We're reading the first chapter of Proverbs, which in the Church
Bible is page 635635. In the Church Bible Proverbs
chapter 1, the Proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of
Israel, For gaining wisdom and instruction for understanding
words of insight for receiving instruction in prudent
behaviour, doing what is right and just and fair.
For giving prudence to those who are simple.
Knowledge and discretion to the young.
Let the wise listen and add to the learning, and let the
discerning get guidance for understanding.
Proverbs and parables, The sayings and riddles of the wise.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but
fools despise wisdom and instruction.
Listen, my son, to your father's instruction, and do not forsake
your mother's teaching. They are a Garland to grace your
head and a chain to adorn your neck.
My son, if sinful men entice you, do not give in to them.
If they say come along with us, let's lie in wait for innocent
blood. Let's ambush some harmless soul.
Let's swallow them alive like the grave and whole like those
who go down to the pit. We'll get all sorts of valuable
things and fill our houses with plunder.
Cast lots with us and we will share the loot.
My son, do not go along with them, do not set foot on their
paths, for their feet rush into evil.
They are swift to shed blood. How useless to spread a net
where every bird can see it. These men lie in wait for their
own blood. They ambush only themselves.
Such are the paths of all who go after I'll gotten gain.
It takes away the life of those who get it out in the open.
Wisdom calls aloud. She raises her voice in the
public square on top of the wall.
She cries out at the city gate. She makes her speech.
How long will you, who are simple, love your simple ways?
How long will mockers delight in mockery and fools hate
knowledge? Repent at my rebuke.
Then I will pour out my thoughts to you.
I will make known to you my teachings.
But since you refuse to listen when I call, and no one pays
attention when I stretch out my hand, since you disregard all my
advice and do not accept my rebuke in turn, I will laugh
when disaster strikes you. I will mock when calamity
overtakes you, when calamity overtakes you like a storm, when
disaster sweeps over you like a whirlwind, when distress and
trouble overwhelm you, then you will call to me, but I will not
answer. They will look for me, but will
not find me, since they hated knowledge and did not choose to
fear the Lord, since they would not accept my advice and spurn
my rebuke. They will eat the fruit of their
ways and be filled with the fruit of their schemes.
For the waywardness of the simple will kill them, and the
complacency of fools will destroy them.
But whoever listens to me will live in safety and be at ease
without fear of harm. So, yeah, we are going to be
spending the next little while in this book of Proverbs from
the Old Testament. But I want to start our time
together this morning in the New Testament and some words of
Jesus in Matthew's Gospel, Matthew Chapter 7 and verses 24
to 27. You turn that up or just listen
as I read it. This is a parable that Jesus
told Jesus speaking to a cried on a mountain.
He says, Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and
puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house
on the rock. The rain came down, the streams
rose, the winds blew and beat against that house, yet it did
not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.
But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put
them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house
on sand. The rain came down, the streams
rose, the winds blew and beat against that house and it fell
with a great crash. It's a really vivid picture from
Jesus here. According to this parable,
hearing Jesus words and putting them into practice is the only
thing that will give us a firm foundation for all the decisions
and challenges we face in our lives.
In a way, Jesus is giving his disciples a definition of
wisdom. Here wisdom is hearing Jesus
words and putting them into practice in our lives.
And with this parable, Jesus is kind of standing in the big
wisdom tradition of the Bible, the books of Proverbs,
Ecclesiastes, Job in the New Testament.
There's there's examples of wisdom in the book of James.
Some of the Psalms in the Old Testament are wisdom psalms.
And we want to think this morning just introducing
ourselves to this book of Proverbs.
What does the Bible mean by wisdom and wisdom In the Bible,
it's not about intelligence or IQ.
It's not about knowing lots of facts and information.
There's a very variety of ways you could define wisdom in the
Bible. Living well in God's world is
one of them. Wisdom is about being able to
live well in the world that God has made or the ability to make
good choices in life. We all face decisions.
Wisdom helps us respond. Or actually another way, how to
be truly human in God's world. I want us to see that that
wisdom in the Bible, it is deeply practical.
It's how to live well in God's world in right relationship with
God and in right relationship with the people around us.
And so there's lots of different ways you can define wisdom in
the Bible. So the definition we're going to
try and keep coming back to in the course of this series.
And it's this and that wisdom in the Bible is growing more like
Jesus as we live in God's world and as we listen to God's Word.
At its heart, biblical wisdom is about becoming more like Jesus
in this world. A wise person is someone growing
more like Jesus as they follow him, as they listen to his Word
and as they put his Word into practice.
And I think that definition of wisdom helps to see wisdom's not
just kind of a, an optional lecture.
There's some wise people, some foolish people.
That's fine. Actually, Wisdom's at the heart
of what God's saving purposes are for his people.
The 20th century evangelist and Bible teacher John Stock, he
used to summarise God's purposes for his people like this.
He would write that God wants his people to become more like
Christ. Christ likeness is the will of
God for the people of God. That's why God keeps us around.
That's why God lets us go through the experiences we're
going through. He wants to make us more like
his son Jesus. And the older I get, the more
convinced I am that that Scott was right about that.
And therefore wisdom in the Bible is ultimately about us
becoming more like Jesus. Wise living brings with it
Christ like character. The book of Proverbs we're going
to see points us to Jesus if we read the book of Proverbs.
If it's got nothing to do with Jesus, if it's just a set of
techniques or life hacks that we can just apply to our lives, we
have missed the point. Because the whole of Scripture
is fulfilled in Jesus, and a wise person is someone who comes
to Jesus, learns from Jesus, and grows more like Jesus.
So the plan for this morning is just to introduce us to this
ancient book of Proverbs. We're going to turn to it
properly in a couple of weeks time after the church weekend at
home. But just to give you an idea of
the shape of the book of Proverbs just on the screen
behind me there. So there is a clear structure to
this book. It's a kind of a challenging
book. It's one of these books that
sounds a little bit random the way it's put together, but
actually when you look at it a bit more closely, there's a real
structure to it. So there's an introduction,
Proverbs 11 to 9:00 we're looking at this morning, and
that gives us the purpose of the book.
And Solomon says from gaining wisdom and instruction.
There's this link with King Solomon, the wisest king in the
ancient world. And the context of the book, we
learn is a father and mother speaking with the son that they
love, wanting to prepare him for life in a fallen world.
Then we get to chapters 1 to 9, this kind of longer
introduction, because you can summarise that, is just get
wisdom. It's like 10 speeches from a
father to a son, and a father pleads with his son to embrace
wisdom and listen to wisdom above anything else in this
world. And then there's like the bulk
of the book, chapters 10 to 30, which is all these individual,
sort of brief, memorable, punchy proverbs and parables.
And they're designed overtime to help us recognise what wisdom in
this world looks like and what foolishness and a lack of wisdom
looks like. And that covers areas like
friendship, work, money, marriage, the words we use,
parenting. And we're going to look at some
of those areas together in the weeks to come.
And then the conclusion, chapter 31, basically the conclusion is
going to like, I want you to marry wisdom.
It's kind of a bizarre way of putting it, but that's kind of
what the father is saying to the son of the end there.
The book ends with a poem celebrating the wife of noble
character, and she is the embodiment of all that the book
has been teaching us about wisdom.
It's like a final plea for God's people to marry wisdom.
Join yourselves to wisdom, commit to living lives that
fear, and worship the Lords in the world that he's made.
So that's the overall shape of the book of Proverbs.
And then I guess there's the shape of this sermon series.
The next few weeks. We're looking at this up to the
summer holidays, so we don't plan to cover every single
proverb in this book. You might be glad to know
there's quite a lot of them. What we hope to do, we're
introducing it today, the beginning of wisdom.
Then in a couple of weeks time, we're going to look at Proverbs
2 and 3 and Proverbs 8. So the theological heart of the
book, how wisdom points us to Jesus and our need for God's
grace. Then we're going to have a few
topical sermons picking up from different Proverbs, looking at
friendship, family, work, and then, God willing, we'll finish
with chapters 30 and 31. Chapter 30, we meet a man called
Agur who's a model for us of how we read Proverbs and put it into
practice. And then that conclusion, the
wife of noble character. And we hope we're going to say
that the whole book of Proverbs ultimately leads us to Jesus,
who he is, how he relates to us, and how he wants to change us
into people who bear his image in this world.
Wisdoms about growing more like Jesus as we love God and as we
love our neighbor and as we love the world that God has put us
into. So that's where we're headed the
next few weeks. But for this morning, we're just
going to look briefly at a chapter 1 together and pick up a
few themes from this and how that sort of lays the foundation
for all that follows. So let me just read verses one
to seven for us again. So the proverbs of Solomon, son
of David, king of Israel, for gaining wisdom and instruction
for understanding words of insight, for receiving
instruction in prudent behaviour, doing what is right
and just and fair, for giving prudence to those who are
simple. Knowledge and discretion to the
young. Let the wise listen and add to
their learning, and let the discerning get guidance for
understanding. Proverbs and parables, the
sayings and riddles of the wise. The fear of the Lord is the
beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and
instruction. How do those verses introduce
this book of Proverbs to us? Well, introduce us to a very
famous figure in biblical history is the proverbs of
Solomon, son of David, king of Israel.
And if you know your Old Testament at all, Solomon is
like the the king of the golden era of ancient Israel.
He ruled over ancient Israel at its peak, a time of peace and
prosperity. And he's seen as the father of
wisdom and the wisdom tradition in Israel.
He's also known as the wisest man in the ancient world because
early on in his reign, if you know the story, a young Solomon,
the Lord appears to him, says what would you like me to give
you? And Solomon asks for wisdom, and
one Kings chapter 4 tells us some of the effects of that
prayer on Solomon on Israel and indeed the nations around
Israel. 1 Kings chapter 4, verse 29.
God gave Solomon wisdom and very great insight and a breadth of
understanding as measureless as the sand on the seashore.
He spoke. Solomon spoke 3000.
Proverbs and his songs numbered 1005.
He spoke about plant life, from the cedar of Lebanon to the
hyssop that goes out of walls. He spoke about animals and
birds, reptiles and fish. From all nations.
People came to listen to Solomon's wisdom, sent by all
the kings of the world who had heard of his wisdom.
So according to that passage, the Wisdom of Solomon was one of
the ways God bless the nations around ancient Israel.
Solomon shared his God-given wisdom not only with the people
of Israel, but with a nation surrounding Israel too.
So all the nations around Israel were blessed by God's wisdom to
Solomon. And that's important because
Proverbs is speaks to people of every culture and generation.
So actually it's interesting that Solomon didn't write every
single proverb. Some proverbs are written by
different people, including by some non Israelites.
So King Lemuel in the closing chapter is a non Israelite king
quoting the words of his mother to him.
And some proverbs have clear parallels as wisdom found across
the ancient world. So some of them are identical to
proverbs you'd find in ancient Egypt.
And, and what do we make of that?
Well, I think we believe we can see God's common grace at work
in the book of Proverbs. Common grace.
That's a phrase theologians use to describe how God reveals
aspects of his character, including his wisdom to people,
even when they don't acknowledge him, even when they don't trust
in him. And the doctrine of common grace
reminds us that every human being is made in the image of
God, whether or not they accept that themselves.
You don't have to be a believer to possess some aspects of
wisdom in this world. We can learn aspects of wisdom
from people all around us, whether they're Christians or
not. And when we can't, we know that
sort of instinctively. That's why Christians can learn
from from podcasts, from books, from articles, from training
courses written by people who aren't Christians.
That's how we benefit to non Christian experts on mental
health, physical health, education, parenting,
relationships. God reveals aspects of his
wisdom from a wide variety of sources and that's his common
grace at work in this world. And we see it at work in the
book of Proverbs. That's about Solomon.
What about this word proverb? What does that mean?
Well, proverb, the Hebrew word is Michelle, and it means to be
like or sort of a comparison. So a good description of the
book comes in Proverbs one, verse 6.
This book, we're told, is a collection of proverbs and
parables. So they're not just simplistic
or moralistic things. Well, it's a randomly arranged
set of cliches, like sort of those posters you see in
inspirational shops, like a cat hanging, going, hang in there,
buddy. That's not proverbs.
It's more than that. These proverbs and parables are
designed to provoke us, to make us think, to get under our
skins. They're designed to surprise us,
sometimes, catch us off guard, challenge us, and ultimately
change us. Actually, we need to take our
time over these proverbs. Proverbs is a deeply practical
book and it wants to teach us wisdom for the real world we all
live in. It's not just theoretical or
academic. It doesn't withdraw or hide from
life in the real world. And actually, we saw that
towards the end of our reading in chapter 1, because we learn
now that Wisdom comes looking for us in the marketplace.
Listen again to verse 20 to 23. We're told out in the open.
Wisdom calls a lie. She raises her voice in the
public square on the top of the wall.
She cries out at the city gate. She makes her speech.
How long will you hear? Simple Love your simple ways.
How long will mockers delight in mockery and fool's hate
knowledge? Repent of my rebuke.
Then I will pour out my thoughts to you.
I will make known to you my teachings.
This is a picture of wisdom we get all the way through
Proverbs. Wisdom's often represented as a
woman calling out to us in the marketplace.
We're told that wisdom here comes looking for us.
Wisdom speaks to us in the noise and confusion of daily life,
that crowded marketplace. Picture all these different
voices, people calling us to go here, there, everywhere.
And wisdom is calling to us. In those moments when you see
that the book of Proverbs, it is good news for foolish people
like us. It's practical help for people
like us who don't always know what to do or what the right
thing to do is. The book takes seriously the
challenges and confusions of this world.
But actually, ultimately, Proverbs is a really optimistic
book because it says to us that wisdom and life can be found as
we slow down and listen to God's word.
Because wisdom wants to be found.
Wisdom wants us to hear her. Wisdom's within our grasp
because it's a gift of God as we put our faith in Jesus.
So just we're going to be looking at the individual
proverbs later in the series. But I just thought this morning
he's going to give you a couple of examples of, of what to
expect for some of the proverbs and a flavour of how they work.
So firstly, just a couple of random selection.
Proverbs 27 verse 14. I, I like this one quite a lot
actually. If anyone lightly blesses their
neighbor early in the morning, it will be taken as a curse.
It is a warning to the overly cheerful.
And we all know, in fact, you know who you are and we all know
who you are. And that's a warning.
And again, what what's great about this proverb is it kind of
says, actually, there are good intentions in this person.
I bless you this morning, brother.
Oh, please, can you just keep your voice dying?
Actually, the intentions are good.
But because that person doesn't understand the time of day or
the person they're speaking to, actually the good intentions are
unimportant. It's taken as a curse.
And it reminds, actually, the proverbs often, I think, are
meant to be a little bit funny because they stick in our minds.
You can see the person earnestly blessing others and just the
response that they get. Or Proverbs 30 versus 32 to 33.
If you play the fool and exalt yourself, or if you plan evil,
clap your hand over your mouth. For as churning cream produces
butter and as twisting the nose produces blood, so stirring up
anger produces strife has vivid imagery.
And it's almost you'd summarize this, this proverb.
Don't be a jerk. Don't just go out looking for
fights. And again, the age and
generation we live in, that's really good advice for a lot of
us on social media and other places.
We're kind of going out there just bullishly, arrogantly
saying, I know what's right and I come on, come at me, prove me
wrong. And actually the consequences
are this churning. I cannot image twisting the nose
produces blood. My nose bled all the time as a
kid in primary school. That's just a vivid image to me.
But but no, it's just stirring up anger, but just to strife.
Just think about it. Think about what you're doing.
And then Proverbs 13, verse 12, Hope deferred makes the heart
sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.
I think it's real emotional insight into that proverb.
Yeah. We just had the season of Easter
and the rest of the Bible reminds us that followers of
Jesus are people of hope. We know that Jesus is coming
back. The new creation is coming.
Our labour for the Lord is not in vain.
We know that no eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has
conceived the things God has prepared for those who love him.
That's the hope that keeps us going.
And yet this proverb helps us see that doesn't mean life is
easy here and now, because that hope is deferred.
We're not home yet, we still suffer now, and even though that
hope will be glorious when it comes, we're not there yet, and
so our hearts often feel sick again.
The future is there, a long He fulfills the tree of Life.
We looked at that in Revelation a few weeks ago.
Being able to rest in the shade of the tree of life, but
deferred. Hope is hard.
And this proverb helps us remember that, prepare for that,
and to recognize it in one another.
I just go. I just, I know my hope's
glorious, but it just doesn't feel like it.
My heart just feels sick. This proverb prepares us for
that. I hope we're going to experience
the blessing of the book of Proverbs in the week ahead,
weeks ahead. But just a few other words of
introduction before we finish this morning.
Kind of Proverbs, one of those books, you almost need to know
how not to read it. It's a book that we kind of come
to and can be a little bit clumsy sometimes or we
misinterpret. So a couple of pointers on that
proverb. Is is not a series of quick life
hacks. I'm told that's what the kids
say. Basically, just a little quick
clues of how to live a happy life.
I want to say this actually. The proverb in this book require
us to think deeply and carefully and prayerfully to learn wisdom
in this world. Proverbs require us to wrestle
with them, ask questions of them, pray about them.
They're not always as obvious as they look at first.
So an example of that. Proverbs 26 verse 4 Do not
answer a fool according to his folly, or you yourself will be
just like him. That feels very clear advice.
Proverbs 26 verse 5 Answer a fool according to his folly, or
he will be wise in his own eyes. 2 seemingly contradictory
proverbs and notice they're one verse after the other.
It's not that somehow that one of them snuck in and the editor
wasn't looking and we all know, but there's a contradiction
here. No, they're right next to each
other. I think what Proverbs is doing
is saying actually doing the right thing and responding in
the right way will change depending on the situation.
We often want hard and fast rules, but biblical wisdom
doesn't always give us those rules.
We have to think who is the person in front of me?
What is going on in their lives? What is going on in our
relationship? And then you think, actually do
I answer or do I not? And that that takes time.
That takes prayer. Actually, if we think we can
read the book of Proverbs and just learn wisdom without
needing to depend on God, we are mistaken.
We need to think deeply and carefully about what the
proverbs are telling us. It's not a quick fix solution.
It's it takes time to understand.
I heard a speaker, Pete Dre, formerly of UCCF, put it like
this. He said someone had said to him,
a younger guy said, well, I guess wisdom is sort of what you
can't learn from a YouTube tutorial.
And let's have again, YouTube is great.
You know, I just go like, how do I, I don't know, do this plug or
how do I fix my boiler or anything like that.
You quickly look at going great, I know what to do.
But actually wisdoms went more than that.
It's not just a high to video. It requires more of us than
that. So not just a series of quick
life hacks. Another really important thing
to remember as we read this book is Proverbs is not a series of
promises from God. And that's one of the main ways
we can get proverbs wrong. Sometimes couple of proverbs to
illustrate this Proverbs 10/27 the fear of the Lord adds length
to life. But the years of the wicked are
cut short or Proverbs 22 verse six start children off on the
way that they should go and even when they're old they will not
turn from it. Now those there's a huge amount
of wisdom in both those proverbs.
The fear of the Lord adds length to life.
Understanding God, understanding how he's made us and the world
we made, that actually should make us wise in how we look
after ourselves, how we care for our bodies.
But I see there are plenty of people who trust the Lords whose
lives are short, who are marred by real ill health.
So to take proverbs tend to be a promise of a long life is to
misread it. Proverbs focus on the general
rule, not the exceptions. We need to remember that.
Again, Proverbs 22 an encouragement for parents to
take time to point their children to God in his ways from
a very young age. But again, it's not a guarantee
that if we do that, every single child born to Christian parents
will be a believer. There's a general rule, there's
a wisdom principle here, but there are exceptions to that
rule. Proverbs are never guarantees to
us of higher lives will turn out.
And if we need to really see that, we need to look at the
other wisdom books in the Old Testament.
The book of Job where a righteous man loses everything.
The book of Ecclesiastes where a teacher just grapples with just
what seems to be meaningless and pointless about our brief lives.
We need to be aware that Proverbs be read alongside Job
and Ecclesiastes. It's not a set of guarantees.
What Proverbs does do is help us do the right thing, even when it
doesn't result in the outcome we'd like.
Proverbs help us respond to situations outside of our
control, and they help us grow more like Jesus and trust God's
goodness and sovereignty even when life is hard.
So it's not just a series of promises from God.
But why do we need the wisdom of Proverbs?
Just a few points. First of all, we are all
naturally foolish people. I'm not being rude, I'm not
being offensive. That's just the way the Bible
tells us. Psalms tell us Psalm 14 verse
one. The fool says in his heart,
there is no God. And actually, naturally
speaking, that's all of us. We all tend to live and think
and make decisions as if there is no God.
We maybe gather on a church, gathered a church on a Sunday
morning and we we remember, we sing God's praise.
But then throughout the week, often we're thinking, well, what
am I going to do? I don't always think what, what
does God think about this? I'm just going to go, what do I
need to do? The full says in his heart,
there is no God and that's all of us.
We need proverbs. We need God's word to open our
eyes to the truth that God is there.
God is living and active and present and we should fear him.
As a result, we need the wisdom of Proverbs because our world
demands that we listen to it and not to God.
Throughout the book of Proverbs, there were at least two voices
calling out to us all the time, Lady Wisdom, this
personification of wisdom as a woman, and Lady Folly, another
personification of, of foolishness, also a woman.
And they're both calling out to the reader.
Listen to me, come to me. I've I've got the secret to
life. Come to me.
And they kind of sound quite similar.
Sometimes. Our world demands that we listen
to you. And the big question throughout
Proverbs is, who are we going to listen to?
Which woman will we listen to? Will it be wisdom?
Will it be folly again? We saw that in chapter 1.
Verse 11. We've got this gang surrounding
the young man in Proverbs chapter 1.
Come along with us. Let's lie and wait for innocent
blood. Let's ambush some harmless soul.
Verse 12. Let's swallow them alive, like
the grave and whole like those who go down to the pit.
We'll get all sorts of valuable things.
Fill our houses with plunder. Cast lots with us.
We will share the loot right from the outset of the book.
The young man that the the the speaker is speaking to, they've
got this invitation. Do I go along with the cried?
Do I go what they say I'm going to do?
Or do I listen to God's word? Do I listen to my father and
mother and put my trust in them? We need the wisdom of Proverbs
because there's different voices shouting at us.
Also, really simply, we've all got decisions to make every day,
big and small and power. Proverbs is helping us to make
good decisions. Amazingly, maybe surprisingly,
God doesn't make your decisions for you.
There's times I wish he did when I look at an outfit I wore years
ago. If only God had stepped in.
But he doesn't do that. God doesn't make our decisions
for us, and we all have decisions to make every day.
What? What have for dinner?
What job do I do? Where do we live and what church
do I join? Do I get married?
If so, to whom? If I have children, how do I
raise them? Now, you can see just from that
selection, some of those questions are more important
than others. What do I have for dinner?
That's that's fairly unimportant.
We're called to look after our bodies.
So battered sausage every week is probably not great.
Well, no, every week, sorry. That's fine.
Every day is a problem. But actually we've got a lot of
freedom with some of these questions.
But some of those questions are more important than others.
What job do I do? Which church do I join?
Should I get married? How am I meant to love the
people around me? And and it's not the scripture
says nothing about those things. Scripture is really clear about
certain things. There are limits.
So what job should I do? Will I become a burglar?
The answer is no, because God says do not steal.
But but should it be a teacher or a hairdresser or an
accountant? Actually, there's a huge amount
of freedom. None of those things are are
barred to us as believers and Proverbs help us help us grapple
the questions. What does wisdom look like in
practice? Because the fact of the matter
is there's lots of grey areas and we struggle with that.
So we want certainty. Proverbs says, well, learn
wisdom, learn that your father loves you and follow him when
you can and link with that. I think really important.
Without wisdom, even our best intentions can cause harm.
We're back to that guy blessing people lightly in the morning.
Actually, we need wisdom for just about every aspect of our
lives. So love without wisdom can just
be a bit spongy, amorphous. Not really.
You can't really get your hand on it.
You actually end up can hurt the people around you if you don't
have wisdom the way you love them.
Courage without wisdom and you become a bully.
Truth without wisdom and you become pride and self-righteous.
Technology without wisdom causes more harm than good.
I was working this week. I'm just Jeff Goldblum kept
coming to my head in Jurassic Park.
If you know the line, he says your scientists are so
preoccupied whether they could do this, they didn't stop to ask
whether they should. Cloning dinosaurs in Jurassic
Park is a lack of wisdom. It's knowledge.
They can do it, but it's not what they should do.
Without wisdom, even our best intentions can cause harm.
We want to listen to this book together.
And so how do you learn wisdom from the book of Proverbs?
What we're told in chapter 1 here, wisdom begins and ends
with the fear of the Lord. Verse 7, the fear of the Lord is
the beginning of wisdom. That's repeated in Chapter 9 as
well. What does it mean to fear the
Lord again? It's more it doesn't mean run
away from Him, doesn't mean hide from Him, doesn't mean keep your
distance from Him. The fear of the Lord means you
worship Him as God. You thank Him for your life and
for our lives in this world. We love Him in response to His
love for us. We listen to Him above all other
voices and we trust in Him with our lives and that's we're going
to keep returning to again and again.
What? How does wisdom lead to that
fear of the Lord? We want to live our lives in
right relationship with God and in right relationship with the
people God has put in our lives. That's the greatest commandment.
Jesus tells us, love God, love your neighbor.
That is the heart of wisdom. We're also really encouragingly
in this book, we're going to see wisdom is learned in loving
relationship with God as our Father.
There's a repeated phrase in this book, my son, my son, verse
8, verse 10, chapter 2, verse one, it keeps coming up.
We learn wisdom. We make wise decisions, not
because we're trying to earn God's love.
That's that's a false mistake. We make something like, well, if
only I was wise, then God would love me.
Actually, we learn wisdom and make wise decisions as people
who are already loved by God. And you take hold of that truth.
You realize God isn't hiding His wisdom from us.
If we come to Him and ask Him for wisdom, He will give it to
us. God loves to give good gifts to
His children. We make decisions in this world
as people who are already loved by our Father in Heaven.
An American pastor, Jack Miller, used to put it like this.
If you belong to Jesus, you don't walk through this world
like an orphan, not knowing where you fit.
You walk through this world as a dearly loved child of the King,
and you can trust Him for what is to come.
Wisdom's learned in loving relationship with God as our
Father, and it's learned finally in community with God's people.
You need to learn wisdom in community.
Proverbs 27, verse 17. As iron sharpens iron, so one
person sharpens another. This was a list of Proverbs
given to the whole of ancient Israel.
Given to the church is the thing you see again and again, the
book of Proverbs. The foolish people in Proverbs
walk through this world alone, and as a result they are
vulnerable to lady folly. They are vulnerable to the
demands of the crowd. They are vulnerable to ways of
foolishness and harm. Wisdom is learned in the
community of God's people, in the community of the church.
We need to listen to the Word of God and the voice of wisdom
together. Younger believers need to listen
to older believers. We need the wisdom of a
believing community around us to grow more like Jesus.
It's my prayer that spending these weeks in the book of
Proverbs, we will be doing that together.
So next week is our church weekend at home.
We're going to think about praying together.
The week after that we'll begin looking again at Proverbs
chapter 2 and 3. And if you want to do your own
reading us all on the book of Proverbs.
We actually stole the title for this book, the sermon, sorry,
from this book Wiser with Jesus and by Zack Eswin.
Really worth getting a hold of that.
And in his introduction to the book, he just comes up with four
words beginning with P that introduce us to wisdom.
He says wisdom. Wisdom is a posture.
We've said that it's we humble ourselves before God.
We ask him to make us wise. Wisdom is a peace.
It takes time. We can't rush at it.
We need to listen. We need to Mull over these
proverbs, chew over them, keep coming back to them.
Wisdom's a prayer. We need God's help to learn
wisdom. And above all, Wisdom is a
person. In the book of Proverbs, Wisdom
is a person, this personification, Lady Wisdom,
someone we love and who loves us.
And in that Lady Wisdom points us ahead to Jesus, the Son of
God, the word made flesh, who enters our world.
Wisdom and Jesus is all the way through the New Testament.
Luke 11. Jesus says he is greater than
Solomon Colossians one Paul says he wants to reclaim Christ with
all wisdom so the people presented fully mature in
Christ. One Corinne is 1.
Paul says his message is Christ crucified, Christ, the power of
God and the wisdom of God. And we're moving into a time of
the Lord's Supper. We're moving into taking bread
and wine to remember the saving work of Jesus on the cross.
An amazing New Testament says where we can see the wisdom of
God most powerfully on display is at the cross of Jesus, one
Corinthians one. Where is the wise person?
Where's the teacher of the law? Where's the philosopher of this
age? Hasn't God made foolish the
wisdom of the world? Jews demand signs, Greeks look
for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, A stumbling block to
Jews foolish the Gentiles. But to those whom God has called
both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and Christ the
wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is
wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than
human strength. The cross reminds us the world
we live in, The people we are reject God and his ways.
We're naturally foolish. We naturally live our lives as
if there is no God, as if we ourselves are gods.
But God sees us in our foolishness, and he Stoops down
to save us. At the cross we see Christ
crucified. That's the power of God
defeating sin and death. But it's also the wisdom of God
taking foolish people like us and opening our eyes to the God
who made us, the God who loves us, the God who forgives us, the
God who will never let us dine Doesn't look like Wisdom.
The cross. There we see the wisdom of God
and the power of God. Let me pray as we prepare to to
move to that. Father God, we do thank you that
in spite of our natural foolishness, in spite of the
fact that we do not always look to you for the decisions we
make, despite the fact we often are overwhelmed by life in this
crowded, noisy marketplace of a world, thank you, Lord, that you
come looking for us. That wisdom is shouting for us
to come and listen and thank you, Lord, that we see your
wisdom supremely displayed at the cross of Jesus where he
suffered and died in our place, to forgive foolish people like
us and to show us in ways we could never know otherwise, just
who you are. Lord, Your goodness, your grace,
your mercy, your power. We pray, Father, as we look at
this book of Proverbs in the weeks ahead, that you would show
us more of your character. And that by your Holy Spirit,
you would change us more and more into men and women who bear
the image of Jesus in this world, so that we will have joy
in following you and so that we will proclaim you to the people
around us. And we ask that in Jesus name
and for his sake, Amen.