Ways of the Wise | Week 1 -- How do I Become Wise?

What would you ask for if God offered you anything? Most of us would reach for money, comfort, or security. Solomon asked for wisdom, and what happened next changed everything.

In a world flooded with information, conspiracy theories, and instant answers, genuine wisdom has never been harder to find. The book of Proverbs and the life of Solomon offer something different: a real, practical path toward wisdom for everyday life.

This teaching explores what wisdom actually is, why it matters more than information, and how ordinary people can grow in it. Drawing from 1 Kings 3, Proverbs, the book of James, and the story of Job, we look at three concrete ways to pursue wisdom in real life.

This sermon was recorded at a Sunday morning gathering at Church of the Lookout in Longmont, Colorado.

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Transcript

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Welcome to the Lookout Weekly Podcast. Church of the Lookout is the world of Colorado, and our vision is Jesus, abiding in his presence, growing in its family, and living on his mission to transform the world with all inspiring love. Visit us online at thelookout.chan so good to see you guys. Um so hey, you are a privileged group because you get to be here for part one of a new teaching series we're calling Ways of the Wise, and it's practical wisdom through the book of Proverbs. Any Proverbs fans out there. Um and so so uh so today, if you have your Bibles, uh where you can you can open up to, we're gonna start in just a second, is in 1 Kings chapter 3. 1 Kings chapter 3. You can uh go there if you have your Bibles. We will have the scripture on the screen here in a second. Um but let me just ask a question as we uh as we get in, as we uh jump in to the message, as they say. Uh if you were given a blank check for however much amount that you desire, what would be at the top of your list? What would be at the top of your list of what you would do with a blank check? Is there are there any immediate answers that come to mind? Just shout it out. Vacation. Come on, blank check. Just give me an honest answer. It doesn't have to be a spiritual, Jesus-y answer. Just give me an answer. Build?

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Set up a repeating dividend fund, or you do it to give it away.

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That was very specific. Set up a repeating dividend fund so dividend fund so he can continue to give it away. He wins, all right? All right. Got the Bud Light player of the game over here, Zach Robertson. Um, blank check. So there's probably a lot of things that come to mind. If you think about giving a blank check, a la Aladdin and the lamp, right? Three wishes, you get the first two wishes, and then the third wish, you whisk for unlimited wishes, right? So I several years ago, I asked my son, uh, I kind of a blank check kind of question. I said, uh, you know, he was he was a lot younger, and I said, Hey, hey, buddy, if you could go anywhere in the world right now, where would you want to go? And he said, anywhere? I said, anywhere. And he thought for a moment. And then he responded with total conviction. He said, the zoo. I was like, hey, man. That's all he that's all he had an imagination for at the time. So the zoo, it's a great, great answer. A couple years ago, my other son, we did a birthday party. Instead of getting him gifts, we said, you get a yes day, right? And so yes day is basically we get to say, we say yes to anything you want, obviously, you know, within reason. And so we helped him design a day around like kind of his greatest desires. So his yes day started off with none other than shaved ice, right? Shaved ice. And then uh and then me and a couple uh him and a couple of buddies, I drove them over to an arcade in town, and they played two or three hours of just just go to town, just play whatever games you want. And then we ended with none other than a card shop so they could all buy their own set of Pokemon cards, all right? This is it. This is the yes say, this is the pinnacle of yes. He knows what I'm talking about. And uh, and it was a great day. But you think about sometimes we don't even ask that question, what would I do if I had a blank check because we're like, that's not even the realm of possibilities. But what's really interesting is uh there's at least one example in scripture of God showing up to someone in a dream and ask and saying to them, Ask me, ask of me anything, and I will give it to you. There's at least one example of that. So that's what I want to look at. 1 Kings chapter 3. We're gonna look at the life of Solomon here for a second as we tee up this series. Here's what it says, starting in verse 5. It says, At Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night, and God said, Ask what I shall give you. And Solomon said, You have shown great and steadfast love to your servant David, my father, because he walked before you in faithfulness and righteousness and uprightness of heart toward you, and you have kept in him this great and steadfast love, and have given him a son to sit on his throne this day. And now, O Lord my God, you have made him, made your servant king in place of uh in place of David my father, although I am but a little child, I do not know how to go out or to come in. And your servant is in the midst of your people whom you have chosen, a great people, too many to be numbered or counted for multitude. Give your servant therefore an understanding mine to govern your people, that I might discern between good and evil, for who is able to govern this your great people? Verse ten, it says, It pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this, and God said to him, Because you have asked this and have not asked for yourself long life or riches or life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself for your for understanding to discern what is right, behold, I now do according to your word. Behold, I give you a wise and discerning mind, so that none like you has ever been before you, and none like you shall arise after you. I give you also what you have not asked, both riches and honor, so that no other king shall compare with you all your days. And if you walk in my ways, keeping my statutes and my commandments as your father David walked, then I will lengthen your days. Come on, this is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. So Solomon, Solomon's one of the lucky few, right? He's given more or less this open-ended question, what do you want? And so uh so so for Solomon, if if he was cornered and asked for anything he could want, he did not choose the riches, he did not choose military power, he did not choose influence or platform. What he asked for was wisdom. And this is, according to Solomon, where wisdom starts, not in talent or education or pedigree, but in an earnest request, which is flipping what we learned in the Garden of Eden, where Eve and Adam, as they were grasping for wisdom to be like God, they took the request for wisdom into their own hands to try to acquire it by their own means. And yet here we see Solomon bring his quest straight to God and receiving wisdom in whatever form or shape God would allow it to happen. And then the scriptures, and I'm not going to read this part, but it would go on to say that Solomon was, would become the most wise person on earth. People would seek him out as we read to search for wisdom. He would go on to write 3,000 Proverbs and 1,005 songs that all flowed out of his wisdom. He he would write sayings to guide the people in skillful living. He would write songs that instructed people. How many of you guys know our songs are not just nice melodies we sing? They're actually teaching the wisdom of God to the people of God. And so Solomon knew that from the very beginning, and it shaped the entire trajectory of his life. And people from all the nations came to hear the wisdom of Solomon. All the kings of the earth heard of his wisdom. And so in the scriptures, we get this book called Proverbs, which is 31 chapters mostly of sayings. Um, and there's different kinds of sayings throughout the book of Proverbs. They're not necessarily life hacks or quick tips or techniques. What they are is they're embodied wisdom for how to index our life, right? But in the scriptures, there's several books that are actually considered part of what we call wisdom literature. So you have Psalms and Proverbs, but Solomon would also go to not only write pro most of Proverbs, the majority of Proverbs, but he would go on to write the book of Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon. And then part of the other book that is part of the wisdom literature of the scriptures, the book of Job. And this collection of wisdom literature was given to the people of God to carry them through generations. And we are wise to consult the wisdom literature of the scriptures to learn what we can learn in 2026. Amen? So and the reason, the reason why we would want to turn our attention to Proverbs is a few different reasons. Number one, human beings have always been in need in the search of wisdom. But in 2026, most people aren't suffering from a lack of information. We're suffering from a lack of formation. It's not information that we need so desperately, it's formation from the inside out. Why? Because we're surrounded by hot takes, life hacks, instant answers, artificial intelligence, conspiracy theories abound, with fewer and fewer reliable instincts for telling truth from false. This is kind of the water we're swimming, and nobody quite knows where what to believe and how to live into a life that lasts, right? Even a few weeks ago, after the space mission that would go around the moon, this incredible thing, I was surprised the amount of conversations I had, people questioning if it actually ever happened. And did that actually even happen? Or if it didn't happen, why didn't it happen? Who's behind this? Who's behind that? Who's behind this war? What's really going on? Everyone seems to have a take on what's really going on. And I'm not here to argue one thing or another, but some of you know what it's like to be in conversations to know, to not know where to put your feet for solid ground, right? So this is where T. S. Elliott, famous uh poet, he he wrote this uh himself. He said, he said, where is the life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? And I think he kind of gets to the core of it. And definitely a huge difference between information and wisdom. And so there's a reason why, as the people of God, we have to remind ourselves of the wisdom that we've inherited, and more importantly, that Jesus is the wisdom of God. That it's wisdom is not just encapsulated in sayings, but Jesus is the person of Jesus is the wisdom of God. So all wisdom is encapsulated in Jesus. And so for us at the Lookout, our vision is to become a people who see Jesus clearly and live into his way faithfully under the real pressures of modern life. And so Proverbs for us, as we open the Proverbs, speaks straight into what many of us are carrying anxiety about money and the future, loneliness, outrage, fatigue, how to raise a family, how to build a marriage, how to steward a vocation. And the question of how to actually grow up, not just get older, which those are two different things. So over the next weeks, several weeks, we're going to be hitting several practical questions. And the one we're starting with today is how do I become wise? Because we want to be like the sons of Issachar, if you know that phrase in the scripture, those who were able to be discerning of the times. They knew what time they lived in. And we want to be the same kind of people, not ones who just go with the flow, but discerning in spirit and in mind. Is anybody with me on that? And so, Proverbs, they're not going to hand you quick fix formulas. Life hacks pithy advice. It's wisdom that is meant to be lived into and digested and embodied. And there's a lot of ways to take formulas into this book, and we come out disappointed. If you just do this, do this. There are ways that the Proverbs will see will index us toward the things of God, but just believe me, it's not always as simple as it thinks. In fact, Solomon, over the course of his life, learned what it was like to actually grow in wisdom, and he changed his perspective quite a bit. In fact, somebody said it like this The book of Proverbs says, Do these things and life will work out this way. But Ecclesiastes says, I did and it didn't. And so even Solomon's like, I don't know. He's growing the most wise person at a certain point. He's like, I don't, I don't really know. You know, he's he get he got to the point where he had to embrace mystery and kind of wrestle with uh his own journey of faithfulness to God. But according to Solomon, the wisdom begins in reverent trust, humility, and attentiveness to God, not just self-confidence or technique. And so, how do we grow in wisdom? Can we just start here together? How do we grow in wisdom? Proverbs 9 10, I think, is the most succinct way of saying it. Proverbs 9 10 says, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is insight. Now, what is the fear of the Lord? It's hard to kind of describe what the fear of the Lord is. It's not necessarily being afraid of God, though that has happened often in the pages of Scripture. Oftentimes it more is referring to the awe of God or the reverence of God. Similar to what you read in the Chronicles of Narnia when they're talking about Aslan and asking if he was safe, Aslan the lion. And they said, no, he's not safe, but he is good. And it's the same thing when we talk about God. You go to, you know, when we talk about being in the presence of God, God isn't necessarily safe in the sense of he will change you and transform you from the inside out. He does have an effect on our lives, and he is good. And so we come to him sober-minded, knowing that Jesus is made a way, but we come in the fear of God, in awe and wonder. And that's why Solomon, his first movement, his first growing in wisdom, what did he first do? He asked for wisdom. This is what we do. We ask for wisdom. If you want to grow in wisdom, it's we don't need to overcomplicate this really. It's just the scriptures say, ask for wisdom. Um, Proverbs 2. Solomon gets at this even a little bit more directly. He said, My son, if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you, making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding. Yes, if you call out for insight and 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. For the Lord gives wisdom, from his mouth comes knowledge and understanding. And so even Solomon, his journey wasn't necessarily about acquisition, it was about receiving it, receiving the wisdom of God. And that was an act that in itself was uh uh uh was rooted in a fear of the Lord. You don't ask for something that you don't feel like you need. And so it's it's good for us even to be in the regular practice of asking God for wisdom. You could ask him for a lot of things, and you likely do, and you should. But where is wisdom on that list? When's the last time you asked for the wisdom of God and the mind of Christ to guide your understanding? And part of this for Solomon is he knew what wisdom was for. He knew what he was getting into as the second king of Israel. He knew that he was above, it was above his head. He was underwater, so to speak. And he said, I need wisdom understanding why to govern the people, to know the difference between evil and good. How many of you know that we need wise people in governance? We need wise people governing this nation, we need wise people governing our workplaces and our cities and our schools. So let me just ask you this: when was the last time you actually asked for wisdom, not as a trite prayer that you pray just because you're supposed to, but uh an earnest prayer of your heart directed towards the assignments that God's given to you in this season. Some of you have assignments before you from God. You need the wisdom of God in your workplace. Huh? You need more than talent. You need more than best practices. You need the wisdom of God. I need the wisdom of God. Church world, I need the wisdom of God to serve you guys well, to be a part of what God is doing. I need the wisdom, I need more than just how do you speak well, how do you preach? No, I need the wisdom of God. And that goes contrary to the world's wisdom. In James 1 through 5, chapter 1 in the New Testament, James doubles down on this. He says, if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach. It starts with asking. Some of you are holding relationships, assignments, projects, things before you, and you've been trying to push through. And just wonder what would happen if you asked for wisdom and waited for a response, and let that drive you and trust that God wants to respond to that desire. So we ask for wisdom, but we also walk with the wise, and so it's more than just asking for wisdom. Part of growing in wisdom is walking with the wise. Proverbs 13, 20 says, Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise. Imagine that. But the companion of fools will suffer harm. Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm. So in the pre-internet age, which few of us can remember, but some of us do, wisdom was something that was passed down in a communal setting from elders into a community. But thank you, Google, we get to bypass complicated people and just go straight to the internet, right? And so we take the world's most complicated questions and we have removed them from a communal discernment and have embedded them into searches, a search engine, and now artificial intelligence, which isn't bad, bad. I use that, we all use that, that's fine. But we have lost the practice of sitting with the wise, of actually spending time with the wise, with those who are experienced. When's the last time you sat down with somebody much older than them for no other purpose but to ask some questions and take notes? That's a good practice, especially if you're younger in the room. If you want to be on the path of wisdom, sit down and shut up. That's what I've learned. Sit your butt down and ask some questions and take notes. And so we sit with those who have walked the way of wisdom, and and and we do that because part of the tragedy of this age is many of us have fallen for the belief that old wisdom is irrelevant. So many people look at the scriptures and say, oh, that's really cute, but it's very outdated, it's antiquated, it's archaic. We read the wisdom of scripture as out as too narrow, irrelevant from modern problems. The new is good. Everything old is unnecessary. Why? Because we've advanced beyond our need for God, beyond our need for all these old things. And we have now science and philosophy and progress and all beautiful things that we that we're better for. But what we can fall into in a modern age is what some people call modern elitism. That everything new is automatically better, and everything old is automatically irrelevant. And that's just not true. The Proverbs, the wisdom of God is still good today as it was thousands of years ago. Anyone with me on that? You can still build your life on the wisdom of God. And that means that we sit with the wise and we also read from those who are wise. I told, I've had wise people told me if you want to grow wise, read books from dead people. If all the books you read are from people who are living, you're missing out. Go find some dead people and read their books. Why? Because their words have stood the test of time. Their words didn't die with them. So you gotta reach back and we gotta go. So part of it is this aptitude of living our lives as if everybody we meet has something to teach us. Everybody is your master in some way. It's a different way of living when you know that every person you're talking to, you don't get to dismiss because God has taught them something that you need. We learn from the wise wherever we can find it. Amen. But we learn, we so we we we ask for wisdom, we surround ourselves with wisdom, which is a lost art. But but but thirdly, another way we can put this is we learn from suffering. There is an old adage that we say on birthdays, another day older, another day wiser, right? Because it's like uh some wisdom only comes with age. You can be uh you can be wise for your age, some wisdom only comes with age. But we all know plenty of old fools, don't we? That was my dad. We all know plenty of old fools. It may be true, it may be true that wisdom comes with age, but as my friend Wade Capel said so aptly this last week, are we aging like wine or aging like milk? Agent, aged isn't always your friend. Even for Solomon, you see this vast journey. And his wisdom wasn't actually able to win the day for him. He he turned from God in his heart later. So we grow in wisdom, but we grow in affection from God. But part of the way that God brings us wisdom is through suffering. Some of you have learned wisdom in the stream, not because of your own pursuit or intellect, but because of the pain that has come to you and the understanding with it. And you wouldn't this you've been through some things that you wouldn't wish anybody would experience. But the things, the gifts of God that you have to bring now have come through a certain grace of God in your life. And I know even for me, there's things that I have journeyed through, sense of loss, internal suffering, confusion, mystery, that I couldn't explain to you. And I couldn't get you to recreate, I couldn't recreate that for you. But what I'm saying is, in the middle of all that, I believe the wisdom of God has been cultivated in a way that I wish I could just learn it from some sayings. But the reality is that God has to teach us and grow us in wisdom, not just through learning sayings and trying to live into them, but leading us through the valley of the shadow of death and making sure that we come out on the other side. This is what Job, this is why Job is such a gift to us in the scriptures. He said, Job lost everything, and yet his life was submitted to God. And he concluded his whole life. He said, I have heard you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eyes have seen you. That is what a person who has grown in wisdom would say. That I have faced many challenges, but now my eyes have seen you. Ancient Greek playwright Ashelus, he summed it up like this, and I think this is going to make sense for some of you who are learning to make sense of what God is teaching you in your actual life. He says it like this. He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart. And in our own despair, against our will comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God. Wisdom comes to us by the awful grace of God. Some of you have tasted the awful grace of God. And it didn't seem like a wise process. You were hoping it would happen a different way. But my encouragement to you this morning is what you've walked through, God never intended to be wasted. And the person you have become may have not been able to happen in any other way. But God is growing us up. He's growing us up into Christ-likeness. And so that means he takes us on the path of wisdom that starts with both our propensity, our disposition to ask for it and to receive it, but our willingness to stay through it as he actually leads us in the path of wisdom, which is likely on likely not what you would imagine or ever hope or want. But we're living in a time again where I believe God is restoring to us those who are willing to let God accompany and Jesus accompany us in the pathway of Christ-likeness and formation as we become wise and discerning people in this life. But this morning, here's where I want to land this morning. Where do you need wisdom in your life? Again, James says, ask if any man lacks wisdom, ask, and God will give it graciously. So across this room, let's just do this. Let's close our eyes and hold this question before Jesus. God, would you bring your wisdom? I want you just to think of a certain search circumstance or situation or assignment in your life where God has placed you. And make it a simple request, God. I could have anything. If I could have anything, I want your wisdom. Just hold that before Him for a moment. Jesus, today we confess that we need your wisdom. We need more than our best thinking. For our lives, our marriages, our businesses. This nation, God, we need more than our best thinking. We need the mind of Christ. And God, wherever we've tried to grasp wisdom outside of your ways or path, wherever we've tried to do it without first starting in fear of you, I just pray that even right now there's a returning in our hearts to say, God, we need you and we love you and we want you. There's this beautiful prayer, this Gaelic hymn. Called Be Thou My Vision. And it's a prayer of God, would you take your rightful place in our vision, our lives? The second verse says, Be thou my wisdom. Let's sing this together as a prayer to God. Thou my great Father, and I thy true Son, thou in me dwelling, and I with thee one. Let's stand together across the room. Jesus, this is our prayer this morning. In an age where the ground is shifting, we thank you that you are our wisdom. You are our vision. We turn our sights, our affections to you. And we do ask for wisdom for the time that we live in. And I thank you that you graciously give it. So we just thank you for across this room, not just knowledge of you, but lived faithfulness embodied in the hearts of your people. I thank you for the wisdom in this room that we have to share with each other and the wisdom we have to share with the world, Lord God. Let it be so to reflect your image and your likeness. And it's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. Listen, this morning, as we stand, as we're about out of here, I do want to have an invitation. We have our prayer ministry team. We're going to be on the sides of the room with purple badges. These are people that would love to pray with you. If you're here today, you just need someone to pray for the wisdom in a certain circumstance of life. And do you just need somebody to be with you in that? This is a time to do that. If you need prayer for healing, if you just want to talk to somebody, these are people that would love to pray with you. You'll see them on the sides of the room. And as we leave again at the end of the service, if you're a guest here, we'd love to meet you in the back. You're going to see a sign that says connect with us. We'd love to get to know you. And here's another thing on the north entrance, you're going to see a bunch of water, pallet of water. If you have any need of water jugs, go grab some water, take it with you home. Everybody needs water, right? But listen, as we go, we're going in the blessing of God. We're not going empty-handed. And you know, we call ourselves the lookout. And part of it is that we are a city shining on a hill, that we are, God's given us a picture of looking out into the world. So let me just bless you with this kind of um just a new kind of blessing. That as we go, may you love well, light up, and look out in Jesus' name. Love you guys.