Pursue Wisdom - [Proverbs 2:1-9]

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OK, Proverbs chapter 2, starting in verse 1. My son, if thou wilt receive my words and lay up my commandments with thee, so that thou incline thine ear unto wisdom and apply thine heart to understanding, yea, if thou cryest after knowledge and liftest up thy voice for understanding, if thou seekest her as silver and searchest for her as for hidden treasures, then shalt thou understand the fear of the
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Lord and find the knowledge of God. For the Lord giveth wisdom out of his mouth, cometh knowledge and understanding.
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He layeth up sound wisdom for the righteous. He is a shield to those who walk uprightly.
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He keepeth the paths of justice and preserveth the way of his saints. Then shalt thou understand righteousness and justice and equity, yea, every good path.
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Everything you're going to need for life, son, you will learn from the study and the pursuit of wisdom.
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William Arnault, in his book on Proverbs, written over 100 years ago, he says, the fear of the
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Lord is an absolute necessity on which all other attainments depend. The man whose knowledge begins and ends with matter and its laws has got a superstructure without a foundation.
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And that describes most of modern science, does it not? They've got a great superstructure.
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They've got no foundation underneath it. And so we have this command to seek wisdom.
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And not only do we have a command to seek wisdom, we have a promise that wisdom will be bestowed if we seek it.
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It's not some elusive thing out there where God is playing catch me if you can.
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He is commanding us, you seek wisdom. That's the first four verses. And if you seek, and if you seek in the proper way, you will find.
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That's verses 5 to 9. And so we answer the questions with Job.
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Job asked the question, but where shall wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding? And he also asked, whence cometh wisdom?
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And where is the place of understanding? That's Job chapter 28. And the answer is, it's found in God's word.
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And so here we have a command laid out. And there are four segments to it.
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It says, first of all, receive my words. Or receive God's words, if you will.
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Incline the ear. Cry after knowledge. And seek as silver.
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And so we are supposed to apply the heart to hide the commandments of God in our hearts.
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And we are to lift up our voice and search diligently for wisdom.
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We are to apply at least as much effort to the finding of God's wisdom as we apply to our jobs and the seeking of earthly wealth.
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And so let's look at this a little bit. First of all, he says, receive the word. Now, what does it mean to receive the word?
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Simple definition means to hear and to act on it. A great deal of the time, particularly with our children, sometimes you want to grab them and say, pay close attention here.
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Because children, don't they have this way of having the words go in here and out there?
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And there's no action, right? You say in the steal from Bill Cosby, you say to your child, didn't you hear me say?
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And the child goes, uh -huh. Why didn't you do what I said?
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I don't know. See, no wisdom. No wisdom at all.
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To receive the word means I hear it and I act on it. And Jesus gave the parable of the sower when he was here on Earth.
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And if you remember, it was the seed that fell on the receptive ground that produced fruit.
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You remember the parable? The seed was scattered, and some of it fell on hard ground where it couldn't germinate, and some of it fell on shallow ground where it germinated quickly, but then had no staying power.
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But some of it fell on receptive and prepared ground. And that produces results. Because the word is the standard of wisdom.
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The word is the standard of wisdom. We don't need to seek to be wiser than God's word will make us.
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And God's word is applicable to every one of his creatures. It's not a matter of intellect.
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God in his sovereignty gives some greater intellect than others. But all of us can deal profitably with God's word.
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Why? Because the Holy Spirit ministers to us. This is not something that we are going in of ourselves trying to dig out the knowledge like we would do with an ordinary textbook.
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We are provided a teacher. We do the same thing with everything else. We go to a teacher who's going to teach us calculus or whatever it is that we're trying to learn.
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Well, God does the same thing for us with his word. He does not leave us with no teacher. He provides teachers.
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First of all, the Holy Spirit is provided to teach us. And secondly, he also gives pastor teachers as gifts to the church.
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And so he has provided us with teachers. He's provided us with teachers. Also, the word of God applies to you personally.
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This is not something which is done in a vacuum. This is not something which exists over here and our life exists over here.
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There is no separation between the sacred and the profane in the life of the believer.
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What does Paul say? Whatever you do, do all. Do all to the glory of God.
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Everything you do in your life is to glorify God. Everything you do in your life is to be affected by his word.
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And so it also, it applies to us personally. It's a fountain and standard of wisdom and it overrides personal opinion.
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I'll tell you a secret. God is not impressed with what we think. You know that?
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God is not impressed with what we think about anything. God is only impressed with what he thinks.
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I once got in a lot of trouble for making that statement. A lady took great umbrage at that. But it's the truth.
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God is only impressed with what he thinks. And so it requires, it requires the idea that it overrides personal opinion.
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And whatever I think, if that is contrary to what the word of God teaches, then the word of God trumps my opinion.
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You know, you can't use the phrase, I think, you know, yada, yada, yada. That's why the statement, we never use the statement around here unless it's just a slip of the tongue.
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What does this verse mean to you? You know, that's really irrelevant when you think about it.
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Okay, it overrides personal opinion and requires a receptive heart as we said. And it affects your life.
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It controls and influences your actions. And this is one of the places where we run contrary to the world at large.
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Because quite frankly, the average person doesn't care how religious you are.
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Religion is a fine thing. As one of the lines in a movie says, you know, religion's a fine thing, my son taking in moderation.
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We don't care how religious you are as long as it doesn't affect your life. And particularly in times of political, when we're doing the political process, you know, we get all upset.
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Well, so and so, you know, if he's religious, will this affect your life? Well, duh.
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You know, but that is the attitude that society has. You can be as religious as you want as long as it doesn't affect your life.
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If you like going to church on Sunday, you know, and sitting there and going through the motions and all that, that's just fine as long as it doesn't affect your life.
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But the whole point of God's word is, it's supposed to affect your life.
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We read God's word and we look at something and we come across something and we say, uh -oh, this is something that I'm supposed to do that I'm not doing.
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So I better get on with it. Or this is something that I'm doing that the Bible says I'm not supposed to do.
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So I better quit. The Bible is intended to affect the way we live.
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Back in the Old Testament, all of the rules and regulations and ordinances and all the rest of it that God gave the
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Israelites were all intended to do one thing. It was all intended to keep them separate from the rest of the world.
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Everything was to emphasize their separateness, that they were set apart to God. They were God's chosen people.
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And that's what all of that was for. It had other effects for sure, but that was the principal reason for doing all of that was that they were separate.
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God said over and over again, do not, when you get into the land, do not marry your daughters to their sons.
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Do not take their sons and marry your daughters. You're separate. You stay separate from the peoples that are around you.
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So the second thing we're supposed to do, we are to welcome the word with the readiness of mind.
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The first thing is we're supposed to receive the word. Second thing we're supposed to do is we're supposed to welcome the word.
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And that is we are to approach the word expecting to hear it and expecting to obey it.
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Again, this is not an exercise that we're going through just because that's what we do every morning.
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You know, check that often, you know, we get up, shave, you know, get dressed, you know, read the
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Bible, check them off and then we're ready to go. We are to expect the word to affect us.
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We are to expect to hear. Back in the day when
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I was on active duty and we would have a staff meeting and I would go in,
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I would expect the commander, Colonel Patterson to give orders, right? And I expected to receive those orders and to act on them.
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I didn't necessarily expect to agree with them because that's the nature of the way it works.
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The commander gives orders and the subordinates go and do their very best to carry them out, whether we agreed with it or not.
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Well, we have an advantage here because we are told that whatever God says is the best thing for our life.
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We can rely on that. That even if we don't see it the way
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God sees it, God sees perfectly and we don't. Therefore, we can take what he has said, said this is the very best thing to apply to my life and I'm gonna do my utmost to do that, to carry that out.
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And so too often, don't we? Don't we read searching for loopholes?
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We're not reading the word with the attitude that, you know,
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I want whatever God says is the best thing for my life. And therefore, I wanna find out what he says and I wanna see how close
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I can get to perfect obedience. You know, I know I'm not gonna be perfect, but he said in Matthew 5, 48, be perfect.
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So I'm gonna set that as a standard up here and that's what I'm gonna shoot for. I'm gonna do my very best to be perfect.
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Now, so often don't we say, how little can I get away with?
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You know, how close to the edge of the cliff can
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I get before I fall over? Don't we look at that? So often we're sinners and we're trying to see, you know, do
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I really have to do this? Kind of like when we were kids, you know, go clean up your room.
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Okay, let's see, if I shove everything under the bed, will that be good enough?
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You know, and so no, we are supposed to expect to hear and obey.
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We are to expect a change of heart and a change of attitude. One of the great things that leads to assurance of salvation, what assures us of our salvation?
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Well, one thing that assures us of salvation is the written word of God. But another thing that goes a long way to assuring us of salvation is the fact that we see
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God's working in our lives. That we're not, it's like the old lady in Appalachia said, you know,
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I ain't what I need to be and I ain't what I'm gonna be, but I ain't what
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I was. Well, that's what we should be able to do and look at our lives and say, we're certainly not where we need to be.
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And we're certainly not what we're going to be because someday we will reach the state of ultimate glorification in heaven.
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But we're not what we were. We are, our lives are changing.
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We are changing. We are being changed. God promises us, I am changing you to look more and more like me.
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And we should be able to see that process going on. We should be able to see that process going on as we do begin to look more and more.
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We're in the family of God. And one of the things about being in a family is we all look alike, right?
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You know, you look like grandpa or grandma. Well, we are beginning to look like our father, our father in heaven.
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And so we should expect those changes. We should expect life's course to be altered because the
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Christian life, as we live the Christian life, God does not force us to do something that we don't want to do.
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Believe it or not, I'll say that again. God does not force us to do something that we don't want to do. Sometimes, you know, we're afraid, well, you know,
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I don't want to commit my life to Christ because he's going to send me someplace I don't want to go. He's going to give me some career that I don't want to follow.
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He's going to make me do this. He's going to make me do that. No, what God does in our lives is he changes us.
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He changes our desires so that amazingly enough, all of a sudden, our desires align with what he wants us to do.
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And so it's not an issue anymore of he's sending me someplace I don't want to go. It's I want to go there, whatever it is.
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When Dallas and I were still members at Grace Community, there was a fellow there by the name of Marty Wolfe.
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Good story about Marty. Marty was a converted Jew. And he had this burden in his heart.
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He wanted to go and minister to his brethren. And in particular, Marty was also very fluent in French and he wanted to go minister to French -speaking
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Jews. You think, okay, I want to go to Paris or France at least. And everyone was encouraging him.
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Yeah, that's a great thing, Marty. The Lord's laid that on your heart. Go to France, you know, minister.
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Marty wound up ministering to French -speaking Jews in Montreal because it turns out the largest community of French -speaking
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Jews that's not in France is in Quebec. And that's where he wound up. That's where God had for him to go.
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But how did he get there? He got there because his desires were aligned, that that's what he wanted.
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And that's what God does for us. That's what God does for us. And we should expect that to happen.
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Jesus is not a fire escape. Jesus, excuse me a second here.
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Jesus does not want us to use him as a fire escape. You know, I'm more than happy,
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Lord, to accept you as Savior, but I don't want you to affect my life here.
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I just want you to keep me out of hell when I die. That's not the way that works.
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You know, Jesus is Lord. You know, you don't make him
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Lord. Jesus is Lord and he is your
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Lord. And we are to acknowledge him as such. Anyway, that's one of the things that Lordship salvation is unpopular is because we don't like the idea that, you know, it's a package deal, if you will.
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If you're gonna follow Jesus, you take up the cross. That's not optional. It's going to affect all areas of our lives.
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It's going to affect our career. It's gonna affect our vocation. It's gonna affect our choice of a spouse.
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It's gonna affect where we live. It's gonna affect our finances. All of those areas are going to be affected.
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So, we are also to retain the word. It's always to be ready for use.
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It's to be our habitual bent of mind toward the spiritual. And how do we get like that?
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Well, you don't get that way by reading one verse in 30 seconds every morning.
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You get that way as you study the word of God. It is resident in your mind.
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And it becomes a habit because seeds are planted and then they grow.
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It doesn't spring up into a full -blown plant immediately. It takes, the seed has to be planted.
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It has to be cultivated. It has to be watered. It has to grow. And that's what happens as we turn more and more to the word of God in all areas of our lives.
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This becomes habit forming. It becomes habitual. It's the way we do things.
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So that whenever we are presented with a situation, we immediately start thinking about, we start thinking about a doctrinal solution, if you will.
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Because we have been taught the patterns by which we are to think and we are to approach things.
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And this works in life. This is not something that's unique to the
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Christian life. In almost all of our career fields, whatever it is, there is a body of doctrine.
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We don't call it that necessarily, but that's what it is. There is a body of doctrine, whatever your field is, whether it's engineering or physics or marketing or whatever it is, there's a body of doctrine.
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And you learn that so that when you're presented with a situation, you think in this pattern.
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The United States military works that way. We have a set of doctrine that all officers learn so that we all think the same way, so that there is a cohesiveness of action that takes place.
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Well, God has his body of doctrine and all of us learn to think that way as we study doctrine.
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That's why doctrine is so important. Doctrine is not divisive, doctrine is unifying because it leads us all to thinking, not in lockstep, but thinking in the same general patterns.
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It's not a slavish following of a certain set of rules. It's a thought process that we all go through.
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And we're to do that, we're to do that. And one of the things about growing things,
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I'm not a gardener, but lots of farmers back in my family, in the past, and one of the things about things that grow, it keeps the soil broken up as things grow.
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The soil doesn't become a hard pack. And that's the thing, as the word of God works in our lives and it grows, it keeps the soil broken up because you have to till the soil.
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Those of you who are gardeners, you know about this. You can't just throw the seed down on the hard ground, can you?
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Now you have to break it up. You have to till it, you have to get the rototiller out there and run around in the garden with it and break things up so that the seeds can grow and the root system can spread out.
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Well, the word of God does that to our hearts. And again, it becomes a pattern.
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It becomes a pattern that repeats over and over and over again. So the next thing we're supposed to do, and I got to speed up here.
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The next thing we're supposed to do is incline the ear. Well, what does that mean? It means to apply to the hearts.
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It means to apply to our hearts. First of all, we are to take every opportunity we can get to hear the word of God preached and taught.
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Now, this implies that you know the preachers, or at least you know about them.
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You don't just listen to everybody. There are folks out there who frankly are not worth listening to.
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So you have to know the preachers. Show some discernment here.
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But grab every opportunity that you can to hear the word preached from preachers that you know are sound.
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You are supposed to listen with attention as in a classroom with the intention to retain.
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Now, you're not just going through a meaningless exercise. You are doing something. Why are you in a classroom when you go to school?
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Well, some kids are in a classroom because they were forced to be there. But the rest of us, hopefully when you get to classroom, you're there because you want to learn whatever it is that's being taught in that classroom, right?
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Well, the same thing happens with the word of God. You're there because you want to learn what is being taught so that you can apply it.
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You can take it, you can apply it, you can make it part of your life. And thirdly, you're supposed to grasp this as something of great value that you're afraid might slip away if you don't hang on to it.
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It's a value. And remember, all of us, all of us are inclined to the things that we consider important, the things that our hearts desire we concentrate on.
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Why does someone memorize the batting average of everybody who has ever played for the Boston Red Sox in its entire history?
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It's because they're a big sports fan and that's something that's of interest to them and it's important to them.
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Why do you learn certain things? You learn it because it's important to you. It's part of your work. It's part of what you enjoy doing.
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Why does a musician learn the pieces that are their favorites?
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It's because they played them so many times that it's just become ingrained in them. And why did they play them so many times?
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Because they enjoy them. We do what our hearts desire. We make time available for what our hearts desire.
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We find the money, don't we, for whatever it is our hearts desire. If we want something bad enough, we'll do whatever it takes to achieve that goal, to get whatever that is, whatever it is.
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We do that. And we are to treat the word of God with at least that same level of interest.
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And he goes on, we are to cry after knowledge, which is an advanced state of inclining the ear, if you will.
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We are to spend time in prayer. What does the Bible says? You have not because you ask not.
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We are to pray expecting results. Now, sometimes we also have not because we ask amiss.
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That's, there are certain things that we are not to ask for, and there are certain things that we ask for with improper motives.
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We are to have the proper motivations, and we are not to ask for something that God has said thou shalt not.
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You know, young ladies, young men, do not ask
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God for permission to marry the girl or guy that really attracts your attention, but that you know is not a
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Christian, because God has already said, don't do that, okay?
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You can ask that God will work in their lives and give them the new birth and bring them to himself so that they'll get saved, and then you can court them.
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That's perfectly permissible. We're also supposed to enthusiastically seek.
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We're supposed to have a keen awareness of the value of wisdom and our lack of it, that wisdom is something we need, every one of us needs.
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It doesn't matter how old we are in the faith. It doesn't matter how much of the
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Bible we have memorized. It doesn't matter how many degrees we might have or something hung on the wall.
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If we are alive on this earth, we still need wisdom. We need to increase in wisdom.
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Remember, we set the bar at perfection, and we're not there yet, and so we are to constantly work at this process.
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It's a process of work. It's a process of work. We are to seek the milk of the word as newborn babes.
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We all, you know, we see the new babies we have around here and what's the new baby want? New baby wants milk, you know, and he's gonna fuss until he gets it, right?
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And so we're supposed to be exactly the same way, and we're to apply the knowledge that we receive. And so finally, we are to seek.
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We are to pursue the acquisition of wisdom with at least the same vigor as we pursue earthy wealth.
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He says that the writer Solomon says, seek her as silver. It's to be a persevering endeavor, if you will, the pursuit of sanctification.
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And the Bible talks about this a lot. Luke 1334 tells us we are to strive to enter in to the narrow gate.
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1 Timothy 6, 12 says we are to lay hold on eternal life.
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Philippians 2, 12 says we are to work out our own salvation. Ephesians 6, 12 says we are to view the
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Christian life as a battle to be won. And Hebrews 12, 1 says we are to view life as a race to be won.
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All of these things. This doesn't sound a whole lot like let go and let
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God, does it? Just let go, let God. This sounds like work, all of this here.
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He said, I thought salvation is a free gift, and it is. The new birth, you had nothing whatsoever to do with it.
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It is God's sovereign choice, and it is gift to you.
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But once that has taken place, and once you have,
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Jesus says, come unto me and I will give you rest. Well, then once you've shown up for the rest, here's a lot of work too that you get.
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We are to seek divine treasure. It says we're to build gold, silver, and precious stones.
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We are to work on that which is permanent. Characteristics of gold, silver, precious stones are what?
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They are, number one, they are valuable in and of themselves. And God's word is valuable in and of itself.
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Term we use, it is intrinsically valuable. It doesn't represent value. In paper money, paper money has no intrinsic value at all.
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What is it? A few cents worth of paper, a few cents worth of ink, that's it. A gold bar has intrinsic value.
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It's valuable in and of itself. The word of God has intrinsic value.
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It's valuable in and of itself. It is permanent. It is lasting. It is eternal.
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What are the other things that are mentioned in that passage? Wood, hay, and stubble.
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Well, wood is not totally without value. It has value. You can do things with it. You can build with it.
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You can do things, but it has no eternal value. And even hay has value.
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I mean, you can feed it to your livestock, and then it gets further down the chain.
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It says we have stubble. Stubble has no value at all. And so much of the time we spend, unfortunately, building stubble, don't we?
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So what are the promise results? In verse five, we are promised an understanding and a knowledge of God.
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We are told how to worship. We are told how to fear God. We are taught how to know
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God. We are also, how to conduct ourselves towards men.
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That's verse nine. We are to conduct ourselves towards men with justice. We are to treat our fellow human beings justly.
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We are not to cheat them. We are not to take undue advantage. All of these things, that's how we are supposed to treat each other.
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And even more so, we are to treat fellow believers the same way. We are to treat them with charity.
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We are to do right. We are to do right just because it is right.
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And we are to, it will lead us, it says, into every good path. And finally, it gives us grounds for hope.
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God has wisdom to bestow. God has wisdom to bestow. He is wise himself.
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God is wise. God knows all things and he knows them accurately.
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In every situation that we will ever find ourselves confronted with, God knows all of the facts, all of the details, all of the motivations.
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So often, we do not. For one thing, we cannot see into the hearts of, into the hearts of men.
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So we don't know the motivations. We might think we know the motivations.
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We might assign motives to individuals' actions, but we don't know the motivations.
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And don't we so often assign motives to certain things we find out later that that wasn't the motivation at all.
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It was something entirely different. And yet, just as a reaction to the fact that we are still sinners, even if saved by grace, don't we tend to assign bad motives to people, to their actions?
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And they may be totally, totally innocent of the motivations that we give them.
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But God knows all of that. God knows exactly the circumstances of everything that happens.
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He is wise. And so he has wisdom to bestow.
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And he will bestow his wisdom. He says in James 1 .5, you know,
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I will give you, I will bestow wisdom upon you if you seek, because God has revealed himself.
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God is up there. We are down here. And God, we cannot reach up and discover
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God. We cannot commend ourselves to God. We cannot find
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God and bring him down. God must reveal himself to us if we are to know him.
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And he has done that. He has revealed himself through his word. Not exhaustively, certainly, because God is infinite and we are finite and the finite cannot grasp the infinite.
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But God has revealed himself accurately. And he has also revealed himself completely in that everything he wants us to know about himself, he has revealed.
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There are things that he restricts to himself. He tells us the secret things are mine and I keep them.
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But many things I have revealed to you. What I want you to know about me,
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God says, I have revealed. So I can be found. If you seek me, I can be found.
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And he has promised wisdom to the righteous. That's John 7 .17. And he promises sound wisdom, which we can also say is satisfaction.
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It's not like the old rock song, I can't get no satisfaction. There's satisfaction to be had, but only in the place that God gives it.
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He also promises protection. He is a shield, it says. He's a shield.
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And he gives us the grace to persevere because no one said life is supposed to be easy.
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No one said life is supposed to be easy. Our life here on earth, there's a certain category of preacher that says, come to Jesus, your life will be fine, health and welfare, health, prosperity, all that kind of stuff.
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And life's gonna be easy. And so what happens? And some poor soul, he said, that sounds great.
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So, you know, he does, he, you know, maybe genuinely gets saved, places his faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ and life goes right down the, you know, and he's saying, what's happened,
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Lord? You know, what's happened? Because that's not what God says. He doesn't say your life will be easy.
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He says, I will give you grace. I will not test you more than you are able to bear.
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That's one promise. And I will give you grace that whatever I put in your path, that you will be able to deal with that situation because I'm gonna put things in your path to refine you.
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One of the things I'm gonna promise you is that I am going to change you into the men and women that I want you to be.
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I'm gonna work on you and I'm going to see to it that you begin to look like my children, that you begin to look like me.
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We've used the illustration before when a refiner refines gold, it's an interesting process.
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And what they do, what the goldsmith does is he puts the gold in a furnace and begins to heat it so that it melts.
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And what happens? Gold being heavier than everything else, the impurities all float to the surface and he will skim the surface to skim the dross off the top.
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And what's he looking for? As he looks down into the furnace, he's going to make a pass and get the last of the impurities off the surface.
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And all of a sudden he will see his face in the surface of the gold. And that's when he knows
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I'm done because now I just have pure gold. It's reflecting my own face back. God does that to us.
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He is heating us so that the impurities come off.
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And what's he looking for? He's looking to see his own face reflected back to him from our lives.
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But he provides us with the wisdom that we need for that. He says again in verse eight, he keeps the paths of justice.
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He preserves the way of his saints. Then shalt thou understand righteousness and justice and equity.
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Yea, every good path. And again, Arnaud makes the comment, says the spirit is promised to those who turn.
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And it is the spirit poured out that enables the turning. Divine sovereignty and human responsibility go together.
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You find that all through Proverbs. And one final comment from Arnaud before we close.
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He said, by the word of God, paths and actions will be weighed in the judgment.
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By the word of God, therefore, let paths and actions, great and small, be pondered now.
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Let's close. Our heavenly father, we come before you. First of all, we praise you,
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Lord, that you have reached down. You have drawn us to yourself. For we confess,
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Lord, that had you not done that, we would have gone our own way as wayward sheep until we reached the point of our own destruction, because we would not have come seeking you.
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And so you came and you drew us to yourself. And Lord, you have provided us with the word.
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You have provided us with your wisdom. We live in the age, Lord, in which as an embarrassment of riches, all of us have not only one
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Bible, we have several. And so we can read the word for ourselves. We can study it.
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And we have the Holy Spirit to apply it to our hearts. And so, Lord, may we do that. May we apply ourselves to the gaining of wisdom with at least the same amount of effort that we apply to our earthly careers, which are transient.
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May we seek the permanent with at least that much effort. We pray this morning, your hand upon our pastor as he opens the word to us.
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May he prepare our hearts. May the Holy Spirit minister to us this morning in Jesus' name, amen.