Sermon - Wisdom From Above: The Hope of Wisdom

Proverbs 2 as One Full Discourse on Wisdom

If you would open your Bibles to Book of Proverbs, Chapter 2, Proverbs, Chapter 2. If you're new to the Bible, that's in your Old Testament, right next to the Book of Psalms, Proverbs, Chapter 2. We're going to try to do the entire chapter today.

It's really all connected and really sort of one full discourse. It changes a bit as you move through the Book of Proverbs here and there. But this is really one full story before us about wisdom, guarding us in the hope of wisdom.

And as you guys are getting there, announced for those of you guys who are getting baptized, immediately following the message, we'll go to communion. And right after communion, make sure you're up here to the side, so you're meeting me down there for baptisms.

So Proverbs, Chapter 2, starting in verse 1. Hear now the word of the living and the true God. My son, if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you, making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding, yes, if you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding, if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God.

For the Lord gives wisdom. From His mouth come knowledge and understanding. He stores up sound wisdom for the upright. He is a shield to those who walk in integrity, guarding the paths of justice and watching over the way of His saints.

Then you will understand righteousness and justice and equity, every good path. For wisdom will come into your heart and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul. Discretion will watch over you and understanding will guard you, delivering you from the way of evil, from men of perverted speech, who forsake the paths of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness, who rejoice in doing evil and delight in the perverseness of evil, men whose paths are crooked and who are devious in their ways.

So you'll be delivered from the forbidden woman, from the adulteress with her smooth words, who forsakes the companion of her youth and forgets the covenant of her God. For her house sinks down to death and her paths to the departed.

None who go to her come back, nor do they regain the paths of life. So you will walk in the way of the good and keep to the paths of the righteous. For the upright will inhabit the land and those with integrity will remain in it, but the wicked will be cut off from the land and the treacherous will be rooted out of it.

Prayer and the Gift of God’s Wisdom

Thus far is the reading of God's holy and inspired word. Let's pray. God, we pray, you bless us today as we look to you for wisdom. Lord, you say that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.

Fools despise wisdom and instruction. And so we come before you as your people that you've redeemed. Sons and daughters of you. And we're crying out for wisdom. We're crying out for wisdom. God, give us wisdom.

Teach us. Renew us in our minds, in our hearts. Give us the strength to pursue your truth and wisdom. Speak, Lord, through your word today by your Spirit. Heal your church. Be glorified in the light that shines from us because of your wisdom.

In Jesus' name, amen. So, we started this series going through the book of Proverbs, God's book of wisdom. Wisdom from above. This is wisdom from God. So, this is what's really important as we approach the text.

It's important for us to remove from our hearts and our minds, from the depths of our souls, that sense of being jaded to the Word of God. What I mean is we have such easy access to the Word of God, we read the Word of God, that maybe at times we fall into that very bad creaturely habit of forgetting what an enormous gift we have before us.

The God who created zebras with a word. The God who spoke and the oceans leapt into existence. The God who speaks and He spreads the universe out. It's just by a word. He doesn't sweat. He doesn't grow weary.

He doesn't get frustrated when He wants to create. He speaks and it comes into existence. He has perfect knowledge. It's amazing. If you look at just the human form, just human beings, the image of God, and contemplate how glorious this is.

What comes from the image of God, the ability to reason and have emotion, the ability to create and make beautiful things. We're not robots, just machines. There is so much that is so powerful about the human being, the image of God in the world, and it's just one aspect of the world.

God speaks into the world and He holds everything together, and it's not just that God creates and it becomes a mess or chaos or out of His control. He is the one with an active decree. He determines what.

He determines who. He determines how. He is the sovereign God, the only God. There is none before Him. There will be none after Him. He is the true and living God, the all-knowing God, the one who needs no instruction.

He is the very foundation and source of knowledge and wisdom. And that's the word you hold in your hands right now. It is revelation from Him to you. This is the very speech of God. God is speaking. And so here you're going to learn that God is saying to us, wisdom will guard you.

Wisdom will bring peace and security. Wisdom will do all these things if you pursue it like this. It's amazing too when you think about humanity in terms of our idolatry and the pursuits of false gods and the pursuits of false teachers and false prophets.

They're a dime a dozen. They're everywhere. And we go to these people seeking for knowledge. You see people who are so lost and darkened in their hearts. They're following a false god, and yet they can't help but pursuing knowledge, understanding, justice, because they're in the image of God, but they won't look to God for it.

They'll switch God for something else, some substandard God for bootleg worship. And they go to the guru who will give them wisdom and understanding, insights and knowledge. There's two specific things I can think about when I think about that particular problem of humanity of the pursuit of the guru, the one who has the wisdom and the knowledge.

You can think about... Some of you guys have maybe seen the documentary about the hot yoga guy. What was the name of that guru? You know what I'm talking about? You see the hot yoga stuff? Bikram. Bikram yoga, right?

Super powerful fast fad that hits the nation, right? Like going into a place, and he turns the heat way, way up, and you go in there into this box with a bunch of other human beings, which would have made the room hotter anyways.

Turn the heat way up, and everyone's just sweating crazy, stinking that room up. That room must have smelled foul. But it's popular. And you see, like, Bikram yoga all over the place. And like, oh, he's the knowing guru, and he has so much insight and so much knowledge.

And then you see, as time unfolds, you see that this person who's the prophet, he's the guru. He's the one who has the understanding. He's abusing women, right? I mean, it amazes me to see some of the places still up in retail spaces that have Bikram yoga on.

I'm like, that's brave. If you know the history and the story of that guru, that one with wisdom and insight and knowledge, you can see that they don't really know as much as they pretend to know. Or more recently, the documentary about Warren Jeffs.

Warren Jeffs, the false Mormon prophet in Utah, well, Arizona, Utah, sort of polygamous communities. So he's the one. He has the understanding and the knowledge. I must yield to this fallible creature.

He knows. So I'll take instruction from him. What was the thing he instructed the women with constantly? What was it? Keep sweet. And pray and obey. Keep sweet and pray and obey. Ah, he knows. He knows, and then you find out the man was a disturbing, disgusting abomination of a man.

The kind of abuse that he perpetrated upon young women, girls. It's horrifying, but we have that within us. We are made in the image of God. We know that there's this source of wisdom and knowledge. There is such a thing as truth and so we're clamoring for it and clamoring for it and so we pursue the guru and all the rest.

And it's just a creature. And they fail constantly. And yet you have here, we have in our hands, the Word of the living God who is the foundation of justice and righteousness and holiness and truth and beauty.

It's all in God. And so God is telling us here with His Word and wisdom, if you pursue wisdom like this, then this is what will happen. So I hope that challenges us. This sermon is first preached to me.

It's first preached to me. And then to you. Challenges us to understand as God's people that God is telling us. Wisdom will guard you. Wisdom will keep you secure. Wisdom will keep you in the land. And this is how you get it.

Wisdom Is Application, Not Mere Knowledge

It's tough to preach a message like this in the context of the 21st century, the 21st century West where we want the quick fix, right? I mean, think about all that we see in terms of like, you want a new body?

You want to be in shape? Well, here's how to do it. You don't have to eat better or work out. Just take this pill, right? Everyone loves the quick fix, right? I don't want to work for it. I don't want to sweat an ounce.

I just want you to give it to me by osmosis, right? Or upload it. Maybe I can sort of do the AI thing and just put an opening back here and you can just upload the information into me back here. We love that idea.

People really love it. Like, we can just upload information. You want to learn Kung Fu? I know Kung Fu, right? Just upload it. That was a matrix. You got that right. You knew that. Yes, good. Okay, sorry.

I know he likes the matrix. But that's what we want. We don't want the quick fix. We don't want the hard work. We don't want the labor. But God says wisdom is available. It'll guard you. It'll secure you.

It'll bless you. And here's how you get it. So to start, if you're new to this study, the difference between knowledge and wisdom, and it's interesting too because you do find at times, and this is at times jarring in terms of like, well, where are we going exactly with this?

You'll see at times there's an interchangeableness between knowledge and wisdom, even in the book of Proverbs, sort of like knowledge as a foundation with the assumption that wisdom is going to come from that.

But there is a difference. Charles Spurgeon said, Wisdom is the right youth of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great as a fool as a knowing fool.

But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom. So wisdom is the application of knowledge. You have to know something. It has to be true, and then the application of that knowledge is the skillful use of that knowledge.

That's wisdom. Not just that you know things. Not just that you have information. And this is one of the things I want to keep challenging us on in terms of the Reformed community. We have to speak to our own people.

We have to speak to our own people. It's often a difficulty within Reformed churches at times with younger, very zealous Reformed people is to say, wow, there's so much knowledge here, so much truth here.

And so we sort of pack that knowledge and that truth within us, and we want to know as much as we can. We're good debaters, but we don't know how to live. We don't know how to love people. We don't know how to have equal weights and measures.

We don't know how to treat one another. We don't know how to be patient. We don't know how to receive accusations or even reject accusations. We need wisdom. Wisdom is not just knowing things. There's knowledge and then the skillful application of it.

So I was thinking about how to sort of apply this. I was thinking back to my days of driver's ed in public school, driver's ed. I was so excited to be able to drive. So very excited to be able to drive.

And I learned how to drive on the Washington, D .C. Beltway. So I am like, when it comes to driving, I have gangster-level skills. I am up there, right? I mean, if you can drive in Washington, D .C. and just survive 24 hours, you know how to drive.

Well, that's where I learned how to drive, and I saw it growing up. I saw how dangerous it was. And if you're living in D .C., you know where the potholes are that will destroy your entire vehicle. You know who lives there because you see them anticipating and swerving, and you see the tourists, kaboom!

And then, like, their tire blows out. So I was, you know, excited, but also I knew this is a deadly endeavor to drive here in Washington, D .C. It's a tough place to drive. So I was very excited, and I took it seriously in driver's ed.

I vividly remember all those classes. I don't remember half of my high school education, but I remember driver's ed because I was very excited, loved it. I wanted to learn all the details. How do you drive?

And I remember back in my day... Oh, gosh, I'm getting old saying things like that. In my day, you had that film that they would play to you in driver's ed. They played it to all of us. What was it again?

It was blood runs... Something blood runs red on the asphalt or the freeway or whatever, and it was like this... It's good to do, to show something like this and say, hey, this isn't a game. There's consequences here.

And they would show you vivid images and video of car accidents and death. And so you need that. You're going to get into a car that will kill somebody and yourself. Here are the possible consequences.

I remember that video. I remember... Identify, predict, decide, execute. Right? I remember that. Identify, predict, decide, execute. I was in my bedroom, and I was in front of the mirror, like, identify, predict.

I was rehearsing it, so excited. And I remember I'd never touched a car yet. Never got into one. I was learning. I remember the books. I remember a class, and you just sat there for 45 minutes talking about if this happens, this is the way to do it.

And I was soaking it all in because I knew I was out there on that road. I could die. And then I remember getting into the car at school with the teacher. She was a piece of work. She would, like, punch you.

Like, punch your arm, punch your leg if you did something wrong. I like that. That's hardcore. You remember this. Like, you're going to die. Don't do something that stupid. And so we're, you know, driving.

I'm not saying do that to your kids. I didn't know her. So I remember, like, you know, learning, and I'm going slow, and you're mostly in a parking lot, and you're driving around the school sort of a thing.

But I had all this knowledge, and now was the time to start applying it. Different from the classroom where it was textbook, instruction. I know what to do. I know IPTI. I know where the stuff is in the car, left indicator, right indicator.

I know how to do this, to play this game. And now I'm in the car. And, you know, you're doing things like parking lots and just driving around the school. And then I passed and got my driver's license.

And now I'm on the road. My first day on the road. Listen, I praise God for this, and all glory to God. I'm 44 years old. I have never been in an accident in all my years since driving. 16 years old, got my license.

As soon as I turned 16, I got it. I've never once been in an accident that's my fault. Not once. I've had people hit me a couple times, but never once been in an accident my fault. Not ever. But that first day I was driving, I was with a friend in the car.

My dad said, first day driving, make sure that you're careful. He trusted me. I got in the car, went to school just fine. Came home from school, it started raining. And I thought, I could take this turn.

And so I started taking that turn, and I literally slid across the road, two lanes, just missed a big vehicle, and slammed into the curb, popped the curb sideways in the vehicle, and bent up both tires up front.

They were completely off the alignment to drive straight. The wheel was turned the other direction just to drive straight. So it's my first day driving. I had all this knowledge, but I had no skills in how to apply that.

No skills. I just knew stuff, but didn't know really how to drive. And so I had to come home and tell my dad, Dad, how are you? I've basically destroyed the vehicle. Thank you for trusting me. And I remember teaching my kids.

My oldest son, I got on the road with him. By the way, it's one of the worst parts of a parent's life when you have to teach your children to drive. Can I get an amen? Terrifying. Well, it's his first day.

He's doing all right in the parking lot since we started to drive. We're coming up rural from the 60. He pulls off to go left, north on rural. Now as everyone knows there, there's a northbound side and there's a southbound side.

Where do you think he turned? He turned not to get in the northbound side to go where all the other cars are going. He decided to turn left and give his father a heart attack at a young age driving straight towards oncoming traffic.

And I had taught him not to do that. He definitely had the information from dad, the knowledge from dad. Don't do that. Oncoming traffic, avoid that. But when it was his day to start driving, he didn't have the skills to apply it.

He didn't know what to do. My daughter, Sailor, we're in the parking lot together. She's a great driver now because she's got skills. She's practiced. She knows how to apply that knowledge. She's in the parking lot at Fry's.

She decides to just start driving over the curbs in the parking lot. And while it was happening, I would say, what are you doing? She's like, what? And it's crazy because she studied so hard. Sailor does, when she wants to get something, she goes all in.

She studied so hard. She knew you're not supposed to drive over curbs in parking lots, but she just didn't know how to apply. Like, I've already driven over one. Let's do a couple, right? I suppose that's what it was.

Or my family, you know, will drive on long trips, ministry trips or whatever. Even going to Salt Lake City recently. Salt Lake City. And my family's just so comfortable with dad driving and everything's fine.

And I think my son, Stellar, said, hey, that was an easy trip. I said, yeah, you almost died four times in that trip. You just didn't know. Like, the dads are driving, right? We don't announce to them, hey everyone, you almost died just now.

Guy almost killed us. Usually we're avoiding because of skill. Because of skill, we can identify there's going to be a problem. This guy's going to pull something he shouldn't do. And so I start anticipating.

I know what happens when that happens, so I'm going to make sure I'm ready to go. And you avoid being killed because you have skills. Not just book knowledge. You know how to apply it. You can do it. You can accomplish it.

So we need to talk about gaining wisdom here. You need knowledge, yes, from God, but you need wisdom. How do you live? Proverbs 1 -7, foundation again. Get it rooted into our hearts. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.

All this talk today out there about what's true and what's beautiful and how you ought to live and how do you live and how do you run a country, run an economy, run a family, all that talk out there, apart from Jesus Christ, is meaningless.

It's not justified. It's not true knowledge. It's not true wisdom. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom. They despise wisdom and instruction. They despise wisdom and correction.

The Hope and Future of Wisdom

So notice how it starts off. It says, My son, if you receive my words and treasure my commandments with you, if, if you do this. There's a hope here. Let's talk quickly about the hope. Notice what it says here.

The hope and future of wisdom go from 1 -29, or sorry, 1 -21. It says, For the upright will inhabit the land and those with integrity will remain in it. But the wicked will be cut off from the land and the treacherous will be rooted out of it.

That's connected to what was already said in chapter 1. Go back to chapter 1. Chapter 1 says, verse 29, Because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord, would have none of my counsel and despised all my reproof.

Therefore they shall eat the fruit of their way and have the fill of their own devices. You're going to get what you asked for. For the simple are killed by their turning away and the complacency of fools destroys them.

But whoever listens to me, wisdom, will dwell secure and will be at ease without dread of disaster. Are you seeing a theme here? Chapter 1 ends with a promise of the security and the blessing of wisdom.

Chapter 2 ends with a promise that it is the wicked will be cut off from the land and the treacherous will be rooted out of it, but the upright will inhabit the land. It's a common theme throughout Scripture and even in the teachings of Jesus.

Chapter 3, you see more of it. Chapter 3, verse 23. Look at the promise. Then you will walk on your way securely and your foot will not stumble. Look at verse 35. Chapter 3. The wise will inherit honor, but fools get disgrace.

More promises of wisdom. But there's more that's being said here and it's said repeatedly. You see this a number of times through the first couple of chapters. You see this theme of the paths. The paths of the righteous.

The paths of the wise. The paths of the wicked. There's the promise of hope, security, guarding, and protection of wisdom. There's the promise of the future. The blessing and wisdom. And then there is this constant theme throughout of the path.

Look at it here in chapter 4. Chapter 4, verse 18. Look what it says. But the path of the righteous is like the dawn of the day which shines brighter and brighter until full day. The way of the wicked is like deep darkness.

They do not know over what they stumble. This is thematic. You're going to see it numerous times in Proverbs and throughout the Scriptures. This concept of the path. Of making a decision of where you're going to walk.

What road are you actually on? And the way it describes it here in chapter 4 is the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn. That's like the start of the day which shines brighter and brighter until full day.

If you pursue wisdom, God's promising, if you pursue wisdom, if you're on that path, the path of the righteous, it's like the dawn of the day. It's like that sun rising. One of my very favorite memories in my life.

In my life, those moments where it's like that was true beauty. And so amazing. We have a church plant commitment to the island of Kauai. It's a very difficult place to plant a church. It's actually hard.

It's a hard, hard place to live. If you go vacation there and visit there, you're not seeing the reality of the island. How dark it is. How much opposition there is to the gospel. It is extraordinarily expensive to live there.

It's a painful life living in Kauai, believe it or not. A very painful, painful life. But I'll tell you what, when we first started investigating the island as a team with our church to go and ask questions to figure out where do we plant this church?

Where can we have the greatest impact? Where do we need to be? Where is everyone who has the addictions? We were there on the island. You guys remember the beach when the sun was rising. Just going out to the beach and watching the sun rise in Kauai is one of the most amazing experiences of this life, I think.

It's amazing because it's just dark and like walking out to the beach at one point you don't realize that you have to watch where you're stepping because it is dark, the sun's about to come up and there are seals littered across the beach.

And so when we were out there with our team, we were ready to hit the ground running that day for our mission and we almost stepped on this seal, which is a big sin in Kauai. You can get in a lot of trouble for touching the seals, but we just didn't see him because it was too dark.

Couldn't see him. He was sleeping. So we step over this seal and we all stand there and we're watching the sun rise and it just starts to peak and it's amazing because just that little bit of light is so glorious.

It's so beautiful. It's amazing what an artist's God is. He just does this like it's nothing. Just splashes out this artistry all the time and it's happening all over the world and in this moment you see just this little orange ball just break above the waves across the horizon and there's a little bit of light that starts to spray out and light things up and then you're like, oh, there's a seal there.

Oh, there's where I can have my footing and there's where this is. So this is saying that the path of the righteous is like the dawn of the day. As you're on that path, as you pursue that light, yeah, it's just a little light, but man, is it beautiful.

And as the day proceeds, what starts to take place, as the sun rises and you're on that path with that little light to start with and that beauty, what do you see by midday is that sun is washing over you.

That sun, that light is wrapping you up. There's no escape from it and that's the path of the righteous. This is where wisdom takes you. You're on that path. It's like the dawn of the day. Maybe you pursue and you're just seeing a little light, still beautiful.

It's only a little, but by midday the path of the righteous is light wrapping you up. It is all around you. That's the promise of wisdom. That's the promise of the path of the righteous if we pursue it.

In verses 26 through 27 of chapter 4, it says, ponder the path of your feet, then all your ways will be sure. Do not swerve to the left or to the right or to the left. Turn your foot away from evil. There's that concept of the path again.

The path of the righteous. The pursuit of the wise. Jesus said the same thing. You're familiar? Same thing. When wisdom was walking among us, when wisdom was incarnate among us, how does Jesus describe his kingdom?

What's he say? There is a broad path and a what? A narrow path. Matthew 7, 13 through 14, you know it. Broad path and a narrow path. There it is. Wisdom giving us the same story. There is wisdom. There is guarding.

There is security. There's the path of the righteous. There's light there. But there's darkness on this other path. You can't even see what you're stumbling over on that path. But you do have to choose the path.

And so Jesus is saying there's a broad one. He says many people find that one. And he says over here is this narrow one. It's got this very small gate you have to almost squeeze through. And that path is narrow.

But Jesus says it leads to life. That's the outcome of that path. You step on that path. It's narrow, yes. But it leads to life. That broad one's easy. There's no squeezing through that gate. It's like one of those people movers at the airport.

They're basically useless. But you get on it. There's not even a lot of work you have to do. You just stand there and as a person who's on that dark path, not the righteous, not the pursuer of God's truth and wisdom, you're just being brought along naturally.

You have to do nothing. It's a broad path that leads to destruction. When wisdom was incarnate, he talked about it in exactly the same way. But what's being said here clearly over and over is that this path is something that you commit to.

You're on one or the other. So in chapter 2 as it starts, it says, my son, my son, if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you. My son. Keep your finger there. That's chapter 2. Now move over one chapter.

Chapter 3. Look how chapter 3 starts. My son, do not forget my teaching. Now chapter 4. Hear oh sons of father's instruction. Chapter 5. My son, be attentive to my wisdom. Chapter 6. My son, if you have put up security for your neighbor.

Chapter 7. My son, keep my words and treasure up my commandments with you. Isn't it amazing that in this glorious word from God you have wisdom being given to people and the relationship of the teacher is a relationship as like a father to a son.

We're all children. We need this instruction and it comes in a paternal way. A fatherly way. My son, if you listen. My son. And this is something that's really common to the Scriptures. You hear often the Biblical writers referring to the old teachers, the prophets, those representatives of God as our fathers.

There's that paternal relationship of respect. You taught me this. And even in the New Testament same thing happens in terms of the relationship of a spiritual father in the faith to a son. But wisdom comes here as a teacher to the children and there's an intimacy there and a level of respect and honor that has to come where it says my son, if you do this you'll get this.

The If-Then Call to Treasure Up God’s Word

Now here's what we have to pay attention to today. If then. And we don't like that, let's be honest. Right? I like to keep the then. Give me the then promises. Give me all the stuff on the backside of the then.

Give me the reward. Give me the blessing. We love that. We are such a culture of weak and lazy people with such a lack of wisdom. We don't want the efforts. Right? I just want to be the godly mom. Right?

I just want to be the godly wife. I just want to be the godly husband, father, man. I just want to be the godly employee or business owner. I just want it. I want all the success. Can I just have the pill?

Can you just upload it? Can you just give it to me by osmosis? We like the then of the promises. Here's what you get. But we don't like the if. And that's it. This whole section is if then. If then. So here's the question we have to ask ourselves as God's people.

Humbly, I'm saying this to myself as much as I'm saying it to you. Are we ready as God's people to deal with the if then? If you do this, then I promise this. That's a word from God. The one who spoke and splashes the most glorious sunsets.

Who holds the whole world together. He says, my son, if then. If then. Here's the challenge. It's clear from these texts of wisdom from God. That you are either on this path or you're on the other. If you do these things, then this will happen.

No quick fixes. No uploading. There's something that has to be taken into consideration as you read through this next passage here where it's if then, if then, if then. Is there needs to be a challenge to us, all of us.

I thought about this in terms of some common grace that I recently heard about. There's a famous man. I don't know if I mentioned him recently. It's really neat to see someone receiving this common grace.

His name is David Goggins. He was a Navy SEAL and just a million other things. He weighed like 300 pounds. He decided one day he was like a exterminator. Like a bug exterminator. Cockroaches and rats and things like that.

He weighed like 300 pounds. He used to go every day and get a box of donuts and a chocolate shake. Treat himself real nice every day. He's going to kill cockroaches. He decides one day, because he sees that famous show of that BUDS training where it shows them following the guys that are Navy SEAL training.