Today's readings from Proverbs, chapter 2 to 3, verse 12.
It's in the Church Bible, page 636.
My son, if you accept my words and store up my commands within
you, turning your ear to wisdom and applying your heart to
understanding. Indeed, if you call out for
insight and cry aloud for understanding.
And if you look for it As for silver, and search for it As for
hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the Lord
and find the knowledge of God. For the Lord gives wisdom from
his mouth. Come knowledge and
understanding. He holds success in store for
the upright. He is a shield to those whose
way of the of life is blameless. For he guards the course of the
just and protects the way of his faithful ones.
Then you will understand what is right and just and fair every
good path. For wisdom will enter your heart
and and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul.
Discretion will protect you and understanding will guard you.
Wisdom will save you from the ways of wicked men, from men
whose words are perverse, who have left the straight paths and
walk in dark ways, who delight in doing wrong and rejoice in
the perversion perverseness of evil, whose paths are crooked
and who are devious in their ways.
Wisdom will save you also from the adulterous woman, from the
wayward woman with her seductive words, who has left the partner
of her youth and ignored the covenant she made before God.
Surely her house leads down to death and her paths to the
spirits of the dead. None who go to her return and
attain the paths of life. Thus you will walk in the ways
of the good and keep to the paths of the righteous.
For the upright will live in the land, and the blameless will
remain in it. But the wicked will be cut off
from the land, and the unfaithful will be torn from it.
My son, do not forget my teaching, but keep my commands
in your heart, for they will prolong your life many years and
bring you peace and prosperity. Let love and faithfulness never
leave you. Find them round your neck, write
them on the tablet of your heart.
Then you will win favour and a good name in the sight of God
and man. Trust in the Lord with all your
heart and lean not on your own understanding in all your ways.
Submit to Him and He will make your paths straight.
Do not be wise in your own eyes. Fear the Lord and shun the evil.
This will bring health to your body and nourishment to your
bones. Honour the Lord with your
wealth, with the first fruits of all your crops.
Then your barns will be filled to overflowing, and your vats
will brim over with new wine. My son, do not despise the
Lord's discipline and do not resent his rebuke, because the
Lord disciplines those He loves as a father, the Son he delights
in. If you were here 2 weeks ago you
might remember this is one of the three so-called wisdom books
in the Old Testament alongside the Book of Job and the Book of
Ecclesiastes. We preach through Job and
Ecclesiastes over the last few years.
You can read, look at those and the archive on the church
websites. And I guess when you think about
wisdom, and this is a wisdom book teaching us wisdom, we need
to think, what does the Bible mean when it talks about wisdom?
Well, we came up with a few definitions last time just on
the screen there. So wisdom in the Bible is living
well in God's world. Wisdom is the ability to make
good choices in life. Another way of putting it.
Wisdom is really how to be truly human in God's world.
I think all those definitions help us see that wisdom in the
Bible is not about lots of information, not about lots of
facts, not about your intelligence or your IQ levels.
Wisdom is deeply practical. It's how to live well in God's
world and right relationship with God and in right
relationship with the people God has placed around us.
And alongside those definitions is what we want to keep
returning to in this book, which is this, that wisdom
fundamentally is growing more like Jesus as we live in God's
world and as we listen to God's Word.
We've sung the song a minute ago, I want to be like Jesus.
That's actually a prayer that we want to be wise.
We want to be people who are more like Jesus as we follow
Him, as we listen to him, and as we put his words into practice
in our lives. So this week we are in chapters
2 and 3 of Proverbs, and some commentators call these chapters
like the theological heart of the book of Proverbs.
Why? Because these chapters make it
clear to us. True and lasting wisdom can only
be found through trusting in the Lords we said last time.
Actually, we can learn lots about wisdom from the world
around us. What the what some theologians
called common grace that we're all made in the image of God,
whether we are Christians or not.
We can learn from lots of people, but Proverbs 2 and three
make it really clear. True and lasting wisdom can only
be found through trusting in the Lord, the God who created us,
the God who has rescued us, the God of loving relationship.
And so we need to live and right relationship with the Lord so
that we can live and right relationship with the people
around us and in the world that God has put us in.
And these chapters in Proverbs includes our verse for the term
Proverbs 3 verse 5. And I've been loving spending
time with this verse this week. It's on my phone and reminding
me actually, it hits me how often I'm looking at my phone
all day. But but Lord did a great design
and this just really captures something of the theological
heart of Proverbs. What is true wisdom?
True wisdom, according to Proverbs, is to trust in the
Lord with all our heart and to humble ourselves before Him.
That is the heart of wisdom. We need to trust in God and to
humble ourselves. So we're going to look at that
key verse in a moment, but we're going to look at Proverbs
chapter 2 briefly. And what do we learn about
wisdom from Proverbs chapter 2? The chapter begins with a
reminder, as nearly all the chapters of chapters 1:00 to
9:00 begin with this reminder that these are the words of a
father speaking to the son he loves.
See how both chapters 2 and three begin with the words My
son, my son in the Bible. Wisdom isn't learned from a
distance. It's not like a correspondence
course or or someone shouting information at us from a long
way away. No wisdom is learned in loving
relationship with God as our Father.
The command to to grow in wisdom isn't so that we'll become wise
and then we'll somehow earn God's love.
No, wisdom flows out of the fact that we are already loved by the
Father, and He wants to show us how to live for Him in that
loving relationship He has won for us through his Son Jesus.
So we're going to learn a few things about biblical wisdom
from Proverbs 2 here. First thing he wants to see is
this, that according to Proverbs 2, learning wisdom is both a
gift from God and a task God gives us.
So in the book of Proverbs and across God's word as a whole,
wisdom is both a gift and a task.
Listening again to verses 1 to 5 of Proverbs chapter 2.
Let me read that for us, My son, if you accept my words and store
up my commands within you, turning your ear to wisdom and
applying your heart to understanding.
Indeed, if you call out for insight and cry aloud for
understanding, and if you look for it As for silver and search
for it As for a hidden treasure, then you will understand the
fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God.
See, according to the loving Father here, learning wisdom
isn't passive or just something automatic that just happens.
Look at the effort involved in pursuing wisdom here.
Look at the words. If you accept my words, store
them up. Turn your ear, apply your heart,
call out for insight, cry aloud for understanding.
Look for it. Search for it.
It's the language of desire. It's the language of hunger.
It's the language of of digging for treasure.
The assumption here is that wisdom isn't just going to fall
into our laps. It's not something we just drift
into. Wisdom is a lifelong pursuit for
all of us. Wisdom is something we need to
strive after, says the Father here, but also need to recognize
something in Proverbs 2. Ultimately, wisdom is a gift
from God. We will not find it on our own,
no matter how hard we may try. Look again at verse 6.
For the Lord gives wisdom from his mouth come knowledge and
understanding. So it's kind of both things.
It's a gift and a task. Even if we strive after wisdom,
ultimately wisdom is a gift from the Lord.
We won't learn true, lasting wisdom apart from humbling
ourselves before God and asking Him for it.
So it's two things, a gift and a task.
And that might sound kind of baffling at first, really.
Well, either it's a gift or a task.
How can it be both? But actually, I think it
actually makes a lot of sense when you think about other areas
of our lives. Anything of value is not quickly
learned. Any skill worth having takes
time and effort to learn it. Let me illustrate this for us.
So going to ask for audience participation here.
And so can anyone here bear hand out?
If you can play a musical instrument, hands up.
Lovely. OK, I'm going to go.
OK, Cayman, what instrument can you play guitar.
How did you learn the guitar? Through my mother.
Through your mother and lessons and practice and and practice.
And how do you get better at the guitar?
Practice. Thank you, Kim.
Can anyone else? Other instruments?
Can we just have A and not a
guitar? We had to guitar.
OK. Yes, Tim.
Drums. Drums.
How did you learn the drums? Lots of practice.
Yeah.
Over the years we've got lots of practice.
Any other instruments? Got drums, Got guitar.
Trombone. Trombone a very good instrument.
How did you learn the trombone? Practice.
Yes. OK, I think we're getting the
two rift here. It takes practice to learn an
instrument, a skill like that. I do not play an instrument.
My family remind me of this because I have not taken the
time to practice. It is a skill that takes time.
Anyone here recently and learnt how to drive?
Put your hands up. Yes, yes.
OK, we'll go down here. So Noah, how did you learn to
drive? Driving lessons.
And what do the driving lessons help you with?
Something to try. And how many lessons did you
need? A lot, yes.
How do you get better at driving practice?
Yes, thank you. I think we're getting the drift
here. Practice is it?
Anyone here speak a second language?
I was quite intrigued with this. Anyone here speak a second
language? Here we go.
What language do you speak? Italian, lots of practice.
Lots of practice in Italian. Are you pretty fluent?
OK, but lots of practice. OK, So yeah, again, wisdom, it's
a gift and it's a task. Now it takes practice to learn
those valuable things, but also the way God has made us often
gives us the desire to learn those things.
It's part of a gift that he's given us.
So actually there's the principle.
Anything of value will take time and effort to learn, but God is
the one who stands behind that time and effort.
And it's the same principle with learning wisdom from the living
Gods. Again, just think of some of the
the most important relationships in your life.
The relationships with your parents or with your children.
The relationships with brothers and sisters.
If you're married, the relationship with your husband
or wife. Your relationship with your
friends. These relationships are really
precious, but none of them are straightforward.
To learn how to love another person well and wisely takes
time and effort. We need to humble ourselves
before God and learn wisdom. That is what the writer of
Proverbs is telling us here. Here's how the American pastor
Ray Orland puts it. He says wisdom is not automatic
for us. Wisdom is not our default
setting. We will never get there.
By drifting. You kind of become a significant
person by being neutral and cute and safely unchanged.
That is complacency. God is offering you a treasure
infinitely worth seeking more of himself, entering into you,
renewing you, safeguarding you. Will you give?
Give yourself completely to God today.
It's a really helpful way of thinking about wisdom.
Wisdom is something worth pursuing.
It is a gift given to us by a loving God as we humble
ourselves before him. But the writer of Proverbs tells
us we need to ask for it. We need to strive for it.
It's both a gift from God and a task God gives to us.
So wisdom is really significant and something we should long
for. In addition to that, in Proverbs
2, we learned that the wisdom, learning wisdom protects us.
In this fallen word, there's error free.
In verses 12 and 16, wisdom will save you.
The writer says the Father is speaking to his son just as his
son is sort of leaving home and making his way into the world.
And the Father reminds him, we are all naturally foolish people
in a world that is not naturally wise.
The world we live in demands that we listen to it rather than
to God. Therefore, we need the wisdom
that only God can give to us. And what are the particular
threats the Father mentions to his Son, verses 12 to 15?
He mentions the ways of wicked man.
And the threat here, if you can sort of summarize it as the
threat of bad company, of being influenced by the people around
US. Verse 12 here men whose words
are perverse, who have left the straight paths to walk in dark
ways, who delight in doing wrong and rejoice in the perverseness
of evil, whose paths are crooked, and who are devious in
their ways. The Father's telling the Son
here, there are so many voices around us, and they will tell
you various things. They will promise you things.
They say if you want to be happy, then follow us.
Don't worry about all that God stuff.
Just do whatever you want to do. There is no God or if there is,
he's just fine with us, whatever we do.
And the emphasis here on the wicked men is on their words,
verse 12. Their words are perverse.
They twist the meaning of true words.
People in our in our world, our culture will use amazing words
like love, justice, peace, belonging, community,
fulfilment, but they've twisted the meaning of those words so
they lead us away from the living God rather than towards
the living God as they're designed to do.
And how does wisdom protect us from wicked men and their words?
Well, it's as we spend time listening to God's Word,
spending time with him, spending time with God's people, asking
God to show us more of himself, that would begin to develop a
better sense of what sounds like Jesus and what doesn't sound
like Jesus, that we will hear promises made to us.
We'll begin to think that just doesn't sit right with me, that
doesn't sound like Jesus. We begin to see through the
lives of this world. We can't always explain it, but
something doesn't sit right as we're spending time with God, in
his Word, with his people, and then we hear the promises of our
world. The Father urges his Son, Wisdom
will save you from the ways of wicked man.
And the other big threat mention is wisdom will save you from the
adulterous woman. That's verses 16 to 19.
Wisdom will protect us from the lie the world tells us that
sexual fulfilment is what life in this world is all about.
Verse 16, Wisdom will save you also from the adulterous woman,
from the wayward woman with her seductive words, who has left
the partner of her youth and ignored the covenant she made
before God. Surely her house leads down to
death and her path to the spirits of the dead.
None who go to her return or attain the paths of life.
The Father wants his son to know.
Here in the world we live in, the fall of where we live in,
sex sells and sex offers us the world.
Sex and sexual fulfillment are presented to us as the key to
true happiness. It's all about youth and beauty
and contentment and fulfillment and completion.
But the book of Proverbs has a very different take on sexual
activity outside the confines of marriage.
The gift, the marriage is from God to his people.
Sex outside of that place leads ultimately to death, says
Proverbs. Therefore, when we hear the
words of the adulterous woman, Proverb urges us, run.
If you're single, go home and remember the passionate life
giving love the Lord Jesus had demonstrated and ask Him to stay
close to you. If you're married, go home and
rejoice in the husband or wife that God has given you,
remembering the passionate life, giving love Jesus has for you
and asking Him to keep you close to Him.
See, throughout the book of Proverbs, this figure of the
adulterous woman recurs regularly.
There are two contrasting women throughout this book, Wisdom
presented as a godly woman or wife, and Folly presented as an
adulterous woman or prostitute. And the adulterous woman is a
warning against all unwise ungodly sexual relationships,
but also she stands as a warning to all of God's people against
spiritual unfaithfulness. Again, across the Old and New
Testament, marriage is a picture of God's love for his people,
and therefore sexual adultery is a picture of spiritual adultery.
Look at Old Testament prophets like Hosea, Ezekiel, Isaiah, Old
Testament books like Song of Songs, New Testament writers
like Paul and James. Our recurring warning in the
book of Proverbs is don't marry folly.
Don't get into bed with folly. Instead, marry wisdom.
Stay close to wisdom because wisdom alone will lead you to
Jesus and the life that he alone can give to us.
Wisdom will save you from the adulterous woman, says Proverbs.
And then verses 20 to 22. It shows wisdom not just about
avoiding sin or foolishness. Wisdom leads us into life in all
its fullness. Verse 20.
Thus you will walk in the ways of the good and keep to the past
of the righteous. For the upright will live in the
land, and the blameless will remain in it.
In that picture of the land, it's the place of God's blessing
to his people. In the Old Testament, the land
was ancient Israel that the promised land God had given
them. In the New Testament, the land
is a picture of what it means to have right relationship with
Jesus, to be in Christ, to be remaining in Him, loved by him,
secure in him. You see learning wisdom.
It's a gift and it's a task, and it protects us in this fallen
world. But by the end of Proverbs 2,
we're maybe asking the question, but yeah, that's great what
wisdom does, but how do we actually become wise?
How do we get started on the road to wisdom?
And that is where Proverbs chapter 3 comes in.
There's where we learn the heart of wisdom, which is to trust in
the Lord with all your heart and to humble yourself before him.
This is our verse of the term. And we just want to, for our
last bit, just to unpack that a bit of what that means for the
beginnings of wisdom and the heart.
Of wisdom. First of all, this verse tells
us to trust, to trust in the Lord's.
What does it mean to trust someone or something?
Well, why? I don't speak Hebrew, but
apparently the Hebrew word for trust is, is anything but a
passive word. So it has that meaning with it.
To throw yourself down on your face before someone, to lie down
in complete reliance. It's a picture of complete
dependence collapsing onto the Lord, admitting how much we need
him, asking Him for His help and presence with us.
So how do we learn wisdom in this world?
Through drawing near to God in repentance and faith.
We threw all our weight on to the God of the gospel.
We cast our anxieties onto Him, we take Him at His word, and we
build our lives upon Him. That is what trust means, and
it's trust in the Lord. It's not an impersonal trust,
it's a personal trust. That word Lord, It's capital
letters in the Hebrew. It's Yahweh that is the personal
name for God. That's the God who created us,
the God who made us in his image, the God who knit us
together in our mother's wombs, the God who has rescued us.
Again, Yahweh was the God of the Exodus who saves his people from
slavery in Egypt in the New Testament, who saves his people
from slavery to sin and death through Jesus.
That is the Lord, the God who rescues us and the God of loving
relationship, the God who adopts us into his family, the God who
invites us to call him Father, the God who speaks to us, who
hears us, who helps us. The heart of wisdom isn't
ultimately learning a set of skills or following a set of
moral principles or making our own way in the world.
The heart of wisdom is trusting in the personal God of the
Bible, the God who made us, the God who saves us, the God who
loves us. And again, to add to that
picture, we've got this picture of loving and trusting and sorry
with all our hearts. Again, contrary to the amazing
design we have here, the heart isn't simply the muscle that
pumps the blood around it. It's quite a vivid picture on
the design. And nor is your heart just a
reference to your feelings. Again, we say, well, well, well,
my heart says this, but my head says this.
No, that's not a Hebrew understanding of the heart.
The heart is the centre of who you really are.
It's, it's, it's everything that matters about you.
It's the way you think, the way you feel, the way you make
decisions. It's the heart.
Your heart is the way you think. What do I believe to be true
right now? How am I looking at the world
around me? It's the way you feel.
What do I desire right now? What do I believe will make me
happy right now? Your heart is the way you make
decisions. What decisions do I have to make
in my life today? What course of action will I
take? And the writer of Proverbs says
you need to trust in the Lord with all your heart, with what
you think, with how you feel, with what you choose.
And to do that, we need new hearts that only God can give to
us. We need to place our whole lives
into the hands of the God who loves us.
And to do that, we need to not lean on our own understanding.
We need to admit that our own understanding will often be
faulty. We don't see the full picture.
And if there's a conflict between what God's Word says and
what our hearts want, we actually need to learn to listen
to God's Word above our hearts. And I see that need for humility
before God. Just glance ahead to verse 34 of
Proverbs 3. Just down to verse 34.
There it, it reads like this. He mocks pride, mockers, but
shows favour to the humble and oppressed.
Now that's a translation of the of the Hebrew there.
But the New Testament quotes this verse twice using the
wording from the Greek version of the Old Testament, the
Septuagint. So in both James four and one
Peter 5, we will read this. God opposes the pride but gives
grace to the humble. That's quoting Proverbs 334.
That's the heart of wisdom to humble ourselves before God,
knowing that He will give us grace as we do that.
See, the heart of sin is I know what's best.
I don't need God. I know what I need to do.
But the heart of humility is God is God and I am not.
I need to listen to him. I can't presume I know what's
best. I need to humble myself before
him. So the question is better
Proverbs asks is so are you teachable?
When's the last time that you came across something in God's
word you didn't like and you didn't try and explain it away
or dodge it. You said, well, this is God's
word, I need to listen to it. Are you teachable?
When's the last time you admitted to someone you got it
wrong and you say sorry to them when you say sorry to God when
you get it wrong, don't lean on your own understanding.
Come to God and ask him to show you wisdom and the last bit of
the the verse, it's amazing statement.
And he will make your paths straight.
All the translations, he will direct your paths.
But there is that idea of a straight path here.
And it's important to be clear that isn't a promise that if we
trust in the Lord, our lives will be nice and ordered and
neat. Our paths will not always look
very straight. The path the Lord leads us down
in this life often looks anything but straight.
It is, to quote the word The Beatles, a long and winding
road. And we don't always know quite
what's going to happen next. But there is a promise here that
if we come to the Lord and humble ourselves before Him, we
can trust His will for our lives.
We don't yet have that aerial view that shows whether our
paths are straight or not, but we can trust in the Lord, lean
not on our own understanding, and know that His will for our
lives is perfect and good. And Proverbs three serve unpacks
that. What it looks like says we can
trust the Lord in good times. Verses 9 to 10 honour the Lord
with your wealth, with the first fruits of all your crops.
Then your barns will be filled overflowing, and your vats will
brim over with new wine. Here the writer of Proverbs
says, when life is good, trust in the Lord.
Recognize everything you have as a gift from God, Thank him for
it. Be generous with it.
In good times, trust in the Lord, and then in hard times.
Verse 11 My son, do not despise the Lord's discipline and do not
resent his rebuke, because the Lord disciplines those He loves
as a father, the Son, He delights him.
Like verse 34, Proverbs 3. These verses are also quoted in
the New Testament in Hebrews 12, and they remind us of an amazing
truth. Hard times are not a sign that
God does not love you. They're not a sign that God has
abandoned you. Actually, it can be quite the
opposite. Hard times can be a sign that
God is with you and He wants to show you more of Himself as
you're forced to lean on Him as a father disciplines the Son he
loves, so God does a lie difficult times to come into the
lives of His people so that we learn we need Him.
So that we learn that He is good.
So that we learn that He is faithful in ways that we could
not learn when our barns were overflowing.
Command here is to trust in the Lord with all our heart, in good
times and in hard times, and we will discover that He is the one
who will keep us and lead us. This is the heart of wisdom.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart, humble yourselves before
Him, and He will lead you in the way He wants you to go.
That is wisdom, says Proverbs. And again we said this
overarching the wisdom in the Bible helps us grow more like
Jesus as we live in God's world. And how does Jesus embody
Proverbs 35 to 6:00? We look at how Jesus lived in
relationship to his Father in this world.
Jesus trusted his Father completely in good times and in
hard times, when he was hugely successful and when he was on
his way to the cross. He walked through this world in
dependence on his Father. He loved his Father with his
whole heart. He submitted to his Father in
order to save us. Words on the screen from one
Peter 2. Christ suffered for you, leaving
you an example that you should follow.
In His steps. He committed no sin and no
deceit was found in His mouth. When they hurled their insults
at Him, He did not retaliate. When He suffered, He made no
threats. Instead, He entrusted himself to
Him who judges justly. He Himself bore our sins and His
body on the cross, who we might die to sins and live for
righteousness. By His wounds you have been
healed. When God's Word calls us to
wisdom, calls us to follow in the footsteps of Jesus.
Because Jesus knows what it's like to trust in God through
good times and hard times, He is able to help those of us to
trust in the Father through good times and hard times.
The heart of wisdom is growing more like Jesus as we live in
God's world, as we listen to God's Word.
So as we finish this morning, I just want to leave us with a
couple of questions to think about in the quiet, and then
I'll hand back to Joel. How can you tell if your trust
in the Lord is wholehearted? Some questions that I found
helpful this week. First one there, are you
teachable? Do you let God's Word overrule
your thinking? It's a big challenge.
We often come to God's Word. I want this to confirm what I
want to do Anyway. Are we teachable?
Secondly, have you collapsed on Jesus as your only Lord and
Savior? That picture of trust just lying
face down, just going. I cannot do this alone, Lord.
Casting our anxieties on him. That is trusting in the Lord
with all our hearts. When was the last time you took
a risk to obey Jesus? Perhaps you, you think, well,
I'll obey Jesus as long as it's safe, as long as it doesn't feel
too scary. This, this proverb says the
heart of wisdom is to trust in him with our whole heart.
Lean not on our own understanding something that
will involve risk, but we can trust in God and in his good
purposes. Let's just take a few minutes to
think about those questions, reflect on them in the quiet,
and then Joel will lead us.