Sunday, October 26, 2025 AM

Wisdom as the Comprehensive Way of Life

Let's go to the Lord together in prayer. Heavenly Father, we come before you today and we thank you for the joy of being able to sing these songs together in unison, confessing the glory of Christ, confessing your truth and your goodness and your beauty in Christ, bestowed to us by your Spirit.

How blessed we are, blessed indeed. We pray this morning as we consider the wisdom of organizing our lives entirely around the worth of your name, that you would bless us even more as we commune together in Christ, eating his meal, trusting in his promises.

Thank you so much for the joy of being together with this body of Christ, my brothers and sisters. I pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. I advise you to open your Bibles and turn with me to Proverbs chapter 3.

We're looking at verses 1 through 12 again. There are certain passages of Scripture that remind me of going to the museum with my uncle. I wasn't expecting much, but wow, there's a lot there, especially the way he tells it and points out all the details.

This is one of those passages I didn't anticipate spending so much time in, and yet it is very rich and rewarding to meditate on. Wisdom, whom the Lord loves. Wisdom is by nature comprehensive. Wisdom is not optional.

Wisdom is not a tactic to employ or even a strategy to use. It's more than a battle plan or a war doctrine. It speaks to the integration of all of life for the glory of God. Ecclesiastes 3 verses 1 through 8 tells us, for everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven, a time for this and a time for that.

Fourteen times over, we are told there's a time for this and there's a time for that. All of life parceled into seasons of contrast. Building may be in season here, but demolition is in season there. Sowing is in season here.

Reaping is in season there. How to know what season is which? Wisdom, which is why wisdom is always in season. How do we know the purpose and the meaning of all the twists and turns of life? Well, there's wisdom.

Wisdom is the righteous mastery of life in honor of God. That's what we're looking at this morning in Proverbs 3 verses 1 through 12. I invite you to stand if you're able as we read God's Word and rejoice in His truth.

This is the Word of the Lord. My son, do not forget my law, but let your heart keep my commands. For length of days and long life and peace they will add to you. Let not mercy and truth forsake you. Bind them around your neck.

Write them on the tablet of your heart in so fine favor and high esteem in the sight of God and man. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct your paths.

Do not be wise in your own eyes. Fear the Lord and depart from evil. It will be health to your flesh and strength to your bones. Honor the Lord with all your possessions, with the first fruit of all your increase, so your barns will be filled with plenty and your vats will overflow with new wine.

My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor detest His correction. For whom the Lord loves, He corrects, just as a father the son in whom he delights. This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

You may be seated. Wisdom is a lot like faith. Of course, they're very related in the scriptures. The fear of the Lord, beginning of wisdom, beginning of knowledge, beginning of understanding. It is by faith we understand we have to begin with God.

But wisdom is like faith in that you have to operate by truth. You have to operate by principle. You have to operate by hope. You can't follow God's wisdom with strict empiricism only by what you can observe and confirm by your five senses.

That kind of sensibility is actually senseless, given that we are made in the image of God to honor Him. We are not the end-all standard. The wisdom of God is often mocked in the present by those who ascribe to the wisdom of the world.

But we do not seek to please men. We are to trust, fear, and honor the Lord. These are the instructions of Solomon to his son, trust the Lord, fear the Lord, honor the Lord. What a great list of instructions of a father to his son.

You've already seen how it was that David left a similar set of instructions for Solomon. Here Solomon speaks to his son. He says, fear the Lord, trust the Lord, fear the Lord, honor the Lord. Those who hate God would call biblical wisdom foolish.

They would say that this whole approach is a bad idea, bad for you, bad for your neighbor, bad for society. But Jesus says that wisdom is vindicated by all her children. The proof is in the pudding. The fruit of godly wisdom is undeniable both in the now and in the not yet, as Christ makes all things new in his people and in the world.

New creatures in a new creation. Worldly wisdom says, trust only yourself. Worldly wisdom says, fear death, fear what men may do to you. Above all things, honor yourself, promote yourself, please yourself.

That's worldly wisdom. You are your own end. But what does the scripture say? It says what has proven time and again in human experience, that we were not made for the self, we were made for God. We are made in God's image to manifest his glory, that our hearts are made for God and they are restless until we rest in him.

So whom the Lord loves, he reminds of his truth and leads in his way. He delivers the one he loves from evil and he gives an inheritance. We see this in verses 9 and 10. Whom the Lord loves, on whom the Lord loves, he bestows an inheritance.

Covenant Inheritance and the Meaning of Proverbs 13:22

I want to read a passage out of Proverbs, one that has long lingered in my memory, Proverbs 13 verse 22. A good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children, but the wealth of the sinner is stored up for the righteous.

Hear that again. A good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children, but the wealth of the sinner is stored up for the righteous. Isn't that what loving parents desire to give to their children, an inheritance that will last even to the children's children and so on?

Certainly in view in our passage here this morning in verses 9 and 10, Solomon is concerned that his son would honor the Lord so that there would be blessings abundant in his son's life. What's the goal, I wonder?

Why and how should the child engage the inheritance? What's the point of it? We need to think about it. Is it just meant for the child's enjoyment? I want you to have a healthy and wealthy life, carefree.

That's my goal as a parent. I want my children to never have to worry or struggle or suffer. Is that the goal? Is that the end of biblical wisdom? To put it into a metaphor that is akin to what we have in the gospel story, Jesus Christ is the heir of all things.

He is the elder brother. He inherits it all, and in Him we inherit the blessings. And let's say an analogy of this. Let's think of a son that inherits all things. The elder brother and then all else who were related to him have a share in his inheritance.

And let's say that this elder brother bestows to a younger sibling 40 acres to manage for 40 years. 40 acres for 40 years. A little cabin on the corner, 40 acres for 40 years. And as the elder brother spends time with the younger brother, he talks to him about this inheritance.

How's it going? Well, the cabin is still there. All four walls. There's the roof. I go in and out of it often. Yes, but what about the timber? How's it growing? What about the pond? Is it well stocked?

What about the fences? Are they tended? What about the trails? Have you cleaned them? What about the deer? What about the cattle? What about the 40 acres? Oh, well, the cabin is still there. I stay there in the corner.

We don't really have much to talk about. Keep that in mind. What is the point of the inheritance? Is not the point of the inheritance for someone greater, something greater, and concerning which we have communion.

Keep it in mind as we move forward through this text. Notice in verse 9, notice in verse 9, the command is to honor the Lord, honor the Lord with your possessions and with the firstfruits of all your increase.

Verse 10, so your barns will be filled with plenty and your vats will overflow with new wine. Now, what Solomon says to his son here makes perfect sense given the precepts of the covenant and the principles of creation.

But his instructions, I don't think, were followed very closely either by his son or the following generations of Judah. Great instructions, they just weren't followed. And there were some in Jesus' day who sought to follow these instructions exactly, but they too missed the mark.

I think many folks today take up these verses and try to apply them in terms of personal wealth management and an enrichment mentality, but don't understand the original context. I think there's a great need to properly understand these words of wisdom.

What does it mean to honor the Lord? What is so vitally important about firstfruits? And what of this promise of barns and vats? Begin with this, it says honor the Lord, honor the Lord. And notice how it falls in sequence to trust the Lord, fear the Lord, honor the Lord.

The honoring of the Lord comes at the end for a reason. How do we honor the Lord unless we trust Him? How do we honor the Lord unless we fear Him? It is the inevitable culmination of a list of coherent and wise instructions.

Trust the Lord, fear the Lord, so that you may be able to honor the Lord. And yet the command itself is a bit odd. How does one honor the Lord? The verb is kabod, the verb of the Hebrew noun kabod, glory.

So it says glorify the Lord. You could translate it that way, glorify the Lord, give Him glory. And it's a fitting artifact that the English language has the word honor that is both verb and noun. Honor the Lord.

He has honor. Do you have honor? Honor the Lord. You can hear how it can be used both ways. But the conundrum comes when we think about the word itself, which more functionally rendered means make heavy.

How do I make heavy the Lord? And given the context, there's possessions, there's increase, there's barns, there's vats, there's wine. Given the context, this glory that is both brilliant and weighty is about wealth.

The same word shows up in the description of Abraham in Genesis 13 too, that he was a weighty man. Why? He had flocks and herds and all manner of wealth and slaves. He was weighty. He was a man among men.

He was glorious. So here's the conundrum. How do you make God heavy with your possessions? I mean, if we're going to take it seriously and try to follow it closely, what does it mean to make God heavy with our possessions?

That's impossible to do. Why? Psalm 24 verse 1 says, the earth is the Lord's and all its fullness, the world and those who dwell therein. He already owns everything. Acts 17 verse 25, Paul tells the pagans, nor is God worshipped with men's hands as though he needed anything, since he gives to all life, breath, and all things.

God is the giver. You can't give anything to him he doesn't already own. Quite the conundrum. Job 41 verse 11, God says, who has preceded me that I should pay him? Everything under heaven is mine. So how do we make God heavy?

The creature, by definition, cannot add anything to the creator. Yet, the creature, you and I, we may take up creation in the name of the creator. We may arrange it, we may improve on it, we may align it, we may invest all the gifts to exalt the name of the giver.

We can do that, and that's what it means to honor the Lord with all that we possess. We glorify the Lord with our possessions when we ensure that our possessions clearly, obviously display the ownership stamp of God Almighty.

The truth of the matter is, the Bible has told us, he already owns everything, but we don't assume that, we don't let that lie, we make a big deal of it, we draw attention to it, we make that clear, we make that obvious, we make a big deal out of that, and so we glorify God with our possessions.

We demonstrate that by our integrity, where what we think and what we say, we do all agree, this belongs to the Lord. God has made us stewards of all that we possess, and so we must question, we must ask, do we resent the responsibility?

I didn't ask for this much responsibility. There it is. How are you making it clear this is all for the Lord, for His purposes, for His glory, to be used according to His will? Do we resent the responsibility if it were to expand more stewardship?

Do we run away from the responsibility? Do we resent God's bestowment of more stewardship to somebody else? Oh, look at that person, look at all much they have. Well, they have a greater stewardship than you, but it's the Lord's to give, it's the Lord's to bestow.

Do we demean our own opportunities through envy? I don't have very much to be steward of. I have far less than anybody else. What does it matter, given contrast to everybody else? Jesus tells us to never despise the small things, but I think you can see the basic creational principles at work here.

We and all we possess belong to the Lord. We are the Lord's possessions, and so we ought to honor Him with whatever we are steward over. We ought to be eager to lord over more in the name of the Lord, to exalt His name even more broadly if He should so please.

Very hard of being human is this, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and so do it. In the image of God, it's all to His name, all to His glory, all for His fame. I want to give a couple of thoughts on honoring the Lord with your possessions before we go on to firstfruits and bursting barns and fat bats.

You know that it is unfitting for you to take up the Word of God, Holy Scripture. It's unfitting for you to take up the Bible and then to intensely, selfishly personalize it just to you. Everywhere it says, I, we, and us, and me, it's always about me.

I'm the main character in this book. Everywhere I look, I find me. These are my promises. We know that that is inappropriate, and it leads to all manner of confusion, if not disaster. So we know that, but do we know that as well about general revelation, not just special revelation?

Do we know that all of creation, we are not to take up the book of creation and make it all about ourselves? Do we know that all that we possess and the life that we experience is also not about me? It's not personalized to me for my purposes, for my sake?

Both in special revelation and in general revelation, Christ has the preeminence. So let's keep that in mind. The concern here is that the firstfruits of all your increase, Solomon says to his son, the firstfruits of all your increase needs to be given to the Lord, especially set aside for the Lord.

But, you know, Solomon and his son both fled, the wisdom uttered here, when they took up their possessions and made themselves weighty before their people, when they marshaled the resources of their kingdom to make Baal and Asherah weighty.

That's not honoring to the Lord at all. But given the Old Covenant, one of the particular disciplines Israel was to employ to keep God first in all matters, especially concerning their wealth, was the offering up of their firstfruits to God, firstfruits of their harvest, firstfruits of their livestock.

They were even to redeem the firstborn son. They were to exercise the economy of the tithe. Why? Here's the promise, and Solomon is not saying something new, but something old, when he says to his son, honor the Lord with all the firstfruits of your increase, so your barns will be filled with plenty and your vats will overflow with new wine.

The promise was that when the people remembered that God was their provider, they kept covenant with Him by tithing and, of course, sabbathing and feasting and so on, but they kept covenant with Him, and so He would respond by greatly blessing them, providing for them, proving to them His faithfulness.

It's a very big theme in the Old Testament. So in Exodus, they were told, bring God the firstfruits. In Leviticus, it was said that all the tithes were holy to the Lord. Deuteronomy says that the firstfruits were to be set aside for all manner of needs within the life of Israel.

They were to set aside the firstfruits of every year, remembering that they were slaves in Egypt, but they were redeemed out of Egypt. They were to give offerings so that the priests could live, the Levites would have an income, and tithe is not only used for priests, but also the poor.

It was inherent to the fabric of their society, but also they had a promise. They had a promise in Malachi chapter 3, bring all the tithes into the storehouse that there may be food in my house, God says, and try me now in this, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you such blessing that there will not be room enough to receive it.

Even as late as Malachi, even after the exile, the return and the rebuilding of the temple, God is affirming that the stipulations of the old covenant are still in force and the people need to tithe, not giving their extra, not giving their weak and sick and miserable animals, but giving their firstfruits the best.

And He says, prove me in this, I'll show you how faithful I am to the covenant. In some ways, this also explains the degree of the infatuation the Pharisees and Sadducees had when they tithed their mint and their cumin and were willing to squeeze the last two mites from widows that the temple may be lavishly overlaid with silver and gold.

Tithing, Firstfruits, and Covenant Blessing in Israel

Now, let's go back to Proverbs 13 verse 22. Let's think about that verse again. A good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children, but the wealth of the sinner is stored up for the righteous.

Now, this verse stands out to me because my grandfather took it literally, and he said, I'm going to leave an inheritance for my grandchildren, which I greatly appreciate, and my brother and my cousin does too.

But think about it in its context, in its context of the covenant. It isn't that the good man reflects on his options and sets up generational estate planning. It's that the good man who's faithful to the covenant ensures generational covenant blessings continue versus the sinner who may try to accumulate wealth for himself against the honor of the Lord, but you know, it's just stored up for the righteous because that's the way God ran the covenant.

That's what it's about. And time and again, what we have in the Scriptures, especially in Deuteronomy 28 and Leviticus 26, is that warnings, if the people of Israel refuse to honor the Lord, to honor the Lord with their possessions, that they became idolatrous, that they became lax in their faithfulness, that the results, you could read about it in Deuteronomy 28 1 through 5, Deuteronomy 28 verses 15 through 19, the resulting blessings for obedience were economic primarily, and the curses for disobedience to the covenant were economic primarily.

And so this explains what's going on in Jesus' day. If you have a really expensive temple, overlaid with gold and silver, bright and shiny, it proves how much God loves you. And if you have a lot of money, it proves how much God loves you, which was shocking when Jesus said, it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven.

They thought the wealthiest were the closest to heaven. But what goes on here? What goes on here is that the Jews, in their idolatry, had hijacked the covenantal promises only satisfied in Christ. They had embezzled themselves into the picture as the main character.

And so it's no wonder that these glory thieves thought little of fleecing their neighbors in the name of the Lord. They made the temple a den of thieves. They deserved not only the table-flipping whipping, but in their murder of the Messiah, that wicked and perverse generation in Jerusalem was crushed in the winepress of God's wrath.

So the actual point of Israel's tithing, their first fruits, was to acknowledge God as their Redeemer, as their provider, and to await, by faith, God's giving of His first fruits, named Christ, His only begotten Son, the firstborn of the resurrection.

He was the grain of wheat which died and fell and brought forth a harvest without measure. So I tell you that many have missed the point of these promises of barns bursting and vats overflowing, not in just our day but also in Jesus' day.

Remember His parable of the man who had it all, the great abundance, I will pull down my old barns and build bigger barns. And Jesus says how foolish this is, those who crave and covet this wealth and are not rich towards God.

The prosperity of Israel in covenant blessing was God's design to draw the nations to the brightness of His servants rising. Hey, everybody, look how blessed this nation is, and it makes no sense other than this, that they serve the one true God who made everybody pay attention.

And all the nations were to come to the brightness of that rising and know that there was one true God. The temple was a house of prayer for all the nations. Due to Christ's faithfulness in glorifying His Father, He has received the full inheritance.

Israel's position foreshadowed the glory of Christ as surely as the moon is the forerunner of the sun. And Christ has received the inheritance not only as the heir of all of Israel's promises but also of Adam's crown and scepter.

He is the heir of all things. So what's the practical point of all this? Are we supposed to tithe and then look for resultant prosperity? Actually, we are to find these covenantal arrangements satisfied in Christ while recognizing that our stewardship in the new covenant in Christ's name is for His fame.

Grace-Giving in the New Covenant

So what about giving? What about honoring the Lord with our possessions? Well, remember that tithing as a law was only found at Sinai, but tithing as wisdom was found with Abram, and tithing is somewhat implicit, is it not, in the sacrificial system offering up of our possessions to God.

But we don't live under the law. We live under grace. And what is grace? Grace is all about giving and giving and giving without compulsion. Something greater. To borrow from Jesus' teaching, something greater than tithing is here.

So 2 Corinthians 9 verses 5 through 8, let me read that passage and then just give a few principles. Paul, in writing to the church in Corinth and organizing a gift for the church under famine in Jerusalem, he says to Corinth, therefore I thought it necessary to exhort the brethren to go to you ahead of time and prepare your generous gift beforehand, which you had previously promised.

But it may be ready as a matter of generosity and not as a grudging obligation. But as I say, he who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly. He who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. So let each one give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity, for God loves a cheerful giver.

And God is able to make all grace abound towards you that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every good work. So how are we supposed to give? Well, give freely, give broadly, give regularly, give thoughtfully, give cheerfully.

Why? Because our elder brother has inherited all things, and we share in his inheritance. And whatever we are steward of and possess, it all belongs to him for his fame. And I want to be a good steward of it, a good manager of it, of which giving is a part, not the whole, but a part, an important part.

And what about the promises that God gives for those who give? Well, he gives many promises. Most of them in the Gospels and the parables that Jesus tell, the promises are that we have joy, that we have joy in Christ, that we rejoice in that.

How does that work? It's the same thing as the 40 acres for 40 years. If we manage it well, if we work through it, see what it's all about, not being bogged down by enviousness or resentment, but we take whatever God has given to us, and we try to do the best that we can with it to honor him, and we make sure that everybody knows, hey, this belongs to my King and Savior, Jesus Christ.

I'm doing it all for him. I have a lot of joy in communion with my Lord. I've got a lot to pray about. I've got a lot to talk about. It's all for him. Proverbs 27 verse 18 puts it this way, whoever keeps a fig tree will eat its fruit, so he who waits on his master will be honored.

Isn't that what it's about? The fig tree is not mine, and I'm just taking care of it for the Lord. I can eat of the fig tree. I can share the figs. I can make plans for the fig tree to be better next year, but it belongs to my Lord, and I'm serving and waiting on him, and that's really the joy.

That's really my attention. Christ has inherited all things. In our communion with him, we know the joy that sustains us in our stewardship. Let's pray. Father, I thank you for the time you've given us in your word.

We pray that we would take it to heart that not only are we to trust you and fear you, but also honor you. We thank you for the many gifts that you give. We thank you for the direction that you offer.

We pray that you would help us as we commune together in the name of Christ. It's in his name that we pray. Amen.