Wisdom's Worldview

By steadfast love and faithfulness, iniquity is atoned for. And by the fear of the Lord, one turns away from evil. And finally, Proverbs 22:4. The reward for humility and fear of the Lord is riches and honour and life. This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God. And thank you, Rob, for reading that for us. Well, let me just start by asking you a question. I wonder if you can recall how many login credentials you have, how many passwords that you have. A decade ago, apparently, was about 25.

These days, the average Aussie has around 120. We live in a complex digital world. There are so many logins and passwords and memberships and subscriptions to remember, and there are different ways that people have dealt with this complexity. Some of them have just come up with a really memorable password. So I'm hoping this isn't any of you here, but apparently, the top four passwords when I did a Google search are these.

Number one is 123456. The second most popular is 123456789. The third is 12345678. And the fourth, maybe you can guess, is password. Two in three Aussies reuse the same password because there are just too many to remember.

Now our tech guru, Mara, will be horrified if you're doing that. So he would say, please stop. Use multi factor authentication. Use different, anyway, this is an IT speech. But the point is, we live in a complex digital world, but it's not just complex because we've gone digital.

There's all sorts of complexities built into life even before the digital technology existed. There's parenting. There's marriage dynamics. There's raising children. There's career and choosing a vocation.

There's conflict management. There's choosing friends. There's managing money. There are so many complexities to life that we need wisdom to deal with. And my question is, is there a skilful way to navigate life?

Is there a good and effective and wise way to deal with these earthly realities that are part of our everyday life? Well, the answer of the Bible is that there is. There is a skilful way to live life, and this is what the Bible or book of Proverbs especially calls wisdom. You see, the book of Proverbs assumes that there is a warp and a woof to reality, that God has designed reality, and because He has stitched it together, there's a particular order and way of doing things which we can observe and learn and grow wise in life. We all need wisdom, whether you've got grey hair or whether it's your first time in church, sunova, wherever you are at, we all need to grow in wisdom.

And so we're spending the next seven weeks as a church in the book of Proverbs in this series we've called Proverbs, Sage Advice for a Skilful Life. So a sage is a wise person, sage advice for a skilful life. And Proverbs was written by a number of sages, mostly by Solomon, but there are a couple of other authors listed towards the end like King Lemuel, I think his mother maybe, and Agur in Proverbs 30. So there's a couple of different authors, but it's mostly written by Solomon, who was called the wisest man on earth in the Old Testament. So the book of Proverbs is kind of like this sage sitting down with us and sharing with you their observations about how life works and how to live life well and skilfully in God's world.

Now just a few things that's helpful to know about this book. It's got a very obvious kind of half to it. So the Proverbs chapters 1 to 9 are more like little longer discourses about wisdom and the way of wisdom versus the way of folly, and it really sets us up about how to read the book well. And then chapters 10 to 31, the rest of the book, are what we normally think about when it comes to Proverbs. Lots of short, pithy little sayings that are packed with insight.

And that's why the Bible readings throughout this series are gonna be picking up lots of different sayings, because those chapters 9 to 31, for the most part, they're not organised by neat categories. They almost seem random. Just proverb after proverb that elicit out, that we're to meditate on and learn about the wisdom of God for everyday living. The other thing to say about Proverbs is that these little pithy sayings, they're not rock solid prophecies. They're not saying, if you do this, God will definitely do this.

They're more like general wisdom for us. Proverbs, it's a little bit like our English proverbs outside of the Bible. So we've got proverbs like many hands make light work. That's generally true. At a working bee, that's a helpful proverb to pull out, but it's not helpful to pull that out in the midst of open heart surgery.

Running into the theatre and saying, many hands make light work, let me jump in there and help you out, surgeon. No, that will make a mess of things. See, proverbs actually require some skill to know when to apply them as well, and they're generally true insights for life. That's why Proverbs isn't the only wisdom book of the Bible. We have other wisdom books like Job and Ecclesiastes that show us when life doesn't go well, show us when the righteous don't prosper, and so on and so forth.

So Proverbs, in the book of Proverbs, they're generally true pieces of wisdom that need to be applied well, but they're not these prophecies. Like the most infamous is train up a child in the way they should go and when they are old, they will not depart from it, and some people feel like a failure if their kids don't end up leading a godly life, and they think, well, like, that was a promise and if I train, I didn't train them up well enough because they're not godly now. Well, actually, you can be a godly parent and raise them up, but it's the Lord who has the ultimate control over their heart and their destiny. So they're proverbs, not prophecies. A Spanish writer, Miguel de Cervantes, I think that's how you say it.

Anyway, he lived in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and he once called proverbs short sentences dictated by long and sage experience. I love that. Short sentences dictated by long and sage experience. The proverbs that we have even just in our English literature, they've come from people who have observed life, they've had experience, they've had failures, and they've observed how things work well. Like when you're in a heated argument, the book of Proverbs would say that a gentle answer can calm that argument down.

There's different ways that the book of Proverbs counsels us about how to live life well. Anyway, there's a lot more introductory material in the series guide that we've created for the series, so I'll ask Jordan to hand that out to anyone who wants one. Sorry, I didn't get them to you before the service, but we'll hand them out now. A bunch of helpful introductory information on what the book's about, genre, how to read it well are in this little series guide, plus a number of other things. There's a Bible reading guide you can use to meditate in the book of Proverbs during the next seven weeks.

There's also a digital bookstore that we have as a church, so one of the bookshops, it's a reformed evangelical kind of bookshop called Wandering Bookseller. They've done a little digital bookstore for us. So there's a link in there where you can see all the books that I've recommended for the series. So if you particularly want to delve more into parenting, you can not only meditate in the book of Proverbs, but you can also buy a book on parenting as well. So I commend those different resources too.

You might want to have a read through the booklet sometime after the service today. So seven weeks in the book of Proverbs. We're gonna be covering topics like wisdom for money, wisdom for family, wisdom for friendships, wisdom for work. But before we go to our favourite topics, we need to understand where wisdom begins. There's a square one for wisdom.

The book of Proverbs tells us there is a starting point for our quest, a way of understanding reality and relating to God that is essential if you're going to become a wise person. And that's why I've called the sermon Wisdom's Worldview, because there's a worldview, a way of understanding reality and relating to God that is required if you're going to even begin on this path which leads to wisdom. So let's jump in to this topic by asking three questions, and the first one is this, what is wisdom's worldview? Well, Proverbs 9:10 says, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight. Now first of all, let's just define what wisdom means according to Proverbs.

So the Hebrew word here is the word chokhmah, which can mean technical skill, aptitude, experience, good sense, wisdom. In First Kings, this word chokhmah is used to describe a craftsman called Hiram. First Kings 7 says, and he was, Hiram was full of wisdom, understanding and skill for making any work in bronze. He came to King Solomon and did all his work. Hiram was a wise craftsman.

You see, wisdom or chokhmah is not so much IQ, it's not so much the ability to retain lots of information, it's skill for life, it's craftsmanship at life, it's knowing the art of living in God's world. But don't be deceived into thinking that you can be wise without God, that just because you're a craftsman or you know how to work well or manage money well means that you're automatically wise. If you don't love God, then the Bible says that ultimately you're a fool. I mean, think about the serpent in the Garden of Eden in Genesis 3. The serpent was the craftiest creature.

He was clever. He tricked Adam and Eve into doing what they shouldn't have done, but was he wise to reject God and to take humanity into rebellion against God? Well, we know that at the end of the story, the serpent will be thrown into the eternal hell of fire for the rest of his life forever. It was a very foolish thing to go against God, even though he's crafty and clever. This is why the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

One scholar says, fear of Yahweh is the first step, square one, in the quest for a meaningful existence. Why is it square one? Because God is the one who has created existence. He is the one who has stitched the fabric of reality together. Why do we live in a world that generally operates by different laws and principles?

We don't live in this chaotic world where rabbits literally pop out of hats all the time, and things don't make sense, and laws of the universe change. We actually live in a world where we have laws like gravity. If I drop something, it's always going to fall. We have an orderly universe that we live in, and we also can observe the way relationships work, the way work works, the way wealth building works, and begin to understand principles and ways that, generally speaking, all things being equal, that we can do those things and pursue those things well. The reason that life works like that is because there is a creator and a designer.

God is the one who has stitched the fabric of reality. He owns it. He has set up its laws and parameters. So even if you're clever with money, if you reject the lawmaker, the judge of the universe, all of your life's work, all your skill and insight will be useless when you face the judgement seat of God. And this is why the preacher of Ecclesiastes says at the end of the book, throughout the book, talks about how death just undermines everything.

It's kind of depressing. So he says at the end, the end of the matter, all has been heard, in chapter 12, fear God and keep His commandments for this is the whole duty of man, for God will bring every deed into judgement with every secret thing, whether good or evil. So you can be really clever with money, you can be great at work, you can be really good at making friends, but if you don't fear God, if you don't have a right relationship with God, it's all useless in the end when He brings all things into judgement. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, brings us into right relationship with the maker of reality, and also we get to learn from the one who designed reality. We can short circuit the process, so to speak.

Instead of trying to figure out ourselves, we can go to God's word, the book of Proverbs, and begin to learn from God's word how to live wisely in His world. I love how Ray Ortlund, a pastor in America says, our search for reality can go wrong not only because of miscalculations along the way, but also because of one grand blunder at the start, leaving God out and making ourselves the judges of everything. But it can be extremely painful to learn the fear of the Lord. It is death to our narcissistic egos and self assured opinions. But we do not change for the better by turning inward.

We change as we turn outward and upward to the Lord with an awakened sense of His sheer reality, His moral beauty, His eternal grandeur, infinitely above us but relevant to us. Our true crisis is not informational, but relational. I actually think we'll discover that in this information age with AI increasing that even more. The human problem's not gonna be solved with more information. We need a right relationship with God who can deal with our deepest problem.

Our true crisis is not informational, but relational. It is He, the risen and living Lord Jesus Christ, to whom we must pay close attention if we are ever going to learn anything. That means we must forsake the fool within named self decisively and endlessly. And I think here's a beautiful description of what the fear of the Lord is there, because we'll need to define that. He says that we should turn outward and upward to the Lord with an awakened sense of a sheer reality, moral beauty, eternal grandeur, infinitely above us, but relevant to us.

I love that. I think that's one way of defining what the fear of the Lord is. The worldview of wisdom, square one, is the fear of the Lord. Now like Tony said earlier, the fear of the Lord doesn't mean being afraid and running away from Him, fearing that we're going to be harmed by Him. Most Christians know the verse in First John 4 where it says, there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.

So a lot of Christians get confused about this because we're like, well, isn't that a bad thing? Well, First John 4 is talking about a different kind of fear. It's not talking about the fear of the Lord there. Fear of the Lord is a New Testament Christian way of relating to God as well. It's talking about the fear of punishment there.

If you're God's child, you shouldn't be, and you've been justified by grace through Jesus, you shouldn't still be fearing punishment from Him all the time. It's not the right way to relate to Him. Perfect love casts out that. The perfect love of Jesus demonstrated the cross should end that. There's actually two kinds of fears in the Bible, and if you want to delve into this a little bit more, I want to recommend to you Michael Reeves' book called What Does It Mean to Fear the Lord?

Great little book you can purchase and read through if you'd like. And I'm pretty sure I read it a couple of years ago, and I'm pretty sure he goes into this same verse I'm going to take you into now in Exodus 20, where it's a sort of a keystone passage for understanding the fear of the Lord, because there are two types of fears in this passage. One is wrong and one is the fear of the Lord, the godly fear that we want. And this will help us kind of define what the fear of the Lord is a bit more. So after God gives the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20, we read this, verse 18.

Now when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the people were afraid and trembled. And they stood far off and said to Moses, you speak to us and we will listen, but do not let God speak to us lest we die. Moses said to the people, do not fear, for God has come to test you that the fear of Him may be before you, that you may not sin. So don't fear, and God's tested you so that you might fear. So what's going on here? What's Moses talking about?

Verse 21. The people stood far off while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was. See, the fear of the Lord, the two words for fear used in this passage are virtually the same. It's yare and yirah in Hebrew. They're basically the same word almost.

If you look them up in a Hebrew dictionary, it's not going to help you. They both just mean fear. They mean being afraid. We actually need to look at the biblical stories and understand, okay, well, what kind of fear is good and why is it good? The first one that Moses says do not fear is illustrated by the people.

They're terrified of God, and they actually want to draw away from God and say, Moses, you speak. We don't wanna be near Him. The second type of fear is illustrated by Moses who actually walks into this dark cloud that's before them. He actually draws near to God. The fear of the Lord, it is fear, it's a reverence for God, it doesn't make Him tame, but it's more of like a trembling delight in Him.

It's an awe for Him. It is infinite holiness that He is not our equal. He is without rival. We cannot match Him, and yet He is deeply good and gracious and someone that we love to look at and want to know. Psalm 130:4 says, but with You, God, there is forgiveness that You may be feared.

If fear means fear of punishment, why is it coming up in this verse? It's talking about the fear of the Lord. The fear of the Lord is respect for God and His awesome power, but also gratitude for forgiveness and mercy. I love the way a book written by a Scottish novelist, I think at the beginning of last century, it's called The Wind in the Willows. I love how it illustrates these two characters that come into the presence of God in the book, and it's a beautiful picture of what the fear of the Lord is.

So at one stage, Rat and Mole, two characters in the book, they stumble into the presence of God, and this is what Kenneth Grahame writes, suddenly the Mole felt a great awe fall upon him, an awe that turned his muscles to water, bowed his head and rooted his feet to the ground. It was no panic terror. Indeed, he felt wonderfully at peace and happy, but it was an awe that smote and held him, and he knew it could only mean that some august presence was very, very near. Rat, he found breath to whisper, shaking. Are you afraid?

Afraid? Murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable love. Afraid of Him? Oh, never, never. And yet and yet, O Mole, I am afraid.

Then the two animals crouching to the earth bowed their heads and did worship. I love that picture. It's so beautiful. It's like, yeah, He's not this tame little puppy dog. I am kind of afraid, but I'm not.

I just wanna, I love this being. This is where wisdom begins. It's the fear of Yahweh. And remember, it's a way of relating to God that makes you want to draw near to Him. This is perhaps why we see this parallelism in chapter 9 verse 10, where the proverb says, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.

So this is a feature of Hebrew poetry. John Westendorf actually talked about in the sermon last week. It's called parallelism where the second line intensifies or explains the first line. So what's parallel here is the fear of the Lord and the knowledge of the Holy One. They're parallel ideas.

To fear God is to know the Holy One. To fear God is to draw near to God and to know God. It's almost the same thing. It's a way of being and knowing God we can embrace moment by moment every single day. Proverbs 23 says, but continue in the fear of the Lord all the day.

And this comes right down to everyday earthly reality. So when you're in the office this week and you're writing an email, and maybe it's a, maybe you've just received a bad email. You don't like it. You're tempted to just shoot something back. Stop.

Remember the Spirit of the Lord is in you. God's presence is with you. He's the judge of all things. Everything be called to account one day. Cultivate the fear of the Lord, and then compose the email.

And I guarantee you, if you're composing an email in the fear of the Lord, you're going to do it more wisely than not. You're probably not going to be a keyboard warrior that shoots back something passive aggressive. Right? You're probably going to do it wisely because you're conscious of God in that moment. The fear of the Lord is something we can cultivate and continue all the day long.

The fear of the Lord is where it all begins. It's square one. It's the worldview that we need if we're going to follow the path of wisdom. But the book of Proverbs doesn't just tell us to fear the Lord, it also holds out the carrot, so to speak. Rather than using a stick, it holds out the carrot and says, here's the rewards of fearing the Lord.

Here's some reasons why it's good to fear the Lord, you should pursue this. So let's look at those next. What rewards come from this worldview? I don't know if you've heard of the longevity movement these days, but there are a group of people out there who are very passionate about being healthy and seeking out ways to increase their lives so that they can live as well as they can for as long as they can. And it's popularised by different celebrities like Chris Hemsworth, who's in a documentary called Limitless, and in this documentary, he tests his body and pushes himself to new limits to try to stop the disease of aging.

And people are looking for this reward of longevity. But I don't know how many longevity influencers actually know that God promises longevity in a sense. Proverbs 10:27 says, the fear of the Lord prolongs life, but the years of the wicked will be short. One of the rewards Proverbs puts before us for the fear of the Lord is longevity. Now you might want to spiritualise that and say, yes, it's probably talking about eternal life, but the book of Proverbs is pretty practical and earthy.

It's talking about just, the word life there in that verse, it can be translated as days. It's harder to spiritualise that. He prolongs our days. The fear of the Lord prolongs days. Right?

It's talking about physical life. It's talking about longevity. Tremper Longman is a great scholar on the book of Proverbs. He says everything being equal, so he's prefacing this. Remember, these aren't prophecies that if you do this, you will always get this.

Everything being equal, generally speaking, this is the way that wisdom goes, living in a way that conforms to God's will results in a longer life. After all, such a one lives in conformity with the way God set up the world at creation. The Harvard Nurses' Health Study followed nearly 75,000 women for sixteen years and found that those attending religious services more than once a week had a thirty three percent lower risk of dying during that period than those who never attended. Really interesting. We can't say that going to church was definitely the cause here, but it's still an interesting finding.

Whatever the cause, Proverbs teaches that the fear of the Lord prolongs life. That's one of the rewards of this worldview. Another reward that Proverbs offers us comes in verse 26 of chapter 14. In the fear of the Lord, one has strong confidence, and his children will have a refuge. You see, if you fear the God who controls everything, then you don't need to fear anything else.

If God is for us, who can be against us? Paul says in Romans 8, when he's just overwhelmed by the goodness and the promises of God. I love how C. S. Lewis illustrates spiritual realities in his Narnia series, and the book Prince Caspian.

There's a point where Caspian and the Narnians, they're being surrounded by this Telmarine army, and all hope seems to be lost, but then they hear that Aslan is coming to help them. And all of a sudden, their confidence just surges. They realise if Aslan's going to come, we can win this thing. This is no problem for the one who can swallow nations whole. You see, and that's a picture of what the fear of the Lord does for us.

When you fear the Lord and you know that Jesus is in your corner, it gives you a strong confidence, and as you teach your children to fear the Lord and know Jesus as well, it gives them a place of refuge for the rest of their lives to hide in when everything else around them seems to be shaking. And the fear of the Lord is the promise of long life, of strong confidence, and also riches and honour. Proverbs 22:4 says, the reward for humility and fear of the Lord is riches and honour and life. Now don't spiritualise this. It is talking about material wealth.

Generally speaking, if you walk in the fear of the Lord and you grow in wisdom and insight and you learn from God, the book of Proverbs has a fair bit to say about how to manage money, and we'll look at that in one of the weeks. If you follow the wisdom of the book of Proverbs, generally speaking, you'll learn how to manage and steward money wisely. You won't be squandering it on sports bets and the lotto and casinos and little get rich quick schemes. You'll be gathering it slowly, putting it in wise, longer term, slower, reliable investments, and you'll gather it little by little, the book of Proverbs says. So generally speaking, the wisdom of Proverbs leads to the building of wealth.

You'll slowly prosper, you'll be honoured by others, and you'll grow the money God has entrusted to you. But doesn't that sound a little bit like the prosperity gospel? Some of you know what that is, that the prosperity gospel is this teaching out there, it's a heresy, it's a corruption of the gospel that tells you if God's favour is on you, you will be healthy and wealthy. That Jesus didn't just die to forgive you for your sins, but He also died to set you free from poverty, and so if you have faith in Him and you claim His promises by faith, you will be healthy and you will be wealthy. It is a sure sign that God's favour is on your life, and it's typically promoted by televangelists, some of the American TV preachers and so on, typically.

Is that what Proverbs is teaching here? It says the reward for the fear of the Lord is riches. Well, the problem is, again, that these proverbs, they're not prophecies. We all probably know godly people who have had financial difficulties, who love God and who haven't ended up rich. Proverbs 15:16 also says, better is a little with the fear of the Lord than great treasure and trouble with it.

Tremper Longman, that scholar I mentioned before, he says Proverbs affirms both the value of the fear of Yahweh and the value of wealth. So wealth isn't actually a bad thing. But if a choice must be made, then there is no question but that the fear of Yahweh is much more valuable. In other words, though the book often suggests that wealth is the reward of the wise, it also makes it clear that sometimes one must choose between the fear of Yahweh and of wealth. So some godly people might choose to be missionaries and give up everything they have in their hope of building wealth in a Western country with lots of opportunities to share the gospel and spend their life for Jesus, and that's a wise person.

The Bible doesn't condemn money, so much to speak, but it condemns the love of money. Money can be a blessing, but it can also be a curse depending on what's going on in your heart. And a truly wise person won't chase head after heel after money, they'll chase head after heel after God. And if God chooses to entrust them with money, wonderful. If not, wonderful, because they recognise that He is far better than money.

Anyway, we'll have a whole week devoted to wisdom on money later in this series. But money, wealth, along with honour, longevity, and confidence are some of the rewards that Proverbs puts before us. Now let's finish by asking one more question. What is the evidence of this worldview? How do you know that you're walking in the fear of the Lord or that you're dealing with someone else who's walking in the fear of the Lord? How do you know that they're a godly person?

The prosperity gospel teaching would say, if they're wealthy and healthy, they probably are. But we already know that Proverbs says sometimes we've got to choose between those things, and that's not right. Sometimes a godly person will be destitute. What's a more reliable sign that someone's walking in the fear of the Lord? Well, let's take a look at this with our last question.

What is the evidence of this worldview? Proverbs 14:2 says, whoever walks in uprightness fears the Lord, but he who is devious in his ways despises Him. That's a much better sign, someone who walks in integrity, in righteousness, and justice, seeking the good of the vulnerable and others, they are someone who fears the Lord, who knows that every deed of theirs will be brought into judgement one day. There is no such thing as a wise, wicked person. See, wisdom in the book of Proverbs is tied up with morality.

It's tied up with righteousness. There's no such thing as a wise, wicked person. You can be clever and skilful, but if you're mistreating others, you're a fool. Jules Zablonsky is a successful artist and wealthy elite in a series called Black Rabbit. He's a craftsman, he's skilful, but he's wicked.

He preys on younger women through his wealth and status. He's a wicked fool who gets himself into a lot of trouble through his foolish choices, even though he's skilful at his profession. There is no such thing as a wise, wicked person, no matter how skilful they are, and the way of wickedness always ends in destruction. Proverbs 16:6 says, by the fear of the Lord, one turns away from evil. Fearing God actually helps us live more righteously, more uprightly.

Why? Because the power to turn away from evil comes from a superior trembling delight in God. It's what Thomas Chalmers called the expulsive power of a new affection. See, generally speaking, the reason we wrestle with sin is because we think it's desirable. We are greedy because we think having more money or having an extra ice cream will make us feel happier.

Right? We sin because we think it's desirable. So the way to defeat sin is not so much by gritting your truth and trying harder, gritting your teeth, it's discovering the superior beauty and satisfying goodness of God in the fear of the Lord. The wrestle with sin is driven out by the expulsive power of a new affection, a greater affection for the living God. We don't so much will our way into righteousness as we want our way into righteousness.

By the fear of the Lord, one turns away from evil, by a trembling delight in Him. Now the problem is, for all of us, is we don't always tremble before God. How can we become wise if we don't even fear God sometimes? Sometimes I'm not even conscious of God's beauty and glory and grandeur. I'm not always walking in that.

I'm not sure if it's realistic to put that pressure on ourselves, we're constantly in that space. So how can I become a wise person if I can't do that very well? Well, ultimately, we don't will our way into wisdom. Wisdom is ultimately a gift from above. You see, there's only one person who ever walked perfectly in the fear of the Lord, and that's Jesus.

Did you know that Jesus is the wisest person who ever lived? He's wiser than Aristotle and Socrates and the tech gurus of our age, and He's wiser than all of them. He is a sage. Isaiah 11 prophesied of Jesus that the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord, and His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. You see, when Jesus walked this earth, He delighted in the fear of the Lord and relating to His Father in that way.

The spirit of the fear of the Lord rested on Jesus, the spirit of wisdom and understanding and insight. And it's the very spirit that God promised to give His people as well. God promised this in the Old Testament. Remember, because of our sinfulness, we cannot ultimately will our way into wisdom because our sense of God's grandeur is dulled by our sin. Wisdom is ultimately a gift from above.

But the good news is that God Himself promised that He would pour down His Spirit from above into His people, to awaken us to the beauty and the grandeur of God again. We see this in Old Testament prophecies like Ezekiel 11 where God says, and I will give them one heart and a new spirit I will put within them. It's the Spirit who gives us wisdom. It's the Spirit who leads us into the fear of the Lord. Look at how God puts it in Jeremiah 32.

He says, I will give them one heart and one way that they may fear Me forever for their own good and the good of their children after them. I will make with them an everlasting covenant that I will not turn away from doing good to them, and I will put the fear of Me in their hearts that they may not turn from Me. What a wonderful promise. God says He will do it. God says He will do what we cannot do for ourselves.

And the spirit of wisdom and the fear of God rested upon Jesus when He walked this earth. But Jesus didn't fulfil that promise immediately. When His ministry began, He didn't pour out the Spirit on His people straight away. We were too unclean for God's Spirit to dwell in us. We were too corrupt to have something so holy live in us.

So Jesus, walking in the fear of the Lord, obeyed the plan of His Father. He submitted to the upside down wisdom of the cross, submitting to what looked like shameful defeat to cleanse us from our sin, to make us a dwelling place for the Spirit. See, Jesus cleansed and purified His people at the cross by giving Himself over to the punishment our sins deserve. The perfect spotless Christ died like a foul corrupt evildoer because He took all the sin of His people upon Himself. And how did God apply Jesus' sacrifice to us?

How did He cleanse us? It wasn't that He just got out some Excel spreadsheet and deleted the sins off our page and put it onto Jesus'. It's actually far more organic than that. Jesus' death to sin becomes our death to sin through the Spirit. See, the Spirit unites us to Christ so that what happened to Him is what happened to us.

Our judgement already took place at the cross for everything, every sin we've ever committed and all that we're ashamed of. And after ascending to heaven, Jesus poured out His promised Spirit upon His people. We see this in the book of Acts. Don't think the fear of the Lord is just an Old Testament thing. It's in the New Testament as well.

Look at how the Spirit of God transformed God's people in the book of Acts. It says in chapter 9, so the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up, and walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied. This is where wisdom begins. Wisdom starts with a worldview that trembles with holy fear before the God who has designed reality, who can teach us how it works, who will judge all things, and ultimately, even further than that, it begins with God graciously gifting us the spirit of wisdom. Ultimately, the fear of the Lord and the wisdom that grows from there are gifts from the Spirit.

The same Spirit that rested upon Jesus now dwells within us. If your trust is in Christ, the Spirit of God is in you. And the Spirit of God leads us to fear God with holy delight and teaches us about the way of wisdom. So let's finish by praying and thanking God for giving us His Spirit and asking the Spirit to keep us in the fear of the Lord and to lead us into wisdom as we go through this series together. Let's pray.

Father, we thank You that You have taken care of everything. Thank You that You are good and gracious, holy and awesome. Thank You for sending Jesus to cleanse us for our sin. Thank You for sending the Spirit as a gift. Thank You, Holy Spirit, that You dwell in us, and we ask for more of You, more of Your influence and presence.

We thank You that You are the Spirit of wisdom, that You are our counsellor and guide, and we ask You to make us a people of wisdom. Make us a people of depth and insight and skill. We pray, Lord, that we would be such a blessing to one another as we help each other navigate the complexities of life. We pray, Lord, that people from the Gold Coast will enter these doors and realise that there is something profound about the people here, not because we're any good, but because Jesus is good, because Jesus is doing a work among us. Let Your kingdom come and Your will be done among us, Lord Jesus, and let the blessings of Your kindness flow out into our city.

We pray this in Your name. Amen.