A Call to Seek True Wisdom

Good morning. Bring greetings to you from Trinity Reform Church. We love you and we pray for you often and I'm thankful to be with you here this morning. Happy Mother's Day to all the moms. Hope you have a wonderful day and I hope husbands and children you really spoil her and take care of her today for all she does caring for your family and for your children. Would you go with me before the Lord in prayer? Father we come before you in the name of your Son, Jesus, our Lord and our Savior, the King of all the earth. We come humbly before you, needing your help, needing your provision, needing your wisdom. Father, I pray, Lord, for all the mothers of this church. I ask that you would bless them in their work. I know they are often tired and frustrated. I pray that you would give them your strength and your comfort.

and that you would give them your help and your wisdom in raising their children, that they would raise them to love you and to serve you, and that they would be filled with joy in this work. I pray, Lord, that you would bless the mothers of this church. We thank you for the many children I see. And I pray, Lord, that you would bless these children, that they would know you and love you and walk with you all the days of their life. Father, I pray for Clear Note Church. I pray, Lord, that you would bless this church and that you would be a help to them during this time. Father, we do pray for Pastor David. I pray, Lord, that you would do your sanctifying work in his life and his heart and that you would be glorified in his life, Lord, that you would show your grace and you would be gracious to him and to his family.

Father, I pray for the elders of this church, the session of this church, Lord, that you would give them wisdom and strength and you would also sanctify them and that you would bring a full and true unity among all the pastors, elders, and the congregation, Lord, and that you would be glorified in this place even through difficult days. Father, I now ask that as we go to your word that you would feed this congregation through me, Lord, that you would be glorified and that your name would be lifted high and that Jesus would be lifted and exalted before all our eyes. It is in his name we pray. Amen. This morning we will be in Proverbs chapter 2, looking at the wisdom that we need and that God gives.

You know, the average person today carries more information in their pocket than kings, scholars, and generals possess for most of human history. Man has more access to information than ever before, right? How much can you get on this little device in your pocket? Whole libraries, world news, financial advice, tutorials. I mean, I fix things on my car. fix my house up with YouTube videos. You can get lectures, maps, medical information. Don't take that too far. And endless opinions. We ask our phones questions that previous generations would have spent weeks, months, maybe years researching to find the information that you can have in a second. And now with AI, it's even more quickly accessible. We're drowning in data, and yet...

Anxiety is soaring. Everybody's anxious. Families are collapsing. People everywhere are confused about truth, identity, morality, the purpose of why we even exist. Why? Because information is not the same thing as wisdom. You can know thousands of facts and still destroy your life. You can know how to build wealth. how to grow a platform, how to win arguments, how to gain influence, how to perform brain surgery, how to build a house, and still not know how to control your tongue, remain faithful in marriage, raise children, resist temptation, forgive your enemies, or walk with God. That is why Proverbs does not merely tell us to gain knowledge. Scripture doesn't just tell us to gain knowledge. We need knowledge, right? There is no wisdom without knowledge.

But it calls us to seek wisdom. Wisdom, biblically speaking, is not primarily an intellectual category. It requires your intellect. It requires you to know things, to know the truth. But it is not primarily an intellectual category. It's a moral category. The wise are equated with the righteous, fools with the wicked. The wise are those who know God and walk with him. and live according to his word and truth. The fool lives according to his own understanding and according to the wisdom of this world. Wisdom, in the Old Testament particularly, is associated with the word for skill. Did you know that? When God called the Israelites to build the tabernacle, and it says, most translations says that he filled different craftsmen and different workers with skill.

to build the tabernacle, it's actually the same word that we translate elsewhere as wisdom. I think it's helpful to think of wisdom as the skill of living a life pleasing to God. It is living according to God's design, according to his law and his truth. Wisdom is living in God's world according to God's commandments, according to what God loves and desires. And so as you... Grow as a Christian, it means to grow in wisdom. A Christian is one who knows and loves Jesus Christ. A Christian is one who has seen their own emptiness, their complete failure before God, their sinfulness, their deserving of God's wrath, and have turned from that and turned to Jesus, who has died for our sins, who lived the perfect life, a perfectly wise life, Jesus at never at any point in all of his life, all of his earthly ministry, did he ever fit the category of a fool. He was always the wise man. And scripture teaches us that all wisdom and knowledge is found in him. He is the wisdom of God. In him is found all the treasures of the wisdom and the knowledge of God. It's found in Jesus Christ. And so as we look at this passage,

that calls us to wisdom and shows us the benefit of wisdom, we must understand that this is speaking to us as a Christian, one who already knows Christ, one who is dependent upon the blood of Jesus for the forgiveness of sins. And now as a Christian, your desire, your aim in life is to become more like Christ. And being like Christ means to become wise, to grow in the wisdom of Christ. to be made into his image. And so as we look at this passage, I want you to read this as a son of God, as his sons and daughters, as his children, to come to his word, eagerly seeking his wisdom. Proverbs, we can divide up into two main sections. You have the first nine chapters, which is Solomon calling us to seek wisdom and to gain it.

to show us the benefit of wisdom and why we all need the wisdom that comes from God. And then chapters 10 through 31 shows us, is filled with all these pithy sayings, all these proverbs, all these sayings of wise words telling us truths. In Proverbs 2, we have a call, a call to seek wisdom and to understand its benefits. So, as you read this, you'll see that Solomon presents this as calling his own child, his own son, to come and to gain wisdom that God had given him. I want you to read this as coming from God. Yes, Solomon wrote it, but it's the inspired word of God. And so this is the word of the Lord. And this is what God is calling you to seek him for. Let's read the word of the Lord, which is eternally true.

Proverbs chapter 2 says, My son, if you will receive my words and treasure my commandments within you, make your ear attentive to wisdom, incline your heart to understanding. For if you cry for discernment, lift your voice for understanding. If you seek her as silver and search for her as for hidden treasures, then you will discern the fear of the Lord and discover the knowledge of God. For the Lord gives wisdom. From his mouth comes knowledge and understanding. He stores up sound wisdom for the upright. He is a shield to those who walk in integrity, guarding the paths of justice, and he preserves the way of his godly ones. Then you will discern righteousness and justice and equity in every good course. For wisdom will enter your heart, and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul.

Discretion will guard you. Understanding will watch over you to deliver you from the way of evil, from the man who speaks perverse things, from those who leave the paths of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness, who delight in doing evil and rejoice in the perversity of evil. whose paths are crooked, who are devious in their ways, to deliver you from the strange woman, from the adulteress who flatters with her words, that leaves the companion of her youth and forgets the covenant of her God. For her house sinks down to death, and her tracks lead to the dead. None who go to her return again, nor do they reach the paths of life. So you will walk in the way of good men and keep to the paths of righteousness.

For the upright will live in the land and the blameless will remain in it. But the wicked will be cut off from the land and the treacherous will be uprooted from it. This is the word of the Lord. Notice that Proverbs 2 starts with a conditional promise. If, if, then. If you do this, then this will be the result. Don't expect the then unless you do the if. Well, what is the if? The if is the first prerequisite here to receiving wisdom and its benefits is that you first need to see your need of it. He says here, if you will receive my words and treasure my commandments within you, make your ear attentive to wisdom and incline your heart to understanding. If you start with a posture, with an attitude of dependence upon God.

You must start by not being wise in your own eyes. We all think we're wise, don't we? We think we have all the answers about things. Well, some more than others. But we all do have pride. And pride is blinding. Pride makes us think that we know things that we don't know. Pride makes us think that we have the answers. But we are called to humble ourselves before God. To see that we need the wisdom that comes from him and that we need to receive it. You have to receive something you don't have yet, right? And so you have to be willing and ready. So first of all, you have to be passive in one sense. You have to see that I can't do anything to produce wisdom. I can't gain it from within my own heart. I can't devise it myself.

My heart is deceptively wicked. Who can understand it? For my own heart springs all sorts of evil and temptations and lies and deceptions because of our fallenness and sin. If we are going to be qualified to receive God's wisdom, we must first recognize our need of it, that we are by nature fools. Proverbs 16.2 says, all the ways of a man are pure in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the spirit. Proverbs 3.7 says, be not wise in your own eyes, fear the Lord and turn away from evil. Wisdom comes from God. We have to make our ear attentive to his wisdom. Where do we get his wisdom? From his word.

We seek the wisdom of God from his word. He has spoken to us through the scriptures by the Holy Spirit and he has revealed himself through the word. So that means reading the word. It also means hearing the preaching of the word. Coming to church and hearing the word of God declared and learning with a posture of humble dependence. But it's not just a passive thing. We are called to be active. In seeking the wisdom of God. And verse 3 says, Does this give you the impression of kind of like, well, when I get around to it, I'll try to learn what God says is wise. No. This is fervent seeking after God and asking for his help. You know, when things are going well in our life, we kind of forget our need.

of God and our need for wisdom, right? It's when we're facing difficulties, when the finances aren't adding up to pay our bills, when we have a sick child or our own health is bad, or we have a relational issue in our family or with a friend or in the church. And then we realize we need God's help. And James, there's a precious promise that I hope you all have memorized. And that whenever you aren't sure what to do, that you would pray this scripture. James 1.5 says, if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given to him. And he goes on to say that don't ask with doubting, for the one who doubts that God would keep his promise should not expect anything from God. But God does make a promise here, doesn't he?

If anyone lacks wisdom, let him ask of God who gives stingily? No. Who gives generously. I mean, it's spring right now. Isn't it beautiful? And seeing the full bloom of the fruitfulness of God's creation. It's beautiful and it's wonderful. And you see the generosity of God on display. You see the generosity on display in all these children that God has given. Do you think he will not be generous in his giving you wisdom in your time of need? And so when you need wisdom, which is all the time, sometimes you feel your need of it more than others, you need to cry out to God. You need to pray and ask him for help and know that he will help you. God doesn't lie. And he has promised that if you ask him, he will give.

you wisdom in your time of need. You need to lift up your voice and ask him for understanding. You need to seek God. You need to seek the wisdom that he gives like treasure. If I told you all, before I came in here, I buried $100,000 outside somewhere. How many of you would be getting shovels and getting to work looking for it? Because we all, I mean, we need money, but we also love money. Do we love money more than God's word and his wisdom? It's more precious than silver, more precious than gold, more precious than a million dollars, more precious than a beautiful big house, more precious than a nice car that runs well. God's word. If you have his word and you have his wisdom, you have the greatest treasure that you can gain in this world. Do you see your need for wisdom?

Do you need his wisdom today? Seek him, and he will give it. So if you are ready to receive the wisdom of God, if you seek the wisdom that he offers, then, now we're in verse 5, then this is what will happen. You will discern the fear of the Lord and discover the knowledge of God. Now we're all, maybe not all of us, but most of us are pragmatic. I'm very pragmatic. I like things to be efficient. I want... Efficiency. What's the quickest and best way to get things done? Which probably drives my wife a little crazy. We may have thought that wisdom, getting wisdom from God is kind of like about efficiency. It's like, I guess there's enough older people around here about my age and older thinking about the movie The Matrix. Like you can just get the wisdom of God downloaded into you and all of a sudden have all this knowledge.

It's not how it works. God doesn't provide you wisdom from a distance. He doesn't give you what you need in some kind of download of intellectual information that you need. No, what you gain is actually knowing God, walking with God. When you seek God and you ask him for help and wisdom, what do you get? Then you... discern the fear of the lord and discover the knowledge of god you grow in knowing him now you know that knowing in scripture doesn't just mean knowing right it means knowing walking with him and i say have a relationship with him i know it kind of i don't like using that word all the time but it is what it is we are to walk with god to to be in a a father and son relationship with him, to know him, to be loved by him and to love him. When you seek God for wisdom, what you find is that you get to know God because the wisdom is coming from him. And you grow in the knowledge and the fear of him. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. What comes first? Fear of the Lord or wisdom? Well, fear the Lord and then you gain wisdom. And as you grow wise,

You fear the Lord more. And as you fear the Lord more, you grow more wise. It's like a constant, wonderful cycle. We fear the Lord because he is the one to whom we must all give an account. We fear the Lord because he is the king, because he is the judge of all the earth. We fear the Lord because we love him, just as a loving father and his child have this type of relationship. A child... in a healthy home, should fear their father but also know they're loved. And that's what it's like walking with God. Verse 6 says, Wisdom comes directly from God. Wisdom isn't this thing over here that God dispenses. Wisdom comes from God himself. Jesus is the wisdom of God.

It comes forth from his mouth, it says, which means his word. God has given us his word, and he has spoken clearly to us through the prophets, through the apostles. And his Holy Spirit continues to speak through this very word, and he provides wisdom to us through his word. It comes from him. Where did Solomon, who wrote this, get his wisdom? It's from God. told him he could ask anything he wanted, and he asked for wisdom. And God gave him wisdom, wisdom beyond his years. Wisdom comes from God. He is the source of all wisdom. And so as we seek God, as we know God, he gives us wisdom just as he promises. He fills us with knowledge and understanding, and he begins to shape our heart.

Remember, I've said multiple times already, wisdom is not simply just an intellectual thing. It's in the heart. And God begins to store up wisdom. Where is he storing up this wisdom? Within you. As you seek him and find him and he speaks to you and provides wisdom to you, he begins to store up that wisdom for you in your heart as a help to you. It says he stores up wisdom for the upright. He is a shield to those who walk in integrity, guarding the paths of justice, and he preserves the way of his godly ones. God is our shield and praise the Lord. If we didn't have the Lord as our shield, where would we be? If he wasn't a help to us, where would we be? Not just a shield from our enemies, a shield from sickness or pain or sorrow. Those things come in this life. But a shield that we would not forsake the Lord. A shield that we would not give ourselves to sin and temptation. He is a shield to us. And how does he protect us? By providing us wisdom to discern good and evil, right and wrong, to give us a good conscience, to know what pleases him. He guards our path.

He reveals the truth to us. He helps us see the dangers of sin and to turn away and to keep on the narrow path. He gives us discernment. He says, well, I'm sorry, let's go back up to verse 9. Then you will discern righteousness and justice and equity in every good course, for wisdom will enter your heart and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul. Discretion will guard you. Understanding will watch over you. God will give you to the discernment you need to determine what is right and wrong, to what is in keeping with holiness and walking with him. Discretion will guard you, Solomon says. Understanding will watch over you, and it will become pleasant to your soul. As you've walked with God, doesn't his law become a joy to you?

We're not saved through the law, right? We're saved through the blood of Jesus. But as a Christian, we look to his law and we say, I want to be like you, Lord. I want to keep your commandments, not because that's what gets me into heaven, but because it's what pleases you. It's according to your character and your nature. I want to love you and to serve you. And so it becomes pleasant to my soul. So you can read Psalm 119 and say, I delight in your law. Your law makes me wise, wiser than my enemies. To the world, we may all look like fools, but if we're wise in God's law, it has eternal fruit. It has eternal benefits. You may lose things in this life, money, jobs, reputation for the sake of Jesus, but If you're living according to the wisdom of God, walking as Christ walked, and only suffering for doing good and not for doing evil, there is only great reward and benefit. There is only blessing. So God provides wisdom, and he provides it as a protection to us. First, he provides it as a protection to us against apostasy, against turning from the narrow way.

We all know, right, that we're all prone to wander, as the hymn says. Prone to wander, Lord, I know it, I feel it. You're prone to forsake, Lord. You're like a sheep where his sheep and sheep wander from the fold. We're prone to wander. If it wasn't for God's help and protection, we would all be lost. We would not keep to the narrow path. We would not stay faithful to Jesus. if it wasn't for his help. And this is why we need God's help. This is why we need his wisdom to keep us on the narrow path, to keep us in the faith. Look at verse 12, to deliver you from the way of evil, from the man who speaks perverse things, from those who leave the paths of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness, who delight in doing evil and rejoice in the perversity of evil, whose paths are crooked and who are devious.

I don't think he's saying here primarily that the protection is against enemies who have turned from God. The protection here is that you wouldn't join their ranks, that you wouldn't be the one who forsakes the way, that your paths would not become crooked, but that you would continue walking with God. The wisdom that God provides to us through his word, through his preaching, through the scripture, builds up our heart and our discernment so that we would love what God loves, hate what God hates, and be faithful to him. You need God's wisdom to protect you from turning away into evil. Now Christians sin, right? You sin. We prayed.

a prayer of confession this morning, because each of us have sinned this week. Some sin is more grievous than others, but all sin is an offense to God. You cannot think that you can leave your sin, you know, you can manage it. You think you can manage your sin, don't you? You've convinced yourself of this. Oh, it's just a... One click, it's just one look, it's just a few dollars, it's just one thing that I take from the office, it's just a little smudge on my taxes, it's just, John Owen said, be killing sin or sin will be killing you. There's no static in the Christian life. There's no, you're either going forward or you're going backwards. You're either letting sin grow or you're killing it.

What sin have you been protecting instead of killing it? Ask God for wisdom. He'll reveal it to you. There are sins that you harbor that you might not even realize right now are sins. It's not a sin just because you know it's a sin when you do it. There are sins that we do ignorantly even. But there's the sins that you know are wrong. And you're like, I just won't let it get that bad. I'm not committing adultery. But you will. I'm not. you know, committing all out fraud. I'm just, it's just a couple of dollars. It's just $10. It's just 15. You will, you'll do more. It gets easier. God's word reveals the truth to us. When he makes us wise, we begin to see what is good and what's evil in us. And we can put it to death. The wisdom that God provides protects us from wandering away.

Do you love Jesus? Do you want to remain faithful to Jesus? Do you want to walk with him? Do you want to leave a godly legacy? Not for you, for your children, for the name or the glory of Jesus. Then you need wisdom from God. And you need to live according to his word. You know, we have a common saying, right? Live and learn. Any of you lived and learned before? We've all lived and learned, right? We've done some things and gone, that was really stupid. And that really messed me up. But as much as possible, well, young people, listen to me. As much as possible, don't live according to that phrase. Live and learn. Learn from your mistakes. You're going to make mistakes. You're going to fail. Learn from it. But Scripture teaches us, Proverbs teaches us, to not...

Live our life according to the principle of live and learn, but learn and live. Learn and live. Take God at his word. Some of us are just so skeptical that we, well, I just need to try it out and see, is it really that dangerous? Is it really that dangerous to flirt with this sin? Yes, it is. And if you take God at his word and trust when he says, this is good, this is evil, You'll never be disappointed to go down the path of righteousness. You'll never be disappointed by taking God at his word. You will only have disappointment and failures and all sorts of regrets when you don't take God at his word and you live and learn. In verse 16, he then tells us that this protection from joining the ranks of the wicked, he identifies a particular sin, a sin that...

is so destructive to men and women, sexual sin. He says, to deliver you from the strange woman, from the adulteress who flatters with her words, that leaves the commanding of her youth and forgets the covenant of her God. For her house sinks down to death and her tracks lead to the dead. None who go to her return again, nor do they reach the paths of life. That's a pretty stern warning, isn't it? Adultery, fornication. is very dangerous. Many have shipwrecked their faith for their desires. You may have convinced yourself that it's not that dangerous, that sex is just immoral, but it's not. Many a man and many a woman have forsaken good things, their family, their marriage vows, the well-being of their children for their desires.

And it's very dangerous. And it has lasting consequences. Consequences that God can forgive and does forgive, and he has forgiven many of us here for these type of sins, all of us. But the consequences in this life don't just go away. He is gracious to redeem and to restore, but it's not worth going down that path. If there is someone in your... life that isn't your spouse, that you are flirting with, thinking about, you better run the other way. Run the other way. It's a coworker, a neighbor, someone in this church. You run from sexual temptation. And put it to death before it grows into something that you can't control. Listen to your pastors and your elders and your fellow brothers and sisters who see the temptation in you and warn you.

Don't get angry at them. Be thankful that they would warn you of the danger of sin. Let me take this verse seriously when it says, none who go to her return again, nor do they reach the paths of life. Proverbs has a way of stating things very absolutely, doesn't it? God is gracious. It almost seems like a contradiction, doesn't it? Because God does save those who have turned to adultery and sin, right? Think of David. who committed adultery and murder, and God forgave him, and we see his repentance in Psalm 51. But can you be so sure that you will turn around? The wisdom of God shows us the danger of sin and helps us to turn around and to repent. And what God promises for those who know him and seek him is the promise of eternal life. Look at verse 20.

So you will walk in the way of good men and keep to the paths of the righteous for the upright will live in the land and the blameless will remain in it. But the wicked will be cut off from the land and the treacherous will be uprooted from it. The Old Testament land is like is a type of the new heavens and the new earth. This is eternal language here. It's speaking about eternity with God. Now, maybe your feelers are going up and saying, is this like teaching some kind of works? Well, of course, Scripture never contradicts itself. The clear interprets the unclear. Things coincide with each other. We don't make our way into heaven because we were perfectly wise and without sin. We're all condemned by nature. We're by nature children of wrath. The only reason that we are counted among the righteous and can be called wise is because of Jesus Christ.

and the forgiveness of sins that is in him. The Christian knows the forgiveness of sins and is being sanctified, right? Is growing in the knowledge of God, is turning from sin, is putting it to death. Not perfectly, but it's happening. And progressively you are becoming more and more and more like Jesus until he returns or we die and he makes us perfect and glorifies us. We have a great hope and promise that God is the one who is sovereign over our salvation. That he is the one who chose us, who provided the sacrifice and atonement, who has given us a new heart and regenerated us, who has made us to know his goodness and the forgiveness of sins, who is changing us and who will glorify us. This is all God who is sovereign over it, right? We believe in something.

You know as the perseverance of the saints. That all of those who belong to the Lord, whom he has chosen, whom Jesus died for, will attain eternal life. That we will be with him forever. That we will persevere. But it's called the perseverance of the saints. What does it mean to persevere? You keep going. Not because you're so great and so good. God is preserving. us in the persevering, but you must persevere. Just because someone made a profession of faith doesn't mean they're going to persevere to the end. And the warnings of scripture are for you, his saints, so that you would be warned of evil and you would turn around and those who have the Holy Spirit hear the warnings and heed them.

You hear the call and the need for wisdom and you seek God and find it and walk in his way and then keep to the paths of righteousness. This is perseverance. It's what it means to be a Christian. Now there are some who are true believers, true Christians who fall into sin and for a season you may have no clue whether you can be confident of their salvation and that God will restore them. And there are those, who forsake the way of the Lord, who are right now in the congregation of the righteous, who are in the church, who then turn away for their own desires and sin. That could be you. And the warning is to turn away before that happens and ask God for help. If you are giving yourself to sin, that's not the time to be talking about the perseverance of the saints. It's time to be talking about repentance.

God is gracious and he gives us the wisdom we need and the help we need. Do you see your need for his wisdom this morning? Seek him, ask him, be ready and willing to receive it. See your own bankruptcy without him and he will give it. He will give you the wisdom you need for difficult days ahead. He will give you the wisdom you need for seeing. sin and temptation and putting it to death. And as you trust in his word and not your own understanding, you can be confident that the upright will live in the land and the blameless will remain in it. That you belong to the Lord, that you are his, and that your life is meant to please him, to glorify him for his glory. Let's pray.