Not so common

One of the greatest difficulties I have in my busy day is remembering. We joke that it is remembering days or remembering what my wife told me. Those are true but it isn’t really that. And its not the cliche that we have in education of remembering my why … I paused because I was afraid some of the teachers in the room might throw something with that cliche. Well, “praise God” no violence yet, so let’s keep going.

What can be so forgetful that in the midst of the messages of my conversations with people around me, the news, the little videos on my phone, all the advice, direction, commands I am given in the day,

Proverbs 3:21 NLT

21 My child, don’t lose sight of common sense and discernment. Hang on to them,

Don’t lose sight of common sense and discernment.

Today before we really dig into the Bible I got to share with you as a way to really cement this part of the scripture in our brains we are going to see two videos today and the first one, it’s from a favorite youtuber of mine, guy who pops up in my algorithm, Pastor Lee Snow. And this one is all about the importance of not losing sight. It goes fast, so you get to see the video in regular speed first and then it will go in a little bit of slow motion so you can catch what happened.

VIDEO - Kick

Once again,

Proverbs 3:21 NLT

21 My child, don’t lose sight of common sense and discernment. Hang on to them,

DON’T LOSE SIGHT! Tell your neighbor what you saw.

Today I am sharing with you the importance of wisdom in our walk with the Lord. In this world, some actually push a faith of blindness, encouraging a Following of Jesus that leaves our brains at the door, instead God made our minds, our faith is interwoven with intelligence, wisdom, reasoning and more.

I once spent time, a friend and I, hosting mormon missionaries in our home. My friend was using the Socratic method with them, a way of just asking well reasoned questions to get to a larger truth, and the missionaries we were talking with began struggling quickly. They started to fade back in the sharing to simple answers to questions, and what they said was, “we would like to leave with you the book of Mormon, you read it, pray about it, and if it feels true to you than lets talk about it. I later learned that there is a phrase in Mormonism, “a burning in your bosom.” And old way to say if this “has the right vibes” then it is true. That faith is based on whether you feel it is true.

It sounds super spiritual. Nice and quick. Goes to the intuition.

If this feels true, than that is belief without seeing.

Yet that is only a portion of the scripture taken out of context to the whole rest of our word from God. One verse doesn’t make up our entire knowledge of God, Jesus, alll of who He is. Look at this piece of scripture and compare it with the logice I described.

Proverbs 3:21–26 NLT

21 My child, don’t lose sight of common sense and discernment. Hang on to them, 22 for they will refresh your soul. They are like jewels on a necklace. 23 They keep you safe on your way, and your feet will not stumble. 24 You can go to bed without fear; you will lie down and sleep soundly. 25 You need not be afraid of sudden disaster or the destruction that comes upon the wicked, 26 for the Lord is your security. He will keep your foot from being caught in a trap.

I don’t want you falling into any traps or kicking anybody you shouldn’t be kicking because you took your eyes off of what God would have for you.

There is refreshment for our soul when we look to wisdom.

With common sense and discernment there is wisdom there is hope in the midst of disaster. You know where else we learned that the way we approach life, what we follow, helps us in disaster. When Jesus said,

Matthew 7:24–27 NLT

24 “Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock. 25 Though the rain comes in torrents and the floodwaters rise and the winds beat against that house, it won’t collapse because it is built on bedrock. 26 But anyone who hears my teaching and doesn’t obey it is foolish, like a person who builds a house on sand. 27 When the rains and floods come and the winds beat against that house, it will collapse with a mighty crash.”

Disaster - those who follow Jesus teaching develop the wisdom that these promises come with. Let’s look at the first part of the promise

Proverbs 3:21 NLT

21 My child, don’t lose sight of common sense and discernment. Hang on to them,

But before we go any further, I have to talk about the elephant in this piece of the Bible. The phrase “Common sense” if there is one thing I know, “common sense” is not common. It’s not just known. I have to teach little boys and girls things so they are common like we can’t pinch people for taking our stuff, can’t leave school at noon because we don’t want to be their anymore and even though all of us, teachers included feel like doing those things, we have to put on to wisdom. But each person learns different things, we learn different customs and ways of doing things so quickly, especially in a place like Stockton with all kinds of beautiful cultures from all over the world we quickly learn that common sense is not very descriptive.

Now don’t forget that every one reading the Bible in this room is likely reading a translation because you are not an expert in Hebrew and just like when people speak spanish and translate it into English, not every phrase or word actually means the same thing in the other langugage. For example, The most offensive thing to tell someone in hungarian is, “you have tuberculosis.” Somethings just don’t translate easily. So people try to translate the idea.

In verse 21 that word translated as common sense is Two-she-yah which even here in my slide you notice is not translated as common sense. But you can even see ithat there are other English words with the similar ideas. So other English versions, trying to give an idea of what is written in the Hebrew over 3000 years ago to the modern English Ear write the verse like this

Proverbs 3:21 CSB

21 Maintain sound wisdom and discretion. My son, don’t lose sight of them.

or even like this

Proverbs 3:21 NRSV

21 My child, do not let these escape from your sight: keep sound wisdom and prudence,

Which one is correct? Well, language is not like math, the other day when I was talking to Tabitha as we left school, I said we will keep it cool and Deborah said no Dad, the word your looking for now is “chill.”

Language is constantly changing what is important is the essence of the word. The Bible is screaming at us here to use our brains! Don’t be stupid and call it anything but stupid. If we do things that are wise our soul will be refreshed.

Some of you might have come today seeking seeking some other answer than the answer every knows makes sense. You know that the answer you currently have is not immoral, it doesn’t go against the teachings of Jesus, but you want something easier. Like if your feeling sick, you want to be healed. A prayer could do it or just coming to worship. Bam Healed.

Now the scripture would say yes you should pray and you should go to the doctor. If your broke, yes you should pray but you also need to remove costs from your life and increase income. If your life is full of people getting mad at you maybe its as simple as stop fighting and pursue peace. I speak generally, I don’t know what is happening in every circumstance and wisdom tells us that what is correct in one circumstance completely changes if other circumstances are changed.

Which is why God through the book of proverbs tells us to seek Wisdom. I want to share with you a second video, from the Bible Project, who wrote the devotional some of us have been using as a guide to read the entire Bible this year. They made a great video that talks about proverbs and I want to share that with you here.

VIDEO =- PRoverbs

Proverbs 9:10 NLT

10 Fear of the Lord is the foundation of wisdom. Knowledge of the Holy One results in good judgment.

So our wisdom begins with the knowledge that there is a God.

There is a latin term called “a priori” knowledge based before or without or independently of observation and experience. Often things that are argued to be right or good, that right or good thing is just accepted and everything after that is an argument for something that was not necessarily right or good in the beginning.

For example, having soft skin makes women beautiful so their are entire industries, classes, etc that work to make soft skin and that this adds value to a woman but waht evidence do we have that “soft skin” is that vital or actually makes a woman more valuable. The beginning argument is not yet proven.

For everyone, the a priori argument, is the fear of the Lord.

In a further description of wisdom in a part of Proverbs that complements our first chapter wisdom says,

Proverbs 8:13–14 NLT

13 All who fear the Lord will hate evil. Therefore, I hate pride and arrogance, corruption and perverse speech. 14 Common sense and success belong to me. Insight and strength are mine.

These are huge promises - insight and strength. If we go back to the previous scripture for more promises:

Proverbs 3:23–26 NLT

23 They keep you safe on your way, and your feet will not stumble. 24 You can go to bed without fear; you will lie down and sleep soundly. 25 You need not be afraid of sudden disaster or the destruction that comes upon the wicked, 26 for the Lord is your security. He will keep your foot from being caught in a trap.

Sound sleep, lack of fear from sudden disaster.

I want you to remember a couple of things, everyone gets afraid. It is an initial, body reaction. Wisdom will tell you what is worthy of fear and what isn’t. When we remember that knowing what God wants, doing what God wants, actually leads to the kind of joy that when we lay ourselves down to sleep at night or when we are in our quiet moments we do not have to have any regrets, fears of being found out, or wondering how we are going to work to make sure no one finds out.

Yet in these days, we have people all over trying to tell us the right things to do. Many of you know them as influencers. I listened to this podcast by two female sports reporters. It was highly recommended by other sports writers I enjoy reading in my spare time. However these ladies spent the first 10 minutes complaining about how they had to do all these special skin care things, and special child care stuff, and special workout regimine and complained they couldn’t find the time. It reminded me of the Barbie movie speech about how hard it is to be a woman today, My friends, it is always hard if our wisdom is based on the influencers of our day and not with eyes fixed squarely on the Fear of the Lord and His wisdom that we weaves into the fabric of our world. We lose sleep. The inevitable change that is coming gives us anxiety but when we remember that the Lord is our security, that even our brothers and sisters who we cannot forget, that are in persecution, war, national disaster, still have the Lord as security in their day to day existence.

But this leads me to something that is true and not simple. Proverbs is about probabilities. To make a simple example: if you eat right and excercise you will be healthy. But health does always happen, it almost always happens. Jesus feared God, in the sense that he showed the ultimate respect to God, yet the night before He was crucified He couldn’t sleep and called on the disciples to pray.

Does this mean God abandon his promises. No. Does it mean that we should take our eyes of sound wisdom and discernment. Not at all, in fact discernment helps us to see that circumstances change and so our obedience to what God desires us to do at that moment, change but the abiding principal, the a priori is

Colossians 3:1–2 NLT

1 Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honor at God’s right hand. 2 Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth.