Wisdom

Transcript

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

Does not wisdom call? Does not understanding raise her voice? On the heights beside the way, at the crossroads, she takes her stand. Beside the gates in front of the town, at the entrance of the portals, she cries aloud, to you, O men, I call, and my cries to the children of man. O simple ones, learn prudence, O fools, learn sense. We are about to enter into the busiest time of the year,

for many of us. Christmas spending is going to be just shy, personal Christmas spending is gonna be just shy of 330 billion in America, that's a thousand for each of us. Okay, it's a thousand bucks for each of us, national average. One in seven of you will be attending a Secret Santa event. Half of you will have family traditions that you must do every year. On average, every one of you will have five extra gatherings this holiday season, five, average. Okay, I know, I'm already feeling it.

All of it though, all of it is so good. The memories, so good, the traditions, being together with family, the pictures, the gifts, it's just good. We did Christmas decoration a couple of days ago in my house, and it feels great. It feels great, but in all of that busyness, right, in all of that goodness, it is so easy to miss the life that we are actually celebrating. It's so easy for us to miss. Amid all the good times, to miss the abundant life that we should be living, even in the midst of it. And so this morning, I thought it'd be completely appropriate right before, right before we go headlong into the post-Thanksgiving, pre-Christmas sprint, right, before we're there, let's stop down. Let's heed the call of wisdom. Let's let wisdom draw us into a deeper abundant life

that is right there in front of us. Because without that deeper abundant life, all the other stuff, it just doesn't mean a thing. It's not better than it. Christmas cards and family Christmas pictures aren't better than abundant life. So in order to do that, we are gonna be in Proverbs chapter eight. Proverbs chapter eight is one of the most, I think it's one of the most interesting chapters in Proverbs because it personifies wisdom, right? Wisdom chapter eight, it personifies wisdom, and by reading it, we can learn to listen to wisdom and receive the abundant life that wisdom wants to give us.

And so let's take a second, let's turn there, but let's also understand kinda what wisdom is. So a lot of times when you and I come to the prospect of wisdom, we're not thinking of what Proverbs eight calls wisdom, the biblical idea of hokkma, right? That's the Hebrew word that we translate into wisdom. It means a little bit different than what we mean. So what do we mean? Well, modern psychology on discussing wisdom is somewhat divided, okay? I mean, they're pretty much saying the same thing, but there's the German school that accents a little bit more on rationality. There's the American school that accents a little bit more on virtue and compassion, all right? But they're all really, they're saying the same thing. They agree on what they, and really on what we all consider to be wisdom, that there's a cognitive component to wisdom and a reflective component to wisdom.

So cognitive means you know how life works, right? You know the rules, you've seen it a few times, and you desire truth, okay? What it means reflective is that not only do you see how life works, not only do you desire truth, but you can see it from multiple perspectives. You can put your own life in the midst of it. You understand where you are in context to everything else. It's not empty knowledge, it's not flat knowledge, it's wide and deep knowledge, right? It's fullness, so it includes self-reflection, it includes insight, it includes advanced problem solving, this is wisdom, this is what you and I are talking about whenever we say wisdom. However, that's a great definition. However, it does not really penetrate us. I can give you definitions of lots of words, and it's not really, it doesn't really sink in. It's not enough to kind of bite on. And this is what makes Proverbs 8 so interesting,

is that it doesn't seek to give us a definition of wisdom. It simply personifies wisdom and tells us what she does, which I think is amazing. So it defines wisdom by her actions. So today, let's learn from wisdom. Let's see how she draws us into that abundant life in Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit. How does that happen? Well, we can go back and I'm gonna repeat the last two lines from what I read before. This is verses four and five of Proverbs chapter eight. If you have a Bible, you can follow along. We're also gonna have the verses up here.

Four and five, to you, O men, I call, am I cry as to the children of man, O simple ones, learn prudence, O fools, learn sense. Okay, so what we see wisdom doing from the outset, the first thing wisdom doing is tempting us toward this abundant life, right? Tempting us toward that, learn sense, and learn prudence. And what wisdom doing is, it's interesting, the wording here, wisdom is not teaching people about abundant life, right? Wisdom is actually tempting us toward it, and here's the difference, right? When you see somebody's kid, right, let's just say it's your kid, and they're at bat, okay? So you have a child, they're at bat. They're in the batter's box playing a baseball game. What you cannot do as a parent, although you may want to, what you cannot do is swing the bat for them, right? You can't do it. You've taught them all that they need to know, hopefully.

And now it's their turn, and as it's their turn, they're learning timing, they're learning patience, right? And they're doing that through a lot of error, and a little bit of like a little bit of win, and a lot of error, okay? If you've ever seen a five-year-old swing a bat, you know what I'm talking about. And so you can't swing the bat for them. Wisdom, however, can. Wisdom is able to swing the bat with us. In other words, stepping out of the metaphor a little bit, wisdom gives us timing and patience in real time.

It actually has that for us. If we're gonna give into this abundant life, right, what we've really gotta understand is that we need to give into what I'm just gonna call Holy Spirit temptation. We need to give into Holy Spirit temptation. So wisdom personified, right, there's a couple of different theories as to what wisdom personified is, but it's at least enough for us to equate it with the Holy Spirit in the New Testament, okay?

And whenever we're talking about giving in to Holy Spirit temptation, I'm not gonna read it, but I just wanna reference it, it's Galatians 5. Galatians 5 is a very famous chapter because at the end of it, it talks about the fruit of the Spirit, right? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. It lists those fruit of the Spirit. But what you see in Galatians 5, a little bit before that, it's talking about how the Spirit and the flesh are work in us, right? And it talks about the Spirit tempting us toward these things and it also talks about the Spirit tempting us toward these things. In fact, that's what the fruit of the Spirit is, that's what abundant life is. It's the result of us following the temptation of the Spirit.

Okay, so how does this look? Real time. It's hard, this is hard, but I want you to follow me on this. You and I, every day, every day, have moments and they seem to come out of nowhere where you think about blessing someone, okay? You do, you think about encouraging a coworker, you think about helping a friend, you think about buying a small gift for somebody, you think about, you think about these things. I think about doing the dishes, right? Taking out the trash, you just think about those things, right, and what do we do with those things? Sometimes we act on them, but most times, we kind of blow it off, like, oh, I'll do it later. Oh, it's too hard to do. Oh, I don't know how they receive it. Oh, if I encourage that coworker, what would they think I was trying to do, you know, play politics, all this? And so we end up ignoring it. We end up blowing it off, okay?

But then let me ask you, what happens whenever you get tempted to do something bad? When you get tempted, really tempted, when you think of doing something bad, like really bad, you have that thought in your head, what do you do? You recoil in fear and shame. You think, oh, how could I even have thought of that? I can't believe I did it. The devil must be tempting me. The enemy must be, like, you know, kind of gunning for me, and we kind of recoil, and we go, oh, you know, and we think now, okay, now I better not mess up, right? We're kind of on high alert. Let me just tell you, when you have these thoughts of blessings, these thoughts where you're gonna bless somebody else, your mentality is like 90% of what you do next. And if your mentality was, okay, this is the Holy Spirit tempting me to do something, I guarantee it would change the amount of times you do something about it.

Because when you just think of blessing somebody, you can say, okay, that must be the Holy Spirit. That must be something I just have to do right now, in this moment. And you don't recoil in fear and dread, but it should get your attention and go, okay, this isn't just me having a good idea. This is the Holy Spirit tempting me toward something. And so when you have thoughts of blessing somebody, when you feel tempted by the Holy Spirit, do it.

Do it. That's where abundant life is waiting, on the other side of that, right? Do that. So wisdom, wisdom tempts us. The Holy Spirit kind of brings us into abundant life. What else, what else do we see in Proverbs? What else is wisdom doing? Look at verses six through 14, and I'm just gonna kind of bullet point these, because it's a lot to read. But in Proverbs eight, six through 14, we see that wisdom utters complete truth.

That wisdom, the goodness that wisdom gives is unparalleled. We see that there is prudent discretion in wisdom. In other words, wisdom knows when to stay and fight and when to retreat, knows when to turn right or when to turn left. There's prudent discretion. And look at 14, there's insightful counsel. Verses 15 and 16 really kind of give us this, the meat of kind of what's going on. It says, this is wisdom talking again, by me, by wisdom, kings reign and rulers decree what is just.

By me, princes rule and nobles, all who govern justly. What wisdom does is wisdom brings order, clarity, insight, justice. Wisdom allows for a timely word and a timely action. That's what wisdom does. It paves the way for those things. I'm gonna give you an illustration. Wisdom, let's just say you have a mom of three children. Wisdom tells that mom which of her children lied to her. Somebody stole a cookie, somebody broke something, something bad happened. And wisdom allows that mom some way, somehow, I still don't know. I'm married to one, I still don't know how they know. But they know, they know. They know which of their kids lied to them. So wisdom tells the mom that. But wisdom also tells the mom that she needs to go in grace and to confront that child in love.

I'm not saying it's perfect. Mom's not a guilt trip, a promise. Wisdom allows her to sniff out which child was lying but also to confront that child in grace and love. Let me just, although it might seem like I'm just straining in that here, let me break down that situation and tell you everything that's happening in that moment. When there are three children, one child is lied, the other two children know it, mom confronts that child in love in front of the other two children, okay? The children, all three of them, experience a wrong righted. That's really healthy for them to experience. They see that, they see something that was wrong, that was done, and it has been righted. It teaches children, remember, this is only one situation, it teaches children to respect authority. It teaches children to trust their mother when they've done something wrong, to love them.

What a great thing to learn. It displays conflict resolution to everybody in the family. And it even blesses her marriage, right? As those things are happening, as that house is kind of running, as the mom is kind of governing the children well, that overflows and a blessing for every other thing. And look, this is just one isolated incident, but these isolated incidents happen all the time. And when wisdom is applied to all of those situations, what happens is that wisdom, it allows wisdom to benefit everyone. It allows wisdom to benefit everyone. When you act in wisdom, many other people feel the effects that they might not know that they're feeling those effects, but they do, it benefits everybody. The problem is sometimes whenever we are in a particular crisis, or when we have a particular problem, or even when we have a particular opportunity, we forget that.

We get blinders on, and we only think about what is going through our own heads. We're only thinking about us. We're not thinking about the benefit of other people. We're not thinking about how other people are kind of taking us. We get these blinders on. And so in your particular crisis opportunity, or situation, or problem, when you actually need a timely word, wisdom is giving that timely word. This is your time, in that particular moment, to give in to the Holy Spirit of temptation and to listen to what he's saying. We are all into timely words before it's time. We like that. We'll read that all day long.

Little quips of wisdom, we're like, oh, that's interesting, oh, that's interesting, oh, that's interesting. But you know when it's not interesting? When 50 things are on fire and we're in charge. That's when it's not that interesting. We're not gonna sit down and read those things. But what the Holy Spirit is saying, what we see wisdom doing is allowing us to govern what we are over, allowing us to govern what we are over with a timely word and a timely action. You can't fake that. You can't be prepared enough for that. You have to take the situations as they come. The Lord knows that, the Holy Spirit knows that. And yeah, like you can, look, you can be wise. I'm not saying you can't prepare for any situation, but what I am saying is that in that particular crisis, what we need to do is we need to give in to the pull of the Holy Spirit. And we need to know that the Holy Spirit

wants to give us a timely word. The Holy Spirit is bringing about abundant life exactly in the midst of those things. And so I want you to remember, which it's really hard to remember this, but like when your boss is mad at you, when your kids are screaming, or either at you or at each other, when your spouse seems aloof, or when your spouse is upset at you, all of those situations, like when your blood pressure goes up and your clarity goes down, in those situations, that's when the Holy Spirit wants to cut through all of that noise, get above all that and go, hey, here's a timely word. Here's a timely action. Listen, I'm speaking in the midst of that. Wisdom is waiting to step in and lead us to abundant life.

What else? I see wisdom doing in Proverbs eight. Look at verses 18 and 19. It says, riches and honor are with me, enduring wealth and righteousness. My fruit is better than gold, even fine gold, and my yield is better than choice silver. So the fruit of wisdom is better than gold or choice silver. When we act in wisdom, it's better than those things. Look at eight, 20 and 21, next two verses.

I, wisdom, I walk in the way of righteousness in the paths of justice, granting an inheritance to those who love me and filling their treasuries. Okay, so we see inheritance and treasuries, and we're thinking money, instantly. That's what gets inherited, is money. That's what fills treasuries, is money. But the fruit of wisdom, remember, two verses before, fruit of wisdom is better than that. So what are we talking about here?

Although it could be a lot of things, because there are a lot of things better than money, what Proverbs eight seems to be pointing to is joy. Joy. We're gonna see why in a little bit. Many scholars kind of see this, and they say, yeah, the movement seems to be pointing to joy. Wisdom, wisdom allows you and I to enjoy good things. It allows us to enjoy, it enables us to enjoy good things. We see this all over Proverbs, Proverbs 12. Those who plan in peace have joy. Proverbs 21, justice is a joy to the righteous. Proverbs 17, children are a joy to parents most of the time. Okay, they are, they are a joy.

But this is the major theme of Proverbs, is that there is joy in doing these things that are good. There's this joy in this upright life. Some of you this season need to remember this. You need to hear this, you need to know this, you need to write this down. There is deep joy to be had in an upright life. Not perfect, not model citizen, not white picket fence, but an upright life. Being faithful and attentive to your family. There's rich blessing in the middle of that. There's rich blessing in just taking a walk with people that you love. There's rich blessing in a steady job. And look, I know it's 2023, and I know we're all excited about our careers and such, and we want the job that's perfect, and we got the best places to work, and all of it, look, there is deep and abiding blessing in having a job that pays the bills. A job that you can hang your hat on that is dignified.

There's deep blessing in that. It's not about how much money you make, it's not about who thinks what about your career, or where it ranks, or whatever. There's so much to be thankful for in a steady job. Just a steady job. When my wife and I pray, we pray at night, and every once in a while, she'll just pray this, and it just stabs me through the heart. She doesn't know it does, so don't tell her. She's not here. She's with the grade school, so don't tell her this, okay? It's our secret. Okay, good, you sound convinced. When we pray, when we pray, it stabs me through the heart, but she just simply says, Lord, thank you for a comfortable bed. I'm like, yeah, yes, yes, thank you for a comfortable bed.

Like, how hard is that to think of? You're in the bed, you're laying on the bed, you're feeling the great effects of a bed. And my wife just says that, and it cuts me to the core every time, because what I'm prone to is missing all of these, just these great things that are right in front of me, all these things that the Lord has built right in front of me. My assumption is that most of us have this problem, that we can't see what's in front of us, that we're just not thankful for just what's right there. We're too busy wanting extra, wanting more. Let's be thankful for that. And these are all the things that we celebrated at Thanksgiving and into Christmas, right? They're blessing, but it takes wisdom to see them as such. It takes wisdom to enjoy them. People who are not wise have the world and hate it. People that are wise have very little and enjoy it. My encouragement to you, just an idea,

but it was really helpful for our family. You just hang a sheet of paper, long sheet of paper, get some butcher paper or whatever, just legal paper, some poster-sized paper or something, and you just write it on top, you just say, I'm thankful for. And look, this is not like if you don't have little kids. This is not just for you with little kids, this is for everybody. I don't care if you're empty nester, I don't care if you live alone, I don't care, it doesn't matter. Put something on there and start to write things that you're actually thankful for. Encourage everybody in the house to write down things that they're actually thankful for. And what that will do is that will help you begin to acknowledge kind of what's around you and all of the abundance that the Lord has blessed you with. Abundant life, despite what the health and wealth

gospel preachers will say, abundant life isn't a big bank account. Abundant life is enjoying what you have. It's finding contentment. That's really hard to remember sometimes in this Christmas season. In verses 30 and 31, we see this joy, right? We see kind of what it's talking about. In the previous verses before verse 30, it was talking about how wisdom was there at creation. And so it says in verse 30, kind of picks up mid thought. Then, I was beside him like a master workman, and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world, and delighting in the children of man. Look, that's a lot of joy going on, okay? And this is at creation. This is at the beginning. So what's happening even at the beginning, right? You have the Father and the Son and the Spirit all in community with one another, all enjoying each other, and all looking ahead,

all seeing this world, all of us, and just taking joy in all of it. Wisdom delivers joy. And if you look, when you read Genesis 1 and 2, before the fall, how everything was created to be, there was Adam and Eve enjoyed working in the garden. They enjoyed their relationship with God. There was no shame, there was no guilt. And that is the life, that is the abundant life that we are called into. It's not perfect, but it looks a lot more like Genesis 1 and 2 than it does what we're living in today.

Wisdom delivers joy. And I wanna end with this one. It's, well, I'm gonna read a little bit more, but Proverbs 8, 32 through 34, it says, and now, O sons, listen to me, blessed are those who keep my ways. Hear instruction and be wise. Do not neglect it. Pay attention to verse 34. Blessed is the one who listens to me, watching daily at my gates, waiting beside my doors. Wisdom invites us into discovery. We don't need to walk in wisdom or with wisdom very long before we learn this, that there is no formula for following the Holy Spirit. There's no formula. If somebody says they have a formula for following the Holy Spirit, they're wrong. It's like somebody predicting the end of the world. As soon as they say it, they're wrong, okay? There is no formula for that. The reason there's no formula for making the Holy Spirit work in you is that, the first is that the Holy Spirit's already working

without your permission. So, I don't know what you're gonna do to coax Him, right? He's already at work, but the second reason is that the Holy Spirit always goes for the heart. It's always personal. It's always a journey for you toward what the Holy Spirit's calling you to do. And it's not, look, I realize that we have thousands of years of saints following the Holy Spirit. I'm not saying there's nothing to pick up, but what I am saying is you can't boil it down for a formula because it's always personal. Just like there's no formula for marriage or formula for a best friend. It's not, it's personal. It takes something from you personally. You have to give yourself to it.

This is why Jesus tells parables, right? Because in those parables, it's cryptic, and He's inviting people to discover what He's telling them. He's inviting people to discover more than that. He's inviting them to discover eternal life. So wisdom invites us into discovery. And this is the gospel. This is the gospel, right? That the gospel is to repent and believe and to walk in abundant life. You have to discover that you are a sinner. I'm a sinner too. We're all sinners. At every turn, we are left to our own devices. We're gonna be selfish. We're gonna shut everybody else out. We're gonna hog everything for ourselves. That's who we are. We are sinners, and we cannot save ourselves. We can't do it. That's a discovery, because sometimes in our world, it is very in vogue to say that really all you need to do is discover who you are on the inside.

All you gotta do is discover who you are on the inside, because inside there's a champion. Inside there's a winner. Listen, inside of us, there is nothing but sin. And I don't mean to be hopeless, but I don't wanna puff you up. Inside of you and me, right, inside all of us, inside of your children, we are all sinners who need grace. We need salvation from that. And you need to discover that at some point. If you go on thinking that you're perfect and don't need salvation, you're not gonna reach out for salvation, right? Does that make sense? Part of the discovery is discovering that you need to be saved. The other discovery, though, is the immense love and faithfulness and loyalty and rich, deep, abundant life that Jesus Christ wants to give to anyone who believes in Him, and anybody who follows Him. Jesus wants to give us that. He wants us to follow Him. And we need to discover Him in that.

We need to encounter Him in that. This is how Proverbs 8 ends, and I'm gonna call the band back up as I'm kinda working through some of this, but Proverbs 8 ends here with these two verses, 35 and 36. It says, it says, For whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from the Lord. But he who fails to find me injures himself. All who hate me love death. It's a very interesting way to end the chapter. This is what Proverbs 8 does. This is wisdom personified, and it really should just help us understand that the discovery that we are being invited into is very high stakes, right? This is not optional. If you wanna have some fun on the weekend, then try to discover wisdom. That's not what's there. What's there is, what's there is. When you discover wisdom, when you look for wisdom, you find life, and that if you ignore that, it is to your own injury, and that if you despise it, then you love death, right?

Then you're just going for something that is going to evaporate anyway, and when it's all said and done, you're not gonna have anything that you've lived for. You're not gonna have any abundant life that you've stepped in. You're not gonna have any legacy of faith. To walk in wisdom, to walk in this abundant life, it means to start really living now. Not just in eternity, but really living now. My incursion to you, we have a time of response at the end, right, where we stand, we sing. What I want you to consider as we're standing and singing, I want you to consider, what is wisdom calling you to do? You may have never given into that pull of the Holy Spirit,

but you might have been ignoring it for a long time, and you might be hobbling right now spiritually. My encouragement, I'm gonna be back there on those comfortable couches and chairs, those lamps back there. I'm gonna be back there. If any of you wanna come and talk, man, I would encourage you toward that. Even if you have questions, you get questions about joining our church, you can come back and talk with me about that. You got questions about whatever next step you gotta take, that's what I wanna help you do. Let's pray. Jesus, thank you for your wisdom. Thank you for calling us out into something better, into something deeper.

Lord, gear us up to enjoy the holidays, but gear us up to enjoy it in you. Help us to remember what you have done during this season and celebrate that, to walk in that abundance, to not just sprint and then be so fatigued by the end, be so drained by the end. Let's take it up. Lord, we need your help. What's your name that we pray? Amen. Would you please stand as we sing?