Wisdom: What It Is And Where To Find It | Weekend Sunday Service | Josiah Smith

A message by Pastor Josiah Smith on Proverbs 1:1-7

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Transcript

Losing Things And Growing Frustration

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Tell me if you can relate to this. Have you ever just randomly one day remembered that you needed something really specific that six months prior you put in a certain location or thought you did for that very moment? And then when you go to that location that you thought you put this thing in to remember six months later, and in fact is not there that are happening to you guys, or is that just me? Um I feel like that happens to me. There's probably it feels like there's an annual just humbling that the Lord does in my life. Um, when I suddenly, for whatever reason, it's always something so specific. It's like some random tax document that I need from five years ago or something like that. That I just I I I thought I put it in a certain location. And so then I start the the search, right? You know what I'm talking about, the search where you've got a little bit of huffing and puffing in your in your heart, maybe in your lungs, and and eventually, you know, you you get so frustrated. And I say you I get so frustrated. Um I start just doing the same sort of circuit. You know, you've got four places the junk drawer, the closet, under the bed, and your garage. And you just kind of do the circuit again and again and again, and you start thinking to yourself, well, maybe I've I didn't, maybe I didn't look thorough, thoroughly enough. So you go back to the closet and you look in the same spot that you looked at last time, and it's still not there. Surprise of all surprise. And you go back to the junk drawer and it's still not there, and again and again and again. Anyone in here? Is that just me? Okay, that happens uh to me quite often. Not no, sometimes, not not often, but sometimes it's be you know, I won't go there. Wisdom. That's what we're talking about today. Wisdom. Um that pursuit, when you're looking for something that you need that you can't find, you get really frustrated. At least I do. And sometimes that that that can grow in my heart, and I I can just get really kind of huffy and puffy around the house. And and my wife knows he's he's gotta be he's gotta be looking for something that he hasn't looked for in three years, but now suddenly needs uh that that whole process is so frustrating. I need it. Where uh is it? That's you know, the the worst part of searching for something really is the frustration that builds as you check location after location and don't find it. I mean, that's the whole idea. Uh, you you can't find it, and it's frustrating. I I hate searching for things and looking in all the wrong places. I hate that. It's one of Josiah's top five hates in this world looking for something and looking in all the wrong places. Now, when it comes to searching for wisdom, today we're kind of launching into just a brief study, both in July and August, kind of summer in the Proverbs, in the search for wisdom. And I know experientially, every single person in this room desires wisdom. You recognize, hopefully, even intuitively, that you need wisdom. You need wisdom in so many different ways on a day-to-day basis. So, in that pursuit, when it comes to searching for wisdom, we are often prone to searching for it in all the wrong places. We we can tend to search for it. Let me give you just two examples. We can search for it in ourselves, honestly. Sometimes we can think that our experience, we can think that our education, we can think sometimes maybe we don't have experience or education. We just think we're great at everything. And and we think that we have the wisdom within ourselves to live a godly life or to make a godly decision. And we search for it sort of in ourselves, or or even more commonly, I think we search for it through worldly channels. Worldly channels that might even seem sort of biblically adjacent, but but we're looking uh to secular authorities to to have kind of a wisdom that we feel comfortable that shapes our lives and our decisions and our thinking and our parenting and the way that we go about our jobs, and we we search for wisdom either in ourselves or in the world, in all kinds of different ways that are misplaced. And here's the kicker in our foolishness, we fail to see how looking for wisdom in all the wrong places, if not immediately, inevitably leads to frustration. It leads to a growing sense of it's not where I thought it would be, it's not where I remembered I put it. And so we often grow content with whatever we find in the corner that looks like wisdom but actually isn't the real thing. Here's my goal this morning. I want you to know with great confidence what wisdom is and where you can go to find it. I want you to skip out on Josiah's top five frustrations in life and not look for something in the wrong place. I want you to skip out on that. I want you to know that the Bible tells you in no uncertain terms exactly where you can find wisdom. And the good news is that it doesn't move. God doesn't put it in a different drawer and forget where he put it. It's always in the same spot, and you can always go to that same spot to find it again and again and again. So this morning I want you in Proverbs 1, I want you to see in Proverbs 1 what wisdom is and where you can go to

Why We Chase Wisdom Wrong

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find it. So if you've got your Bibles, please go there. Proverbs 1. I'll read for us verses 1 through 7. It says this the Proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel. To know wisdom and instructions. So if you ever asked, well, what's the book of Proverbs all about? Well, here it is in this this introduction, this prologue to the book. To know wisdom and instructions. These are Proverbs recorded from Solomon, the son of David. He's a king of Israel. He made this famous request to the Lord for wisdom rather than riches. He's considered the wisest of all kings at this time, to know wisdom and instruction, to understand words of insight, to receive instruction in wise dealing, in righteousness, justice, and equity, to give prudence to the simple, knowledge and discretion to the youth. Let the wise hear and increase in learning, and the one who understands obtain guidance, to understand a proverb and a saying, the words of the wise and their riddles, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction. Now, if we're gonna be talking about wisdom, what it is, and where to find it, I want to just begin with the with a working definition that we'll return to both today and in the future weeks that we spend in Proverbs. Now, this definition is not original to me. It was one of my professors at Cedarville, but I thought it's just been helpful. It stuck with me uh over the years, and I want to share it with you this morning. Wisdom, let's define it this way, is skilled living in God's created order. When you think about what wisdom is and what you're seeking to pursue, wisdom is skilled living in God's created order. And I want you to see that in the text. We'll get to that. I want to prove that to you from Proverbs, but just think of it: skilled living in God's created order. So we would affirm, hopefully, you affirm, that what the Bible says about God being the creator of the world, we would believe that. God is the creator of all things. And because we affirm that God is the creator of all things, it would logically follow that if he created all things, he had a specific intention. He had a specific design. In other words, God did not create haphazardly, he did not create sort of willy-nilly, he had a plan, he had an intention, and he had a purpose. And so wisdom is understanding that reality, that God is your creator, that he's not just your creator, he's the creator of all things, and that because he's the creator of all things, he has a specific intention, he has a specific design. And so wisdom is growing and understanding that. It's living skillfully in the world that God has created. And to live skillfully in the world that God has created, you have to understand the way in which God created the world and his purpose and his intentions and why he created the world the way that he did. And that's what wisdom is. It's skilled living. And it does require skill to navigate this world. It requires skill to navigate the relationships, it requires skill to parent well, it requires skill to be a faithful worker that honors the Lord. It requires skill to do all of these things. So it's skilled living in God's created order. And that's our working definition. And you'll see that as we go through even one through seven here of chapter one. But here's the the next question: that's the definition, skilled living in God's created order. Where

Fear Of The Lord Defined

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do we go to get that? Where do we go to grow in that, to find that, to understand it? What is the source of wisdom? Well, look back with me in verse seven. It says, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Now, in other parts of Proverbs, and even some of the other wisdom literature, like Job as an example, or other places that we see this whole idea of the fear of the Lord. Sometimes it's even defined as the fear of the Lord is wisdom. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. So this is what the scriptures are saying the fear of the Lord is where you are going to go to find knowledge, where you are going to go to find wisdom. Think about it this way: what the alphabet is to reading, what musical notes are to songs, what numbers are to mathematics, the fear of the Lord is to gaining wisdom. If you want to grow and skilled living in God's created order, if you want to be skillful and not sort of bumble around in this life, stumbling over everything to and fro, you got to recognize that the source of this, where you're going to need to go, is the fear of the Lord. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. And again, what the alphabet is to reading, musical notes are to songs, numbers are to mathematics, the fear of the Lord is to gaining wisdom. In other words, without the fear of the Lord, you will not gain biblical wisdom. You might grow in experience, life experience. You might be able to recognize certain patterns about human tendencies and the way that the world works, but that's not true biblical wisdom as it's defined here. Because without the fear of the Lord, there is no wisdom. That's why he goes on and says, Fools, the fool says in his heart, there is no God. Fools despise wisdom and instruction. So the source, that the fountainhead of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. Now, what does it mean to fear the Lord? Let me put it to you this way, very simply, to fear the Lord is to recognize God's character and respond rightly. To recognize who God is, his steadfast love, his holiness, his faithfulness, his power, to recognize who God is as the creator of the world and to respond in worship. I mean, that's really what the fear of the Lord is. To respond by revering, trusting, worshiping, obeying, and serving him. That's what the fear of the Lord is. So, in order to get and gain wisdom, you have to rightly understand who God is according to how he's revealed himself in his word and rightly respond in worship. You recognize this is who he is, this is his character, this is who I am, in light of who he is, therefore I will respond in worship, in trust, in obedience, and in service to him. That's really ultimately the fear of the Lord. And in that sense, the Proverbs makes it clear that wisdom is impossible without God. Biblical wisdom is impossible without God. And if you try to cut God out of this equation, you will be like Josiah looking for the tax document in all the wrong places. You're gonna be looking in it in places that you will not find it and you will grow frustrated. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Wisdom is impossible without God.

God As Source And Giver

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Point number one, I want you to understand that God is the source and giver of wisdom. Now notice how this is phrased. He is both the source and the giver. He's the source of wisdom, he's the fount of wisdom, and he also freely gives wisdom. The scriptures tell us that with wisdom, in wisdom, God creates the world. In fact, we'll look at a passage in a second in Proverbs chapter 8, but with wisdom, God creates. With wisdom, God orders the world that he creates. With wisdom, God operates the world that he creates. And with wisdom, God sustains the world that he creates. If you're in Proverbs, flip over to chapter 8. I want you to see this. Don't take my word for it. With wisdom, God creates, he orders, he operates, he sustains. Proverbs 8, verses 22 through 31. I want you to see how the wisdom is personified and the way that wisdom speaks of itself in relation to God. Verse 22 says, The Lord possessed me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old. So at the beginning of his work, wisdom is present. This is said in a poetic way, but really this is just trying to communicate that in wisdom, through wisdom, with wisdom, God created the world. And that goes back to what we just said. He doesn't just create haphazardly, he does it wisely, with an intention, with a purpose. The Lord possessed me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old. Ages ago, I was set up at the first, before the beginning of the earth. When there were no depths, I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water, before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth, before he had made the earth with its fields, or the first of the dust of the world, when he established the heavens, I was there, when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command. When he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him, wisdom says, like a master workman with skill, and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world, and delighting in the children of man. Proverbs makes it clear that wisdom is the means by which God does everything. Every decision, every action of God is wise, is exactly what it ought to be. And in fact, it's not just what it ought to be, it accomplishes the intention that God intends when he does something. His plans are never thwarted, they're never foiled. He does it in wisdom, and and he does it exactly how it ought to be done, even through creation of the world. He creates, he orders, he operates, he sustains in and through wisdom. And so, in that sense, you cannot have wisdom apart from God. God is the source of wisdom, he's the source, if we're going to use the word here in Proverbs 1:7, of all knowledge. And of course, this makes sense. If God did not create, we would not exist. Where would our knowledge of anything come from if God did not create us? If God did not create, we would not exist. And if God did not reveal the creation, the ordered universe, his design and his intention, we would not know. And many people do not know. If he did not create, we wouldn't exist. If he didn't reveal, we wouldn't understand. And if God did not speak, we would not put the pieces together. We wouldn't. So in other words, because God created, that's what it says in Proverbs 8, Genesis 1. I mean, all throughout the Bible, because God created, there is a design, there is an order. There is a specific way that things operate. Because God revealed, there is a way to know that design and to know that order. And because God spoke, we can grow in understanding that design in order, ultimately through relationship with Jesus Christ. Let's see how that connects to the fear of the Lord. The fear of the Lord is rightly understanding God's character, who he is, and rightly responding in worship. What is the most pronounced way to do that according to the scriptures? Well, it's to rightly see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ and respond in faith, repentance in faith, believing in him, trusting in him, and following him. Because God spoke, we can grow in understanding all of these things, the design, the order, the intention. In fact, Paul even refers to Jesus as the wisdom of God in 1 Corinthians 1, 22 through 24. It says, For Jews demand signs and Greek, Greeks seek wisdom. But we preach gen, we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles. But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of God. In order to rightly fear the Lord, you have to recognize who He has said what He has said about His Son, who His Son is, what His Son has accomplished. That's what the fear of the Lord is rightly understanding who God is, what He has provided in His Son, Jesus Christ, and responding in worship through putting your faith in Christ. I mean, this is why we've been studying Hebrews the last couple months as a church. Hebrews 1, 3 says, He is the radiance, Jesus. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature. And he upholds the universe by the word of his power. That's what we're talking about. Jesus. See, he is uh said to be the wisdom of God. This is what we are asking the Lord for, for wisdom that helps us to live skillfully in his created order. And we recognize that God is both the source and the giver of wisdom. Without the Lord creating, without the Lord revealing, we wouldn't have any idea what any of this means or any of significant way to navigate it skillfully.

Four Building Blocks Of Wisdom

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Now, as we think about pursuing wisdom, we need to we need to know what specifically we are asking God for. What are the different sort of components of wisdom that we see outlined here in verses one through seven? Point number two, I want you to recognize the different components that make up wisdom. Recognize the different components that make up wisdom. Now I'm just going to talk about a few here that we see directly in this text. There are certainly more, but in Proverbs 1, 1 through 7, I think we see some different components that are laid out to help us better understand what it is that we're pursuing when we pursue wisdom. And I want you to see that, to recognize that. To know wisdom and instruction, verse four, to give prudence to the simple, knowledge and discretion to the youth. We want to grow in our knowledge. Think of it this way facts, um, truth, things that involve both the head and the heart. In order for us to grow in wisdom, we have to recognize that there are things that we need to know. There are things that we need to know. And the good news is that God has told us and revealed to us those things that we need to know in His Word. So a part of growing in wisdom is growing in our knowledge, our knowledge of the Word. That's why we put such a premium here at Compass of reaching teaching and training. And we want to teach the whole counsel of God's word because there are things that you need to know in order to grow in wisdom. There are things that God has said that you need to know. You need to grow in your knowledge of his word. You need to grow in your knowledge of his character. And that's a part of the pursuit of both the fear of the Lord and the wisdom that it produces. You need to know what God has said and what God has revealed. That's part of the whole intention here: to know wisdom, to get our minds around it, to give prudence to the simple knowledge and discretion to the youth. We don't want to be ignorant about the things of the Lord. We don't want to ignore what God has said and spoken in his word. So the first component, we just need to know things. We need to know what God has said. And to be honest, the the church in America, I would say, largely is lacking in knowing what God says. This there is an epidemic of biblical sort of illiteracy that we See in this country, in the West in general. We take for granted what God has revealed. It's even so, in some sense, steeped into our specific culture, we think we don't need to read God's word. We don't need to meditate on it, because it's in some sense in the air that we breathe, or the culture that we live in, or at least there are times when we we feel that way or articulate it. And that that is true in different ways in different parts of the country. But a lot of churches, a lot of Christians just simply don't know what God's word says about much. And yet, wisdom is increasing in knowledge, is growing in the knowledge of the fear of the Lord, who God is, what he has said, the instructions that he has given. So if you're looking for wisdom, biblical wisdom, you got to recognize that you got to go to the scriptures and there are things about the Bible that you need to know. And that sounds so basic, but that's one of the first things that we ignore in the pursuit of wisdom. So then, if we're not growing in our knowledge of God and his word, we're not looking for wisdom in the right places. And that pursuit of wisdom outside of what God has revealed in his word, and growing and knowing what he has said, is looking in the wrong places and it will lead to frustration. We need to recognize this is what God has said. We need knowledge of who he is, to know wisdom and instruction, knowledge and discretion to the youth. The second component of wisdom that we see here in these verses is instruction. Do you see that there again in verse two? To know wisdom and instruction, even in verse three, to receive instruction in wise dealing, in righteousness, justice, and equity. Now, instruction, you might think of it kind of in the more typical way that we mean in our context. Instruction we often think of uh is I don't know, a teacher getting up and giving some sort of lecture. That that's often how we define it. Instruction. I'm giving you instructions. Or we might think of it as I'm telling you to go and do something, I'm telling you exactly how to do it. Or we might think of uh the the manuals in the furniture that we assemble that we don't read, right? The instructions that we are supposed to read, and often we skip, maybe especially the men. Uh that's not instruction, according to what we're seeing here in Proverbs 1. The instruction here, it's it's not less than that, but it's certainly more than that. It has the idea of discipline. Uh, and I don't mean discipline, as in you you do the same thing consistently every day. I mean being corrected. There's a sense of instruction, is you're veering from the path and you're allowing God's word to instruct you, to correct you to go back onto the path. That's what instruction is. That's the that's what the word means, to be pulled back onto the path, to be disciplined, to be corrected, most especially by God's word. And so to grow an instruction for you is to evaluate your life consistently according to the lens of what God has said in his word. And then when you find those areas of disalignment, you go, I'm gonna be instructed, corrected by God's word. I'm gonna realign, resubmit myself to what God has said in his word. That's what instruction is. And that's the whole idea to know wisdom and instruction, to be corrected, to receive instruction in wise dealing, in righteousness, justice, and equity. So we're pursuing knowledge. We need to know what God has said in his word. But we also are pursuing instruction of God's word, that when our lives inevitably become unaligned with it in any number of ways, sin struggles that we have, we let the mirror of God's word expose those things in our heart and we let it correct us, instruct us to go back onto the path. That's what we need, that's what's necessary in this pursuit of wisdom, instruction, to know wisdom and instruction, to receive instruction in wise dealing and righteousness, justice, and equity. Here's a third sort of component that we see here: understanding. So we have knowledge of things, we have instruction being corrected by God's word. Now we have understanding. You see that there again in verse two? To know wisdom and instruction, to understand words of insight. We we need to grow in understanding. Now, understanding is the skill in utilizing or distilling knowledge. In a sense, it's knowing what to do with the the knowledge that we have gained. It's knowing what to do. Okay, I know God's word, I meditate on God's word. Now what? What do I do? Well, understanding, biblically speaking, is your ability to make the jump from just knowing something to understanding the significance of how that's going to shape your life. That's what understanding is. It's not just simply I could regurgitate the facts, I could tell you uh everything that it means, I could break it down to you on a blank sheet of paper. No, it's it's understanding. Therefore, I know that my life will look differently because of what I know to be true in God's word. That's what understanding is. I understand the significance, the ramifications of what God's word and his truth that he has revealed means for me in my life. I understand that. I recognize that in Colossians 3, when Paul says to put off the deeds of the flesh, I don't just understand theologically what that means. Put off means to take it off, don't do it anymore. No, I understand that that means for me in my life, I have to do that and what that's going to look like, the sins that I struggle with, the things and the areas that I need to grow in. That's what understanding is. It's the skill in utilizing the knowledge that you have of God's word, to know wisdom and instruction, to understand words of insight. Even there, words of insight, words of insight from the scriptures that you can then utilize in specific ways and specific context to accomplish specific things that are intended with the wisdom that is provided. We even see in verse six to understand a proverb and a saying, the words of the wise and their riddles. Here's a fourth component of wisdom. I'd say application, or the word in the text is prudence. Application or a prudence. You see that there in verse four? To give prudence to the simple. Now, prudence isn't necessarily a word that we use too often these days, but prudence means good sense. It's it's basically the next step. So you you know something that's knowledge, you understand the significance that it should have in your life, meaning that you recognize that truth is not static, it's supposed to transform. And that's the understanding. Now, prudence is doing that with good sense. It's applying those things and those truths and that wisdom to your life in a way that is good and it makes good sense. It's understanding and applying God's word. In a sense, it's it's living out what James says. We are to be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving ourselves. So, knowledge, we we know what God has said in his word, understanding. We recognize that there's there's not a gap between knowledge in our lives. There should be a sense in which the knowledge that we have leads to understanding because we recognize we need to live God's truth. And then the prudence is the good sense to do that and to sp and pursue that skillfully. And this is where we get the definition, by the way, of skill living in God's created order. We need prudence to the simple. A simple means fool, or those who are at least uh younger and need lots of wisdom. That's what Proverbs is for, to give prudence, good sense. We we need those things. We we need to know how to apply them and to utilize them in a way that is proper. It's applying the knowledge and understanding that is gained through the instruction that we receive, the correction that we receive. We want to apply that. And you know, you know that feeling, by the way, right? When you are seeking to instruct someone, correct them. Hey, come over here, don't do that, do this, watch out for that. And you know the feeling of that being ignored. They're not being prudent, they're lacking good sense, and that's frustrating. We want to be corrected by instruction that leads to understanding and that leads to application. Oh, I recognize, I see what you're saying, I see the truth of God's word, I see the areas in my life that it needs to be applied, and I'm going to apply it with good sense, with prudence. This is what we see here to understand a proverb and a saying, to give the words of the wise and the riddles, to give prudence to the simple. So the four components that we see here knowledge, discipline, understanding, discipline, or correction and application or prudence. And again, the good news in all of this is what James tells us in James 1, verse 5. If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God. Which, by the way, is there anyone in this room that doesn't lack wisdom? At least in certain situations, I mean on a daily basis. There are so many sort of, we call them gray areas of life, where there's not an explicit black and white, thus says the Lord, command. And so God, uh, in his wisdom, allows us to pursue wisdom through the fear of the Lord, to grow in being able to skillfully navigate the areas of this life that are not explicitly laid out in scripture, word for word. And there is plenty of those in your life. We need wisdom. We lack wisdom all the time. Ah man, how do we do this? We could go this way, we could go that way, we could buy this house, we could buy that house, we could buy this car, we could buy that car. We could live here, we could go to this church, we could serve in that ministry. What do we do? Well, you need wisdom. And if you lack wisdom, which all of you do, no offense, let him ask God who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given to him. That's the good news. You can go and you can ask as you're pursuing the fear of the Lord, rightly understanding who God is, responding in worship, and you can know that knowledge, correction, discipline, understanding, application, prudence, all of that will be given to you. And maybe not necessarily an instantaneous download from heaven, but the Lord will grant you that wisdom. He'll give you, he'll help you grow in wisdom. Now that's the sort of next part of this. Okay, we recognize the components of wisdom, those four components. We recognize that that God is the source and the giver of wisdom.

Listening Well Takes Humility

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So, practically speaking, what is what's some meat to the bone of how we actually grow in wisdom? Well, point number three: you grow in wisdom through listening. Grow in wisdom through listening. This is what verse five tells us. Let the wise hear and increase in learning. Let the wise hear, listen and increase in learning. And the one who understands, obtain guidance. The thing that you need to grow in, and this is just a practical, okay, I want wisdom, I'm gonna ask the Lord for it. What do I need to do? Proverbs tells us again and again, you need to listen. You need to listen to what God has said in his word. This is what Proverbs 12, 15 says, the way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to advice. A wise man listens, a wise man recognizes that wisdom does not begin and end with them. They listen. A wise man listens to advice. Proverbs 18, 13. If one gives an answer before he hears, before he listens, it is his folly and shame. If you give an answer without listening, the Bible says, it is your folly. You're you're a fool. You're acting like a fool in that moment. It is your folly, and it even goes as far as to say, it is your shame, because that's what the simple does. That's what the unwise do. If one gives an answer before he listens, before he hears, it is his folly and shame. Now, if you just read the Proverbs, if you go to chapter two, you're gonna see again and again and again, my son, listen to my instructions, hear my voice again and again and again. Even verse eight, are you there in chapter one? Verse eight, hear my son, your father's instructions, and forsake not your mother's teaching. Hear me, son, listen to what I am saying, listen to others who have spent time meditating on God's word, who have grown in their own right in knowledge, in being corrected by the scriptures, in understanding, in application. Listen, hear. That's the aim of Proverbs. To listen and to grow in wisdom. Let the wise hear and increase in learning. And the one who understands obtain guidance. Now, if we're gonna listen, and we're gonna listen well, I think there are four things that come to my mind as requirements for listening well. Think about this practically. Okay, we're trying to listen, we're trying to grow in wisdom. It starts with the fear of the Lord. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction. Okay, we want to listen because we want to grow in wisdom. We're gonna be skillful in living in God's created order. What is that gonna require? Well, four things, four requirements for listening well. Here's the first one humility. You and I need humility. You need you need to recognize, I need to recognize that we are not the arbiters of wisdom. Wisdom comes from outside of ourselves. This is what, again, in verse 7, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. God is the source, he is the giver of biblical wisdom, true wisdom. And so it takes humility to recognize that we don't always have it right, we don't always know the right thing to do, we don't have the right answer, we don't know the best decision, we don't know the thing that makes the most sense in every context. We need humility, and if we're in that posture of humility, you know what that's gonna do? When your pride is low, your listening tends to be high. I want to learn. I recognize that in this moment I lack sense. Help me. Would you help me? That requires humility, it all it also requires a level of being in community where you have people to listen to, where you have people around you that can speak, and you actually do listen, and you actually do want to heed their counsel. This requires humility. If we're prideful, if we're arrogant, no one rejects wisdom faster than those who are prideful. Fools despise wisdom and instruction, and humility is so essential in growing in wisdom and listening. That's what we need to recognize. Humility. Wisdom comes from outside of ourselves, ultimately from God, who is the source and giver of wisdom. The second requirement for listening well, I would say, is submission. It's submission, it's to submit to God's created order. Submission, again, is you recognizing that because God is the creator, he gets to set the rules, he gets to set the agenda. We don't like that word rules, but that's just the reality. God is the creator of all things, He doesn't care if you don't like the rules. That's just the way it is. He's the creator, and wisdom and listening recognizes okay, there's someone else in my life that's in charge, and it's not me. It's the Lord. And we need to submit to God's order. When God says things about how we ought to pursue our marriages, we submit. Yes, Lord. When God tells us how we are to parent our children, we submit, I will do that. You're my creator, you are my God. When God tells you that you are to be honest, because he hates lying lips and he hates a lying tongue, you say, Yes, yes, Lord. I will do that. I'm gonna submit to your word. When God tells you how you are to spend your money, how you are to live your life, how you are to utilize your time, how you are to think about the world and what you are to be engaging in and consuming, you go, Lord, you're in charge. That's necessary for listening. And those people that don't listen, again, because they're prideful, they will not submit. That's why we see in Jesus and the gospel talk about it's like casting pearls before swine. You're asking someone that's not that's prideful and that is unsubmissive to listen, what's the result? Nothing. Fools despise wisdom and instruction. We need to submit to what God has said in his word, to submit to God's created order. And there are times when that's easy, there are times when that's really, really difficult. And if you want to grow in wisdom, true wisdom, biblical wisdom, you need to recognize you need to listen to what God has said in his word by submitting. I will obey, I will do what you have said for me to do. Now, here's the third requirement for listening well. I would say it's a discipline. No, a different kind of discipline. We were talking about discipline in the corrective sense before, uh being prudence, but discipline is the idea of committing yourself to something, seeking it out. Discipline is seeking out wisdom and being diligent in applying uh wisdom. Even if you if you flip over to chapter two, it talks about the value of wisdom. Verse one of chapter two, my son, if you receive my words and treasure up my commands with you, making your ear, there's listening again, attentive to wisdom, and inclining your heart to understand. Yes, if you call out for insight and you raise your voice for understanding, if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. And here's the good news, verse 6 for the Lord gives wisdom. From his mouth come knowledge and understanding. He stores up sound wisdom for the upright. He is a shield to those who walk in integrity. We we need the discipline to obey what Proverbs 2 says, to seek out wisdom, to pursue it, to go and find it. If you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures, then you will understand the fear of the Lord. This requires discipline. This isn't just going to happen. You're not just going to suddenly be biblically wise. It's something that you pursue, it's something that you grow in, it's something that you discipline yourself towards. So we need to be disciplined in seeking out wisdom. We also need to be disciplined in seeking to diligently apply wisdom. You see that there in chapter two? If you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you, making your ear attentive to wisdom, inclining your heart to understanding, all of these things of hearing, pursuing, going after, and applying, assimilating into your life. That's a requirement for listening well. We want to be be disciplined, submitting to God's word, being humble. God opposes the proud, he gives grace to the humble. We want to be disciplined in pursuing wisdom. Here's the fourth uh requirement for listening well. Trust. You need to trust that what God has said in his word is actually good. And sometimes we can we can wrestle with that. Sometimes we can question that in our hearts is this good? Is this the right thing? If you're gonna listen well to what God has says, what God has said in his word, you need to trust that the wisdom that he has and the wisdom that he gives is valuable, necessary, and ultimately is a blessing. It's good. We said that wisdom is skilled living in God's created order. There's a lot of assumptions baked into that definition, but one of them is that that created order is good. And it's what you ought to do, it's what you ought to pursue, it's what you ought to believe in, it's what you ought to commit your life to. Trust. You have to trust that the way that God has designed things, the way that God has spoken, what God has revealed is exactly what you need. And that by submitting to God's word, even at times when your heart has questions or doubt, by submitting to God's word, you recognize that this is the right thing. It's the it's the good thing. It's it makes good sense. That's what wisdom is. We need this. We need trust that I'm gonna give my life to the Lord. I'm gonna wholly submit to him, and I'm gonna trust that that's gonna be what's best

Closing: Wisdom Has A Home

SPEAKER_00 44:10

for my life. We gotta build our lives on something. Everyone builds their life on something. And you recognize if you're pursuing biblical wisdom, you're trying to build your life and what God has said in his word. You gotta trust that in so doing, it'll lead to blessing and it'll produce a wisdom in you that only the Lord can give. So we'll end here how we began with the fear of the Lord. The fear of the Lord is so essential in the pursuit of wisdom. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction. And fearing the Lord is rightly understanding who he is, his character, what he has especially done and provided and revealed in and through his son, and responding appropriately in worship. Everything I am, everything I have is yours. I'm submitting to you. I recognize you're the creator. That's what the fear of the Lord is, and that is the fount. That's the source. That's where you can go consistently to find wisdom and not be frustrated.