Welcome to the River City Church podcast and a message by our
lead pastor Jason Powers. Our prayer is that this message
would inspire and encourage you, build your faith and point you
to the life changing love of Jesus.
May you enjoy the goodness of. God as you follow him today
series. Today and that series is on the
book of Proverbs and Man. Is this a time for us to talk
about proverbs right in the world?
It's hard. The world is kind of feels a
little bit crazy and, and you know, we're trying, we're doing
our best, we're doing what we can, but it can be difficult
sometime. I wanted to teach the proverbs
for a long time, but I haven't really kind of known how to go
about it right? Like, do you go each chapter?
Do you go like like 1 by 1? How do?
You do it. And So what we're going to do
over the next several weeks is kind of just deal with some of
the topics, some of the recurring themes that could run
throughout the proverbs that will kind of impact and and
affect our life. But that's the important thing
for us to remember as we jump into the proverbs.
One danger in talking about the proverbs is that we can deal
with them as kind of neat little intellectual exercises, right?
Like we can come to them and just.
Oh, I'd like to think about that and talk about that over dinner
with my friends and see what that is about.
And the proverbs as, as we read and as we're going to see,
they're fundamentally not that. They're fundamentally not just
about information, not just about getting smarter.
The purpose of the proverbs is formation.
What the Proverbs do when they get in and have their work, when
they work as expected, is they change us, they transform us,
they shape us and not just us. What happens then as I become
shaped by the wisdom and the Proverbs?
My friend Jacob is shaped by the.
Wisdom and is in in the Proverbs.
And my friend Tony is shaped by the wisdom and the Proverbs.
What happens is we become a people, a culture, a church
shaped and walking in wisdom. And that's important.
That's God's design and His. Desire for us, that's why.
It's in there. So before we kind of jump in and
start handling it, let's talk a little bit at at kind of 50,000
feet, right? The book of Proverbs belongs to
a genre. To understand the Scripture,
it's important to understand the genre, right?
Like is this a prophecy that tell us what's God's doing in
our world right now? Is this an epistle?
Is this a letter of encouragement or correction?
Is this a history book? Well, the book of Proverbs falls
under a genre called wisdom literature.
And the wisdom literature can include the books, the Psalms,
the Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon.
These aren't law books. What the Proverbs is not, and
this is important, like if we don't get this, the book of
Proverbs is going to miss us, right?
It is not a list of rules. It is not a thing that says if
you go do this every single time, this is going to work out
this way. The book of Proverbs is not a
list of unconditional promises. The book of Proverbs is not a
contract between God and us that you say that you can go back to
God and kind of hold him accountable and say God, I did
what you said in you. Let me down if we want.
To think about how to approach and enter into the proverbs.
Think about it like the .5 setting on your camera, right?
My teenage daughters tell me about all of this, right?
And apparently .5 is out. I can take a picture of my
friend Mike right there and it's granular.
I can see, you know, his Gray hair and his, you know, big
white smile. He loves that see like big white
smile and all those things I can see.
But when I switch to .5 mode I can see all.
Of you, the whole. Thing comes into picture.
That's how we come to the proverbs.
That's what the proverbs point. That's it is a wide angle lens
of reality, not focused on the granular details of this moment
and this moment and this moment. When I say it's not a promise,
think of it like a please don't leave the trail like we just got
back. From the Great Smoky Mountains,
which I, I, that's where heaven is I, I just, I feel like it.
And so we're excited and. The thing is, there are bears in
the. Great Smoky Mountain, we didn't
see any. I was looking for them but they
didn't see them right. But we would go hiking and we
would walk on these trails. And because it's this pristine
wilderness, there are these signs that say please stay on
the trail. Now that's good advice, right?
Because you can get off the trail and.
You can get. Lost.
But what that doesn't mean is that if a bear is chasing you,
you don't run for your life in any direction that you can to
get away from it, right? Stay on the trail means in most
cases, in most circumstances, and in most situations, the
thing that you're looking for is found on the trail.
What are you looking? For I'm looking for vistas, I'm
looking for sites, I'm looking for all these things in the
woods. Your best way to experience
those is to stay on the trail. And occasionally, sometimes you
have to get off the trail. That's how we come to Proverbs.
Proverbs are wisdom for your life that the vast majority of
time in your experience are going to lead you where you want
to be, are going to lead you to the place where you want to,
where you want to get. That's how we come.
We want to look at them in terms of our life.
Now I want to talk about something that's a little more
nuts and bolts about the Bible that I'm going to be teaching
out of. Typically I have I my baseline
kind of preaching Bible is the Christian standard Bible, the
CSB. When Johnny and I taught
Ephesians last year, we taught out of the new American
standard, and we did that for a very specific reason.
It's kind of clunky. Johnny even said this, the
language is kind of clunky. It's a.
Word for word translation. And the reason we did that in
that context is because there we were dealing with words like
election, right, salvation. Those are super important word
detail words. We've already said the Proverbs
is a different kind of story. So I'm going to teach this
series out of the New Living Translation.
Some of you are like, whoo, finally we got Jesus
translation, right? Yep, that's good, right?
Here's why I chose the New Living Translation for this
series. Again, it's like the .5.
What the New Living Translation does is it takes the original
context, the Greek and the Hebrew text, and it translates
them thought for thought rather than word for word.
So it allows the text to be more readable.
It allows it to be more conversational.
I don't have to get a translation from the new
American Standard Bible into common English.
I can come to the New Living Translation.
And that's so important because what we're looking for in this
is an orientation, right? Like we're looking for a
direction. It's something like, which way
do I go? And what the new living in
broad, broad terms, thought by thought, it says the way of
wisdom and following the Lord is this way.
It's just more readable. So here's what I'm saying.
If you have the Christian standard Bible, if you went out
and bought it, I'm not abandoning you, brother.
It's fine. We can.
Do this right. If you've always had the new
Living translation, that's great.
You can keep using it if you have another translation, the
NRSV or the NIB or the NA or like like.
Great God spoke through the mouth of a donkey in the Old
Testament. He will meet your earnest desire
to find him in the translation. So if you have a new Living
Translation at home and you want to bring it.
To church with. Us with you each.
Week. That's great you'll be able to
read. That, but I want to get back
kind of this idea, this topic about about the.
Wisdom in the sun of the .5 and all that.
And about this idea that the purpose of the the point of this
proverbs is is to Orient us right?
Is to give us a direction. It's to form us.
It's to shape us into a certain kind of people.
That's good news because one of the things that we talked about
a lot here is nobody arrives in this room unformed.
You have been formed by your life, and some of your formation
taught you that the way to go about life is just to follow the
rules. If you'll follow the rules, then
everything will be fine for you. Some of you were taught that if
you'll just work hard, then everything will be OK.
You just work hard and you put an honest day's work and you
sweat and you grind it out and everything will be fun.
Some of you were told that if you'll just have basically
generally good intentions, if you'll just really want to be a
good and nice and kind and deep and decent person.
And so you've lived your life up to this point chasing that
script, trying to live out those those things.
That's what it means to be formed.
You have a response to life in this world that comes from where
you are, comes from where you've been.
Rules are fine. Let me be real clear, right?
There's some people in here that are just like, if he like,
listen, rules are good, Rules are necessary.
It is important to know that some things are good and some
things are not good. The point, the problem with
rules is they're not ultimate. They don't form us perfectly on
our own. And here's how I know.
Because my wife, my loving, beautiful wife right over here,
she was formed to be a rule follower.
I was formed not to be a rule follower.
I would. I think rules are great
stretching exercises, right? Let's figure out kind of how far
they go. Here's the thing.
Both the rule follower and the rule stretcher.
Have not been exempted from anxiety, from fear, from
loneliness, from anger, from hostility, from sin.
I'm telling you, my wife loves rules.
Rules are good. They're important.
But they don't complete us. They don't fill in the holes, we
don't fill in the gaps. And I know that.
And that's So what that indicates to me is that as good
and necessary and important as rules are, if those become the
center, if those become the main thing and in fact the only
thing, what that's going to lead us to is malformation.
And what I would say is we can be malformed by being obsessive
rules follower. We can be malformed by being
obsessive rule ignorers. We can be malformed by being
people who follow our intentions, who people who
follow the acquisition of knowledge, people who just say,
if I could just learn a little bit more, if I could just know a
little bit more than I would be OK.
And what I want to say is wherever we are in that journey,
none of those things is sufficient in and of themselves
to create the kind of life then in our heart we know we were
created for. We can have good intentions and
hard work. Have you ever had that?
Have you ever wondered like man, I'm working hard, I'm doing the
good work. But if that's not enough, we can
have good intentions and sign on to a get rich quick screen
scheme. And our best intention, we want
to provide for our families. We want to give everything that
we can. And so I'll just invest a little
bit here and it'll be great. And I know the odds are.
Against it and our family ends up hungry.
You ever missed the boat? Your intentions are great, but
the way it worked out in your life wasn't great.
And again, this is so important. There's no shame here, but I.
Do want to do is hold up a mirror and say like, like we've
got to look at ourselves and see how's it working?
How's what we're doing, doing right?
One of the big problems is values, right?
Like look at this, I come in here and I get the language of
Christian value. I come in here my doctrine of
divine love. Is pristine.
The problem is I walk out of here and I go to HEB and you see
me furrowed. Right.
You see me on the. Road.
I'm pounding the steering wheel right.
My values are great, but the expression of my values through
my life. Not so much.
I get angry, I get scared. I have a short fuse.
The problem isn't that I'm not well-intentioned.
The problem isn't that I don't know what I'm supposed to do.
The problem is that it hasn't formed me.
We can be well meaning in our intention.
We find somebody who's broken hearted, whose heart has been
crushed by a relationship, and we draw up and in our best
intentions, our most well meaning moment, we begin to talk
about how man, that other person wasn't good for you and they
listen. It's their problem and not your
problem and and I'm. Sure, you're fine and listening
and I heard about them and slowly, well meaning and
well-intentioned we slide into gossip.
We begin and our desire to protect someone.
We begin to destroy and demean someone else, only to find a
weak. Week later, that word got out
and now we've hurt someone else. The problem wasn't that our
intent wasn't good. The problem wasn't that we
didn't mean well. The problem was we can't help
ourselves. We want to do right, and I want
you to hear me say it. Listen, if, if, if we don't
begin on that. If if if you don't.
Trust. Me in this we're going to have a
hard time throughout this years I want you to know I.
Believe that your intention is fully right and good.
I believe that you want and desire the goodness that God has
for you. But if we.
Step around and look not just at the world out there, but at the
life that I'm living in here. I can see it's having marginal
effect at best. I want to do right, but I lack
the ability to do it. And a lot of times, what's
difficult, what makes it even more difficult?
As we live now in this kind of morally ambiguous reality, don't
we? We've got people on every side,
from every camp in every direction, telling us not just
what we should do, but with the force of moral certainty.
You. Must.
Believe. Think.
Do this or you must believe, think or do the exact.
Opposite often within this room, our intentions are good, but I
know for myself, I'm not getting better fast enough, better
little bit right degree by degree.
I'm not there's no criticism, there's no, no anger here,
right? But that's what our that's what
our confession is. We say this every week.
We cannot pull back from it. What is our confession?
Our confession is we are badly broken.
Brokenness is part and parcel of that.
We have to. Acknowledge that the brokenness
is the part of us that just says man, I want to love people well,
but as often as not, I end up alienating them or hurting them
or fearing them or running for them or or demonizing them in
order to make myself feel more secure.
The problem isn't that we don't have an good intention.
Here's why I say that. Here's the purpose that our
confession is meant to serve in our in our gatherings, in our
meetings. When something that we read and
hear or something from the scripture shines a light on
something that has in us that's broken, we don't have to run
from that. We don't have to hide in shame
from that. I want you to know this room is
a safe place to come broken, but it's not a place to stay broken
because we believe that God wants to.
Heal us and put us back together.
And one of the the most fundamental ways that he does
that is by inviting us to walk in wisdom, which the Proverbs
unpacked for us. A problem isn't that we don't
know enough rules. A problem isn't that we don't
have enough intellect. The problem isn't that we don't
that we're not trying hard enough.
All those things are important. They're just not enough.
I want you to be smarter. I want you to memorize this
sucker. I want the people in this room
to be the most efficient, effective handlers of God's Word
and the world. But you've probably known
somebody who knew a lot of Scripture that you could hardly
stand to be around. That's unfortunate, and that's
not wisdom. And what I want to say about
that is that's not God's desire for your life.
That's not. And the reason I know is because
He has put right in the very middle of his word, of his, of
his, the story of his dealing with mankind.
Right there in the very middle of it, He's put a book about
wisdom, about how to live. So we're going to start today
just looking at that. How does wisdom form us?
How does it affect us? How does it get into us?
What is our response to it? What do we do with this wisdom?
Right. And So what I want to do, again,
just like what Kerry did, is I just want to read it.
So if you have it. On your phone if you have it, on
an iPad if you have it. And listen, I'm a big fan of
this, right? Just because I can see where it
fits in the hole. If you've got a paper Bible, I'd
encourage you to Brant, But if you don't, that's fine.
Listen, I don't care. Use a scroll, smoke signals, I
don't care. Just get it right.
Like get the word. So I'm going to read Proverbs
chapter 1 verses one through 7. These are the.
Proverbs of Solomon, David's son, the king of Israel.
Their purpose is to teach people wisdom and discipline.
To help them understand the insights of the wise.
Their purpose is to teach. People to live disciplined and
successful lives to help them do.
That's a formation word. What is right and just and fair?
These proverbs will give insight to the simple knowledge and.
Discernment to the young. Let the wise.
Listen to these proverbs and become even wiser.
Let those with understanding receive guidance by exploring
the meaning in these proverbs and parables, the words of the
wise and their and their riddles.
The fear of the Lord is the foundation of true knowledge,
but fools despise wisdom and discipline.
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God, by the way,
that's the response to that. I didn't know that, right,
because I didn't come up like in a liturgical thing.
But that's the deal. When we come up and read every
time, and there's at the end, this is the word of the Lord,
our response is thanks be to God.
And you know why we give thanks to God?
Because His Word transforms us and forms us into what he's
doing in our lives. We thank Him for his word, which
is ultimately Jesus. But we'll get back to that in a
minute, right? So these verses at the very
beginning, they are an Establishment Clause, if you
will. They establish a lot of things
that are going to help guide us and lead us through the book of
Proverbs. So it's important that we
understand these. We're going to keep needing to
come back to these because listen, you're going to read
things in there and you're not going to know what to do with
them, right? And they're going to kind of be
offensive to you and they're going to hurt your feelings and
they're going to confront you, right?
And we're going to want to have a response in a certain way,
right? So what we do is we come back to
this and we go, what's what's going on?
What does this tell us? The first thing that this that
this introduction tells us it. Man, I should slow down the 1st.
Thing that we. Find in this introduction is
that the purpose and the purpose of the Proverbs is
transformation. Listen to what it says.
I'm going to read it again. I'm going to read a lot, right,
just because I want to hear it. Listen to what it says starting
in verse 2. Their purpose is to teach people
wisdom and discipline. Their purpose is to help them
understand the insights of the wise, right?
So that's all sounds like knowledge, right?
To understand, to see, right? But here's where it goes.
The purpose is to teach people to.
Live to teach people to live disciplined and successful lives
and to help them do what is right and just and fair.
So the purpose of? The wisdom and the proverbs, the
thing that they do, the reason that they're in here is to train
us. And what it says about the way
that it trains is discipline. Aren't you glad you came on
Discipline Sunday? We misunderstand discipline, and
I think the reason we misunderstand discipline, the
reason often I misunderstand discipline is because I think of
it often in terms of my parenting relationship with my
kids and the OR the way that I was parented by my parents.
And the problem is, the way that I discipline my kids is often
rooted in my sinfulness. In my brokenness.
So what I want to do is OfferUp a definition of discipline that
I think is going to rescue us from all of that, right?
Discipline is very simply training that leads us to a
Jesus shaped life. So here's a picture of what
discipline might look like as a parent in my kids, right?
My I set a rule for my kids don't play in the street.
The reason I don't want my kids to play in the street is because
the semi doesn't care. The Kent semi isn't looking for
them. So what happens then is when my
kids run out into the street, the first thing that happens is
my heart pops out of my chest. My brain goes to the worst
possible thing that happens. And So what does that look like
in practice? I snatch them up.
I throw them on the right. What they receive is, man, Dad's
ticked. What's real is.
Dad loves me too much to let me even consider being in a place
where my life could be in jeopardy.
Now, if I were less reactionary and sinful, right?
What I would do is hurry to grab my children and keep them safe.
And then I would in a level, in a way that they could respond
and understand, teach them why we stay out of the street, why
we well, unfortunately, too many times I don't do that.
I just say do what? I say.
And we wrap that in the term discipline.
And so we come to distrust discipline.
And I want you to hear that word discipline, for you may be
attached to all kinds of ugliness, even abuse.
And we want to hear is God's desire for your life is to set
you free. We're going to see all of this,
all right, not to crush you, not to destroy you.
And so we have to use words to describe the things and the ways
and the places that we are, but we can acknowledge the baggage
that comes with them and we can do the best of our ability, move
past them, right? And so when we say discipline,
right, like we're discipline, it's, it's leading to a Jesus
shaped life. Unfortunately for me and for us,
it defines what a Jesus shaped life looks like.
I wish it didn't because then I could just go.
Well, that Jesus shaped life, right?
Like Jesus, like Jesus, he turned over the table.
So now I can just baptize my anger.
Right, it doesn't say that what it says the.
Life that it wants. To lead us is right and just and
fair. That is where the proverbs lead
us. The proverbs lead us to
righteousness, the proverbs lead us to justice, and the proverbs
lead us to fairness. Sounds good now, but when those
words shape out a way that I don't like, I want to dismiss
them and I'm going to want to dismiss them.
But this is the goal of life that is right and just and fair
wisdom. This book of Proverbs, as we
jump into it and listen, when you read it each week, it's not
a narrative. It's it's disjointed as heck,
man. So many times it's like this and
it's talking about, you know, a gold ring and a pig snout and
hiding in the. Corner of the roof I got weird.
Stuff in there, right? All of this, all of this right
now as we ingest the whole lot of it, what it's going to do,
it's going to train us. To.
Recognize and to Orient ourselves towards God and others
in real time. That's what righteousness.
That's what right and just and fair is.
It's an orientation towards God and other people, right?
My righteousness is a relational orientation towards God.
My justice is a relational orientation towards others.
Fairness is a relation to read this and hear this right, we
read it in verse. We see in verse 4.
These proverbs will give insight to the simple stop.
How do you feel about that word? Simple.
They'll give insight to the simple knowledge and.
Discernment to the young. Let the wise listen to these.
Proverbs and become even wiser. Let those with understanding
receive guidance by. Exploring the meaning in these.
Proverbs and parables, the words of the wise and their riddles.
So the audience is actually two. There are two different kind of
audiences. 1 is the simple. Now, when you hear the word
simple, when I first hear the word simple, the first thing
that kind of comes to my mind is The Big Brother and The Grapes
of Wrath, right? Right.
A kind of a little bit slow, probably unintelligent, maybe a
little bit dumb. The biblical idea of simplicity
of a simple person is not dumb. It is not ignorant.
It is not a person who is lazy. It is not a person who is
immoral. The idea behind being simple,
when it says it gives wisdom, it gives life to the simple.
What he's talking about is simplicity of simple people that
are unformed, people that haven't been shaped.
By the way of Jesus. It's people that are easily
influenced. It's people that are not yet
discerning. And again, we hear all that and
we just go, yeah, well, I don't want to be all those things.
But listen, maybe you've been following Jesus for like 14
minutes. Maybe a month ago you said I
want to follow Jesus, but you don't know what that means yet.
Well, I say lovingly and kindly to you redemptively is that's
what it is to be simple. That's why it's so overwhelming,
man. We come in here we go, yeah, I
want to follow Jesus. And then you go out there and
you watch the news and you see people who are like, you got to
think this and you're like, what the heck is going on, man?
And we wrap it in all and all of this stuff, right?
So the question of simplicity is like, I want to follow Jesus to
the best of my ability. I'm ready to give everything
that I can do that. But what about my politics?
What about my friends? What about my like, do I have to
like? What if I don't believe that
it's six literal days? Can I follow Jesus?
We're unformed. We don't.
We don't know. Yet listen, if you're a new
follower of Jesus and you're like, I don't know what to do
with this book. I don't know how to get in it.
I don't know how to read it. I don't know anything.
But I I just know God wants me. God loves me and he wants me to
follow him and I want to follow. I want you to know that's
enough. He meets you right where you
are. You're welcome here.
You're this is a place for badly broken people.
And I just want to say like it. He's calling you.
You're not here on accident if you're here because somebody
invited you. You're here because Somebody
Loves You very much and they're giving you the best of what they
have. I just want you to know, I want
you to hear this from my mouth. God's not mad at you.
You don't have to shine up or clean up or get up.
He meets you right where you are.
But listen, he doesn't leave you where you are.
You've been following him for a long time and nothing's changed
in your outlook or your view or your perspective or the way that
you. Treat people or groups of
people. Then you may believe in him,
but. Are you?
Following him, being transformed by him, I want you to hear me
say there is no shame in not knowing.
You do not need to be embarrassed by what you don't
know about the scripture. You just need to go get it.
That's what this is about. That's what small groups are
about. That's what our classes are
about. That's what we do is about that.
So go get it. But it's not just to the simple.
It's also to those who are, let's say, more seasoned.
I don't want to say mature, right?
Because we can be around this for a long time and know a lot
of things and not have it get into us and not have us.
Be. Formed right?
Because the idea is there is no arrival at wisdom.
You're not a lot come to a day. Someday we go, fuck, I got my
wisdom certificate in the mail. Now I'm wise.
Because wisdom is rooted in the character of God, right?
And our God is infinite. He is infinite in his goodness.
He is infinite in his intellect. He is infinite in His Holiness.
He is infinite in his righteousness.
Which means it never, ever, ever, ever runs out.
Which means we never get to stop getting wise.
We never get to stop learning and being shaped and transformed
and formed by the wisdom of God. Now we can opt out of the
process. We can stop, but you can.
Settle for just knowing things. You can settle for being the
smartest person in the room. But when everybody looks at your
life and they see a lack of wisdom, knowledge without
wisdom, that's ugly. No condemnation, no criticism,
but reality. Me too.
I've been doing this for 20 some years now.
My kids see the ugliness, right? I'm growing.
We never run out of wisdom. But here's what that means.
It's I love that there are both, that that he dresses both in the
same thing. If you're here and you're new,
if you are a new believer, a new follower of Jesus and you just
don't know what I want you to know that this is important.
God has provided this for you. But the other thing that he has
provided for you is wise people. You should seek them out and
learn from them and ask them. I tell people when I counsel
them in marriage, I say you should find people whose
marriage looks like you want your life to look and ask them
1000 questions now for us mature ones, do you know why young
people don't often come and ask us questions because we're not
really that approachable on. That.
And what I'm going to say from the outset is whatever it may
be. It's not maturity.
I'm not that impressed by what you know.
What I want to see is how does what we know grow into who we
are? So if you are young and simple
in this room, seek out the wisdom of people who have gone
before you. But if you're in here and you're
mature and you've been following Jesus for a while, maybe you
read a proverb a day, every day for the for as long as you can
remember. If the wisdom of the Proverbs
and the wisdom that you encounter isolates you.
From simple people. It's not wisdom, it's probably
more like pride, possibly self righteousness.
I don't know because I don't know your story.
I don't know where you are. I'm not accusing anyone, but but
that's what it is. I know in my life, if there's
somebody that and I and I draw back from them because of
something there, it's probably not their problem.
It's my problem. But the question for all of us
is, is the wisdom of God? Is his life and his teaching his
principles? Is his wisdom shaping our
marriages or are you doing that on your own?
Is his wisdom shaping our singleness?
You know, the Bible doesn't hold up marriage as the ultimate goal
for every person. There are some who are called
and created to be single and that is a beautiful gift and
there's wisdom for that. And we need it.
Does the wisdom of God shape and form your money the way you
respond to anxiety and fear and crisis?
Does wisdom shape the way that you approach entertainment?
Does wisdom talk about the movies that you see, the TV
shows that you watch, the music that you listen to?
No condemnation, but if not, why not?
Why do we believe that there may be an area of our life that God
is just not interested in or effective in?
I mean, God, I know that you're able to be the ultimate creator
of all things. I know that with a word from
your mouth, all things came into being.
But I'm not really sure you're ready to balance my budget or
get me ready for retirement. I better handle that myself,
right? I do have a degree in English so
I'm ready to go. Knowing who and what wisdom is
for it leads us to the doorstep. It's for all of us.
It's God's training. It's his way of teaching us how
to have a life that blesses Him, that honors him, that is.
Fruitful. It's not just about us also.
That's a big thing. This story's not about us.
This story's about Him, right? But what brings Him honor and
glory as a people who put His way into practice and walk that
out and begin to look different? So we know who it is and what it
is that leads us to the doorstep of wisdom.
But we don't need to be at the doorstep of wisdom, do we?
We need to go through it. So how do we walk through that
door? Verse 7 says fear of the Lord is
the foundation of true knowledge.
But fools despise wisdom and discipline.
So I wish that Solomon had said fear of the Lord is the
foundation of wisdom, because that would make a nice, neat,
tidy little thing. But we're good here, right?
Like the language doesn't bother.
True knowledge and wisdom go together.
Knowledge says the sun is going to come up tomorrow.
I like, I know what I believe. Like, I mean, it could not, but
that would be the end of the world and it wouldn't matter at
that point. But knowledge says the sun is
going to come up tomorrow. True knowledge says I better set
my alarm clock or I'm going to miss work, right?
True knowledge is wisdom. True knowledge is the
understanding. It is the idea.
It is the intellectual capacity that then shapes and forms our
actions, our responses, our truth.
And what Proverbs 1? Seven tells us is that biblical
wisdom is built on the foundation of learning to
respond to God as He truly is. This is hard because we've been
formed in our understanding of who God is and what God is.
Some of you come here with deep and heinous church hurt and some
of you have been told, Well, you haven't been told, but you've
experienced this sense that God is angry and ready to crush you
and destroy you. And if He is anything, he is a
little bit cranky and upset at who you are and what you are and
what you've been to do. And so then we read about the
fear of the. Lord, and you're like I knew it.
He just wants to hurt me, right? Because who are we afraid of?
We're afraid of our enemies, we're afraid of power that we
can't control. We're afraid of power that's
different from us. We're afraid of lack.
We're afraid of scarcity. We're afraid of all kinds of
things. And so when we read about the
fear of the Lord, then we kind of lump all that in together.
And what I'm going to say is that's not the biblical.
Picture of the fear of the Lord. Fear in this sense doesn't mean
hiding in expectation of retribution.
I think a better and listen. So anytime I talk about, anytime
somebody uses a. The metaphor for God, it is
incomplete, does not perfectly reflect their holes in their
ways, right? But to talk about the fear of
the Lord, I think about electricity.
I'm not afraid that like I'm not up here worried about whether
that socket over there is going to jump out and ZAP me, right?
It's contained. It's like I know how it works.
Not only do I know how it works, I can use it.
I can leverage it. I can take that power, that
energy, and I can charge my phone.
I can light my iPad, I can light my house.
I can do all kinds of crazy things, but I don't get to come
to electricity on my terms. To come to electricity on my
terms will have a shocking consequence.
You like what I did? Our God is not.
Are you listening? Our God is not angry, but he is
powerful and he is deadly serious about the consequence of
rejecting his life. And in fact, he attaches a word
to it. It's the word foolish.
The biblical definition of a fool is not someone who doesn't
have enough understanding. It is a person who understands
just enough to say no, just enough to reject it.
That's the counterpoint. All throughout the the Proverbs,
we have wisdom and foolishness. The wise person, the fool.
Fools are the ones who stick keys and light sockets.
Fools are the ones who stare into the wisdom of God and say,
I think I'll do my own thing. I think I'll approach power and
marriage and wisdom and finances and righteousness my own way.
The wise people want a Jesus shaped life and so they walk
through the door into things that they don't know fully or
understand. Because we're ready and willing
to be formed. And what it talks about is a
fool. What a fool does is what does it
say? They despise wisdom and they
despise discipline. That word despise doesn't have
to have emotional heat. You don't have to look at this
and just go, I hate it. You just have to.
Look at it and just go, I don't, I'm not going to do it.
That's to despise the wisdom of the Lord.
So foolishness then is any. Are you listening?
Foolishness is any. Posture in our life other than
grateful, humble, imperfect, always failing, and incomplete
submission to. The God who loves you and calls
you into his life and into his world.
Foolishness is saying no to the God who wants to give you
stability and eternity and life and love and purpose.
And this is a startling claim. Wisdom begins in the fear of the
Lord. Wisdom begins with this kind of
awestruck reality that we're standing before the great power
and all of the universe, in fact, the power that created all
things. And it's Starling precisely
because it leads us to wonder what that fear sounds like.
And I know my nice neat little metaphor about light sockets.
I know that perfectly. And once and for all banished
all wrong thoughts about the fear of your Lord out of your
mind, right? We want to know the problem is,
and this is a problem. We hear something like that, and
then we begin to guess about what it means.
And then we walk out of the room with our guesses and we kind of
baptize them, right? And we kind of make them
ultimate and we make it final. And what I'm going to say is
that's a bad idea. We should never do that, right?
So there's a phrase that we say all the time.
We say it love to say it around Easter time, right?
Like where we watch Jesus getting nailed to a cross,
right? We watch Jesus say, forgive
them, father, for they don't know what they're doing.
And the phrase that we always say is Jesus is what God has
been saying the whole time, right?
But that means it's like we don't get to nullify Jesus by
reading Moses. Paul doesn't trump Jesus.
The proverbs don't trump Jesus, right?
So with that idea if. Fear if the fear of the Lord.
Meant some kind of threat. Or terror, then I would expect
to hear that on Jesus's lips. I would expect to see that on
his, on his in his behavior. But instead of fear and.
Threat and. Terror, What I hear from Jesus
is seriousness and weight without coercion.
You know what that is? That's invitation.
It's not a threat, it's an invitation.
And here's what it sounds like. Matthew Chapter 7, starting in
verse 20, 24. Anyone who listens to my
teaching and follows it is wise. Now we know we're talking about
the Proverbs. Whoever listens to my teaching
is wise. He's like a person who builds a
house on a solid rock. Though the rain comes in
torrents and the floodwaters rise and the winds beat against
the house, it won't collapse because it's built on bedrock.
But anyone who hears my teaching and doesn't?
Obey. It is foolish, like a person who
builds a house on sand. When the rains and floods come
and the winds beat against that house, it will collapse with a
mighty trap. With a mighty crash at the end
of Matthew Chapter 7 is the end of Jesus sermon on his mount
where he defines what righteousness and justice and
and intimacy looks like in the Kingdom.
What Jesus says is the way that we endure this life.
He doesn't ever say that there will not be storms.
He says you can count on the storms.
What he says is the way that we understand the way that we
endure these storms isn't to understand his his teachings.
It's not to have the right systematic theology.
The way that we endure the storms is to build our house on
a different thing in a different place.
Remember in communion what did Jesus say?
Remember Me? That's what he's.
Talking about that's what remembrance is change your
building site you don't need new permits they're transferable you
can do all of that but notice the formation language in Jesus
he talks about building he talks about storms he talks about
waiting that's. Formation language.
He doesn't say try harder. He doesn't say get your act.
Together, he says, check where you're building.
Are you building your life on on some kind of political hope it's
going to crash? Are you building your life on
some kind of economic hope? It's going to crash.
Are you building your life on the hope that your kids are
always going to love you and give you meaning and purpose to
your life? Your life is going to crash.
Is your life built on your relationship with your spouse
that brings you so much comfort and joy?
The mortality rate for the human race continues to hover around
100%. Somebody's going to leave first
if that's your. Foundation.
It's sand and it's failing and it's fading, and Jesus invites
you into something different. Wisdom.
Wisdom is the way that God saves human lives from collapse.
And the promise is if you choose wisdom, then you will weather
the inevitable, not escape it, not bypass it, overcome it,
endure it. So the question for you today,
are you listening? The question for you isn't do
you believe? I don't.
I'm not going to ask you what you believe because I can see it
in your life. The fruit of your belief is your
response. If I believe the sun is coming
up tomorrow, I will set my alarm no matter what I say to the
contrary. But maybe you're in here today
and you know that you've been building your life on sand.
You know that despite your best intentions, your life has
continued to produce fruit that is discouraging at best,
destructive at worst. You know you're not evil.
You just want the life that you want without having to
surrender. There is no category for that.
There is no way around that. But that recognition that your
life isn't producing the kind of fruit that you want, The word we
call that confession, the acknowledgement of what is real
and untrue, The next step in that it's not shame.
The next step to confessing that your life hasn't produced
wisdom. It's not.
To to kind of like try to prove yourself that you're serious.
Just start building differently. Just start doing different
things. Just start having a different
response and relationship to power and to provision and to
money and to friends and and all of those things.
Just start doing it. Differently.
You're not earning it. You're following.
You're being LED. You're being guided.
You're walking in wisdom. That is called repentance.
Turning away from what is unstable to what is here to
stay. Repentance isn't isn't God
yelling at you. Repentance is building your life
differently. That's the invitation,
invitation of Jesus into a durable life.
Durable salvation doesn't begin when you die.
Salvation begins today. I think the idea that's going to
shock us when we enter into eternity is how much continuity
there is between this life and the next one.
And I would hate to come to find out that all of my intentional
rejections of Jesus for pleasure in life and feeling good in this
world, it will hinder me in some way from a full experience
there. And this isn't a threat.
This is a a mirror. God's desires to give you every
good thing that we can't even fathom and understand.
And wisdom is his path. Wisdom begins when we
acknowledge God is the rightful King of creation and our lives
by submitting to his rule. It's not an easy decision.
It's not a decision to be made lightly because it carries great
and eternal consequence. You can't follow Jesus and stay
the way that you are. You become like Jesus, become
like him. But it's a decision that when
made, leads to a goodness, the goodness that we've been
seeking, the hope that we've been seeking for, but it will
forever and always fall apart without him.
So the invitation to Jesus today is walk through the door.
Say yes, you can begin building your life on wisdom.
Jesus, You are the wisdom of God made manifest.
Everything that we're going to read about in this Old Testament
book is fulfilled by you. So Jesus, we want to put our
trust in you today. And I pray for everybody in this
room who maybe they haven't done that before, but they're here
today and they know that. And they know I've been walking
my own way. I've been living by my own
wisdom. Jesus, I pray that you would
bring comfort to them. I pray that they would know that
you're not angry at them, but that you are actually righteous
and you are actually holy and you are actually powerful and
you are actually king. And to reject your authority is
not a small thing. It is the equivalent of key in a
light socket. I pray if that's you and here
today and your heart is seeking Jesus, that you would just say,
I confess that I've been building on sand and I want to
build on the rock. Jesus, show me how.
And Jesus, we know that you are always faithful to your word.
So we trust you and we walk together towards you.
Give us the grace in this series not to moralize.
Give us the grace in this series not to preach some legalism that
says if we do everything right, then you're obligated to us.
Lord, help us just chase you, and may the fruit born in our
presence be sweet smelling and beautiful.
We ask these things. Jesus, in your name and for your
glory. Amen.
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May the Lord bless and keep you in all grace and peace.