2. The Messy Side of Wisdom

The Messy Side Of Wisdom

Proverbs 3:5-6

Open Bibles

Happy Birthday to my wife…

We started our series last week by agreeing that for most of us… our lives look quite a bit different than we had dreamed as a kid…

- I mean we all had amazing dreams for our lives… for that matter we all had great hopes for

2020… dreams and plans that would make our lives unique and completely fulfilling.

… But I’m guessing that none of your dreams involved quarantines or facemasks…

… No one’s dream involved losing a job or watching our country tear itself apart on the

nightly news…

… I’m also confident that not one guy in this room laid awake at night staring at a

poster of a minivan or a prius on his wall?

… and not one lady here ever thought they would get so excited about the thought of

getting a Roombu automatic vacuum cleaner…

BUT HERE WE ARE…

- And there are these moments in our lives… Moments when we become uncomfortably aware of just how far our lives have drifted from our dreams…

… and the longer we think about it… the more dissatisfied we tend to become… and the

more STUCK we start to feel…

and we’re smart enough to realize that we’re not the only ones who have ever felt this way… so we start wondering, “What does everyone else do when they feel TRAPPED in an Unsatisfying Job… or an unfulfilling relationship… or in a life that is just not as remarkable as they dreamed it would be?”

- And 9 times out of 10 the answer is… They RUN AWAY!

… And again, You’re smart enough to know that IF YOU RUN… you’re gonna leave some

broken hearts behind, some broken relationships, Some irreparable damage, but at this

moment the loudest voice in your head is screaming…

... “If I don’t make my move NOW... I’ll never get UNSTUCK!.”

- So you ran… 1 time , 2 times or 3… but something you’ve noticed about RUNNING… whether it was your personal experience or maybe your observation of other people running is…

- No matter how far and how fast you run… Life never got better…it just got more complicated

- And No matter what job title you had… or what marriage you were in... or what town

you ran to… wherever you go there YOU are… You are common denominator...

So last week we opened our series by looking at this amazing verse in Romans

Where the Apostle Paul says… “TIME OUT… LET’S ALL TAKE A BREATH… BECAUSE THERE’S A BETTER WAY TO HANDLE THIS!” and he lays out a this completely different approach for getting UNSTUCK… a way of escape that leaves no wake of destruction…

Slide

Romans 12:2 He says…

“Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world,...”

Or in other words… “Don’t just blindly follow the lead of the people around you… their path for getting UNSTUCK ALWAYS leaves a trail of destruction…

Slide

So instead of just RUNNING AWAY… why not invite God into your situation... AND

“… let (HIM) God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.”

- Paul is saying… You’ll never change the OUTCOMES of your life by just changing your decisions…

Because every decision you make is driven by a WAY OF THINKING that caused you to decide that way…

… So, if your goal is to see different OUTCOMES in your life… TO LIVE A LIFE THAT IS

UNSTUCK… it all starts by ALLOWING God to come in and RENOVATE the way you think…

- AND it’s with this BOLD CLAIM in mind that we’re going to be looking at some very simple truths over the next few weeks

… ALL WITH THIS PROMISE…

… As you embrace these truths… and allow them to impact the way you THINK…

… THEN these truths will have the power to change the way you DECIDE…

… and When you DECIDE different you will BEHAVE different…

… and When you BEHAVE different… your outcomes will be different…

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Slide

BUT Before we go any further in this series, I need to remind you of something I say pretty often…

...TRUTH IS TRUTH WHETHER YOU CHOOSE TO BELIEVE IT OR NOT!

- With every truth we have a choice to make… will I apply this truth or try to ignore it?

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- The first truth we’re going to look at is one that… if you have spent any time around the church or a Christian friend or have ever heard a sermon before today... You’ve probably heard it....

- In fact, I’ll bet not even our MOST FAITHFUL NOTE TAKERS will write this down morning…

… but I have to warn you…even though this truth is so simple… it’s still a little bit threatening to us… and here it is

...“GOD KNOWS WHAT'S BEST FOR YOU!”

... I know your all saying “DUH Pastor!... Like I didn’t know that!”

- But it’s the second layer of this truth that makes it so threatening and so hard for us to swallow… and that is… “Not only does God know what’s best for you… BUT God knows what’s best for you… BETTER than you know what’s best for you!”

- “Now Come on Pastor Roger… let’s not get carried away.”

- I KNOW what I want… what I need… I know better than anyone what’s going to make me

happy…”

#1

- How many of you can think of a time in your life where you were absolutely positive about a decision you were making… Buy this car… move to this town… major in this subject… date this person... accept this job…

- But whatever it was… you were absolutely sure that you were making the right decision…

Only to discover AFTER you made the move… AFTER you pulled the trigger on that decision… that it was the WRONG decision?

- SURE we all have!

#2

How about this… A decision you were positive about and made all the plans and right before it was done the deal fell through… maybe she said “No” or they hired the other guy or the contract on the house fell through… and you were MAD... but 3 months, 6 months… 12 months down the road you look back and say, “I am so glad that that deal fell through?”

- You know what we just admitted… Sometimes we don’t know what’s best for us.

- We were so sure… but the outcome was not what we anticipated.

#3

How many of you have watched someone you love make a decision that you just knew would crash, but they were convinced and sure enough you were right?

- You know what your friend didn’t realize??? It’s the same thing you often fail to realize about yourself… “YOU DON’T ALWAYS KNOW WHAT’S BEST FOR YOU!…

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Now while that’s all settling in… I want us to take a look at 2 verses in Proverbs…

- And what you need to understand about the book of Proverbs is… Proverbs is a book of

Wise Sayings.

- And a majority of these wise sayings were written by one man… In fact he is known

throughout history as the Wisest man who ever lived, and his name was King Solomon

- I know some of you were very taken aback b/c you thought Pastor Jeff was the

wisest man to ever live, and I’m sorry to disappoint you.

- Now King Solomon had a very famous dad… his name was King David (killed Goliath), but when David’s time was up his son Solomon took over and quickly became… the wealthiest man of his time…

… the most powerful man of his time…

… He ruled Israel in the greatest time of its history…

… in fact, rulers from all around the world would travel great distances just to ask Solomon for

his advice and counsel…

- So suffice it to say… Solomon was the man… and honestly if there was any man who ever lived who could say, “I don’t need anybody’s help… not even God... to know what’s best for me.” it truly would have been Solomon.

Slide

- But instead of saying that… Solomon says this in Proverbs chapter 3...

Proverbs 3:5-6 NLT

“Trust in the LORD with all your heart…”

- “Oh Man we’re only 8 words into this deal and already we’re cringing right?”

- “Trust in the Lord?”…

- I mean that’s not what we’re taught to do… Culture says “Just trust your heart!”

- I mean it sounds romantic and it seems to work in EVERY SINGLE HALLMARK

CHRISTMAS MOVIE THAT PLAYS IN MY HOUSE 24 HOURS A DAY… GOD HELP ME

PLEASE…

… But I feel it is my duty to remind you all that these movies are pretend… and

As unfortunate as it is… we don’t live in the pretend world do we?

- In fact, how many of you would be honest enough to admit, “Yep, I’ve made a choice or 2 based on what my heart said and it was an Epic Fail?”

Slide

- So Solomon… the wisest man to ever live… weighs in on the subject and says...

“Trust in the LORD with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding.”

… b/c your heart and your understanding are based on your perceptions and your feelings...

… and perceptions and feelings come and go.

Slide

INSTEAD...“Seek HIS (God’s) will in all you do, and he will direct your paths.”

- And I get it… this is really OUT OF THE BOX THINKING… because Solomon is literally saying “If at any point, your feelings or your brilliant ideas say something different than what God is saying… You are wrong and God is right.”

- And for us free thinking… independent Americans… that’s a tough pill to swallow… and it makes us want to push back...

… I mean this is a no haggle… no compromise… release of control…

… and for so many of us… even those who consider yourselves a hard-core Jesus Lover… this

is a pretty painful renovation…

… This is God coming in and insensitively ripping out our old way of thinking… like a

rotting floor… and replacing it with His way of thinking…

- But AGAIN… the promise is… when we allow Him to change our way of thinking… despite the pain… we will decide different… and the outcomes of our lives are different…

… WE GET UNSTUCK!

- I dare you to think back to some of those regrets you carry and ask yourself… “How would things be different today, if I would have just believed that God knows best and I would have allowed what He said to TRUMP what I thought?”

… If I would have not been too afraid to confront that…

… If I would not have allowed my ego to take control…

… If I would have listened to the nudging of the Holy Spirit…

And in these 2 short verses Solomon presents us with a Cause and Effect in our relationship with God… “BECAUSE you will acknowledge God's ways and make decisions based on His instruction…. THEN God will bring you to pleasant outcomes.”

- That’s the promise of this Proverb.

- NOW Solomon’s story does go on from here… in fact Solomon took his own advice in every area of his life accept 1. (I Kings 11)

- Way back in 1 Kings 11 God gave Israel a law that Jewish men should not marry women

from other countries… And this wasn’t about racism at all… it was because if they were to

marry women of other cultures… those women would bring their foreign gods into Israel and

the men of Israel’s hearts would be turned away from the One True God…

- Well by the time Solomon came along… this was a very old law… and Solomon had kind of an issue with it.

- Because in Solomon’s day… countries would make peace alliances with one another by the king of one country giving the king of another country his daughter to marry.

- B/c what king would attack a country that his daughter lived in.

- So here Solomon is the king in a very hostile time in history and he has a decision to make… God’s law says one thing, but culture says something different.

… and in an attempt to protect his people we read in verse 3 that Solomon chose to follow his

culture and he married 700 foreign wives of royal birth.

- That’s a lot of peace between the nations folks…

BUT this is where I, as a man, start to question how wise Solomon actually was?

- I mean sure there was peace between the nations, but can you imagine Solomon’s life trying to keep 700 wives happy.

- And do you know what else 700 wives meant??? 700 Mother-in-Laws… And not all of them

are as great as my Mother in Law…

- I mean God tried to protect Him, but he wouldn’t listen.

1 Kings 11:4 NIV

“As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the LORD his God, as the heart of David his father had been.”

- So Solomon decided to not take his own advice… he decided that instead of TRUSTING GOD for the safety of his people and the stability of his country that He would flow with the culture and he did exactly what God said he would do.

1 Kings 11:11-12 NIV

“So the LORD said to Solomon, "Since this is your attitude and you have not kept my covenant and my decrees, which I commanded you, I will most certainly tear the kingdom away from you and give it to one of your subordinates.”

- DO you know what happened?

- Israel had a civil war…

- The country was divided in half and they killed one another.

- They didn’t need foreign countries to attack them… they attacked one another.

- BUT then a bunch of the foreign countries attacked too and killed even more Israelites.

- And in his attempt to save His country Solomon destroyed it.

- In an attempt to protect his people…Solomon led tens of thousands of them to be killed

- And the rest ended up in captivity.

- So at the end of the day… the very outcomes that Solomon was trying to avoid were the outcomes he led them to.

- And if he would have just said… “God you know best.. And even though I don’t understand how marrying foreign wives will lead me away from You… if you say it will I’ll trust you and you will protect us some other way.”

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- SO, here’s my question for you… “Are you ready to go through the Messy Side of Wisdom?”

- Just like Solomon it’s easy to go with God’s wisdom when it meshes with our desires, BUT what’s going to happen when it stands in opposition to what you want?

… Will you be the person that talks louder so God cannot be heard?

… Will you figure out new ways to present your case that make you sound righteous?

… Will you choose your way over God’s?

- OR will you adopt this NEW WAY OF THINKING that says… “God knows what’s best for me better than I do!”

- “So Lord, I will follow YOU whether I understand or not?”

WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE?

… Your way will lead you down the predictable path… where your life ends up being a series

of situations where you just feel STUCK!

… God’s way… promises to lead you on a path that is fulfilling and prosperous…

SO for you… what’s it going to be?

BOW HEADS