Proverbs 3:13-25

God’s Wisdom Provides for You

Intro: Early to bed and Early to Rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise. Ben Franklin made this proverb, Not a biblical proverb, famous when he printed it in his Poor Richard’s Almanac in 1735. This saying existed in a few other forms or similar terms since about 1486. But does getting up early bring you health, money and wisdom? But as a young man working in an England printshop, Franklin learned to live this and prove the proverb, and he outworked his more experienced coworkers and earned the trust of his boss.

I understand the idea behind the statement, If you get up early you have more time to work and you can get more done. Getting up early usually means you go to bed early so you are not out too late to get in trouble, because nothing good happens after midnight. I’m not sure how early is early, but the Military makes you get up early and I’m not sure how wealthy, healthy or wise I am for it.

But is that all it takes to be wise and wealthy? The answer is No. But getting the wisdom and being prosperous is just as simple as going to bed early.

Read Verses:

MP: Obtaining God’s Wisdom can provide you with Peace and Prosperity, and be held in high regard in your life

God’s Wisdom is Prosperous (13-18)

This set of verses from 13-18 is thought to be a hymn or poem that Solomon has inserted into the proverb. It begins and ends with the words blessed or happy. The words are from the same root. The New American Standard Bible says “How blessed is the man who finds wisdom” in verse 13 and ends verse 18 with “and how happy are all who hold her {Wisdom personified} fast. Other translations use one word both times, showing that they are very similar.

Solomon is establishing that to be blessed and or happy, you must cling to wisdom.

What does wisdom give you? It keeps you out of trouble As I said nothing good happens after midnight, So if you exercise wisdom in your social life, that means you have less of a chance, being involved in something that would be unwise. Like having a few too many grape Neehi’s and making a bad decision.

But another word used in verse 13 is understanding. You get an understanding of God. We don’t have Him all figured out, but we do get an understanding of our sinful condition caused by disobedience and our need to be saved from God’s wrath.

He goes on in verse 14 to say when you seek wisdom or when you ask for wisdom you profit or gain from having this wisdom or understanding. But what you profit from your understanding that God has saved you is greater than silver and gold.

Application: The understanding that you have received God’s grace and forgiveness is the most priceless Gift you can receive

There are 7.3 billion people in this world today. Your odds at winning the California fantasy five are 1 in 575 thousand; your chances of winning the California super Lotto is 1 in 41 million. But if you are saved, you had a 1 in a 7 billion chance to win. And guess what? You won. If God chose you for adoption into his family, into His kingdom, you won something better than the lottery. With the lottery, you have to buy tickets and choose numbers and then watch for the numbers. But in God’s Grace, all you have to do is accept his free gift. There is no standing in line to mark all the boxes and playing the same numbers every week.

The understanding comes from the Holy Spirit. : says the Holy Spirit comes to convict the world. At that moment when you felt compelled to accept Jesus you had, on some level been given the understanding and the fear of God. Basil the great says

You just show up, Repent of your sins, believe that Jesus, God the son, the second person of the Trinity, died on the cross to take the Father’s wrath and was brought back to life. And in our death to our other selves, our old selves, we have everlasting life through Jesus. This is what Solomon is saying here, when you are wise, you are going to live longer physically by not falling for the latest internet challenge

Or make a decision that would kill you. But also, when you walk in the ways of God, you will have everlasting life in His Kingdom.

And we can believe his word about the Gift, that it is not a get rich scheme, because God is trustworthy.

God’s Wisdom is Trustworthy (19-26)

We covered this a little bit last week and most of this proverb is the explanation of the first 12 verses.

In verses 19 and 20, Solomon reminds his son that God made the heavens and the earth. He knew how to fill the oceans and where to it the rain when it was needed.

How much do you trust the people who designed and made your car or the plane you take a trip? You have to trust that the wings are made to provide the lift so the plane takes off. And these are all designed by humans who hope they have an understanding of physics and mechanics to make the cars and planes that we get into on a regular basis. How much more can you trust God that is the creator of the laws of physics and mechanics and everything else that happens in the universe?

And so when you grasp wisdom and discretion as it says verses 21 and 22 reminds you like earlier in verse 3, to put the wisdom around our neck. Keep them in your sight, always in your presence and on your mind.

When you are wise and exercise discretion, you watch what you do and say and walk a little closer. When you don’t exercise discretion, you say whatever comes to your mind, you act out however you want. You may have heard someone describe that they don’t have a filter between their brain and their mouth.

Where you walk, you will not stumble, where you lie down, you have no reason to fear anything and even if something unexpected comes up, you are kept free from danger. And you also free from the wrath that awaits the wicked mentioned in verse 25 when the judgment day comes.

Application: You can be confident because God’s wisdom created everything

He did not create the world without a plan. He is not going behind us cleaning up our messes. If God just adjusted to us and our free will, he would be nothing more than a fixer. Someone you hire to take care of problems when they arise.

And that would minimize the Power and significance of Jesus’ work on the cross. Jesus wasn’t the clean up crew; He is and was the solution from the very beginning.

Abraham and Moses trusted God. The people trusted God sometimes on the Exodus, but they largely did not. Or they at least went through periods when they wanted to trust someone else or go back to trust Pharoah.

The 12 Apostles Trusted Jesus when they left their various good jobs to follow Him in His ministry. Paul was confronted on the Road Damascus and realized that Jesus was who he said he was. A lot of them were some kind of leader or had a decent paying job. They left it all to follow Him because they trusted God.

When you follow Jesus, You are also expected to leave the old life behind and lead a new life in Christ. We can have the confidence to Follow Jesus

In Paul’s Second letter to the , Paul tells the church that they are letters that God has written Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, like some, letters of recommendation to you or from you? 2 You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everyone. 3 You show that you are Christ’s letter, delivered by us, not written with ink but with the Spirit of the living God—not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.

Paul’s Competence

4 Such is the confidence we have through Christ before God. 5 It is not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God. 6 He has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

Anytime in a movie where the main character is a rebel or an outsider, it is because they do not trust people or authority. They have been burned too many times and so they only trust themselves. The lack of trust keeps him or her from getting close to others until the end of the movie when he starts trusting people and his life has improved dramatically.

TS: And all of a sudden, the character treats people better because he starts to act honorably.

God’s Wisdom is Honorable (27-35)

We are commanded to love our neighbor as yourself. If you needed help from your neighbor and he said, as it says in verse go away, come back later, you may say, but I need help right now.

One of the coolest memories I have as a kid is when my dad helped our neighbor kid. The kid and I were playing and we jumped our fence and he fell off and hit his head. There was blood everywhere it was pouring out of his head. My dad was on the back porch I think and he came running out grabbed some kind of rag or shirt scoped up the kid and took him out the gate, down the alley and over to his house so his parents could call the ambulance. There was no thinking, just action on my dad’s part. He helped his neighbor who was not lonely the kid, but his agents as well, when he was in need. He didn’t just say, well, not my kid, not my worry. No I think he acted because if i had gotten hurt, he would want someone to take care of me and get me the help I needed as soon as possible.

How we treat others, especially those who are different from us in anyway tells others, like a letter or a billboard, who we really are. If we are jealous about a promotion a coworker receives or you rejoice with them

Application: When we love others we are honoring God.

Why? because he loved us first. We were the others. says “Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.” Christians were the outcasts. You were an outsider to the Kingdom of heaven. And yet he loved you in spite of your behavior and your sins and He cleansed you with the blood of Jesus. You were made white as snow.

Now the command says to love others as yourself, that means you have to love yourself. You have to know in your heart that you are forgiven. You have to treat yourself with respect. And confidence because of your identity in and with Christ.

says But whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit.And God does not have or give us a timid spirit.

If you don’t look to God for your identity, then you start looking for it in other people.

like the violent man who uses devious tactics to get what he wants.

We have to trust Godthat when we act honorably even though it may be a sacrifice, it is to Honor God.

Conclusion:

A television program preceding the 1988 Winter Olympics featured blind skiers being trained for slalom skiing, impossible as that sounds. Paired with sighted skiers, the blind skiers were taught on the flats how to make right and left turns.

When that was mastered, they were taken to the slalom slope, where their sighted partners skied beside them shouting, “Left!” and “Right!” As they obeyed the commands, they were able to negotiate the course and cross the finish line, depending solely on the sighted skiers’ word. It was either complete trust or catastrophe.

What a vivid picture of the Christian life! In this world, we are in reality blind about what course to take. We must rely solely on the Word of the only One who is truly sighted—God himself. His Word gives us the direction we need to confidently finish the course he has set before us.

Action: do you trust God? Even if or maybe especially when you can’t see where He is guiding you. How can you trust him a little more than you did today?

Like the sighted guide, God knows where he is going. So why do you second guess him when he gives you direction?