FBC Daily Devotional – November 8, 2021

Faith Baptist Church

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Well, good morning on this Monday morning, beginning a new week, second week of November, and I trust your week's getting off to a good start.

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Did you have a good day yesterday, gathering together with God's people, learning from the

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Word of God, worshipping the Lord? I hope it was an encouragement to you.

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I hope that, you know, a lot of times we can go to church and not really feel like going on the way there, you know?

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Maybe we'd rather sleep in or go do something else, go do something different. That's just how emotionally we can be on a given

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Sunday. But a lot of times we gather together, we start interacting with God's people and feel our spirits lifted a bit.

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But then when we really get into the worshipping of our Lord and we sing the hymns of praise and hymns that teach us about who our

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God is, what He's like, then we can really feel some and sense some encouragement coming within and feel the

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Spirit, sense the Spirit of God working and moving within us. And that prepares us then for His Word as it's opened unto us.

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Well, as we begin this week, let's talk a little bit about wisdom. So one of our scripture readings for today is in the book of Proverbs, chapter 16, and verses 21 through 23.

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And these couple of verses, I want you to just notice especially how they relate to wisdom.

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The first verse begins, it says, The wise in heart, the wise in heart will be called prudent.

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So in these few verses, I want you to see four qualities of those who are wise in heart.

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Notice that first of all, a heart of wisdom will possess a sense of discernment and can see the issues that are involved.

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The wise in heart will be called prudent, will be called prudent. So the more we grow in our wisdom, our understanding of what

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God is like, what God likes, you know, God's perspective on life and the world and all that is in it, the greater we grow in this ability to discern the real issues that are involved in a given situation.

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So you can think about that and apply that politically in the world, in the political world in which we're living right now.

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Last week, the president was at this global climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, and talking about how we have to save the planet, we have to save ourselves, and we have to do that by doing all of this stuff related to the environment.

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And you have to, you hear some of the things they talk about doing, and you have to wonder where is the wisdom here, just in some of their proposals.

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But even deeper than that, what's really the root, what are the real root issues that are involved?

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Is the climate really going to collapse? Are we causing it to collapse?

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Are we able to save ourselves by, you know, cutting carbon emissions or whatever different strategies we try to impose upon ourselves or upon mostly upon others and so forth.

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I think it was kind of ironic, by the way, to see all of those private jets that were flown into Glasgow, to see this 85 -car motorcade of, you know,

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President Biden as he's traveling, you know, all over, you know, in Europe and so forth, and then going to a climate summit that is to talk about reducing carbon emissions and all of that kind of thing.

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It's really quite comical, but really, to get back to the point, wisdom looks at subjects like that and seeks to discern what are the real underlying issues that are involved.

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I'm afraid that there's really not a whole lot of wisdom that was displayed in that particular situation.

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But then secondly, wisdom, as we grow in wisdom, wisdom learns to temper its speech with a gracious demeanor.

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See this at the end of verse 21, it says the sweetness of the lips increases learning.

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So the person who is able to communicate truth graciously will be more effective at bringing the learner along.

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I mean, you think about that from your own experience in school. Did you ever have a teacher that was just a grouch, just a crab, and could just be caustic?

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I shared in a pastor's post recently, I think it was a couple of weeks ago, about a teacher

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I had in eighth grade that was brutal, she was a science teacher, and she just had this demeanor about her that was just mean.

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And I think it was interesting in that regard, because I saw recently someone on Facebook posted a yearbook from our junior high year with that particular teacher.

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I think the person who posted this was a year younger than I. But there were a lot of comments underneath that post of a picture of that yearbook with the teacher's spread.

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And somebody asked the question, who's your favorite teacher? And I was surprised to see how many people commenting on that post pointed out that teacher that I'm talking about, and pointed out just how mean and nasty she was, and how unkind.

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Wasn't a whole lot of science learning going on in her class. But in contrast to that,

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I think of teachers who had a very gentle spirit and a very gracious demeanor, like my high school geometry teacher, for example, or teachers that I had in seminary and so forth.

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Gracious words will increase learning. And then a third characteristic of wisdom, as we grow in wisdom, is it will yield a more joyful life.

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The 22nd verse says, understanding is a wellspring of life to him who has it.

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It's a wellspring of life. It increases our joy. And then a fourth quality of wisdom is seen in verse 23, says the heart of the wise teaches his mouth and adds learning to his lips.

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And what I think is the idea that is expressed here is that a wise person can persuade judiciously.

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The heart of the wise teaches his mouth how to speak and how to speak in a way that is judicious.

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So you can persuade judiciously. In other words, the wise person doesn't have to resort to deception, doesn't have to resort to strong arm tactics, doesn't have to coerce people, doesn't have to stand at a platform and pound on the podium and make mandates and demands of people.

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No, a wise person can persuade in a judicious manner that will bring people along without their feeling coerced and strong armed into doing what they really don't want to do, but feel like they have no choice.

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I suppose there are a lot of applications that we can apply to that in this day of government mandates, reducing freedoms and all of that kind of thing.

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But rather than get into the politics of it, let's just notice the principle and notice the quality of a wise person who can persuade judiciously.

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So may God give us wisdom, biblical Christian wisdom.

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Our Heavenly Father, we realize how little wisdom there is in our world, how much folly just dominates in so many areas of life, in education, in the workplace, in government, halls of government, and even sadly, ecclesiastically.

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Father, I pray that you would give us wise hearts, hearts that know you, that know your word and are changed by that word.

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us that wisdom, we pray, and we ask it in Jesus' name and for his sake, amen.