Proverbs 2:1-11 (The Condition of Wisdom)

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Thank you for subscribing to the Shepherd's Church podcast. This is our Lord's Day Sermon. We pray that as we declare the

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Word of God, that you would be encouraged, strengthened in your faith, and that you would catch a greater vision of who

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Christ is. May you be blessed in the hearing of God's Word. I was supposed to send this illustration to my brother,

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Ken, who works in computers, and I did not have time. I didn't have it completely worked out until then.

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And so if it's inaccurate, please show me grace. But we live in a world filled with algorithms, so much so that we barely even recognize them.

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Algorithms determine what's the next video that plays on whatever streaming platform you're on. Maybe it's

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Let's Church. Your algorithms define the software on self -driving cars.

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Algorithms are involved in helping you solve a Rubik's Cube. I just did this, actually.

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I memorized the algorithm, barely, and I solved my first Rubik's Cube recently, which was a great joy.

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And to realize how simple it is in all the years of pain that I suffered as a child was quite interesting.

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What is an algorithm? And why are we talking about that today?

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Well, an algorithm is a set of instructions that are given to solve a problem. And one of the most common algorithms is what's called an if -then -or -else algorithm, an if -then -or -else algorithm.

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And it's used with things like traffic lights. It's used with daily decisions, whether you realize it or not.

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How does it work? Well, if creates the condition. If this happens, then an outcome is going to come out of it.

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So if this, then that. And if this, then that or else algorithm says if the condition doesn't happen, then there's another outcome that's going to happen in its place.

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For instance, this happens all the time. Think about paying your bills. If you pay your bills, then you will have good credit or else another outcome will occur and you won't.

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Think about baking a cake. If you follow the recipe carefully, if you add all the right ingredients, if you preheat the oven to the right temperature and degrees, and if the humidity is just right, then you will bake a delicious cake.

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And if not, if one of those conditions is not met, well, it will be on a continuum of inedibility.

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Think about a doctor making a diagnosis. If the doctor gets the diagnosis correct and if he gets the medication prescribed correct, then presumably healing will occur.

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Or if he doesn't, maybe you die. Algorithms create conditions and outcomes.

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If the condition is met, then the outcome will occur. These things help us in technology.

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These things help us in decision -making, and it also applies to our passage today in Scripture. Proverbs 2, 1 through 11 is what

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I'm going to call a divine algorithm. It is a great condition that if those conditions are met, then we will receive the reward.

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And in fact, there's seven conditions in this passage, and if all seven of those conditions are met, then there's seven rewards.

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And what we will realize very quickly is that those conditions are impossible to meet.

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So if you will, we're going to look at three things today. Go ahead and turn with me to Proverbs 2, 1 through 11. We're going to look at the condition of wisdom, we're going to look at the reward of wisdom, and we're going to look at the or else what of wisdom.

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That's the algorithm we're going to be looking at. So Proverbs 2, verses 1 through 11.

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This is the word of the Lord. My son, if you receive my words and treasure my commandments within you, make your ear attentive to wisdom, incline your heart to understanding.

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For if you cry for discernment, lift your voice for understanding, if you seek her as silver and search for her as hidden treasure, then you will discern the fear of the

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Lord and discover the knowledge of God. For the Lord gives wisdom, from his mouth comes knowledge and understanding.

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He stores up sound wisdom for the upright. He is a shield for those who walk in integrity, guarding the paths of justice, and he preserves the way of his godly ones.

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Then you will discern righteousness and judgment and equity in every good course.

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For wisdom will enter your heart and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul, discretion will guard you, understanding will watch over you.

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Let us pray. Lord, we thank you so much for your word.

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And Lord, we thank you that the book of Proverbs is so focused and fixated on wisdom.

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And Lord, we thank you that if we do the things that you say in your word, there are promises that are attached with these things.

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If we seek wisdom, then we will walk in blessings. Lord, help us today to see how these things work.

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Lord, help us to see how you help us and how you accommodate and minister to us in our weakness.

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And Lord, help us not to end with a sort of laissez -faire attitude, but to see,

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Lord, that obedience, as 1 John chapter 3 says, obedience to the commands of God is evidence that you abide in us.

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Lord, help us with these things in Christ's name, amen. As we're reading this passage, you'll notice that the ifs happen in the first half and the thens happen in the second half.

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So there's a condition that's being put forward, seven of them, in fact, and then there's an outcome that's being put forward, seven of them, in fact.

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If we obey, if we meet the conditions, then we will have the blessings. Now, again,

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I said there's seven conditions, seven things that need to happen in order for us to be blessed, and we're gonna walk through those briefly for just a moment.

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What's the first condition? If you receive my words. This is

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Solomon obviously talking to his son, but this is also God speaking to us. If you and I receive the words of God, then we will come into the outcome.

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We will come into the reward that God has for us. Now, you ask yourself, what does it mean to receive the word of God?

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Receiving is more than hearing. Remember, we said that hearing requires audio waves alone.

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Receiving means bringing something into you. When someone comes on your front porch and knocks on your door, you receive them into your house.

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You welcome them into your dwelling place. Well, the same thing happens with the Hebrew word here for receive, which is l 'ka.

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L 'ka doesn't mean just hear something. It doesn't mean just cognitively examine it. It means bring the words of God into you so that they take hold of you and bring intention and purpose into your life.

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This word l 'ka is the same word like you'd be hanging on like Leo to a floating piece of wood in the middle of the

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Atlantic Ocean, if you know the reference. This is the same word where you might be hanging onto the side of a cliff or in elementary school where you're supposed to do however many pull -ups for the presidential test that we were supposed to take, and you're trying to squeak out your eighth pull -up, and you're hanging on for dear life trying.

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This is the word, l 'ka, gripping something, hanging on to the words of God.

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Now, when you think about it when it comes to the words of God, how do we hang on to the words of God? How do we receive the words of God?

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Well, I think it involves an attitude. Being the kind of person who wakes up in the morning, and this is not me yet,

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I want this to be me, and I hope you want this to be you, waking up in the morning, salivating over being in the text of Scripture, wanting to be with God and His word, meditating on that word day and night, like David says, that the word of God became his delight, dreaming about it during the night, consumed with the word in your day.

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That's the first condition. The condition is if we obsess in a holy way over the word, then we will come into God's blessings, and if we don't, we will not.

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So that's the first condition. Second condition is like unto it. It says, if you treasure my commands.

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Now, I'm supplying the if there, and by the way, I want you to know why I'm doing that. Because every clause in Proverbs 2, 1 through,

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I think, 3 or 4, begins with an if. So you have synonymous parallelism, which is just a fancy way of saying they're all if statements.

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Just because every statement doesn't have an if in front of it, doesn't mean that that's not the thrust of what the author's doing.

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He's giving this conditional sort of statement to all of these clauses. So I'm supplying the if.

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If you treasure my commands. So it's not just receiving the commands of God.

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There's people that we receive into our home that we don't treasure. That's true. There's packages that we receive into our home that we do not treasure.

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Imagine the Amazon driver pulls up and gives you your latest installment of toilet paper.

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You're thankful for it, but you don't put it in the family safe. Maybe you do.

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The word here is sathan. It means to store up. It means to hide away, like something that is precious.

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So receiving the word of God in a biblical way, in the condition that God is talking about here, is not just bringing it lackadaisically into our heart.

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It means treasuring it. It means viewing it as the most precious thing that you and I possess.

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You think about whatever it is in your home that is the most precious thing that you own.

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The thing that goes in the locked vault. We're to treat wisdom.

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We're to treat the word of God at an even higher level than that, in a higher regard than rubies or gold, in a higher regard than our life savings and our 401ks and whatever else that we own.

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We are to treat the word and God's wisdom as though it's precious.

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That's number two. Number three, our third condition. It says if you make your ear attentive to wisdom.

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That's verse two. The emphasis shifts not just from hearing and listening, but to inclining your ear.

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Because let's be honest, you can accidentally receive something into your home and recognize it as treasure, but there's nothing intentional about that.

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So we must also intentionally incline our ear to the word of God and to wisdom. That's kashab in Hebrew.

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It sounds like a kung fu movie, kashab. It's intentional. Incline your ear.

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Be intent upon the word of God. Be focused on the word of God. Direct your energy toward the word of God and towards wisdom.

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There's nothing passive or accidental about this. You think about it. Maybe you'll remember this in high school or in undergrad, graduate school, whatever your terminal level was.

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You remember sitting in that classroom and your professor says, okay, today is time for us to prepare for the final exam.

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I'm going to give you all the information that you need, which is never true, by the way. But I'm going to give you all the information you need and I want you to take notes on it, listen, whatever.

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Word to the wise. If you're in that situation, take notes, listen, record the lecture.

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There's a way that we listen on an average day in class versus the final exam prep that's very different.

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The way that we're supposed to listen to the word of God and incline our ears to the word of God is like that final day of exam prep where we need a 93 in order to maintain our

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GPA. We listen differently in that moment. So that's the third.

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We must receive the word of God into our hearts. We must treasure it above all else. We must incline our ear to listen intently to the word of God and to wisdom.

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Those are the conditions for blessings, and if we're not doing those things, then we have no confidence that we will walk in God's blessings.

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The fourth, we don't just incline our ear, we incline our hearts. Proverbs 2 .2

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says, incline your heart to understanding. So inclining our ears is not enough. We must also learn the secret of inclining our affections, our passions, our heart, our emotions to the word of God and to wisdom, bringing all of our life under the lordship of Christ.

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The Hebrew word here is natah, actively turning our heart towards something, deliberately, intentionally, bringing our heart into conformity with wisdom and the word of God.

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Are you feeling encouraged yet? You shouldn't be, because we don't do this. We don't do this.

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We let our heart wiggle and wrangle and float off like a boat without an anchor.

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There's nothing about our life that's intentionally inclining our heart to the Lord. Number five, if you cry for discernment,

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Proverbs 2 .3, for if you cry for discernment. A crying for discernment is first and foremost, it strikes at the most basic element of our pride.

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To cry for discernment first, you must admit that you don't have it and that you are weak and that you're finite and that you're frail.

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The Hebrew word here, kara, means shouting out in desperation. It means crying for someone or crying as someone who knows that they need help.

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This is the same cry that a mother makes when her child slips and falls into a pit. This is the same cry of a broken man who finds himself in a pod full of pigs and he realizes that he has to return to his father.

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Brothers and sisters, this is what we are supposed to do regularly, to be broken over the fact that we don't have perfect discernment and to cry out to the

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Lord for it. And yet, there's so much of our life that just exists on autopilot.

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Our brain actually prioritizes efficiency. I don't know if you have ever thought about this canon.

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You will soon learn this. If you don't have the push to start button in your car, we actually have the old fashioned key.

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My glorious blue thunder has the key. But I've never actually, except for the very first time

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I got in the car, I've never moved my head around the steering wheel to try to see where the keyhole is.

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I literally sit down and put the key in instantly, turn it, and the car is started within a millisecond.

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My body is prioritizing that action because my brain doesn't want to spend excess energy and effort trying to find the keyhole.

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So somehow, someway, I can autopilot through that and not have to spend an ounce of brain power.

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You think about driving on a long trip. Have you ever been driving on a long trip and you get to your destination and you forget how you got there?

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Or you get off the right exit, but you have no memory of why or when you did that?

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It's because your brain is autopiloting. This is what we do all the time. We autopilot through life.

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We autopilot through work. We autopilot through marriage. We autopilot through family. We autopilot through everything.

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And we don't cry out for discernment for God. We just go through the motions.

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That's number five. Number six is if you will lift up your voice. Lifting up your voice here is an act of persistence.

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It's asking and asking and asking. Do you remember the passage in the New Testament where it says, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be open?

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That verb in the New Testament is a continuous verb. It means if you seek and seek and seek and seek and seek and seek and seek, you'll find.

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And if you knock and knock and knock and knock and knock and knock and knock and knock, the door will be open. That's what that passage is literally getting after.

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It's like the woman, the widow before the unjust judge who, because of her constant nagging of the judge, he finally gives her what she needs.

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And the point of that parable that Jesus gives is how much more gracious is your father than an unjust judge?

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The point here is that if you want to walk in the blessings of God, then you need to be the kind of person who is not just on a

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Sunday morning seeking after the things of God, but a Monday morning Christian, a Tuesday morning Christian, a

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Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, all of life Christian who is in a continual pursuit of lifting up your voice to know

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God, to know His wisdom, to know His Word. The final one,

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I think, is probably the most convicting. If you seek wisdom as hidden treasures, you'll come into the blessings of God.

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We've already been told that we need to treasure God's wisdom. This is different than just treasuring the wisdom.

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Treasuring the wisdom is what you put in a safe. Being a treasure hunter causes you to leave your home to go out and look for treasure.

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Do you see the difference there? Treasuring something is putting it in a safe. Treasure hunting is going out and finding.

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This is the person who views God's Word as such a glorious and beautiful treasure that you do not settle for accidentally finding the glories of God in the

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Word. This is convicting because how many times have we put on the audio

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Bible while we drive through traffic and we get to our destination and we finished our Bible reading plan but we have no idea what we just read?

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How many times do we wake up in the morning with our cup of coffee and our eyes are still blurry and we have no idea what we just read?

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I've done this thousands of times. I'm not seeking for the treasures of God. I'm checking off a moral duty that I believe a good person does.

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That's what I'm doing. How many times do we do that? How many times do we take the glorious Word of God that our brothers and sisters have died for, their blood has made the pages of Scripture ruby red because they loved it so much and yet we allow it to collect dust on the shelf?

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This kind of passion that Solomon's talking about is an all -consuming pursuit that fuels us into the

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Word of God, that fuels us towards wisdom, that consumes us, that causes us to be the kind of people that people look at and think are extreme.

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What's really extreme is how little we seek after the things of God. That's extreme.

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The way that the Bible causes us to wake up in the morning, delight in the evening, go to sleep resting in the truth of God and all of life, passion, that's normal.

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That's normal. And yet how earnestly have we sought the things of God?

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Do you pursue the things of God with the same passion and vigor that you do for a promotion?

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Do you pursue the things of God with the same tangible effect on your heart that you do making sure that you pay your bills?

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Have you put in the time and effort to dig into the Scriptures like you've dug into those things that you're interested in your favorite

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TV show or supply whatever activity? Are we searching for, running after, looking for the treasures of God?

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Or are we content with mud pies in the slum, as C .S. Lewis once famously said? A child who's offered a holiday at the sea goes on content with mud pies in the slum because we are far too easily pleased.

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We need to be honest with ourself. We need to be honest with the fact that we have not met these conditions.

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None of us, not a single person in this room has met even one of these conditions.

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And when you consider that God is a God of perfection and that God doesn't receive things that are imperfect as worship, then none of us have met them because we might have met them for an hour, maybe.

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We might have met one of them for a minute. But have you done it daily, day in, day out?

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Have you had an off day? You've not met the condition. Because we have not done these things perfectly.

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We have not done them at all. And you know how an algorithm works. If the condition is not met, then the then doesn't happen.

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What is the then? Well, there's seven of them, in fact. So let me talk about things for a moment that you don't deserve and you can't earn.

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Because I want us to be encouraged. You can't do it.

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You can't do it. You can't do it. But now let me tell you about what you could have if you could. That's where we're at right now.

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There's seven rewards of wisdom if you were to meet these conditions. If you were to do these things as God has described, there's seven rewards.

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Proverbs 2 .5 says, then you will discern the fear of the Lord. Brothers and sisters, remember the whole book of Proverbs is predicated on the fear of the

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Lord. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of understanding. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of the knowledge of God. If you don't have the fear of the

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Lord, you don't have God. So, let's be really clear here. If you don't meet these seven conditions, you have not

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God. Are you encouraged? Imagine what life would be like, brothers and sisters, if we really, truly feared the

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Lord. If we really, truly came under the awe and wonder of who

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God is. If we received God's words, like he says, if we treasured God's commands, if we made our ear and our heart attentive, if we cried for discernment, if we lifted up our voice for his understanding, if we sought wisdom like hidden treasure, what would your life look like?

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The peace, the unity, the blessings, the shalom.

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Everything promised in his word would be yours. That's the first one.

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Second one, you'll discover the knowledge of God. Calvin says that the knowledge of God is the most important knowledge of them all. If you don't have the knowledge of God, then you know not

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God. This is a kind of knowledge that is not just fact. This is not the kind of knowledge where I say, my wife is five foot four, she's got blonde hair, and she's beautiful.

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That's the kind of factual knowledge where I'm describing who she is, and that can be done on paper. And you all could have the same knowledge of my wife as I do.

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You could know that she's five foot four, she has blonde hair, and she's beautiful. You could all know that, but you don't know her like I know her.

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There's a different kind of knowledge that's intimate. That's the kind of knowledge we're talking about here. It's not just knowledge on a paper.

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It's not just Bible verses memorized. It's not just you have a theology degree. This is intimate, relational knowledge where you know

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God. If you don't meet these seven conditions, the indication is you cannot know.

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You could know him on the same level as Richard Dawkins who went to seminary. He didn't. But if he did, and he could learn some facts, that's the level that you could know him on if you don't meet these seven conditions.

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What's the third? Then you will discern righteousness, justice, and equity. That's verse nine. Imagine a world where you had

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God's moral compass for everything, and you knew the right path in everything, and you were unswayed by culture, and the world, and the flesh, and you followed these conditions.

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Wouldn't it be an incredible place to be where you knew what God wanted for your life? You knew what decision you needed to make in all situations.

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You knew what wisdom was in every situation.

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Number four, wisdom will enter into your heart, Proverbs 2 .10. If you meet all these conditions, wisdom is going to dwell inside of you.

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Number five, knowledge will be pleasant to your soul. If you meet all seven of these conditions, the knowledge of God will be a balm to you.

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It will be like a canteen of water in the middle of the Sahara Desert to you. If you met the conditions.

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Number six, discretion will guard you. What a blessing that would be in these days if we had a few folks who were guarded by discretion, avoiding traps and pitfalls that the enemy sets, watching over us every step and protecting us so that we don't fall and fail.

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That's number six. Number seven, then understanding will watch over you.

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Verse 11, if you meet these seven conditions, these seven realities will be yours.

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But the hard truth is, brothers and sisters, that I've just described 14 things that don't belong to us.

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14 things, seven of them are conditions and seven of them are blessings that are not ours in our flesh.

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The reality is, is that you and I will never discern the fear of the Lord. We will never discover the knowledge of God.

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We will never discern righteousness, justice, equity. Wisdom will not come into our heart.

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Knowledge will not be pleasant to our soul. Discretion will not guard you and understanding will not watch over you if you live in you.

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Because you can't do it. This is why this divine algorithm includes an else clause.

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Because you're not enough and you need someone else. You see, the plain hard truth about it is, is that if you rely on your ability and your effort and your performance, none of this will ever be yours.

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For the reprobate who believes that they're a good person, none of this will be theirs. They will receive the wrath of God poured out upon them.

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They will receive the curses that God describes in his word and they will rot in the flames of hell forever.

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Because God's justice demands it. God doesn't lower his standard in order to let people in.

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God is not the mafia. God is righteous and God is holy and God is just.

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Therefore, his standard is his standard. His standard is holy. So if you don't meet that standard and you are leaning into your own understanding and your own ways and your own effort, you will not be enough.

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Self -love, self -worth, self -sufficiency is going to send you to hell.

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So the only solution, the only hope, is that we look outside of ourself for something to heal us.

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Because we're not enough. If I look to my performance,

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I deserve the same spot in real estate in hell as the most thoroughgoing atheist.

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I deserve all of it and more, maybe more, because I've spent my whole life in the church and I've heard the gospel.

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I do think the fire of hell will flame a little hotter for those who heard the word of God for a lifetime and still rejected it.

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Brothers and sisters, you are not enough. You're not. How often do we live in this sort of self -sufficiency or control or I need to do this,

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I need to do that? We've got to strike the first person pronoun from our language because we are not enough.

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We are not smart enough. We are not good enough. We are not moral enough. We are not righteous enough. We've not done what

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God has said in his words. So therefore, if we rely on us, we are damned. The only option is to look to Jesus Christ.

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The only hope we have is to look to Christ because he came and he was obedient in our place.

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Because God would not lower his standards, brothers and sisters, he lowered his son. Because God would not lower his standards, he sent his one and only son down to us.

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And it was Jesus himself who received God's words fully where we have not. It was

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Jesus himself who treasured God's word perfectly where we have not. It was Jesus who made, even though he was in the form of God, he made his ear inclined to the words of God.

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So that when Jesus said, I don't even speak unless I speak the words of the Father because he was so inclined to the words of God, he did it perfectly.

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He inclined his heart to understanding and submitting wholly to the things of God. Jesus cried out for discernment in ways that we have never cried out for discernment.

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But Jesus lifted up his voice for understanding. Jesus sought wisdom and searched for it and found it like treasures, even taking him up the cross and dying on behalf of his people.

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Because why? We didn't do this. And if Christ didn't do this, we would have no hope.

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The reason, brothers and sisters, that you and I are saved is because God didn't lower his standard.

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He lowered his son. And his son did what we could not do. And in his son doing what we could not do, his son stepped into the blessings that we could not earn.

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All seven of those blessings that I described belong to Christ and Christ alone.

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And praise God almighty that Christ is not selfish. He earned the treasures of God and out of sheer unadulterated love for you, he's brought you in.

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Our only hope in this life is Christ.

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Our only assurance in this life is Christ. Our only reward in this life is

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Christ. Our only sufficiency is Christ. Do not lean on your own understanding.

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Do not trust your performance. Trust the one who went before you and did it all and who brought you in because he is mighty to save.

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That is our only hope. And that's the only way that Proverbs 2, 1 through 11 actually applies to us if the

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Spirit gives us the blessings that Christ first earned. Let's pray. Lord, help the reality of this passage to awaken upon our hearts that we have done nothing to earn your favor.

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That we have done nothing to earn your rewards. That at every step of the way we have spurned, we have disobeyed, we have ignored, we have rebelled.

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And Lord, let that lead us to a kind of godly sorrow that does not cause us to turn in on ourself but causes us to turn to Jesus Christ, the author and the perfecter of our faith.

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The one who came and among other passages came intentionally to fulfill

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Proverbs 2, 1 through 11. Lord Jesus, you knew that your people, that God's people would not come under the blessings if you did not accomplish

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Proverbs 2, 1 through 11. So Lord, today, help our hearts to be grateful that you have not put this millstone around our neck.

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But Lord, you allowed this millstone to crush you for our good. And because of your great love for your people, you brought us in and shared with us your treasures.

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Lord, let that elevate our heart. Let it cause us to break the sin of self.

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And Lord, help it to cause us to have unimaginable joy that we belong to you.