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Introduction
Every Christian lives in the real world.
When we’re saved, we aren’t somehow teleported out of our current reality into a Caribbean commune of people who will appreciate our walk with Christ and be agreeable with all that Christ has called us to do.
We still go to work at the car dealership or the Honda plant or the bank where we worked before.
We still face the dilemmas over how we will operate our businesses and deal with our employees.
We still go home to a marriage that isn’t perfect and a home that isn’t conflict free.
We still find ourselves wanting to say what we shouldn’t say, do what we shouldn’t do, and spend what we shouldn’t spend.
We live in the real world, and we have real world problems.
This is where I think the book of Proverbs helps us.
Proverbs teaches us that God built order into life and that it’s an order that we can learn and apply to our lives.
That is, God has given us Proverbs so that we might learn the ways of the world and be able to navigate all of its complexities and dilemmas in a way that is in alignment with our pursuit of Christ.
He has given us this book so that we can know how to not only live in the real world, but to thrive and flourish in the real world.
This morning, we’re going to begin gleaning from Proverbs how we might understand the ways of the world as God designed it.
God’s Word
Read
To My Son
v. 1 “My son, if you receive my words” The purpose of Proverbs is not to call us to self-help.
The purpose of Proverbs is to call us to the Gospel.
Proverbs takes the gospel and helps you to apply it to your job and your speech and your romantic life and your temper.
So, starts off how so many of the chapters of Proverbs start, with a father talking with his son.
It’s a father living life beside his son and pointing out the ways of the world along the way.
Proverbs was used most often in the Hebrew culture for the purpose of training the young men of the household how they might lead their families and God’s kingdom well.
It was so they could learn the ways of the world according to the design of God and then live according to that design, and as a result, not only would they flourish, but God’s people as a whole would flourish.
APPLICATION: There is a word their for the teenagers and the children that are in the room this morning.
You’re not wise, and that’s okay.
You’re not wise, but you can be.
You have the opportunity to obtain wisdom that will propel you and protect you.
You have the opportunity to avoid pain and sleepless nights.
You have the opportunity to draw from the well of Christ.
But, you need to understand it’s not always going to feel good, and it’s going to run against the wisdom that you’re going to hear from your buddies, and it’s going feel like it’s putting you behind sometimes.
Wisdom always makes you look foolish to fools for a little while.
The question facing you this morning is whether or not you will choose wisdom or not.
APPLICATION: There is a word their for the teenagers and the children that are in the room this morning.
You’re not wise, and that’s okay.
You’re not wise, but you can be.
You have the opportunity to obtain wisdom that will propel you and protect you.
You have the opportunity to avoid pain and sleepless nights.
You have the opportunity to draw from the well of Christ.
But, you need to understand it’s not always going to feel good, and it’s going to run against the wisdom that you’re going to hear from your buddies, and it’s going feel like it’s putting you behind sometimes.
Wisdom always makes you look foolish to fools for a little while.
The question facing you this morning is whether or not you will choose wisdom or not.
APPLICATION: Oh, and what I want for the rest of you is to realize that there is no age limit for the need of wisdom.
No doubt, there are people here of every age that find themselves doing things that are foolish and reaping the harvest of that foolishness.
Whenever we believe ourselves wise enough and thoroughly learned, then we are only proving how unwise we are and how far we have drifted away from gospel humility.
If you’re drifting, you will never drift to wisdom, only away.
Will you choose wisdom this morning?
The Means of Wisdom
v. 1 “if you receive my words...” Solomon writes this to his son about the attainment of wisdom by showing causes and effects, means and ends, conditions and realizations.
Three times in the first four verses, Solomon says, “If you....”, and then in verse five and verse nine, he says, “....then you will understand.”
So, you can see this is about causes and effects.
“If you do this, then you will understand this.”
I want to start the same way that Solomon does by looking at the means of Wisdom.
Wisdom Must Be Treasured
v. 1 “treasure up my commandments to you” The first means of wisdom that I want you to see is that Wisdom must be treasured.
The first four verses present Wisdom to us as a treasure.
That is, wisdom is valuable and wonderful and can secure your future like the discovery of a great treasure.
There’s a change that happens between chapter one and chapter two.
In chapter one, Solomon calls for the ‘hearing’ of wisdom, but now in chapter two, he escalates it from ‘hearing’ to ‘accepting’ or ‘receiving’.
Because he wants his son to be wise, he wants him to do far more than merely hear wisdom.
He wants his son to embrace it, to accept it, and to treasure it.
To become wise, there must be a willingness to receive and accept wisdom.
Because true wisdom will often run against what you feel and what you think and what your opinions are.
If you aren’t willing to have your feelings and opinions confronted and changed by true wisdom, then you aren’t willing to be wise.
When we come to the gospel, we come to Christ out of a repentance that confesses our own inadequacy and foolishness and desire to rebel against the goodness of God.
And so, in coming to Christ in the gospel, we are, in effect, saying that we depend upon his goodness and wisdom and strength.
So, for us to live out the gospel, is to live our lives in pursuit of that wisdom and the application of that wisdom, even when it seems counterintuitive to what makes sense to us.
You Focus on What You Treasure
v. 2 “making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding” You can hear this father imploring his son to focus on the wisdom at hand.
And, even in imploring him to focus, he is calling him to treasure wisdom.
For you focus on that which you treasure.
He doesn’t just want him to hear wisdom and have it go through one ear and out the other.
He wants him to listen to wisdom.
He doesn’t want him be like a child that refuses to take their medicine or goes limp in protest of being picked up; he wants him to soften his heart and open his heart to receive the wisdom that he has to offer.
Between North and South Korea, there is a de-militarized zone that is 2.5 miles wide and 155 miles long.
In that zone, there are an estimated 2 million landmines.
If you found yourself in the middle of an area as saturated as that, you would treasure above all else a friend who was there with a map.
You would hang on his every word.
You would follow his instructions precisely.
You would be focused like you’ve never been focused before.
The most important thing in your life would be his words because your very life was dependent upon them.
You would treasure them.
Brothers and sisters, you live every day in the middle of a minefield.
You go to work in a minefield and you go shopping in a minefield and you come home to a minefield.
Our children are living in this minefield.
And, God has come to us as a friend with a map that we can navigate it now and live forever.
Focus yourself, and treasure wisdom!
You Accumulate What You Treasure
v. 1 “treasure up” Whenever you treasure something, you can’t have too much of it.
In fact, you want to collect it and accumulate it.
There’s no shortage of people trying to accumulate as much money and as much gold as they can.
‘Treasure’ up can be translated as ‘store’ up.
It’s the accumulation of wisdom over a long period of time so that it’s available when you need it.
Each of these implies something that takes place over time.
If you will always receive my words, if you will keep on listening, if you will keep your heart focused on what is right, you can be wise.
Wisdom comes through preparation, not reaction.
Wisdom requires that I not wait until the heat of the moment and the last possible second to seek it.
I obtain wisdom now so that I can respond wisely later.
I learn now so that I can understand later.
I don’t wait until I’m on the verge of disaster to desire it; I pursue it now so that I can avoid being on the verge of disaster.
APPLICATION: Wisdom comes through living urgently even when life isn’t urgent.
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