ABC - Wisdom from God - Lesson 8

Good Morgan. How's everybody doing? It's good. Yes, I see that hand.

Hey, I hope you guys had a good week in the Lord. it was a good week to study Proverbs. We're gonna be jumping into Proverbs this morning. Before we do so, let's pray.

Lord, we are so grateful to be with your people this morning. We thank you for the life and the breath that you have given us and that you sustain. Our heart beats today because you will it. And we thank you, Lord, for giving us life, for giving us friendship, family.

And especially for our relationship with you. We ask Lord, that you help us to grow as we study your word, both during the Sunday school hour, during the worship hour. we ask that you'd fill us with your Spirit and guide us. And that we may grow in our relationship with you, that we may extend your kingdom.

Do damage to our enemy, the devil. And ultimately worship you with all that we are in Christ's name we pray. Amen. All right.

Good to see everybody. We're going to be talking quite a bit this morning about the proverbs, and there's a proverb that we have on the screen behind me, a journey. Of 1000 miles begins with a single step, Proverbs 32:7. 1 of my favorite proverbs.

All of the Bible. Anybody familiar with this one? Yes Where does that come from? You don't think it's in the proverbs?

Yeah, it's Proverbs 32:7. This is the MSB version, Mike Scott Berry. Yeah, no, this is Confucius. There is no Proverbs 32.

It ends at 31. So it's a trick question. That's not cool. so we're gonna continue on, on our study of the wisdom of God.

We're gonna do lesson 8, as I said in the email that I sent out to you guys in the next week, we're going to actually go backwards to lesson 7. Solomon builds God's temple. Anything stick out to you guys about Last week's lesson on. Solomon's prayer and God granting of his request for wisdom.

Yeah, Joe. Yeah. David Right. Yeah, that's an interesting point.

Yeah, so Joe is saying that. when David desired to build a temple for the Lord, God sent Nathan. but in this case, God appears directly to Solomon in a dream. And Solomon is gonna be the one to, to build the temple.

So that's, yeah, it's a very interesting point. Anything else stand out to you guys about last week? Yeah, Dave. Yeah.

Yeah, Yeah, it's great. You see, so you see early in life that he's, he's saying, Lord, I'm just a kid. I need wisdom to be able to rule your people. It's hard for us, Solomon and Not everybody knows at the time that all this is going on, some of the difficulties Solomon's gonna run into later in life, right?

And so, we have to take it at face value. Although we are gonna see the ups and downs of Solomon, we're gonna see some real severe problems, but I think by the time he's writing Ecclesiastes, we're seeing him. Returning back to the Lord and. And actually trying to teach us to not learn by the mistakes he made, to try to avoid those.

We're good. Yeah, anything else? Yeah, Dan. Yes.

Yeah, that's great. Yeah, so Dan's just saying, just, Solomon coming in requesting, making a request that really seems to, to go along with the way God sees things, not just what we want. Yeah, I am, I was really, I was really struck by Solomon's request to be able to rule God's people. Well, just give me wisdom.

To be able to rule your people. And I think the thing that just really, it's been hitting me all week as well, just that really hit me is just the Just the kindness and graciousness of the Lord. that Solomon come and asks for a really good request. And the Lord gives him that and more.

Even though Solomon is categorized, is it in verse 3 where it says Solomon loved the Lord, walked in the statues of his father David, except he worshiped on the high places. So, here's the Lord. looking at Solomon and the overall character of his life, seeing faults, and yet appearing to him and blessing him. I don't know if I used this analogy last week, but, the way Solomon or the way God treats Solomon, we see the same concept in the New Testament where Jesus says, God wants to, to bless you and, and he's gonna fill the bag up to overflowing, right?

Just pack it full. That's the, the Lord's disposition towards grace. Unlike those baked Lays that I buy at the store, that's one of my favorite potato chips is baked Lays, and I go buy them, and then I open them up and I look down and there's like 4 chips in there. Yeah, man, so now, if I'm, if I'm really gonna enjoy them, I have to buy two bags.

And so depending on where you buy them, it could be $1 or 150 cent. It's not paying $3.50 for 8 chips or 33, $3. So, but the Lord, he's not like that. He's just stuffing it down and just overflowing in, in grace and blessing.

All right, let's, there, we're gonna do a, a little pop quiz here. In your packet, I think it might be the, the last sheet in the packet. You should see a pop quiz. Do you guys have that?

And we'll just do it together. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna try to figure out whether the respective proverbs come from the Bible. Or from elsewhere. So And we'll see how we do as a class.

So the first one, a penny saved is a penny earned. Raise your hand if you Benjamin Franklin. All right. All right.

So we got Benjamin Franklin. spare the rod, spoil the child. Yeah, that's a summary statement of several different proverbs about Proverbs, Proverbs 22:15, 23:13. A merry heart does good like medicine.

OK, good. Yeah. So that's in the, that's in the Bible. God helps those who help themselves.

Anybody know where that comes from? Yeah, it's, it's, it's actually from Benjamin Franklin when he used to write, what was the little It was the, it was a poor man's almanac and he actually used to go underneath the pseudonym of a woman when he was writing these little statements and I'm always forgetting the gal that he pretended to be. Anybody remember what it was or? No, it wasn't Dear Abby Silence Dogood.

OK. Yeah, that was one of his pseudonyms and then there was another one that he had. So he, yeah, he, there was all kinds of stuff that he wrote that Later on, people thought that it maybe came from the Bible. the early bird gets the worm.

Yeah, foghorn, Leghorn, yeah. popular proverb, and we, we don't really know where it comes from, not in the Bible. Cleanliness is next to godliness. Yeah, from grandma Yeah, this is something I find myself wanting to say when I walk into My boy's room, Follow your heart and it will never lead you astray.

Yeah, Disney, exactly. Or there was some, some baseball movie where the ghost of Babe Ruth shows up and he says, follow your heart, son, and you'll never go wrong. Yeah. Is that what it is?

Every time I hear that, I Look at my kids and I go, It's all right. wealth makes friends. That's actually from the Proverbs. We're gonna talk about some of what these statements mean and how we should understand them.

patience is a virtue. You might know? Yeah, it's not, it's not, it's not Proverbs, it does come from Aristotle, but we know that patience is one of the fruits of the spirit. So, it's not necessarily.

There Do you guys have any other or is that it on your page? That's it? OK. So, yeah, you guys passed.

You guys did very well. A plus for everybody. so let's Let's go ahead and open up to Proverbs chapter one. We're gonna take a look at A couple key sections.

Of the proverbs. Starting right there in chapter one. And I'm reading from the New King James. The proverbs of Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel.

To know wisdom and instruction. To perceive the words of understanding, to receive the instruction of wisdom. Justice, judgment, and equity to give prudence to the simple. To the young man, knowledge and discretion.

A wise man will hear and increase learning. And a man of understanding will attain wise counsel. To understand a proverb and an enigma. The words of the wise and their riddles.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom. And Instruction So who is the author of this passage, obviously? Solomon and did Solomon write all of the proverbs that we have in this book? No, but he writes a lot of them.

if you look over at chapter 30 and 31, there's some other authors that are identified, still all of the proverbs underneath the inspiration of the Spirit. And, and this isn't the only book where we see Proverbs in the Bible, but it is obviously the book that is called Proverbs. and then we look, just in this section, there's some, some basic purposes that are mentioned, for Proverbs. What would be, how would we, what would be some of the purposes for this book or for the Proverbs?

Yeah, to attain wisdom. Yeah, Barbara. Good. So, yeah, the, the proverbs often they, they categorize groups of people for us, the wise, the fools, the simpletons.

Yeah, we see that many places in the Proverbs, right? What else? Anything else stand out to you guys? Yes.

Right. So there's instruction and there's the ways of the wicked or the foolish, and there's the ways of the righteous. or the wise. I like verse 4, to give prudence to the simple, to the young man, knowledge and discretion.

Why, why would young men particularly? Or young women for that matter, need knowledge and instruction. I've been around the block Yeah, they just don't have the same life experience, right? And And so they, it's, if, it's, it's the age-old story, you're hoping your children will learn things from instruction rather than from negative experience.

everybody's gonna go through. Their negative experiences, but we're all hoping that our, young people will be able to learn. from some of our mistakes. you guys probably know the famous statement from Mark Twain.

When he said that when he was 17, his dad was really quite an idiot. but when he Turned, I think you, I forget the exact quote, but when he got into his 30s, his dad had wised up quite a bit. And. And that just seems to be, that just seems to be par for the courses, isn't it?

so, like Solomon, we all wanna pray that That, that will learn young, that will have a sense of humility and the need for wisdom and instruction from other people. So I remember as a young Christian going through periods where I did have a real sense of the need. for instruction from people at my church and would feel that, man, there's so many people around me that have wisdom and, and some of our youth leaders would put into me and I had several actually surrogate mothers and fathers spiritually.

But then, I, I hit.

a certain age in my teenage years. Where my dad, I remember at a few different occasions, I probably already told this story. He said, Michael, you had a better head on your shoulders when you were 9 years old. Than you do now.

He's not a believer. And then, on a couple of different occasions, I did some things that I guess teenage boys do. And he just said, your head is in another location. And I won't say exactly the way my unbelieving father said that, but I just thought it was so cruel.

For my dad to say that to me. And I just told myself when I was that age, I will never say anything of the like or even think anything of the like about my future children. And then one of my children hit about 1314, 15 years old. And I have to say, on a number of occasions, that phrase has come to my mind.

That you had a better head on your shoulder, young man, when you were 9 years old, and your head is somewhere in the netherworld. I'm not sure what you're thinking. And so I called my dad one day and I probably told you guys the story, you probably already heard it, but I called my dad one day and I said, Dad, remember when you used to say such and such to me when I was younger? He says, oh yeah, yeah, I remember that.

And I said, I completely understand. And I hold no ill will towards you anymore. And he just laughed and he says, don't worry, they grew out of it. They normally survive, so.

but yeah, so in the proverbs, part of the idea is that young people will be able to read, study, and, and attain wisdom. In knowledge, we do see here, Chris Kidder did a great job for us surveying the Psalms a few weeks ago, and in Proverbs, many of the Proverbs, we'd see the same type of Hebrew poetry. Does anybody know what we called that back when we went through the The Psalms, it's like the key feature of Hebrew poetry. Yeah, so couplets or parallelism.

So in, in so in Hebrew poetry, there's, even in the Hebrew, there's really not much of a rhyming scheme, but what you do see is these parallel thoughts. Sometimes the parallel thoughts are similar. It's, you're saying the basic idea the same way twice. Sometimes they're contrasting and then sometimes they're advancing on the second couplet advances a little bit on the first part of the couplet.

So it's real common Hebrew poetry. by the way, you also see in the Proverbs, The type of Hebrew poetry where like, each section will begin with another successive part of the Hebrew alphabet. you'll see that over in Proverbs 31, for instance, and, so it'll start with Aleph, and then bait, and then Gimmel and Dale. And so if you're looking at the Hebrew text, you kinda see how the structure is developed.

for poetic purposes. so, So an example of that, we could, just look at verse 7. So we have the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. But fools despise wisdom and instruction.

So would this be like a synonymous parallelism or contrasting parallelism? Contrasting, yeah. So you've got, fear of the Lord, you got fools, you got knowledge, you got wisdom. And so that's, that's part of what you see here.

And, and it seems like, verse 7 is something, the concept in verse 7 is something that shows up over and over and over again. In fact, most Bible teachers would see verse 7 as really the theme of the book. And so let's take a moment to just look at this. So the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, fools despise wisdom and instruction.

Let's first of all talk about that phrase at the beginning there. Fear. Of the Lord What exactly is fear? Of the Lord.

And how would we figure out what that means? Uh-huh. Say it again. OK, so Brian says reverence.

OK, so may I ask another question, Brian? What is reverence? Fear. OK.

All right. Good job, good job. OK, you got reverence equals fear or fear equals reverence. What is reverence?

OK, I respect, right? There's a general sense of respect. Good. Yeah.

I like that. So there's like the sense of awe that will fill our hearts about, about God. Yeah, Allison. Good.

Yeah. So the fear of the Lord, there seems to be this idea of understanding who we are against God. He's the creator. We're the creature.

It's appropriate for us to bow down and worship Him, right? Good. That's excellent. I think we get a little bit right here from this couplet, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.

Whatever the fear of the Lord is, foolishness seems to be a counter or an opposite to it. So If you see people that are behaving foolishly, the idea would be they're probably people who don't fear the Lord. and foolishness in the proverbs doesn't seem to be lack of information. It seems to be a lack of awareness of what to do with the information, especially in light of the fact that we are creatures and that God is the creator.

So the fool has said in his heart, there is no what? God So the fool might have all kinds of incredible assembly of facts in their mind. They might be able to do lots of amazing things with the information that they've attained. But the fool will say there is no God, and the fool has no fear of the Lord.

And so that seems to get us a little bit to the idea of the fear of the Lord. But I think we can also, this is a difficult concept because fear of the Lord, if you take both, the Hebrew and the, and the Greek, it's the same word that we have for English. It just, if you just take fear by itself and the Greek word hobos or phobia. It's, it's just fear, right?

When you think about all the range of meaning in the English word, fear, you have a similar range of meaning both in Hebrew and Greek. Yeah, justice. Oh yeah. Oh good.

Yeah. So Justin saying over in Psalms, we say the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. I think you also see it in Proverbs 9. I think we'll actually look at it here in a second.

Proverbs 9:10, similar type stuff. Yeah, so it's a theme that gets repeated. But let's, let's think back in our, just Old Testament context, how people behave when they interface with the Lord. and, and where fear seems to show up, this concept of fear and fear of the Lord.

let's start with the Old Testament. So if you just think back to like say the garden. Adam and Eve were told not to eat of the fruit. Or they'll surely die.

They eat, the Lord shows up on the scene, and where are Adam and Eve? They are hiding. Why are they hiding? They're afraid And this is an appropriate fear, in light of our sin.

Don't you think so? in fact, in one sense, we can look at Adam and Eve and, maybe, maybe, think badly upon them for their sinful decision. But the Bible actually seems to be more critical of those that sin and have no fear. there's no fear of God in their eyes, and they, and they're, and they're brazen in their sin.

Here, Adam and Eve sin, and they understand their eyes are open, but they've got some idea of what this means and the fact that their Creator is now starting to stroll through the garden and they hide. and so there seems to be an indication of fear there. When you come to Cain, Cain, the way he talks to the Lord at times, it just feels like he is a, Yeah, he's almost like a a teenager that just doesn't respect his parents. Cain, just think about this.

Cain is still living in an era where God is showing up and having 1 to 1 conversations with him. And so he shows up and he says, he warns him beforehand, hey, the sin's at your door, but if you will resist, you'll be in good shape. And, he's upset that the Lord doesn't respect the sacrifice. And then after he murders his brother, do we see him running off into the bushes?

No, God shows up and he says, am I my brother's keeper? And so with Cain, there seems to be no fear of the Lord in his eyes. He doesn't seem to really get it. That the Creator who holds his life in his hands shows up on the scene and can take Cain out.

And yet the Lord gives grace to Cain. And then we can, we fast forward, let's fast forward to, to Moses and the burning bush, for example. Moses comes along, he sees this bush that's burning, it's not consumed. The Lord says, take off your shoes, you are on holy ground.

And, and Moses, this interaction, there's this sense of fear and awe. and then Moses becomes the representative of the Lord, goes up to Mount Sinai. Mount Sinai is quaking and lightning, and are the people of God or Israel, are they, are they pretty ready to run up the mountain and high five the Lord? Now, what's their attitude at that point?

They're like, Moses, you go talk to Yahweh. We are afraid. We don't want to approach the mountain lest we die. you go talk to Yahweh, you come back and report, tell us what he said, we're gonna keep our distance.

And so, so there's this, this fear and this quaking on the part of Israel. And then, we see various things throughout the Old Testament. That would indicate, on the one hand, there is an appropriateness to fear the power of God, to fear God in light of our sin and His holiness. you get, for instance, Isaiah 6.

Isaiah has this incredible vision of the Lord and the, and the robe of his temple, and what's his overall response and demeanor in Isaiah 6? Woe is me. I am a man of unclean lips. And so there's this, this sense of comparison of sin versus the Lord.

And so, what makes things so difficult as far as how to understand the fear of the Lord is it seems like, and you guys can tell me if, if, if you think differently, it seems like there is an appropriate sense in one level in which when we consider ourselves before a holy God, sinners, apart from any covering, there is an appropriateness of feeling the trembling that we see at places in the, in the Bible. The sense of fear and trembling before the Lord. At the same time, The Lord bids that we would come into his presence through Christ.

We see in the book of Hebrews, a couple of different concepts.

One is, it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. That seems to be an indication of judgment. At the same time, we're called to come boldly into his presence and to acknowledge Him as our Abba Father. How can that be?

How is it that we have on one, on the one hand, saying it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God? And yet, in the very same book, we're commanded. Aren't we to come boldly to approach with boldness. How can that be?

Yeah, Joe. Yeah That's great. So Joe says it depends on how you're dressed. So are we dressed in the righteousness of Christ?

And so now that we, the relationship that we have with the Lord is still one of respect, but now it's, this is our Father, and so we're told to come boldly before the throne as our Father. or are we thinking that we can approach him in our own righteousness, offer strange fire like Nadab and Abayou, and, hey, it's cool, God's good, he's my bud. My sin's not that big of a deal. we see examples.

Was it, is it Ananias and Sephira in the Book of Acts? This isn't just an Old Testament thing. These guys think they can just pull a fast one on the Lord, no big deal. All of a sudden you have two people dead.

Right? And it says, and the fear of the Lord, all of a sudden people began to fear. And, and so there seems to be, the fear of the Lord or concept of fear of the Lord, it's not super easy to define. It's not a real easy concept.

I, I love the image that CS Lewis draws in his, his books, The Lin Witch and the Wardrobe. There's a scene in which you have Aslan, I forget which book it's in, and he speaks, Aslan is, is, is this lion. That is in one sense tender, but also like, we're not quite sure, there, there's a little bit of a trepidation about, about approaching this lion unless you're in good relationship with him. Let's see, what else were we're gonna say about this.

So here's some things that it some ways in which we would not say this, that it equals the fear of the Lord. We don't fear the Lord like you might be afraid of spiders. Right? It's a different fear.

I'm not too bothered by spiders, but I'll tell you what, rats freak me out. There was one time back, at the Linden Street property, we were getting ready for our festival of treats, and there was some candy that we had laid out in the foyer, and I was walking up to my office in the back, like several yards away, and I would see this candy on the steps, like, what is this? And then one day we saw a rat just running through and I was just, we call Aurelio, no, not Aurelio, Angelo.

So Angelo comes down and he puts out these glue sticks, and one of the glue sticks was up near my office.

So I had forgotten about this thing. I come around the corner, come marching up the steps. All of a sudden I looked down and there's this rat like flapping around on the glue stick and I screamed like a little girl. And I call Angelo.

I'm, Angelo, Angelo, there's a rat here. What am I supposed to do? Just, just get a bucket and cover it up. Just, I'll be there in a little bit.

And I'm just like, Angelo, I'm going into my office. I'm locking the door and you just, when you get here, you let me know. And I was not gonna go outside and get any bucket or box and throw it over that thing. And anyway, that's not, that's not the thing we're talking about, that we can have a fear of things like that.

or you can have a fear. Of, I can remember getting in trouble when I was younger. And My mom or our live-in babysitter saying, I've talked to your dad and he will deal with you when you get home. And I can remember hearing the garage door go up and I would be, oh.

Oh, I'm just, I think that might be a little closer to some aspects of the fear of the Lord. my dad loved me, he cared about me, but when the garage door came up and I could hear him coming into the house, this fear would overtake me. And I am, I am gonna get it, right? So that might, that might approach it a little bit.

What else? I think the other thing is, so we've got the fear of the Lord. There's another phrase that gets used in the Bible quite a bit, and it's called the fear of man. And so, The fear of man, what seems to be behind that idea is if we fear man, it's like we want Men or people to think well of us and we're even willing to compromise maybe our viewpoints or convictions in order to fit in with a person or people, right?

And so, I would see this sometimes in high school. I got saved when I was pretty young. I was like 1415. and there were other churchgoing kids that if, if I was talking to them one on one, they would play the church or Bible game with me.

They would say, oh yeah, Jesus is cool, whatever. And then one of their friends would walk up and it'd be a complete change. All of a sudden they start using foul language or whatever, or you could just tell who their allegiances were to. It wasn't, it wasn't to the Lord.

And all of a sudden, I found out that you're not in my camp, right? And you're not gonna stand with me. we're not gonna stand together with the Lord. And, and so the fear of man, it seems like, I could be wrong on this, it, it seems like people are either gonna fear the Lord, or they're gonna fear man.

It seems like people are going to fear something in their life. there are some people I've known that just their attitude is, I don't fear anything. I don't fear God. I don't fear man.

I'm just gonna do what I'm gonna do. And so I'm not sure what, where that person fits other than foolishness, yeah. Oh yeah. 15 years.

Classes the ball Christian Yeah, and, on the one hand I want to. Their wishes, but on the other hand, No way, dude. Yeah, that's tough. That's tough.

Yeah, especially in the workplace, because those are tough calls, aren't they, at times, because on the one hand we're, we're being we're hired by somebody to do a job, right? And so we, we need to do that job on their time. But the big thing for me, I used to be a public school teacher and I was really just kinda shocked. I, I thought that once I got into public school teaching, there would be a complete contrast between the students and the teachers.

And what I found, especially in the teacher's lounge and so on, is there was very little difference. I go into the teacher's lounge and the teachers were just as filthy, at least on my campus, with their speech as the students were and. And then I just, I just wouldn't laugh at certain off-color jokes. And as soon as you don't laugh at the off-color jokes, people are just kinda like, OK.

And so you're just in a completely, right away, you're just in a different category of person. And, and you have to decide, am I gonna go ahead and roll with it? pretend like I know what they're talking about, laugh at what they're saying, or try to be their friends, try to, try to be kind and so on and so forth, or so on. So, so there's the fear of God, fear of man, there's this category of foolishness.

Anything else that you guys would say about the fear of the Lord? At least that phrase, yes, Mr. Westberg. I like that.

So, so we're talking about reason being tied to the respect of fear. So we really thought out who God is and, and what he can do, what he chooses not to do because of Christ, and so there's this, this reasoned reverence. I really like that. Or are we just running from what we don't understand and we fail to reason out?

That's excellent. I like that. In 2 Peter, he writes that God's word is given to us. Everything Right.

Right. Yeah, so the Word of God has been given, every, Lord has given us everything that we need for, say it again. Life and godliness or, and godliness can be translated as reverential fear. That's good.

Let's go back to that verse. So we got the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. So this idea of understanding where we fit in God's universe, respect for him, reverence for him, worship of Him, a desire to please the Lord in the appropriate ways, that is just, it's the ABCs of knowledge. It's the very beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.

So fools might have all kinds of facts in their minds, but they're still categorized as fools because they don't have this ABC level of the fear of the Lord. This is one of the reasons why I, I, I think it's just Integral that parents see themselves as ultimately responsible for the education of their children. Now you may choose to hire a private school, you may choose to use the state school, you may choose to home school, but it seems to me that whatever a parent chooses to do, they need to be the ultimate teachers because the very rudiment.

Of knowledge, the very rudiment of our education and pedagogy is the fear of the Lord.

So, if I'm hiring somebody to do the teaching of my children and they don't fear the Lord, and the fear of the Lord comes into none of their subject matter, and I'm not doing anything to oversee that or supplement that as a parent, we've got, Houston has a problem, right? You're not gonna see any lift off, I don't believe, if, if the fear of the Lord isn't at the very basis of your approach to education. And so, I, I personally believe that there's lots of different ways that the Lord may choose, that parents may be led to do the education of their children.

I'm not, even though I, we homeschool our kids, I believe very strongly in homeschooling.

I'm not one that says that it's homeschool or no school. However, all of us should buy into the idea that a mere, merely accessing facts really is not enough. just as Jesus says, what shall it profit you if you gain the whole world and lose your soul? So, so your child grows up, goes to college, goes out, gets a great job, makes millions of dollars.

Buys all kinds of stuff and then dies and goes to hell. What was it all for? so the very rudiments of our education system, our, our approach as Christians to education should be the fear. Of the Lord.

OK, so let's, anything else you guys want to say about that before we move to chapter two? Yup, Barbara. Yes. Yes.

Yeah, totally. Yes. So Barbara's saying that, children have to have more than information if they're actually gonna grow on things that really are important, right? It's one of the things that used to really kinda get under my skin a little bit.

I, I taught, 7th grade English, and I'm not sure if they still do it this way, but back when I was a teacher, the idea was, if you just wanted to get kids to read. It didn't matter what they read, you just want to get them to read. And so, at that time, at the junior high level of literature, people were just writing as much nonsense as they could. To draw kids into reading.

So as gross as it could be, as, anything that would just make kids want to read it, even if it was complete nonsense and gross, even like maybe a little promiscuous, just as long as the kids were reading, that's the goal. And, Yeah, I just, I just, I just had a real problem with that. I was very glad for the fact that we had so many Christian teachers on campus. In fact, I'll just give you a little bit of my philosophy for free.

You can throw this out if you want. Like I, I personally, like we chose not to put our kids in public school because I wanted, I wanted to have a lot of control over the formulation of their philosophy in order for them to launch. But I've told my kids on a number of occasions, in fact, I'm having this conversation quite a bit with my older son right now, I would love it if one of my kids went to teach at public school because I, I think that's an amazing mission opportunity, and so, while I'm, like my son's still formulating his ideas and I'm not overly excited about how various influences could influence him.

once he does formulate those ideas and gets really strong in his own faith, I would love to see him go on to be a public school teacher.

one of my old pastors, they did things really interesting. One of their kids, they sent into the public school system because he was just so strong in his faith. He was just an amazing evangelist, and he just really didn't care about peer pressure. He had no fear of man.

And so they sent him to North High School, and he just went to North High School and just, just did great. Led a lot of people to Christ, did a really good job. But their middle son, when he was very young, he was already starting to be approached by girls in not so great ways. And he was a tremendously great looking kid and he was starting to struggle around 7th grade, and they yanked him and started homeschooling him.

And they're convinced, and I would agree that that, that actually saved that kid's spiritual life cause the type of propositions he was getting from women or girls at 7th grade was not good for his soul. And, and so he did very well in that environment and then grew up in the Lord and, and they're both doing well. So it just, it does require a lot of wisdom, but I think the bottom line is cry out like Solomon did, Lord, what do you want us to do? Give us wisdom.

We don't know what to do here. And make the fear of the Lord the very basis of your approach to your education plan. Let's go ahead, let's turn to chapter 2. This is probably where we're gonna Land and finish.

Chapter 21 of my favorite sections of the Proverbs. Where Solomon says, my son, if you receive my words, and this is verse one, treasure my commands within you. So that you incline your ear to wisdom and apply your heart to understanding. Yes, if you cry out for discernment, lift up your voice for understanding.

If you seek her as silver, search for as for hidden treasure. Then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. For the Lord gives wisdom, and from his mouth comes knowledge and understanding. He stores up sound wisdom for the upright, and he's a shield to those who walk uprightly.

He guards the paths of justice and preserves the way of the saints. Then you will understand righteousness and justice and equity in every good path. Just some really amazing. just counsel here through the Holy Spirit, through Solomon, that applies to every one of us.

We can pass it on to the people we're discipling, to our children, so on, grandchildren, and, I just summarize this section as, a lot of times when I'm talking to younger people, I'll say. imagine, your grandpa gave you $100. You're so excited. You, you, you put it in your pocket, you get home, it's in your pocket, but then you get distracted and you go back into your pocket, you're like, oh, it's not there.

you had it when you got home, but you go back into your pocket and it's gone. What are you gonna do? You can just like, it'll turn up. Gonna go over and play a few more video games, turn on the TV.

No, I've seen, oh, you, you, you felt it, right? All of a sudden, we turn into a, Bilbo Baggins looking for the ring around his house, right? We're just like, whoa, you're just looking everywhere, looking underneath stuff, and you're searching, you're, you wanna find it. And then, and you guys have experienced this, that lost item, all of a sudden you find it, what's the feeling?

Oh, man. so excited. We got it, we found it. Everybody's happy, everybody's rejoicing.

And so, I'll share, sometimes with people, this is, the Lord, he's very gracious and he wants to dish out wisdom, but he set up his economy in in, in, in a certain way where he really wants us to seek after it. Now, this isn't a work salvation thing. This is more the way God has set up his economy for sanctification, that he's really calling us to, to stretch our muscles. And go after knowledge and wisdom., the proverbs say later on, that is the glory of God to conceal a matter, the glory of kings to search it out.

That's just a very interesting passage to me. That God gets glory by concealing things. How in the world does he get glory by concealing stuff? think about it.

Think about just over the years of, of the of human history, all the things that people have researched and done experiments on or maybe just happened upon, and then we open something up suddenly, it's like, whoa, penicillin has some pretty amazing properties. Wow, electricity. There's these things that God has hidden in his universe, spiritual and physical, and human beings go out and search for those things and then they get uncovered and suddenly we're like looking at our Creator in a new way and we're like, man, this, this is just amazing.

And, and by the way, I don't think that's going to stop when we get to the eternal state.

Get the eternal state, God just, he's making a new heavens and a new earth. We're gonna be living in time with physical bodies, resurrected bodies, but yet physical bodies. And, and probably for all of eternity, we're gonna be continuing to discover new things that God has concealed. And every time something new is discovered, we'll just be glorifying God again, and worshiping Him for some new piece of information that represents his glory.

And and goodness. And so it's, it's for ourselves, for the people you're discipling, encourage them. To seek wisdom, to really make the study of the word of God, something that is a high priority in their life. 2 Timothy 3:16, right?

All scripture is given by inspiration, it's breathed out by God, that the man or woman of God may be equipped for every good work, right? summarizing. Look down at verse 6, we see the Lord gives wisdom from his mouth comes knowledge and understanding. God wants to give out wisdom.

He wants to give out instruction. He's done so through his prophets, he's done through, through His Son. As we're studying the word, he's even giving out wisdom through the Holy Spirit as the Holy Spirit illumines our minds. And And he wants to give it out.

We just need to seek it, to search it out, to study. be like, the one verse, be a workman, who is, who is rightly dividing the word of truth, going out and working hard, and then just see how the Lord just unfolds things to us. Yeah, Barbara. Yes Yes, Yeah, that's, I, I think that's a good definition.

A lot of people would draw a hard line between knowledge as being just the facts and wisdom as being like the application of the facts or right living, and I, I think that's, that's a decent understanding I think just practically. I think in my opinion, when you look at the various synonyms that are all over the proverbs, it doesn't seem to be that. tight and fast. It's a little squishier, which is the way Hebrew works a lot of times is we in our Western Greek-oriented mind, we want these like tight little categories where this means this and this means something completely different.

But I think what you get is In Proverbs, there's a piling up of synonyms and tons of overlap. Sometimes knowledge as it's used in the Proverbs, feels a little bit more like our use of wisdom. And sometimes wisdom feels like depending on where it's at in the context, feels a little more factual oriented. But I think the big idea of what you're describing is true.

When you take all those synonyms, understanding, knowledge, wisdom, if it's done within the circle of the fear of the Lord, then it is, it's right living, right? It's taking facts and living right. Whereas the fool despises all of those synonyms. The fool despises instruction, knowledge.

So the fool doesn't just despise knowledge, he despised knowledge, instruction, wisdom, all that word group, all those word groups get despised by the fool. Whereas those that are walking according to wisdom, they, all those word groups bleed into each other. I haven't found out a real satisfactory way to distinguish all of them. I know there's lots and lots of attempts, but.

Totally. Totally. Yeah, so there is a clear distinction between wisdom and foolishness. The distinction between wisdom and knowledge and understanding, that gets a little blurry in my mind.

Yeah, Mr. Westberg. Yeah, Yes, Right. Yeah, it, it could be.

Word of knowledge is a tough one for me. I'm not really sure how to define it. Yeah, it's a great question. Is this a spiritual gift or something that's acquired through age and maturity?

And I would say yes. Yeah. It seems like it's both ends. there's definitely a sense in which if we are applying the things that the Lord is revealing and given to us through his mouth, then, then maturity and age has a benefit, right?

Because we're, we're, we've seen how we've fallen in the past, we come back to the Lord, we ask for more wisdom, he gives it, we try to apply it, maybe we fail sometimes, maybe we succeed. And so over time, I think if, if we're walking ongoingly in the power of being filled with the spirit, then age and wisdom does have that benefit. on the flip side, we have, you guys have all experienced this. Sometimes you meet 70 year old people who are fairly immature in their walk with the Lord.

Because even though they've walked with the Lord for a long time, but they just haven't applied it the same way. they've sometimes despised, the things of the Lord, maybe early in life, and so, you'll find them dealing with some maturity issues later in life that can sometimes be a little surprising. So, and then other times you find people that are like in their twenties that are, they've got some amazing wisdom. And I've had some friends, I remember one particular buddy of mine that he got married, I think when he was 20 and his wife was 19 and they just really sought the Lord and, and had a lot of life experience by about 28, 29, where you would think this guy was like in his 40s, just by his maturity level.

He just had gone through a lot and applied it well. Good stuff. Any, any other comments that you guys have or, yeah, Dan. Just the, the God That is true.

Yeah. is Yes, Generally tend So If there's Yes. So, yeah, so Dan's saying it's all about truth that brings wisdom. Are we, are we coming into contact with what actually is true in God's word through Christ?

Yeah, that's excellent. Where's the passage in James that talks about Wisdom is first of all, pure, peaceable. Is that chapter one? OK.

Let's flip over there real quick and we'll end. My Alzheimer's is kicking in. Do you guys remember where in chapter one that is? Chapter 3 In what verse?

17. Oh, there you go. Yeah, let's, let's just finish on this. Something that Mr.

Westbrook said that kinda Brought a thought is It's not like people in the church just because we, we are born again, we come into contact with God's word, that every single Christian always has better discernment than unbelievers. we know the Lord, so we know the rudiments. however, there is this thing called common grace, and everybody's made the image of God. And if unbelievers are out there, knowingly or unknowingly, practicing principles in God's universe.

There are good principles. you can find pagans that at times make better decisions than believers. the difference is, is the believer is covered in the grace of Christ and their sins are forgiven, they're heading towards heaven. but we do have to be careful about the idea that somehow that all Christians are the wisest and the smartest and all unbelievers are the dumbest and That's not what the Bible means by the foolish and the wise necessarily.

The very rudiments, if a, if a, if somebody who actually Maybe doesn't make all the best decisions, but they've embraced Christ as savior. They are overall categorized within the circle of the wise. Whereas you can have somebody, an unbeliever who's actually making better financial decisions and, maybe has a lot of just common knowledge, but they've rejected Jesus Christ as their savior, maybe they don't even believe in God, and they would still be categorized within this category called the fool or the foolish.

Looks like, James 3:13, let's just talk about us as believers for a second, we'll pray.

Who is wise and understanding among you, let him show by good conduct that his works are done in meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter envy and self-seeking in your hearts, do not boast and lie against the truth. This wisdom does not descend from above but is earthly, sensual, demonic. But where envy and self-seeking exists, confusion and every evil thing are there, but the wisdom that is from above, so here's some, here's some ways on how we identify whether we're getting wisdom that actually descends out of the mouth of God from above.

It's pure. Peaceable Gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits without partiality, without hypocrisy. Now the fruit of the right of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. I think as believers in the church, that's something that we really need to hold close to our chest is, we can, we can grow on a lot of theological knowledge.

We can gain all kinds of knowledge about various scriptures, systematic theology, maybe start studying Calvin, Spurgeon, all great things that we would highly recommend. But if our studies, are leading to a non-peaceable spirit. where we're not gentle in the way that we're conversing with one another. We're not willing to yield and admit when we're wrong.

We're not finding ourselves to become more merciful or, or, then there does need to be a, a check in our step about what are we doing with this great information that we're learning. there's this term, I, I, I forget, I think it was created by RC Sproll. He talks about cage stage Calvinists, cage stage Calvinists. He says that when new Calvinists, when, when first come into contact with the doctrine of election and God's sovereignty, you need to stick them in a cage for about 2 or 3 years and then let them out and they'll cause less damage.

But he says a lot of young people when they first come into contact with the biblical doctrines of election and predestination and God's sovereignty, sometimes they run around with their election acts and they just start lopping off heads, and there's just not this wisdom from above. And And I think in the church, it doesn't, it's not just with Calvinism. I think it can just be with. just life in general.

If our, our study of God's word, our study of theology, Over time, it should start to soften us and make us more gentle and more peaceable, willing to admit that we're wrong, and even just just a willingness just to be patient with where other people are at at that time in their life. I remember being at a LA Bible training school down in Compton with a, a professor from the Masters seminary, And one of his students, came up to him and was really excited about a subject, and the way he described it, I could tell that theologically, this student was, was not quite correct.

He had some ideas right and other things were just off the map. And I just remember that professor just looking at him and just saying, that's great, Joe, keep studying, keep studying.

And he knew it wasn't the time for him to start to slam into all of his mistakes. This young student, young in the Lord, had grabbed certain things but hadn't grabbed other things. And so he affirmed him in the things that he grabbed, and then he just told him to keep studying the word. And I just thought, I really drunk that in.

I just, that, that was something instructive to me. I don't have to correct every single flaw I see in somebody else's theology. sometimes you just see some really good stuff and you just commend them on it, and you just say, keep studying. how much, how gracious has the Lord been to us, right?

I go back to some of my own notes. I'm looking at something I taught five years ago, like, what in the world? What was I thinking? I don't believe that anymore.

The Lord is just patient with us, right? Let's go ahead and pray. I'll be up here for questions if you guys have any. Let's pray.

Lord, we just thank you so much, for the wisdom that does descend from above that comes out of your mouth. Your word has been breathed out by you. Thank you that we live in such an age and in a culture where we can freely study your word, we thank you for the Holy Spirit that illumines our hearts. Help us to be, to grow in humility in the way that we handle the knowledge that we've been given.

Not to, behave in a proud manner towards unbelievers whose eyes haven't been opened yet. Not to behave proudly towards our brothers and sisters in Christ or at different levels and different, but help us to really encourage one another, help us to speak the truth and love. we pray, Father, that we become better and better students to really seek and search and dig as for silver and, knowing that you are such a gracious God willing to reveal. In Christ's name we pray.

Amen. All right.