old. They're just not gonna have the same experience. God bless you if you're 10. I mean, it's going to be a great life, but you can't match the wisdom of somebody who's been on this earth five times as long as you. You just can't. Wisdom comes slow. Wisdom comes slow. Through prolonged reading of God's Word, through sitting with God's Word, sitting by the fire of God's Word, the wiser you get. The word of God is like a mentor that takes his time. When you have a good mentor and you run to them with some question, you know what a good mentor does? It doesn't answer your question. A good mentor says, what do you think?

And it's not to just make you squirm, although you squirm. It's to help you think through what you're asking. It's to help you realize the whole situation that you are in. Because what you have realized is this much, you've only pulled the curtain back this much, and you're thinking, that's my problem, I need to solve that problem. And if I solve that problem, I'm good. And part of a mentor's job is to expand the curtain and help you understand what your problem really is. What the scope of your question really has to do with. And when we sit with Jesus the Wise Teacher, when we sit with the mentor himself, listen, he does love us. He does want to give us all good things, right? He does say, ask and I will give it to you.

But Jesus is no slot machine. We don't just pull his arm and get whatever we want. It's a relationship. Jesus is a wise mentor. We can listen to him, but it's prolonged. It's striving, it's frustrating at times, maybe. Over time and in the right moment, clarity comes. Illumination comes. Jesus won't ever give us more than we can handle, right? He's not gonna let us fall off the cliff. He's going to help us when we fall down to get back up. But this is the wisdom of the word. It's not just information, it's a relationship. Today, what I wanna do during our time of response and Michael's gonna come up, I just wanna help you understand that the wisdom of God's word, it is something we memorize, but it's not just something that we memorize. It is something that we read, but it's not just words on a page. It is good information on how to live a good life, but it is so much more.

It is a person that is calling us to walk with him, not to be perfect, but to walk in that wise, good, beneficial life. How can a young man keep his way pure by guarding it according to your word? The word of God desires to protect you, to grow you, to love you in the moment, to bear with your ignorance and your infirmities and your idiot habits, right? And mine too, the Word of God wants to walk with you through that and say, look, live a life that is pleasing to the Lord. How good will it be to be honest? How good will it be to be forthright? To be joyful, to be loving, to be sacrificial for other people. We just had a room full of people in here, 150 big that realized the joy of sacrificing and looking totally dumb for kids to see who Jesus is. What a great illustration. This is what wisdom does for us. Wisdom leads us, guides us, helps us, wants better things for us even than we want for ourselves and it

begins by inviting wisdom to be a part of your life. What we're going to do during our time of invitation, I'm going to be down here. I'm just going to be standing down here. If you want prayer, do you want to join our church? If there's something that you want to do, a process you want to begin, I would encourage you to come down, make that decision, talk with me. Let's pray. Let's talk about it. And Michael is going to lead us. Would you please stand as we sing? Oh, in the darkness we were waiting Without hope, without light Till from heaven you came running There was mercy in your eyes To fulfill the law and prophets To a virgin came the war From a throne of endless glory to a cradle in the dust Praise the Father, praise the Father Praise the Son, praise the Spirit Through He in one, God in all majesty Praise forever to the King of King of all. To redeem the God, I'm sorry, reconcile the lost.

To redeem the all creation, you did not despise the cost. For even in your suffering, you saw to the other side. Knowing this was our salvation Jesus for our sake you died We thank you for your sacrifice today Jesus Praise the Father, praise the Father Praise the Son, praise the Spirit And what of glory say, will praise forever to the King of Kings? And the morning's breath, to let stones move far good, for the Lamb to call good dead. And the dead was from their tombs, and the angels stood in awe For the souls of all who'd come to the Father are restored And the Church of Christ was born, then the Spirit lit the flame Now this gospel truth of the Lord shall not alert to the needs And we sing praise the Son and praise the Spirit through the air. Praise forever to the King, all kings. And praise forever to the King.