The Treasure of Wisdom

Justin studies with his 10-year old son about the treasure of wisdom from Proverbs 2. Watch how he works to make really valuable connections for his son in this episode.

Watch the video of this study at www.youtube.com/appianmedia

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Hi there, my name is Justin Dobbs, and this is listen, my children, I'm a husband, I'm a dad, and I'm learning to do what a lot of you are doing, one of the most difficult but most important things I'll ever do, bring up my children to follow the father. Over the next five episodes, we're going to keep walking through the first five chapters of Proverbs, you, me and our kids. Listen, my children podcast is made possible by a donation from the Oliver family, we're thankful for their generous support of Appian medius content. If you or your organization is interested in helping to fund content like this, please contact us through our website at Appian Media dot org. Now, today, my son Elijah is going to be joining us. Elijah is 10 years old. He loves structure and he's working all the time to make connections. We're going to listen in on a conversation that Elijah and I had in our living room in Proverbs two. So if you have a Bible, you want to turn there with us, be great as we talk about the treasure of wisdom. Ok, so we are talking about the Book of Proverbs, and I've already talked some with. Linden and Amos Angelilli about the book of Proverbs, what do you remember about the Book of Proverbs? Mostly it's just a book of wisdom telling you how to live your life. Well, some how to find wisdom, how to obey God correctly. And obeying God is good for us, right? That's part of it. What wisdom is to remember Proverbs one four seven. The fear of getting you to look at your Bible to the large VNU with knowledge. But fools despise wisdom instruction. Yeah. Yeah. So wisdom begins with the truest thing that we know, and that is that God is great, that he's awesome. And when he's the biggest and greatest and most awesome thing in our lives, then life makes sense and we see the world the way it really is. Everything good begins with it. Yeah, that's it. Everything good begins with a good way of saying it. Now, what I want to do with you is I want to talk about Proverbs Chapter two. You get the long section. We're going to talk all the way through this chapter. But what proverbs do you remember what a proverb is now with a book of proverbs is what a proverb is? No, I know. It's when you take two things and you lay them down beside each other. That was a parable. The word parable and the word proverb is actually it's the same word. This is where the same word that Jesus uses to talk about parables. It's the same word this used here, similar to our English high. A same. Maybe so. I think so, yeah, Jesus does it in a lot of his teaching jokes about the Kingdom of Heaven is like a tree or it's like a master. And so he knows about heaven and we know about earth. And so Jesus is able to talk about heaven and talk about earth so that we understand from earth the things about heaven. So he takes two things and lays them side by side. And Proverbs does that now in Proverbs after two, he's going to compare wisdom with treasure. So there are a few things here I want you to see about wisdom, about the fear of the Lord. OK, you ready? Let's get in there. So I want you to look at Proverbs two and can you read verses one through five? Get my son if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you making your ear attentive to wisdom, including your heart understanding. Yes. If you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding, if you seek it like silver and search for its hidden treasures, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. Great, perfect. So wisdom is a treasure. Now, when you're walking around outside and you're just going on your way, do you look down like, oh, there's a gold nugget and just put that in your pocket and like, oh, there's some rubies and put those in your pocket and you just only. Yeah. What does it take to get treasure. You have to search for and digging for it, mine for it and you sweat and get dirty and hard work and volunteers. Yes. Yeah. It's wisdom is a treasure that's found through hard work. It's hard work to get wise. Now, the treasure that we get, the wisdom that is the treasure that we're looking for. What is it in verse five? Look for it in verse five. Then you'll understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God, wisdom, the wisdom, the treasure that we find. The treasure that's going to be your life long pursuit, son. Is it growing understanding of how great an awesome God is? And the more you know about how awesome he is. The better your life will be, just the first thing is wisdom is a treasure, and and knowing how awesome God is, is that Treasury takes hard work to find it. But you got to work hard to get it. Here's the second thing. I'm going to look at verse six for the Lord gives wisdom from his mouth, some knowledge and understanding. He stores up sound wisdom for the upright. So do. The second thing that I want you to know about wisdom here is that while wisdom is a treasure that you work hard for. No matter how hard you work for wisdom, you can't get it unless God gives it. It's a treasure that he stores up and gives to the people who work for it. So look at this, he says, to store up treasure. And then he says, God's got this treasure store. Of wisdom, it was worth searching and we're working hard for it, God says, OK, you want to know more about me, you want to understand how great an awesome I am. But the people who really want to know God, he loves to show who he is to them. And so he's giving himself as that treasure. He's giving the fear, the Lord, to people who really want to know him best. Second thing is God gives wisdom, people who are looking for it. Now, what some of the work that you might have to do to know the fear of the Lord and no wisdom to make you make mistakes. Sometimes we make mistakes. Now, does that mean you go looking to make mistakes? You know that those are mistakes. Those are those are intentional problems. There was an accident, but when we make mistakes, we want to learn from them. What's another way to learn wisdom, to dig deep, to talk to other older people? Ok, your father. Mom. Mm hmm. Elders, other people who know God. Look, what's a really good way to go? Do read God's word. Yeah. And so as we dig down, there's there's a God on the other side of this who's sitting on the other side of this word, who's giving it to us. That's the second thing. Now, the third and last thing we're talking about here in Proverbs two. Look, at the end of year seven, he is a shield to those who walk in integrity. Mm hmm. And Treasurer, where do you put it, like just in a safe house or the safe and it is really valuable, you might even like hire some guards to protect it, right? Yeah, because you want that treasure to be protected. Now, this treasure doesn't need protecting. This treasure protects the people who have it. Because he says it's a shield, he is a shield to those who walk in integrity, verse eight, guarding the paths of justice and watching over the way of his saints. Then you will understand righteousness and justice and equity, which means being fair. And every good path or wisdom will come into your heart and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul. When you store a wisdom in your heart, it sort of acts like a treasure that protects the person who owns it. This is no ordinary treasure, no ordinary treasure. It's a really valuable treasure. Now, one of the the most dangerous things it will protect you and me from. Look at verse 16. So you will be delivered from the forbidden woman, from the adulterous with her smooth words before sex, the companion of her youth and forgets the covenant of her God for her house sinks down to death and her paths to the departed nun who go to her come back. Nor do they regain the paths of life. So one of the most dangerous things that the treasure of wisdom will protect us from. It's from things and people who look really attractive, who look really good and really nice, they say, come with me and I'll give you all this pleasure. And wisdom helps us to see through that and go, whoa, that's that's a trap that's deadly because where does her house sink down to? And she'll be all night where she'll what she'll. Miskelly, help is where the dead are, in other words, you go after her, you're going to die. Not a good plan and but wisdom when you have it helps you to see those problems and to stay away from them. And it's not just like bad women, but anything in life that you think, oh, that'll be really nice to have. I'm going to disobey God in order to get there. Usually there's no way if it's if it's an OK thing, a lot of things that we want, God wants us to have and Proverbs helps us to see the wise wants the things that are good to have and the right ways to get there. So treasure work hard to get it, Prescott to give it and then let it protect you. The things that are not good for you. I don't we pray about that real quick. Father, thank you for this time and your word to learn about the treasure of knowing you and fearing you, of treating you like the great and awesome one that you are. God, we love you and we know that you love us. We know that you want to give us wisdom to teach us the right way to go and please be with Elijah and protect him in the way that you want him to walk, protect him in his life. And father, please protect all of us who look for your wisdom, guide us and keep us away from evil that would tear us apart and destroy us. Although there are things in this world that look good, but you give us insight to see through these things and to see the right way to go. Thank you for your wisdom. Thank you for Jesus who saves us from our sins and keeps us from the evil one in his name. We pray. Amy. So thanks for joining me and Alija for that conversation in Proverbs to wisdom is a treasure, and God loves to give wisdom to those who are working for it. It's the treasure of knowing how great and awesome he is. So maybe it's something you can talk about with your family is where whereas God help them in their lives. Where have you found that God has given you wisdom? Maybe you could ask your family members about that and have a conversation about that. And and as parents, there are a few things about this conversation I'd like to to walk through with you, some things that maybe we can learn together. The first of which is this is you'll notice Elijah and I are building on past conversations. We've memorized scripture together as a family. We used to do that in our evening Bible studies. We would make memorizing a passage just a part of our regular Bible reading. And so it would be the fear of the Lord and they would respond. The figure of the Lord is beginning of knowledge is the beginning of knowledge, and we would just work through that until we could all say it together. Recently we've been doing something really fun where Lindsays sort of taken that on. I pass it off to her to do in the morning with the children after breakfast. So I don't know what your daily routine is, but having some kind of routine where you can build a library and your minds of of scripture, you can recall it, it's digested. It's part of your makeup as part of your thinking. And so to have God's word ready at any time is really special. So hearing Elijah, I know that sometimes the kids are a little camera shy, so they're not able to recount it in the face of a camera, but they know it. It was just recently a brother passed away brother in Christ, and I think it was Jubilee. And she responded with Psalm 56, verse eight, about God putting our tears in a bottle. She was prompted for that. She just knew that passage. She thought it was appropriate. And so a four year old is counseling us with God's word. So so build on your your past experiences together. Keep building on your past discussions. The connections are there, even if not every connection that your children make is making sense to you. Not everything Elijah said in this one did I get. But I tried. And so we want to build on that now. The second thing is to limit yourself. And I'm talking to me here, just because Elijah can handle longer bits of Bible instruction doesn't mean that I need to cram it all in. Sometimes I put him to the test. He's ten. He's a bright young man, and I think you can handle this much. But it wasn't too long ago, though, that he said, I think I'll ask mom. She'll give me a shorter answer. I've got to be careful that I don't try to give him too much all at once. So do recognize that your children may be able to do more than you think that they can, but keep it down to those bite size pieces. Back with Jubilee. I kept it short and simple. We only looked at seven verses. Here's Elijah. We looked at a whole chapter. So maybe that's useful. Maybe that's appropriate. But maybe you can take it in smaller pieces than that. And that would be useful to the third thing here. I would encourage you to to share your emotions with your children. The Bible is an emotional book, and I don't mean that the Bible only accesses us through our emotions, but God does address our emotions. And if we read God's word and we don't feel anything, we're probably not doing it right. So it's OK to let your children see that you feel strongly about what you're reading. I wasn't planning on getting emotional in my conversation with Elijah, the conversation that you and I just listened in on. But I did because as I was teaching him, I was thinking about the things that I was teaching I needed to. And your children are going to latch onto the things that they see you feel strongly about. They want to feel strongly about those things. Do they think those are things that are right to feel strongly about? So let your children feel with you. And then lastly, have fun with it. Elijah and I joke around a lot and sometimes I have to pull him back from joking around too much. My wife would probably say that I push him to joke around more than I should, but you can be reverent toward God and enjoy worshipping God as a family together at the same time. So enjoy your time as a family serving God. A family that serving got together is a joyful family. So let me encourage you to to enjoy this time. As you're reading God's word together, your kids will learn to expect an enjoyable conversation in the Bible if they know that you enjoy it. Otherwise, it can become sort of a routine that they they dread, make it a happy time. Now, next time, we're going to be having a discussion with Alija and Linden together, if it's just one on one, that's a certain way that you can tailor a conversation. But next time we'll be looking at how to have a conversation with multiple children at different levels, all at the same time.