Bible Recap Week 24

This week, Pastor Eric takes us into the book of Proverbs, where wisdom isn't just something we know—it's something we live. In a world full of opinions, quick fixes, and endless advice, Proverbs reminds us that true wisdom begins with reverence for God and is revealed in the choices we make every day.

Wisdom is more than knowledge. It's learning to listen, discern, and apply God's truth to our relationships, words, decisions, and priorities.

As you listen, consider:

•  Where are you seeking wisdom right now? 
•  Are your daily choices reflecting God's truth or the world's advice? 
•  Is there an area of your life where you know what is right, but haven't acted on it? 
•  Who are you allowing to influence your thinking and direction? 

God doesn't just want us to be informed—He wants us to be transformed. Join us as we discover how the timeless wisdom of Proverbs can guide our everyday lives and help us walk in God's best.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 1:03

So you can live like Jesus. Love like Jesus. I I love spending time in the Word with you like this. So let's get started. Hey, Water's Edge family. Uh thanks for listening again today. As a church, uh, we are beginning a journey through one of the most practical and profound books in all of Scripture, uh, the book of Proverbs. As Bible recap readers, we're uh finishing up, uh, mostly finishing up the book of Proverbs and have been there this week. Um beginning this Sunday, um, we're gonna be uh looking at different passages of Scripture in Proverbs and uh the launching a new sermon series entitled uh A Summer in Proverbs. I'm excited about it. I've been studying uh this week, and uh um but before we begin this series, I wanted to spend a few minutes not only just for Bible recap folks, but also maybe for some other congregational members that are uh um listening today, uh thinking more about the sermon series than uh Bible recap. Um this is one of the most important books in Scripture because it it speaks of the importance of gaining wisdom. We live in an age overflowing with information, and yet we starve for wisdom. We have more knowledge available to us than any generation in history, and it's doubling at the speed of light, it seems. Um I literally on my um on my iPad or in my computer, I can log, or even on my phone, I can log into my Kindle library, and I have an entire library um of books that I have purchased. Um I have Audible, which I have you know many, many books that I've purchased to listen to. Um there are uh programs like Logos that I have belonged to for uh probably 20 years of ministry, and I have volumes and volumes of information at my fingertips. Yet, despite all of our information, many people uh feel anxious and fragmented and uncertain um about so many things on how to live. The problem is we don't lack knowledge. The problem is that knowledge alone cannot tell us what kind of people we ought to become. Knowledge alone does not help us necessarily with some of the most important life's questions life questions, and that's why uh that's where Proverbs enters the conversation. The book of Proverbs is not primarily interested in making us smarter, it's interested in making us wise. And wisdom, biblically speaking, is the God-given skill of living faithfully in God's world. The opening verses of Proverbs, uh, which we'll be looking at this coming Sunday, tells us exactly what the Bible is about, or the book is about. For gaining wisdom and instruction, for understanding words of insight, for receiving instruction and prudent behavior. I love the word prudent, behavior, doing what is right, just, and fair. Wisdom is not just intellectual achievement. Wisdom is not just learning a book uh or reading a book. It's wisdom is learning how to live well before God in his world. It's learning how to speak, it's learning how to listen, it's learning how to handle money, it's learning how to build relationships, it's it's about navigating conflict, um, it's about the importance of working, uh, how to exercise self-control, um, how to pursue righteousness in just an ordinary life. One of the things I appreciate about C.S. Lewis and his writings, and and uh he in his writings, and then even in the Chronicles of Narnia, um especially, he just he models this insistence that Christianity is concerned not only with isolated actions, but with the formation of character. Christianity is about a transformed character. C.S. Lewis often reminds us that every choice that we make shapes us, every habit that we have bends us towards becoming the kind of person either that God wants or that God doesn't want. In mere Christianity, Lewis writes that every time you make a choice, you are turning the central part of yourself into something a little different than it was before, with every choice. That insight fits beautifully with the book of Proverbs. Um The Sages of Israel, uh Solomon, who who penned most of Proverbs, understood that life is not simply a collection of just you know random decisions, but life is a path. Again, uh Proverbs speaks of a path or a road or speaking of the way. There is a way of wisdom, there is a path of righteousness, there is a path of destruction. The question Proverbs continually asks is which road are which road are we walking on? Notice that wisdom in Proverbs continually is saying, uh examine the way that you are walking. It's not presented merely as information. Wisdom is a way of life that we need to embrace. Wisdom is often personified in in uh Proverbs towards the middle section in the end, as a uh woman, as a woman that is calling out into the streets, inviting people to follow her. Um, it's it's like a mother uh saying to her children, please come and listen. I know what I'm talking about. I'm not trying to make your life miserable, I'm trying to teach you uh more than knowledge. I want you to learn from my experience. Um wisdom is is uh pursuing us in that in the the uh woman of wisdom. God is God does not hide wisdom from us. As a matter of fact, he says in James, if any of you lack wisdom, you should ask God, who wants to give it to you generously. He's calling us into it. Walter Brugeman, one of my favorite Old Testament scholars, um, describes wisdom as Israel's reflection on how life works under God's good ordering of creation. That's important because Proverbs assume something foundational to the reader. The universe is not chaos, because the universe belongs to God. Creation, God's creation, has moral shape and spiritual structure because it comes from the hand of the wise creator. Proverbs teaches us that wisdom begins by recognizing that reality, real true reality, is God's reality. That's why foundational verses, and again we'll look at this Sunday morning, of verse 7, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. But fools despise wisdom and instruction. You see, it's the fear of the Lord. That phrase can can sound strange to modern ears because fear is seen as terror or cowering. Um, but this type of the fear of the Lord is reverent awe. It's it's recognizing who God is and who we are not. That's the fear of God. It means understanding that God is creator and we are creatures. It means acknowledging that God's wisdom far exceeds our own. C. S. Lewis once observed that humility is not thinking less of yourself, but it's thinking of yourself less. I think that was C. S. Lewis. I think it is. The fear of the Lord creates precisely that kind of humility. Um it frees us from thinking that we are in the center of our life, that we control our life, that we're in charge of our life. Um it puts God in the center of our reality. And according to Proverbs, that humility is the starting point of all wisdom. That this is particularly challenging in our cultural moment because we are constantly encouraged to uh trust your heart or trust your instincts or follow your heart or you know what are you what do you think you should do? Yet Proverbs repeatedly warns us about self-reliance upon what we think, um, because self-reliance can be detached from God. A wise person not only trusts the knowledge and things that they've learned, but they attach themselves to what God's created order teaches us. Um one of our favorite verses in Proverbs is trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight or direct your paths. Umtice the contrast in that. We are to trust in the Lord. We're not to lean on our own understanding. The issue isn't that our understanding is bad, we just don't lean on our understanding, we trust in the Lord. Um it's it's saying that our understanding, our human understanding, is insufficient without God. Wisdom begins when we stop pretending that we have to have all the answers or that we know everything. Wisdom begins when we are able to sit with God and say, God, what do you think? What are you teaching me? Um, for Bible recap people, we know that we look at scriptures and we continually say, Where is God in this? One of the recurring themes that we'll look at this summer in Proverbs is the contrast between the wise person and the foolish person. When Proverbs speaks about a fool, it isn't describing somebody that you know has a low IQ. Biblical folly is folly is not intellectual deficiency, biblical folly is moral and spiritual stubbornness. The fool in Proverbs is the person who uh refuses correction, uh rejects instruction, um becomes his own authority, like you know, hey, I'll I'll interpret this law because I I am all knowing. The fool knows everything and learns nothing. Um I was I I was working on something this week and I was talking to an attorney and I thought that I understood something, and the attorney said, uh, Pastor Eric, you need to concentrate on being a pastor. You're not a lawyer. And I thought, but but I think I understand it. He said, Well, you're not understanding it correctly. Um the wise person remains teachable. Uh you you don't you don't approach things like I was and say, Well, I I understand this. Um I've never been to school, I've never taken a law test, I've never even really studied law. I think I wrote a paper on contractual law in high school. Um don't pretend like you know the law. Um a wise person listens. A wise person listens to an attorney, a wise person receives correction when when uh when they're given correction. A wise person understands that um to grow it requires it requires humility. Um so many uh I talk with pastors all the time, and so many young pastors want to know um, you know, how how do you get to this point, or how can you get to, you know, uh different things in ministry and serving in ministry and all that. And they want to know, you know, what should they do? And and the answer that I give so often is um it requires humility. Just just be humble and trust God to direct your paths. And if that if that is a a church that's growing, if that's a church, a larger church, if that is serving in different types of positions or whatever, um don't force it. Just just allow that to happen. Tell God that you're willing to. Um one of my favorite proverbs is uh 12.1. Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but whoever hates correction is stupid. I mean, that's just putting it right out there. That's remarkably direct, right? It reveals a profound spiritual truth, though. Our willingness to receive correction says a great deal about our spiritual maturity. As disciples of Jesus, we would we should be people who remain teachable throughout our entire life. And I have to say that I'm probably more uh teachable today at uh 60, almost 62 years old, than I was at 30 years old. Um, because at 30 I felt like I knew a lot more, and today I realize how much I don't know. Um, Proverbs matters because it helps us understand that spirituality um is really walking with God uh through a course of time and learning from experience from from Him. Um Proverbs uh brings life, uh especially our life with Christ, into ordinary moments of everyday life. Um simple moments like like the one with the attorney that I was just mentioning. Many of it's many of the Proverbs that we'll look at deal with topics that that seem um incredibly practical. Uh throughout the summer, we'll talk about our words, our speech, our friendships, our relationships, our uh how we work, our marriage, um uh sex, parenting, finances, integrity, how to make decisions. In other words, Proverbs refuses to separate our spiritual life from how we live everyday life. And I just say, Amen. I that's why I'm so excited about this series. Um the sages understand that faithfulness is demonstrated not merely in dramatic moments, but really in ordinary habits of everyday life. The God of Scripture, our creator, the the one, the centerpiece of our life, the center of our joy. That God is not only present in great worship experiences or when all of us are singing on a Sunday morning, He is present in conversations around the dinner table. He is present in business transactions, he's present in relationships, he's present in our words and our word. Um Proverbs reminds us that life and discipleship happen in very ordinary places. Um it can happen in a gym, it can happen at at uh uh happy plays or Maddie's or whatever your favorite diner is, chili's. Um we we we need to read Proverbs, study Proverbs. Uh there's 31, by the way, so you can read one every every day of the month if you have 31 days in the month. Um but read Proverbs through through the lens of Jesus Christ or uh read Proverbs, always looking for what God is teaching us. This is critically important. It it if we're not careful, Proverbs can kind of sound like a um like a self-help uh book. Um it's not self-help literature, it's wisdom literature. Do the right things and life will go well. That's that's kind of like um uh almost um it's a it's uh you don't read Proverbs like it's a promise. You read you read Proverbs as um if you do these things in God's created world, normally or generally speaking, this is how things will go. Um if you follow wisdom, everything will work out. But scripture as a whole teaches really uh a more nuanced picture because in in in the wisdom literature we have uh the book of Job, and Job was a wise man, but he's he uh still suffered. Um and so in in uh uh in Job's life there were injustices done by by others, by his friends, um, and just by circumstances in life. Um so it's Proverbs, as you read Proverbs, they're not it's not teaching us promises that we um hold that that we hold on to. They're they're general uh truths that by following God in this manner manner, generally speaking, this is what this is what will happen. There they're patterns of God that have that are woven into his creation. Um we uh we uh we read Proverbs prayerfully. Um I would encourage you as you read them, but don't rush through them. Don't don't rush to finish. A Proverbs is a Proverbs is not like a uh a textbook or a book that we read. It's it's almost more like a seed. You know, just take take one a day. Read a chapter slowly. And if you don't get through the end of the chapter, it doesn't matter. Uh read, reflect on on like the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The in other words, having God in proper position, proper position and and just embracing who he is, and then inviting him to show you uh true wisdom. The fear of the Lord, it's the beginning of wisdom. So we reach wisdom by by uh having God in his proper place in our life. And then I would say, secondly, you know, you read it prayerfully, but secondly, I would identify one area where God is inviting you to grow in wisdom. Um maybe it's maybe uh God wants to grow you in uh the way you handle money or uh relationships, or um, maybe it's your speech, or um maybe it's your ability to to learn from others. Um ask God to where wisdom needs to take deeper root. And then thirdly, I would say uh wisdom begins with worship. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and uh and the best way to fear the Lord is being in that position of worship before wisdom um it becomes a uh it's it's before wisdom um is about technique, it's it's about relationship, it's about having God in his proper place and having a deeper trust in that. The invitation to Proverbs is not just simply, hey, let's get smart together. It's it's let's draw near to God. And the closer we come to God, the God of wisdom, the wiser our lives become. I'm excited about this uh journey through Proverbs all summer long. Um, I believe God has a lot to teach us this summer, and as we learn together what it means to walk the path of wisdom. Um, so grace and peace to you, Water's Edge family. I will see you Sunday as we begin a summer in Proverbs. God bless you. Thanks so much for listening to the Water's Edge Bible recap. I look forward every week to walking in the Word with you. You can find more information about Water's Edge Church at www.watersedge.faith. And you can listen to our weekly message on any platform under the Water's Edge website or by downloading the Water's Edge app.