Wisdom for Life: Proverbs
“How Do You Get Wisdom?”
Proverbs 3:1-12. 30:1-4
October 27, 2013
New City Church of Los Angeles
I.
Introduction
[Slide 1]
We kicked off a teaching series called, Wisdom for Life: Proverbs, last Sunday.
Proverbs 4:7 says:
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The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom.
Though it cost all you have, get understanding.
Yet, so many of us don’t really think wisdom is important; it is so undermined by our
culture. Some of us focus so much on our personal freedom that we don’t really think
about wisdom. “I don’t want anyone telling me what to do. I am going to figure out
what is right for me.” We view wisdom as an infringement on our personal freedom.
Some of us are so into moral living that we have reduced everything to morality
and living by the law. We are trying to figure out the technicalities of the law to see how
we are to live. We don’t see a place for wisdom. Some Christians think that to seek
wisdom is against seeking faith. God calls us to seek wisdom, understanding, prudence,
discernment, and insight. All of these things are good things.
We said that wisdom is more than knowledge or moral living. Wisdom is seeing
the reality of what is really going on and determining what to do about it. We are faced
with issues of wisdom everyday. Most of the decisions we make everyday are not issues
of information, and it is not an issue of morality. They are issues of wisdom.
It’s not enough to be a person of vision, a person of high principle, a person of
high moral values; you also have to be a person of wisdom; otherwise, you are not going
to be able to make good decisions in like 80% of the decisions you have to make. You
see, wisdom is the ability to make good decisions in 80% life situations in which moral
rules don’t apply. There might be three or four choices you have to choose between, and
they might all be moral, and they might have different moral values competing for
priority. Which is the right way to go? If we don’t make decisions about work,
relationships, marriage, family, children, life in general.
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Now, how do we get wisdom? We are going to look at Proverbs 3 to help us
answer that question. So, today’s sermon is entitled, “How do you get Wisdom?” [Slide
2]
Let’s go to Proverbs 3:1-12:
3 My son, do not forget my teaching,
but keep my commands in your heart,
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for they will prolong your life many years
and bring you peace and prosperity.
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Let love and faithfulness never leave you;
bind them around your neck,
write them on the tablet of your heart.
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Then you will win favor and a good name
in the sight of God and man.
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Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
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in all your ways submit to him,
and he will make your paths straight.
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Do not be wise in your own eyes;
fear the Lord and shun evil.
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This will bring health to your body
and nourishment to your bones.
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Honor the Lord with your wealth,
with the firstfruits of all your crops;
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then your barns will be filled to overflowing,
and your vats will brim over with new wine.
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My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline,
and do not resent his rebuke,
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because the Lord disciplines those he loves,
as a father the son he delights in.
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One of the things that I want us to notice from Proverbs, this and others, is that wisdom is
a process. It is not a formula. It’s not a technique that you learn. It is a path that you
walk on. This passage and other passages talk about walking the path of wisdom.
Often times, we don’t want a path, which is a relational process. It takes time and
mundane and repetitive. We want it to be a door. We want a technique. Something
instantaneous if we knew the formula. Sometimes, as we seek to discern God’s will, we
ask God for a sign. Lord, show us if this is what you want me to do. Maybe, sometimes,
we open up the Bible at random and see what it says. I’ve someone who did that and
opened up to Matthew 27:7 which says: “Then Judas went and hanged himself.” And he
thought, let me try again. Then he got to Luke 10:37 which says: “Go and do thou
likewise!” And he thought “Oh dear, this is going horribly wrong!” So, he did it again
and turned to John 13:27 which says: Jesus told him “What you’re about to do, do
quickly.”
There is no formula. There is no technique. Even if we feel like there is a sign,
God says to test it. God calls us to do the hard work of seeking wisdom of God. Get into
the path of wisdom. Walk the path of wisdom. Wisdom is not a door, it is a path. It is
developing the day-to-day and moment-to-moment spiritual habits that help you become
a wise person.
Now, what habits or spiritual disciplines, help us get wisdom?
[Slide 3] Five things from this passage (there are others from other passages):
You gain wisdom by (1) knowing God, (2) knowing yourself, (3) knowing wise counsel,
(3) knowing God’s words, and (4) knowing troubles.1
II.
[Slide 4] First, we gain wisdom by knowing God.
Proverbs 3:3 says:
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Let love and faithfulness never leave you;
bind them around your neck,
write them on the tablet of your heart.
1
These five habits come from Keller, T. J. (2013). The Timothy Keller Sermon Archive.
New York City: Redeemer Presbyterian Church.
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These words, love and faithfulness, are two Hebrew words that almost always used to
describe God’s love and faithfulness to us. These are our covenant words that describe
our intimate and personal relationship with God. For example, in Exodus 34:6:
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And he (God) passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The Lord, the Lord, the
compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and
faithfulness
God is abounding in love and faithfulness. Same words. The word love is the word heced, which means industrial-strength, absolutely-committed, unfailing love, God’s love
for you in which he’s absolutely committed to you under any circumstances. Of course,
faithfulness is essentially a synonym. If you want to go down the path of wisdom …
What does it mean when it says, “Let love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them
around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart”?
This is actually extremely practical. It’s actually something very hard. It’s not
enough just to know God loves you. If you want to become wise, you have to find ways
to pound deep into the very heart of your heart of your heart every day that he’s
absolutely committed to you, that he would never leave you or forsake you, that he will
do anything for you.
You have to pound it into your heart every day, to bind it on your heart. You have
to remind yourself about it as you go about every day. That’s what it’s saying. You have
to find disciplines: prayer, worship, music, poetry, memorization. You have to find ways
for every day to make the absolute industrial-strength commitment, love, and faithfulness
of God to you real to your heart. You have to learn deep in your soul that he absolutely
loves you.
Now why is that so important for wisdom? It’s the primary thing. The book of
Proverbs is constantly telling you wise people have a calm. They have an inner
unassailable poise, so no matter what the situation there’s a kind of calm and poise and
confidence, and that’s why they always make good choices. No matter what the situation,
they never lose their head. They have this inner calm and poise. You can’t get that unless
you do this. That’s where it comes from.
You say maybe, “I know God loves me,” but at the deepest level? You have to
find ways of pounding into your heart the fact that God loves you so it’s so real to your
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heart it leads to that unassailable inner poise and calm that never, ever, ever can be
dislodged. You’ll never get that unless you do this. That’s the first discipline: going
deeper into God every day, finding ways to make his absolute love and faithfulness to
you real to your heart.
IV.
[Slide 5] Second, we gain wisdom by knowing ourselves.
Proverbs 5 says:
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Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
Then, in verse 7, it says:
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Do not be wise in your own eyes;
fear the Lord and shun evil.
Here is the great paradox of wisdom: the more wise you get, the more you think you are
not wise. Put another way, if you think you are wise, you are a fool. When you realize
how foolish you have been, that’s when you are making progress in the path of wisdom.
That’s powerlessness in 12 Step lingo. That’s repentance in biblical lingo. Why is this
important? Because being wise means you are absolutely in touch with reality. We stop
the denials. We realize our limitations; we realize our weaknesses; we realize our
failures; we realize our hidden sins—not just the external sins, but also internal sins of
bitterness, envy, hate, jealousy, selfish anger, self-centeredness, arrogance, pride,
condemning and judgmental attitude, our powerlessness to actually change on our own.
If we don’t know this about ourselves, we will continue to make foolish choices in our
lives.
But, how do we stop the denials? How do we face the heart of darkness that is
within us? Some of us have this instinctive feeling that we don’t want to go there. “I am
okay. It’s your problem, not mine.” We keep blame shifting. If we are really honest to
ourselves, we don’t want to face ourselves because it is too scary to think: “Maybe I am
not as good as I thought I was.”
I know we have a tendency to believe that we are kind, merciful and loving. In
fact, some of us believe in that so much that if anyone questions our kindness, mercy or
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love, we get angry. We get abrasive. “I can’t believe they think I am not good.” I’ve
seen marriages break apart because one person think he or she is good and the other
person is causing all of the problems. When I point to the issues that show that he or she
is not blameless, there is anger, there is denial, there is bitterness. They can’t handle it.
When we build our lives on our identity that we are good and wise, we don’t have space
to be corrected. We don’t listen. We are in denials.
I believe that the only possible way to get to know ourselves without denial and
face the reality of the heart of darkness within us is if we believe that someone loves us
no matter what. If there is he-ced love. If there is faithfulness no matter what. When we
have that inner calm that God loves us more than we can ever imagine, that’s when we
have the confidence and boldness to face the reality of who we are.
If you are building your life on the foundation of thinking that you are a good
person, you are not going to examine the foundation when you know very well that if you
find out that your foundation is no good that you don’t have anything else to stand on.
You are going to repress it, or deny it, or medicate it. You’re not going to admit who you
are. You are going to make excuses all the time. You are going to blame others all the
time. You’ll blame your mom, your dad, your spouse, your family, but you will not face
yourself.
So, the second daily discipline is ruthless yet non-traumatic self-examination. Do
you see why the second goes with the first now, why knowing the self goes with knowing
God? You have to be able to do ruthless self-examination, but you won’t actually be able
to admit who you are unless it’s not traumatic, and that will only happen if you know
how much he loves you.
Unless you are so deeply immersed in the sense of his love, you will not
psychologically be able to admit what’s bad about you. To the extent I don’t know how
much God loves me, I don’t know who I am. So, I need to do the first discipline of going
deeper into God and pushing that into my heart of hearts, to that degree I can do the
ruthless yet non-traumatic self-examination that is the very essence of wisdom.
V.
[Slide 6] Third, we gain wisdom by opening ourselves to wise counsel.
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The whole book of Proverbs starts out with the father saying in 1:8, “Listen, my
son . . .” Chapters 2-7 all start out by saying, “Listen, my son” or “My son” this or that.
Chapter 3 says, “My son, do not forget my teaching…”
The point for us here is that you’ll never find wisdom by yourself. You have to
have mentors. You have to have counselors. Do you see what chapter 3, verse 7 is telling
you? The fool is an individualist. The fool is someone who says, “I don’t need anybody
else’s advice; I know. I know my mind. I know what I want. I know what the right thing
to do is.” A fool doesn’t need advice. A fool is an individualist. But a wise person is so
unsure of his or her wisdom you need counselors, you need friends, you need advisers,
you need mentors, and you go get them, and as a result, you get wise.
Do you see that you also need humility in order to become wise? If you don’t
have humility, if you don’t have enough self knowledge that you don’t know that you
have blind spots, you will not seek wise counsel.
That’s why at New City, we push participation in Grow and Serve Groups. That’s
where we do community, and get to know each other. And that’s why we also encourage
people to get into a discipling relationship. Your relationship during Sunday can only go
so deep, and your relationship with others during Grow and Serve groups can only go so
deep, and that is why you need to reach out for mentors, disciplers, sponors, counselor,
advisors. I know it is messy, but that is how you get wisdom. You need a relationship
where you allow others to speak into your life. It could also be your family, your spouse,
your parents. You need to let them in. I know there are things that might rub you the
wrong way, but humility means you learn from them. You don’t have to agree with
everything they say, but you need to listen and consider what they say. I think that is
critical especially in our community. We come from such different backgrounds and
cultures. We don’t agree with one another on everything. Yet, we can still learn from
one another as we open our hearts and approach from the angle of humility—that I am
more messed up than I know. I need to be doing more self-examination, and others can
help me.
We can’t really get wise counsel from people unless we are willing to open
ourselves to others and become a part of the mess that we call relationship.
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V.
[Slide 7] Fourth, we gain wisdom by soaking in God’s word.
Verse 1: “My son, do not forget my teaching, but keep my commands in your
heart …” The word commands there is the Hebrew word torah which refers to the law of
God. You need to master the Scriptures. God has revealed his heart to us in the
Scriptures. He has revealed his will for us in the Scriptures. When you love someone,
you want to know what they like, what their will is, what they prefer, and you want to
live that. It would be more so when you know that person loves you and you know that
person is wise and all knowing. That’s God. God loves you and has the best for you. He
wants you to be truly happy. That’s right. That’s why if we love him back, we want to
find out everything he said. One of my NT professors used to say, “This is the word of
the one who loves me and I love. I want to know everything about what he said.”
God gave us so much wisdom right to us and he wants us to mediate on it and live
in it. Here is one example in verse 9-10: The world tells you to hold on to your money,
but God tells us give it away. That’s the wisdom of God. Specifically in this passage, he
says to “honor the Lord with your wealth, with the first fruit of all of your crops.”
We need to come to a place where God’s love, God’s law, God’s wisdom, God’s
character, God’s preferences become a part of who we are. Grace loves Pride and
Prejudice by Jane Austin. I also like it too mainly due to Grace’s influence. Do you
know when we get to know a character so well that we start to think like that character? I
think Grace is like that. She can actually get into the mind of Elizabeth Bennett, the main
character. What if you knew God and his son Jesus Christ so much that you can start
thinking like him? What if you can anticipate what he would do? What if it becomes
who you are because you have become so intimate with the character of God?
VI.
[Slide 8] Fifth, we gain wisdom through experiencing troubles.
You’ll never be wise without knowing trouble. If you get down to verses 11–12,
it’s a little surprising actually. Up until verses 11–12, do you see how many interesting
promises there are? Verse 4: If you seek after wisdom, people will like you. It says you
will win favor in the sight of God and man. People will like you. Verse 8: You’ll be
healthy. Verse 10: You’ll make money. In other words, it’s really saying if you go into
the way of wisdom, generally your life often tends to go better.
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Then you get to verses 11–12, and it’s a little surprising because you’re not
expecting it. It says, “My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline; and do not resent his
rebuke, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in.” It
says bad things will happen, though, and it’s part of the path. I don’t think it is God who
actually causes it. It is our own sins or it is the sins of other or it is a part of the
brokenness of the world caused by sin. But, God can use what was done for evil into
something good. It become a part of the training. It’s part of the discipline. It’s part of
the way in which you’ll learn wisdom. Why? Wisdom does not avoid suffering; it
transforms suffering into more wisdom. Notice it says, “Don’t despise, and, don’t resent
it.” In other words, you have to stay on the path. Don’t go the stoic way and say, “Oh,
I’m not going to let it bother me.” Don’t go the resentful way and get bitter. Let the
trouble in your life drive you more into knowing God, more into knowing yourself, more
into God’s Word, more into your friends’ arms. If you know trouble in the context of
those others, during troubled times you grow in wisdom much faster than any other time.
But, there are some troubles that I just have a hard time explaining. It’s one thing
to suffer because we lost a job or something but another thing to suffer through rape or
abuse or losing a child or murder or something horrendous like that. I know we can’t
make God responsible for human evil, but I still can’t explain why these things happen. I
don’t have enough wisdom to explain it.
Actually, the Old Testament is full of those questions, especially the Book of Job
and Psalms and some of the prophets. They are filled with questions like: Why do the
innocent suffer? How do we learn how to deal with that? How do we deal with
horrendous evil? How do we get the wisdom to deal with that?
[Slide 9]
Near the end of Proverbs in chapter 30:1-4, Agur, one of the writers of the book
of Proverbs, asked the same question.
The sayings of Agur son of Jakeh—an inspired utterance.
This man’s utterance to Ithiel:
“I am weary, God,
but I can prevail.
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Surely I am only a brute, not a man;
I do not have human understanding.
(he is literally saying, I am completely ignorant. I am like an animal. I don’t
understanding. There are too many things I can’t understand about God, about
this world, about suffering. Why? O Lord?)
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I have not learned wisdom,
nor have I attained to the knowledge of the Holy One.
(he is saying: how can I possibly know God? I don’t see how I can gain any real
wisdom.)
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Who has gone up to heaven and come down?
Whose hands have gathered up the wind?
Who has wrapped up the waters in a cloak?
Who has established all the ends of the earth?
What is his name, and what is the name of his son?
Surely you know!
He says, “Unless God comes down from heaven and explains it to me, I am not going to
understand what is really going on in this world. This world will continue to overwhelm
me and freak me out and frustrate me. I need to have somebody come down from
heaven. Then I’d have wisdom. Until then I don’t.” Then he actually says at the end,
“Who is this person, what is his name, and who is his son?” What does that mean?
Centuries later, in John 3, Nicodemus, a member of the leading council of the
Jews, was having a conversation with Jesus. Jesus said to him, in John 3:13, “No one has
ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man.” I think
Nicodemus was blown away at this point because he would have known the reference
that Jesus was making to Agur’s question in Proverbs. Nicodemus knew Hebrew
Scriptures and he probably memorized all of the Proverbs. Agur says, “Who has gone up
to heaven and come down? That’s the only one who can give me the ultimate wisdom.”
Here, Jesus said, “I am the one Agur was looking for. I have come from heaven.
I’m the man who came down from heaven. I can tell you heavenly things. I’m the source
of ultimate wisdom.” Imagine Nicodemus hearing that. Then Jesus says, John 3:14-13,
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“Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up,
that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”
Jesus says, “I have come from heaven to bring you the ultimate wisdom.” I am
the incarnation of God. I will suffered on the cross for your sins. Just as Moses lifted up
a dead snake, I will be lifted up on the cross. I will suffer horrendous pain. I was be
rejected by my followers. I will experience abuse and violence and injustice. I will
experience abandonment and wrath of the universe, the wrate and justice of God. In
some ways, all of my suffering and your suffering and everyone’s suffering and cause of
those suffering got put upon Jesus, and he died for us.
Do you know what that means? It means that the ultimate wisdom is the cross.
But, it also means that Jesus didn’t just suffered for us, he also suffered with us. God is
not a person who is detached from suffering. God suffers along side of us.
So, when we wonder about questions of why the innocent suffer, we meet God, an
innocent person, who suffered with us.
Through what he has done for you, you have to see his love for us. You have to
see the cross. It’s not just a theoretical sense of God who loves me. It is God who came
down and died for us to show us how much he loves us. You have to bind this he-ced,
this love and faithful in your heart. When you bring the cross into your life, you will
bring ultimate wisdom.
Jesus won through losing. Jesus got power by giving all his power away. Jesus
ruled through service. Jesus got wealthy by giving all his money away. If you bring the
cross into every area of your life, every relationship, wealth, words, emotions, and start to
work it out, wait till you see how wise it is.
The world says, “If somebody wrongs you, pay them back.” The cross says,
“Forgive them.” Go ahead and see how wise that is. The world is wrong. The world says,
“Keep your money or spend it on yourself.” Take the cross in there. The cross says,
“Give it away,” and wait till you see how wise that is. The world is wrong. Bring the
cross into the center of your life and it’ll make you wise.
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