Get Wisdom

Morning church. Today's reading is Proverbs chapter four. Hear our sons, our father's instruction and be attentive that you may gain insight, for I give you good precepts, do not forsake my teaching. When I was a son with my father, tender, the only one in the sight of my mother, he taught me and he said to me, let your heart hold fast my words, keep my commandments and live. Get wisdom, get insight.

Do not forget and do not turn away from the words of my mouth. Do not forsake her and she will keep you. Love her and she will guard you. The beginning of wisdom is this, get wisdom and whatever you get, get insight. Prize her highly and she will exalt you.

She will honour you if you embrace her. She will place on your head a graceful garland. She will bestow on you a beautiful crown. Hear my son and accept my words that the years of your life may be many. I have taught you the way of wisdom.

I have led you in the paths of uprightness. When you walk, your step will not be hampered and if you run, you will not stumble. Keep hold of instruction. Do not let go. Guard her for she is your life.

Do not enter the path of the wicked and do not walk in the way of the evil. Avoid it, do not go on it, turn away from it and pass on, for they cannot sleep unless they have done wrong. They are robbed of sleep unless they have made someone stumble. For they eat the bread of wickedness and drink the wine of violence, but the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn which shines brighter and brighter until full day. The way of the wicked is like deep darkness, they do not know over what they stumble.

My son, be attentive to my words, incline your ear to my sayings, let them not escape from your sight, keep them within your heart for they are life to those who find them and healing to all their flesh. Keep your heart with all vigilance for from it flow the springs of life. Put away from you crooked speech and put devious talk far from you. Let your eyes look directly forward and your gaze be straight before you. Ponder the path of your feet, then all your ways will be sure.

Do not swerve to the right or to the left. Turn your foot away from evil. Well, time to reflect on that passage this morning together and to identify the context in which God is speaking to us. We live in a world, in a society, based on choice. I know it's often said in advertisements that we see on television or slogans that we might even be familiar with.

Do yourself a favour. We have the choice. It's your decision. But I'm asking myself the question as I pray you'll ask it this morning too. Is it really true?

Do we really have a choice? Take an important decision like, who to marry as an example. It's true to say no one person can be coerced or forced into a marriage. To be told to marry a particular person is actually illegal. It contravenes the law of the land here in Australia.

We say the choice is yours and yours alone. But that hasn't always been the case. You didn't always choose who you married. In fact, in terms of the history of humanity, you could argue it's a fairly recent idea. Today, you decide instead of your parents or your extended family or your elders or the chief in the village. And even today, despite the advice you might be getting from well-intentioned family members, clearly, they do not make the decision for you.

It is yours and yours alone. Because of that, it's just the beginning. And I could go on. We who want to be free, who want to live as we want to live, and do the things that we want to do, you could argue that our culture today is one of the most individualistic, independent in the history of the world. In fact, even in The Australian newspaper this weekend, there was an article on loneliness and the fact that people prefer to live alone.

They're individuals. Our parents, our standing in the community, the things that we do Monday to Friday in our regular work, our routines, don't determine what we can do with all the choices that are available to us. Choices. What do they mean? And what do they say about us? That's what I want us to be thinking about this morning.

How can we make the right choices? How can we know for certain that we're grounded in reality and at the same time in God's word and continue on the right path? I mean, if ever you or I need to get it right, it is surely now, perhaps more than ever before. In the history of the world, the consequences of making the wrong choices has never been more severe. And today, the consequences can be lifelong.

They can last a lifetime. So what we need more than ever is this thing called wisdom, something that concerned the ancient writer of the book of Proverbs, so much so that it was recorded for him in terms of words that he might address even to his own son or daughter. Wisdom. Wisdom is what we need to be grounded in reality and at the same time honouring God with all our choices so we can be intentional about obedience and to ward off sin in our lives. Last time we looked at the book of Proverbs, we came up with a definition borrowed from a scholar that lived two hundred years ago.

And he said, wisdom is becoming competent with regard to the realities of life. Wisdom is becoming competent with regard to the realities of life. Wisdom is about knowing how things really happen, how they really are. It offers insight and discernment. It offers understanding.

Here in chapter four of Proverbs, there are at least three things that I can get out of the text this morning that are necessary for us to achieve wisdom, to get wisdom, to grab hold of wisdom, to have it happening in our lives. Three things that will characterise our lives that are described here in Proverbs chapter four. Sorry. First one being, wisdom can be described as a glorious fight. And to have wisdom, we need a guarded heart.

And thirdly, we need a living word. First thing, a glorious fight. The way of wisdom can be characterised, you see, as a glorious fight. And it's verses five to nine that I'm thinking of. You can hear the teacher, or the father speaking to his sons.

Get wisdom. Get understanding. Do not forsake wisdom, though it cost you all you have. Get wisdom, get understanding. Esteem her, embrace her, and she will present you with a glorious crown.

The words that are in there are just full of language that get across the idea of due diligence, of applying real effort, of an attitude that is determined. The word get comes up four times. It actually means to purchase something. It's a costly purchase. The word get has the language of sacrifice associated with it.

In order to get it, you need to sacrifice. It's a fight. It says right there in verse six, do not forsake wisdom. Do not let go of her. Be relentless in your pursuit of her.

So there's a degree of real determination to get this thing called wisdom. Notice the language is also the language of romance. On the one hand, it's a fight, but on the other hand, it's the language of a man courting a woman. Nothing he desires is more important. He's told not to forsake her, to love her, to esteem her, to embrace her.

That's the language of passion and pursuit. It's the reason we were introduced to Lady Wisdom from Proverbs 8 last fortnight, just two weeks ago. And gradually, verses eight through to nine build that up, and these verses give the reason why the pursuit is worth it. Eventually, a wise person does get wisdom, and it's described there as being a crown in beauty and in splendour, something that only comes to those who fight hard in order to achieve it. For the person who wears the crown of wisdom, there's peace.

Restlessness is gone. The restlessness described in those verses is taken away. You get clarity. You get understanding. And you begin to understand things as you've never understood them before.

No more darkness. No more obscurity. When things were going wrong, when there was a potential to be upset, when you were stumbling along with life's decisions, you were just getting more and more angry, more confused. But wisdom comes, and it's like a glorious crown. It sets things out in order, and you have a benchmark or something by which to understand all the things that impact your life.

But as we've been saying, it's a fight. Why is it a fight? And why does it cost so much? You may not want to hear the answer this morning. Why is it a fight?

Well, first of all, because Proverbs says, by nature, we are all naturally fools. By nature, that's the way we come into the world. We don't come into the world with wisdom. We're not blank slates that some people say we are, as if our mind could absorb wisdom naturally. We don't come into this world neutral.

We come biased towards the position that a fool holds. And the definition of a fool, in the Psalms at least, a fool is the one who denies in his heart that there is a God. And therefore, we're fighting really what is our own nature, our own natural inclination. We're fighting the will within us to be wise in our own eyes, to do battle against that which comes naturally. Second, the other reason why we have to fight is because wisdom is described here as a process.

It's about disciplines that we have to follow, things that we have to stay at for years and years. And God decides that we usually do our best learning when we, according to James chapter one, undergo trials and temptations of this life. It's how we learn. It's how we grow as God's people. You see, it's in the context of trials and temptation that James says, if any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, and it will be given to him.

That's the way we say wisdom is a gradual thing. It's a growing thing. A thing that we need to be busy with year after year. You can hear that repeated in verse 18 of Proverbs 4. The path of the righteous is like the first gleam of the dawn shining ever brighter to the full light of day.

Wisdom there is a process. We have a start. It's like the gleam of the dawn, the sun coming up above the horizon. As we've been saying in the first chapter, the Lord, the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. But the fool despises wisdom and discipline.

That implies there is a start, a time to bring on wisdom, a time to make a conscious decision to base our whole lives with wisdom, and then be prepared to grow in it. What is the start? How does it begin? Begins in the fear of the Lord. We've been trying to explain what this thing is, the fear of the Lord.

The fear of the Lord means to have a vital and a real relationship with God. The great God of heaven above, Him who is the King of kings and Lord of lords. It's not just a knowledge about Him, something we might be thinking about in our mind, but a relationship. A relationship in which His love, His holiness, His majesty, and His power are just so real to you. And then you will have a healthy fear of the Lord.

One which might direct your prayer life, for example. And anybody who says, I'm going to pray thirty minutes a day, well, you know how hard that is. It's unbelievably hard to stay focused. But a real relationship with God can be so rewarding. Another thing that brings on wisdom is accountability.

Do you see a man wise in his own eyes? Says Proverbs. There's more hope for a fool than there is for him. Only a fool is described as being wise in his own eyes. So the definition of a fool is that he just doesn't care about what somebody else thinks or what their opinion might be or what their take on a particular decision is like.

If I'm wise in my own eyes, well, that's all that matters. That's the way I see it, and that's the way it's going to be. But wisdom is the opposite. Wisdom is always trying to see things through the eyes of others. So a wise person is surrounded by counsellors and good friends.

That person knows how to keep good company. He takes a lot of advice and he listens. He listens well, even as a son or a daughter listens to their own parent. Whatever way you look at it, wisdom is a fight to be won. It's going to take years and years, but it's a glorious fight, a wonderful fight.

Now the second thing to look at this morning is this thing called the heart or a guarded heart. How to get wisdom is not just a glorious fight, but we also need a guarded heart. What do we mean by a guarded heart? Verse 23 is amazing. Above all else, guard your heart for it is the wellspring of life.

And here it's helpful to compare some of the ways this verse has been translated by different scholars. Take a look at some of these translations with me. From the New American Standard Bible, watch over your heart with all diligence for from it flow the springs of life. From the old King James Version, keep thy heart with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life. And then The Message which is a paraphrase of the Bible, keep vigilant watch over your heart.

That is where life starts. Essentially, this is saying there's nothing more important than this. If you're going to be wise, then guard your heart for everything you do comes from your heart. Guard your heart for everything you do comes from your heart. Now that's not a modern understanding of the way we use heart today.

If someone has no heart, then we say that person is cold and calculating. But to have a heart means you're warm and compassionate and affectionate. One understanding is that thoughts come from the head and emotions come from the heart. I'll put it to you, we live in a day and an age when we've elevated emotions and their privilege beyond anything else. We know thoughts and ideas can come from computers.

AI or artificial intelligence can reason. It can even do the thinking for you. Robots and computers have reason, but only humans have this. We have emotion, and therefore we have heart. So we say, what really makes us human then is not the ability to reason so much as it is emotion or to have heartfelt emotion.

But I said, I want to suggest such thinking distorts the biblical ideal of heart. It's a modern contemporary way of thinking about heart that doesn't reflect what the writer in the Proverbs is on about. If you study the whole book of Proverbs, you quickly see that people who manage their emotions well, who can control them, are living with wisdom. Because look what it says here in verse 23, above all else, guard your heart for it is the wellspring of life. The wellspring.

The heart is the wellspring of life. That's the biblical definition. Go through the rest of the Bible and it often talks about thinking with the heart or acting with the heart. You see, it's more than just feeling with the heart. The Bible does not say that the heart is the seat of our emotions.

Rather, the Bible says everything flows from our heart. Read the word heart in scripture and you're dealing with a person's whole life. And that includes their emotions, their thinking, and their actions as well. It is the wellspring of life. It is the source of all that we're on about in our life. And so the father in Proverbs tells the child, guard or protect your heart.

And do that in the next verse, verse 24, by putting away perversity from your mouth, keep corrupt talk from your lips. Let your eyes look straight ahead, and fix your eyes directly before you. What your mouth says, what your eyes look at, and what you do with your hands, all flow from the heart. It is the wellspring of life. The Bible believes that your heart is the seat of your most fundamental commitments, your most precious hopes and desires.

It's where you hold your beliefs about the things you must have in order to live joyfully. Now everybody believes there are some things that we must have if we are to live this life joyfully. If I can have this, then my life has meaning. I have real purpose. Then I'm secure, and I know I'm worth something.

When you hear that, that is your heart choosing. It affects everything about you. Your mind, your will, as well as your emotions. Your mind perceives it, understands it, finds it reasonable. Your emotions suggest to you that it's beautiful and something you eagerly desire.

And the will, well, the will implements it. It actually does it. It finds it practical. This is how we'll move forward. So guard your heart is what Proverbs is saying.

Protect it. Direct it. Give it the nurture that it needs. And of course, the burning question this morning, how do we do that? How do we guard our heart?

It brings us to my last point this morning. What does guard your heart actually mean? When you first read it, maybe you were thinking as I did, well, I have to be careful about my emotions. I have to be able to manage my emotions well. Maybe I can learn some new biblical breathing technique that allows me to exhale and inhale and so be a calmer person, a more gentle person.

Or maybe I should be taking the dog more often than I do for a walk. Walking releases endorphins and well, endorphins will make me a more pleasant person. Or who knows, even head to the gym. Some people have to manage their emotions by taking medications. But this is about guarding your heart, which is not just the emotions as we have been saying.

It's the source of everything you do. It is the wellspring of your life. We have to look at what the answer is here in scripture, verses 24 to 27. The teacher or the father speaking has been addressing us as his sons, and he keeps saying, he keeps repeating, I'm going to give you my words. You need to get my words.

You need to take my words into your heart. What are those words? Well, essentially, in Proverbs, they were the words of the Torah, which is the law of God. It's the scriptures. The book of Proverbs, in fact, all of wisdom literature is basically taking God's law, the great commandments of the law of God, and bringing them down to earth, down to reality, down to our daily lives.

And so what he's saying is this, my son, pay attention to all that I've been saying. Listen closely. Do not let them out of your sight. Keep them within your heart for they are life to those who find them and health to a man's whole body. They're life to those who find them and health to a person's whole body.

Simple solution here is you want to guard your heart. Well then, take the words of the Torah, take the words of the Bible and put them into your heart. Get them into your heart. You see how strong the claim is here. He doesn't just say, live by them, or work with them, or somehow manage them in your life.

He says, the actual words I give you are to become your life. Put them in your heart because your heart is the wellspring of your life. Now how are you going to do that? At one level, it makes perfect sense because what we believe to be true, we want to live out in practice every day of our lives. It's what we need to be happy, to be fulfilled.

You know what we say to ourselves? If I have a bit more cash to splash or if I go ahead and marry that person or if my career goes well or my business takes off, then I will have what I need to be happy. That's our convictions. That's our belief. Your heart is the wellspring of your life.

You literally control the outcomes in your life by what's in your heart, what you put into your heart. Maybe I can illustrate that this way. Think of two people. They work on an assembly line, and their job is incredibly boring. Putting bolts on nuts or something similar.

And they stand side by side day after day, year after year. One person does that job enthusiastically, working themselves to death. The other person, well, you know, he's taking it easy. He's knocking off early. He pulls the occasional sickie, and he knows how to work the system.

One person says, unless I'm incredibly successful and make a lot of money in my career, I cannot live life joyfully. How did a person's heart get there? There are things going on in that person's heart that affect them, cause them to behave that way, to perform that way at work. So in other words, it's not the actual job that he does, but it's his own thinking about things. It's about his most fundamental commitment.

It's about what's in the wellspring of his life, what's in his heart. The other person says, well, this is a job. I only do it Monday to Fridays. It's not the sum total of my existence. I can have a happy life apart from my work.

Both of them have the same outcomes. Both of them are putting nuts on bolts on the assembly line. But clearly, their approach to what they're doing is markedly different. So how does a person's heart get there? Again, it's not the actual outcome, it's not the job, but it's what's in the heart that counts.

At one level, we're being told, take these words and put them into your heart. Drill them down deep until they make a difference. But does that really work? Does it really make sense just to memorise scripture, to read and learn biblical principles and drill them down deep into your heart, even relevant ones? Will learning and learning about the verses, the texts in the Bible really change anything?

Will they make a difference in your life? Put it to you, it won't. What we all need is a living word. A word that's alive. A living word that lives in our heart.

We need that living word deep down inside of our heart for it is the wellspring of our lives. A living word to come inside of us and change us. To mould us. To shape us. To make us truly wise. Now let me close by telling you where to get this living word.

You have to read the book of Proverbs in the context of the whole Bible to see this. We go to John's gospel, John 5, and there's a story in the life of Jesus where He's talking to scribes and the Pharisees of His day, the religious leaders, and He says, you guys study the scriptures diligently because you think that by possessing them, you have eternal life. But these are the scriptures that testify about Me. Okay. So in speaking to these men, Jesus says, so you're reading the words of the Torah, you're incredibly religious, and you think that by reading them, memorising them, you have the words of eternal life.

Jesus goes on and indicates that these words are about Him. You're right. The Bible does have the words of eternal life. These words are about Me. In Proverbs 8, the passage we looked at two weeks ago, remember, wisdom is talking.

Wisdom is personified. And she's described there as a beautiful lady, someone worth pursuing. And wisdom says there, I was with God in the beginning. God was creating the world and the human race. Well, we did it together.

Wisdom with God. Was this just poetry? Was it just a clever metaphor? Just a poem? When you get to the book of John, John chapter one, in the beginning was the Word.

And listen carefully, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. Word with a capital W. And then it says, through Him, that is the Word, all things were made and without Him nothing was made that has been made. And here again, we have the Word alongside of God, but the Word is God making all things with God. So here is what the Bible is claiming, and here is what Jesus actually claims.

Jesus says, He is the wisdom of God because He is the living Word. He is the Word. And if you grasp Him, if you put Him into your heart, He will make you wise. I want us to think about this this morning. What is wisdom really?

We've already said it's not just knowledge. Even artificial intelligence can give you knowledge today. We say it's knowledge applied. Wisdom is knowledge brought down to earth. It makes us competent to face the realities of life.

Who is Jesus? Well, Jesus is God embodied. He is wisdom. He is God literally brought down to earth. God in a human form.

For sure, talk about the glory of God, the majesty of God. We sing about the holiness of God. But all those are just abstractions. And if you just memorise those abstractions, and that's all you know to be true about God, it won't change your heart. It's not gonna pull your heart off the things that you've already given your heart to in the world today.

You need more. You need wisdom. You need the wisdom that became reality in your world and in my world. This is Him, wisdom. This is the Lord Jesus Christ.

He is the wisdom of God Almighty brought down to our level where we understand it, where we can live in it, where we can thrive in it, and enjoy life. And oh, how we need it. We need it in our hearts. Get wisdom says Proverbs. But you only have this wisdom, of course, if you see Jesus on the cross.

At a time when the world was wagging the finger and accused Jesus of being the fool. Jesus Christ, says Paul, is the wisdom of God, which is utter foolishness to the world. But hang on. We were all fools too once. It's the way we come into this world, bent towards sin.

But we can call what God did in Jesus, sending Him to die for all the fools of the world on the cross because He died in your place and in my place. He hung there. He took our place. He took the place of fools. He got the suffering that fools deserve.

He got the death that you and I deserve. And if you see Him dying there on the cross for you, you will love Him. And this thing called the wisdom of God, the fear of God begins to live in you and to change you and to warm your heart towards Him so much so that you'll guard it, you'll fight for it because you'll love it. Love her. Love wisdom.

Cherish her. Embrace her. Get wisdom. That's the message of Proverbs 4. It's not enough just to study a bunch of rules.

You have to be passionate about wisdom. And the way to get passionate is to love Jesus, embrace Him, make Him number one in your life, and you can do all those things literally if you see Him dying on the cross in your place. I invite you to think about that more and more, to meditate on that. Let Him and His character burn into your heart, and you will get your heart back because there'll be nothing, no beautiful women, no great career, no prosperous business. Nothing will be as beautiful as Him. He will fill your heart, and you'll get your heart.

He is the living Word. This is the way of wisdom. Amen. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we thank You that as a father speaking to His children this morning, that You would help us to see this very seriously and all the more clearly as we turn our hearts towards You.

Lord God, help us to guard our hearts, to fight for wisdom, to love wisdom, to cherish wisdom, only because Jesus became a fool for us so we could have the beginnings of wisdom in this life. And Father, as we see Jesus walking and acting on this world, behaving and doing things in the Bible along the wise way, but then we see Him going to the cross. It's at that point that our own hearts melt. And we understand that His example of wisdom is more than an example. But through His sacrifice, He becomes a living word brought into our hearts, reshaping us, remaking us in the image of our Creator. Lord God, we pray that You'll make us each one wise in the way Jesus is wise, and we pray this together in His name. Amen.