Proverbs 2
Turning your copy of the scriptures
to Proverbs chapter two, tonight we’ll look at the whole chapter,
I believe it’s 22 verses. So in our study so far of Proverbs,
we’ve looked at the goal of wisdom, to know wisdom, to understand
words of insight, receive instruction, and so on, so that we can know
the fear of the Lord and live a righteous life. We’ve looked
at the fear of the Lord, we’ve looked at listening to our parents
so that we aren’t fools, but we’re wise and we’re a beautiful
garland around our neck. Tonight, we’re gonna pick up
on a variation of some of the themes we’ve already heard. We
wanna stay away from wayward friends and wayward women, all
right? That’s what your mama taught you. So we wanna pick
up on that this evening. So let’s hear God’s word, Proverbs
chapter two, beginning at verse one. My son, if you receive my
words and treasure up my commandments with you, making your ear attentive
to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding, yes,
if you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding,
if you seek it like silver and search for it as hidden treasure,
then you will understand the fear of the Lord. then you will
find 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 watching over
the ways of his saints. Then you will understand righteousness
and justice and equity and every good path. For wisdom will come
into your heart and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul.
Discretion will watch over you. Understanding will guard you,
delivering you from the way of evil, from men of perverted speech
who forsake the paths of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness,
who rejoice in doing evil and delight in the perverseness of
evil. Men whose paths are crooked,
and who are devious in their ways. So you will be delivered
from the forbidden woman, from the adulteress with her smooth
words, who forsakes the companion of her youth and forgets the
covenant of her God, for her house sinks down to death and
her paths to the departed. None who go to her come back,
nor do they regain the paths of life. So you will walk in
the way of the good and keep to the paths of the righteous.
For the upright will inhabit the land and those with integrity
will remain in it. But the wicked will be cut off
from the land and the treacherous will be rooted out of it. Amen. This is God’s word. When
I was about seven years old, we moved to a new house. We lived
in my early childhood in two Presbyterian mansions. And then
in about 1981 or so, maybe 1983, We moved to a house that was
our own. And we decided we needed a storage
shed in the backyard. And boring people go buy one
and have it delivered in, right? We had to build one. And so I
remember going to the lumber yard with my dad and a friend
who was going to help build this shed. We went and got all the
materials, all the lumber. We had it delivered. And I was
ready to go. I had my hammer. I had my tools.
Well, we put a tarp over those materials. And I could not figure
out why. The next day we built a frame on the ground, and that
sat for a few days till the weather got good. There was no progress.
I was sleeping at that point with my hammer under my pillow,
I think, ready to go to work. Well, one day the concrete truck
came. And when the concrete truck came, that was pretty exciting.
Down the chute came wet cement into the frame. That concrete
was pushed, and it was scraped. It was put into a mold. I think
I remember us putting a pipe through the concrete so we could
run some wires through it at a later point. And then at the
very end of the day, a broom was taken and swept over the
concrete to create a nice little rough edge. That’s about my memory
from seven, eight years old. And then the excitement slowed
down. The concrete had to cure. It
had to age. But we had put together a foundation
on which this storage shed could eventually be built. Now I was still ready to get
to work. I was ready to rip the tarp off
those materials and get to it. But the concrete had to set and
the shape and final form of it had to be final in order to build
on it. But one of the things I want
us to think about this evening is what do you do in raising
children? What do you do in teaching someone
wisdom before the concrete sets, before the concrete hardens?
I likened raising kids a couple of weeks ago to a sapling. We
put a sapling in the ground, and we don’t just put it in and
pack the ground and pour a little water on it and hope for the
best. We usually stake it and tie it off in about three different
directions. The wind can blow, the weather can come, and for
the most part, it’s probably gonna make it until it grows
strong enough, the roots go down, and it can make it on its own
with the wind and the rain and other elements. Well, you might
could liken child rearing to curing concrete. There are things
that you can do with young people before the concrete sets. But
once that concrete sets, whether it’s perfect and molded just
right for the right purpose or it’s warped, you know, you don’t
see the concrete truck come to pour a sidewalk. and men standing
under a tree waiting for it to harden. What do they do as it’s
coming out of the shoot? They get to work. They’re pushing
and scraping and molding and getting it done before it dries. And that’s what parenting is
like. That’s what the nurture of the church is like for raising
the next generation. Before the concrete sets, before
the sapling is rooted, we’ve got work to do to see that everything’s
in ship shape because After the tree is rooted and after the
concrete hardens, there’s no going back. And chapter two of
Proverbs is a reminder to us, it’s a reminder and challenge
to young people, the value of wisdom, it must be pursued and
it will bring you blessings. That’s what we wanna see tonight.
I think I titled our message for the evening, Seeking Wisdom
and Finding Blessing. And I think you’ll see that in
two parts tonight. The first four or five verses are seeking
wisdom, and then the rest of the chapter is finding the blessing
from it. And I think if you have little
ones, you’re pursuing wisdom for them, right? But as you get
older and older, you’ve got to begin to pursue wisdom for yourself. So let’s think for just a few
moments about First of all seeking wisdom and then we’ll look at
finding blessing in it Wisdom’s value is listed there in the
first few verses of chapter 2 my son if you receive my words If
you treasure up my commandments with you making your ear attentive
to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding Yes, if
you call out for insight, raise your voice for understanding,
if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures,
then you will understand the fear of the Lord. And then you
will find the knowledge of God. So first we want to think about
seeking wisdom. And notice what is involved in
seeking wisdom. I look through these first four
or five verses and I see the ear, I see the heart, I see the
mind, I see the mouth, and I see the eyes. With our ears, we open
them up. Aren’t you all amazed, here we
are preaching to the choir on Sunday night, but aren’t we amazed
at how many people don’t come to church? Bill usually says
something to me after a Bible study, I wish more people would
come here. Something like that, right? I
wish there were more people who would come hear what we’re learning.
It’s a privilege, isn’t it, to have copies of God’s word, but
it’s also a privilege to have it read and taught to us, just
as it’s a privilege to eat a meal or to have a good visit with
the doctor. It’s a privilege for us to have
and to hear God’s word. And so many people are living
impoverished lives. They won’t skip a meal, right?
But they’ll skip the diet. of the word of Almighty God.
And so our ears ought to be attentive. How about the heart? A heart
that treasures or a heart that is inclined towards the wisdom
of Almighty God. We’re living in a world, as we
mentioned during our prayer time, it’s not inclined towards wisdom.
It’s inclined towards foolishness. It’s inclined towards hatred
and deceit. It’s inclined towards all other
manner of living that’s not godly. Or how about the mind? The mind
is the chief instrument to receive knowledge. We’re firm believers
from the Bible that God speaks to the mind, and once he speaks
to the mind, it gets down to the heart. The school that I
attended for pastoral training’s motto is, a mind for truth, but
a heart for God. And what they’re recognizing
is that God speaks truth to his people. It comes to our mind,
but it gets to our heart. And after it gets to our heart,
it gets into our hands, where we then might go and serve the
living God. Well, there’s also the mouth
in these first couple verses. We call out, Lord, I’m looking
for wisdom. I’m praying for wisdom. I want
wisdom. I seek it. I call for it. And then there’s the eyes. With
the eyes, we seek diligently. We’re always excited as a church
family, aren’t we, when people come looking for a church like
ours and they find it. We love what we do here. We love
our worship. We love our God. We love our
Savior, Jesus Christ. We love the word. We love fellowship.
We love all these wonderful things. And we’re so glad when others
seek it and they find it. It’s why we have a website. It’s
why we try to put out in the world who we are and what we
do, because we believe other people are seeking it and we
hope that they’ll find us. So there’s great value in seeking
wisdom. Now, how does this apply to children?
Can you read these passages to a child that’s, say, zero to
five years old? You know, and you sit your little
one-year-old down and say, my son, open up your ears and listen
for wisdom, right? That doesn’t exactly work, and
so how does that work? Well, little kids like that are
in the home, and so you start to teach them Bible verses. I
can remember we had a little book called My ABCs Bible Verses,
A Soft Answer Turns Away Wrath. What was B? I can’t remember. Be kind or something like that.
But there was one for C, children, obey your parents and the Lord
for this is well pleasing. D is do all things without complaining
and disputing. E is even a child is known by
his deeds. And on and on you go through the alphabet and there
was a Bible verse teaching wisdom to little kids. Little kids can,
they can hear it, they can remember it, and they eventually catch
on what it means. And so when you have little ones in the home,
you want to teach them. the ways of wisdom, even if it’s
in little bite-size pieces. And then when they get a little
bit older, you teach them the catechisms, you teach them Bible
stories, you teach them who God is and what he’s done and the
way they can understand. And then as they get to be about
12 to 18 years old and then grow into adulthood, they can articulate
these things on their own. They can hear it, they can argue
it, they can talk about it, they can discuss it and all those
sorts of things. They can demonstrate it, explain
it in their own words. But that’s why God has given
the family and the church so that as we sit, as we walk, as
we rise, as we lie down, as we go about our business side by
side, our children can see that as adults, we’re striving to
live by wisdom too. We’re seeking to live by wisdom. They see the wisdom and the value
of it. But also they get to see foolishness. They get to see others make bad
choices. It’s in the context of your home. God willing that
they see it and say no to it because they see the negative
effects. But there is great value. It’s
what Proverbs is teaching us. There’s great goodness in seeking
wisdom. But there’s a second side to
this section of Proverbs. It’s one thing to seek wisdom.
It’s another to be blessed by it. It has great value for our
lives. Verse five is kind of a hinge.
It’s the, there’s a if then statement. The if is if you seek it. Verse
five, then you will understand the fear of the Lord. You will
find knowledge of God. For the Lord gives wisdom from
his mouth come knowledge and understanding. He stores up sound
wisdom for the upright. He’s a shield to those who walk
in integrity. guarding the paths of justice
and watching over the ways of the saints. And so if you want
to be blessed, you seek wisdom and you find blessing living
in that wisdom. So you look for it as if it’s
a treasure, you listen for it, you think about it, you pray
for it. In a sense, becoming a wise person is a second job,
right? Just as you manage the house
and do your daily task, you also seek God’s wisdom. And so once
you seek it, you’ll find that there’s great blessing in it.
And look at a handful of these blessings, starting in verse
seven. He is a shield to those who walk
in integrity. Maybe your parents told you,
you walk upright life, God will bless you, he’ll protect you,
he’ll oversee your life. But you get off that path, no
good is gonna come. And then it picks on, it carries
on in verse eight, he guards the paths of the justice, and
he watches the way of his saints. He gives you understanding of
righteousness, justice, equity, every good path, wisdom will
come into your heart, knowledge will be pleasant, discretion
will watch over you. Some of these words are popping
back up again, aren’t they? The way of wisdom, they all seem
to pop back up through our study of Proverbs. He’ll deliver you
from the way of evil, from men of perverted speech. They forsake
the paths of uprightness. They walk in the way of darkness.
They rejoice in doing evil. They delight in the perverseness
of evil. If you seek wisdom and you find
a right relationship with God, trusting in him by faith in Christ,
he will put you on the right course. And if you’re on the
right course, you’ll have justice, equity,
and all those things. But there’s two big protections And there’s
one, the protection from bad friends, and then there’s the
protection from bad women. So we just looked at the protection
of the bad men there in 13, 14, and 15, but look at verse 16.
So you will be delivered from the forbidden woman, from the
adulteress with her smooth talk. She forsakes the companion of
her youth. She forgets the covenant of her
God. Her house sinks down to death,
her paths to the departed. None who go to her come back,
nor do they regain the paths of life.” I don’t know if y’all
do much people observing, but you can kind of tell by the look
of a person whether they’re living a righteous life or not. It shows
up in the way they keep up their appearance. It shows in the way
they treat their body. It shows in the way they live
a life of respectability or lack thereof. But what’s true of bad
people? They always have bad friends,
and they always have bad girlfriends. Isn’t that true? what this passage puts on display
here. You don’t wanna be righteous, you don’t wanna be wise. That’s
all well and good. For one thing, you’re gonna die,
but you’re gonna get caught up with bad friends and bad women. And you know this is true, you
see it on afternoon television, those of you who watch afternoon
TV, all the Judge Judy shows and Maury Povich and where all
the chair throwing happens and all that. What is it? It’s always
bad company and bad girlfriends. And so a wise person seeks the
Lord, he seeks God’s protection and provision and stays away
from bad friends and from bad women. And notice the covenant
blessings that pop up at the end of the chapter in verse 20,
following it says so. So there’s some if statements,
some then statements, and now some so statements. So if you
pursue wisdom, if you seek it, then you’ll be blessed and protected.
And then here’s the so. So you will walk in the way of
the good. You’ll keep to the paths of the
righteous. The upright will inherit the
land and those with integrity will remain in it. And then there’s
the but. But the wicked will be cut off
from the land and the treacherous will be rooted out of it. So a couple questions. Is it
worth the effort to pursue wisdom? Yes. Is it worth the effort to
walk in the straight and narrow? Yes. What is there to gain? Everything. What is there to
lose? Well, your life. And a lot of times a foolish
life is a slow death. You know, sometimes we read,
what do they call it, the Darwin Awards? where somebody just does
something really idiotic. Usually it involves cutting down
a tree or jumping a car over something or involves electricity
or some other deadly thing. We get these Darwin awards, which
I think is out to prove that Darwin was true, the fittest
will survive and the stupidest will die. Well, I think it’s
very true in the path of seeking wisdom and finding blessing.
If you don’t seek wisdom, and you don’t find God’s blessing,
you’ll die a slow, painful death. And God has a sense of humor.
You’ll wallow in your foolishness. And it may be the foolishness
of death. It may be the foolishness of disease. It may be the folly
of prison. It may be the drudgery of bad
friends who steal from you, bad girlfriends who leave you high
and dry and that sort of thing. But isn’t God’s warning clear?
And what we prize, we will go after. So what will you prize,
wisdom or foolishness, life or death? Make sure that what you’re
prizing and going after is a wise life that’s found in living for
the Lord Jesus Christ. Let’s pause and pray and ask
for God’s grace. Lord, we pray that you would
bless us with the desire to pursue wisdom and holiness and godliness
so that when we find it, we are blessed by it and protected by
it. And we pray that you’d help us to renounce all foolishness
and to go after your goodness and blessing in Christ’s name,
amen.