Wisdom Calls Us To Trust

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0:00amen and good morning and it's great to be with you all um my name is joel and i'm happy to be serving christ and serving you all as pastor here at new creation and um it is good to be in the lord's presence to see your faces to worship together it really it's a gift to be together um i think back to those uh awful covid days of not being around people and especially not being around people for worship. And that's just the worst. We were meant to be together. So thank you for putting a priority on the gathered worship service and for being together as God's people. It's really good. I want to start as we continue our sermon series on wisdom by connecting wisdom to an aspect of marriage. An aspect of marriage that if you're married you know about this.

0:56It's a challenging but an essential aspect of marriage. So if we go all the way back to Genesis 2, God crafts Eve out of Adam, and God brings her to Adam, and Adam is immediately smitten. He just, poetry comes out of his mouth. It's true. This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. He is so overjoyed to see her. The first marriage, the creation of a new institution, the most fundamental and important unit of society got created in Genesis 2.

1:40And to drive the point home, God's Word says this right after that moment. It says this. He just lied for it. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh. Now this seems like an odd insertion. Adam and Eve didn't have human parents to leave, right?

2:07But God is telling us something about marriage here. This verse is more than about moving out and enjoying yourselves on your honeymoon. It's more than that. Marriage forms a new unit. one that surpasses all prior ones including the unit between you and your parents.

2:30Leaving and holding fast or as it traditionally used to be called leaving and cleaving. Leaving and holding fast it means entering and establishing a new household together. Leaving doesn't mean abandoning your father and mother there still is a commandment to honor them but a decisive shift has taken place when you get married. Your spouse is now your chief confidant and counselor and ally and support. Number one, humanly speaking, number one. Everybody else, including your parents, falls down the list.

3:10Now working this out is difficult. It's iterative. It takes a lot of trying and stumbling and falling and trying again. I'm not going to ask for a show of hands. how many of you have gotten into a fight with your spouse about one of your relationships with your parents probably a lot of people in this room including, you're not married my daughter raises, something you want to tell me but your parents have gotten into fights about our relationship with our parents the health of your marriage depends on you working on this You working out this leaving and holding fast.

3:55My marriage and other marriages have proven that you cannot, in fact, improve on the hold fast part of marriage without also giving attention to what it means to let go. They both go together. You can't work on the holding fast without letting go. And so it is with wisdom. This is the analogy I'm making. So it is with wisdom. There's a leaving and cleaving if you're going to grow in wisdom. We're in a sermon series on Proverbs 1-9 called Wisdom Calls.

4:26Today is about trust, and trust is about leaving and cleaving. Leaving your former places of trust and holding fast to the Lord in trust. It's both. Trust is holding fast to God and letting go of other things that you would like to trust. So let's go to the Word of God and see from Proverbs 3 what it is that God has for us today. This is the Word of God. It's reliable.

5:01It's faithful because He's faithful. He never lies. And I want to remind you, there's lots of good in this passage. He comes to us for our good. He comes to us in truth and holiness, but He comes to us to bless us for our good. So let's come eagerly as children who want to be blessed. My son, do not forget my teaching. But let your heart keep my commandments. For length of days and years of life and peace they will add to you. Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you.

5:38Bind them around your neck. Write them on the tablet of your heart. So you will find favor and good success in the sight of God and man. trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make straight your paths be not wise in your own eyes fear the Lord and turn away from evil it will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones honor the Lord with your wealth and with the first fruits of all your produce then your barns will be filled with plenty and your vats will be bursting with wine my son do not despise the Lord's discipline or be weary of his reproof for the Lord reproves him whom he loves as a father the son in whom he delights blessed is the one who finds wisdom and the one who gets understanding for the gain from her is better than gain from silver and her profit better than gold she's more precious than jewels and nothing you desire can compare with her long life is in her right hand and in her left hand are riches and honor her ways are ways of pleasantness and all her paths are peace she is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her those who hold her fast are called blessed pray with me Father, Son, Holy Spirit as we come before you today we ask for you please to keep your word that when Your Word goes forth, it goes forth with power, spiritual power to change us.

7:27Holy Spirit working in us, would You please apply these things to our hearts, to our lives. Open up our eyes to see where we need to let go of some things and where we need to move into closer trust of You. And show us most of all the rich promises that You hold out for us. Help us to see You as our Father who loves us, who cares for us in all ways and in all things and at all times. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

8:03Wisdom calls us to trust. Everybody trusts something. There's no one that trusts nothing. In this passage, a father addresses a son and it pushes him to examine where his trust is right now and to shift it, put it on to the Lord. So he starts with this. He starts with this, don't let go. Don't let go. If you're anything like me, you need lots of reminders to make life work. There's things to do, there's places to be. There's only so much room in my head.

8:42I used to have a really great memory, no longer, no longer. It's not just facts and stories that I forget, But my task list and my appointments, even long-range deadlines, all of those things I used to remember really well. Now I walk into a room and I think, why did I come in here again?

9:04So thank goodness for reminders. And our lives are full of them. Calendar entries have timed alerts. They even know where I'm going, and then it calculates the distance and the time it's going to take, and it alerts me at just the right time, which I then snooze. pretending that I have more time. To-do lists are on our phones, on pieces of paper that we carry around. There's even Bluetooth GPS trackers that you can attach to your stuff so that you'll never lose them.

9:36You can make a siren sound if you lose track of your keys. We're forgetful people. There's nothing wrong with that. It's just the way we are. We're finite. Our brains don't always hold everything. the author of Proverbs 3 knows it my son do not forget my teaching but let your heart keep my commandments the wise parent has opened up God's storehouse of wisdom he's opened up the treasure box and he's handed that treasure to his child but he knows that people are forgetful so he says bind them around your neck write them on the tablet of your heart a cross necklace is beautiful but it's more precious to be adorned with the word of god around your neck a tattoo of a bible verse is really cool but more important is for his word to be written on our hearts right everyone puts in effort to remember things we all do it grocery lists homework assignments doctor's appointments picking someone up from the airport.

10:54Better not forget that one. We all know if we don't set reminders, we're going to forget. But have you, have I, put in as much effort to remember what God has said as we do what we need to get at the store?

11:14These four verses that start this passage are an exhortation. Don't let go of wisdom. Do everything you have to to remember it. Hold fast. Remember, don't let go. If you take seriously the fact that you don't want to waste your time when you go to the grocery store or come home and not get the thing you needed for dinner, if that's important to you, how much more important is to hide the Word of God in your heart so that you never forget that?

11:51But the parent knows what's coming next. The parent knows that it's not just about remembering the Word of God. One of the simple joys of my childhood was riding escalators. It was a simpler time.

12:09I like to come up to the escalator, let my parents get on, and put one foot on the escalator, grab the handrails, and then keep the other foot on the ground. And then you start to get stretched, and you get pulled.

12:29I'd try as long as I could to keep that one foot planted on the ground that's not moving, but you know you couldn't last forever. Eventually, you've just got to get on that escalator or something else worse probably.

12:45Wisdom is the same way. If you're going to take hold of God's Word, of God's wisdom, and you're not going to let it go, eventually you're going to start feeling a tug. You're going to feel that tug and you're going to realize, I've got to make a decision here. Either I let go of some things and hold on to God's Word, or I let go of God's Word. life is going to pull you in two different directions that's where the next eight verses come in don't let go of God's wisdom but do let go of some other things when I was a teenager I read in the Bible you can ask God for patience and I thought well if I ask Him for patience He might do something to make me grow in patience but then I read another passage if anyone lacks wisdom let him ask God and he will give.

13:42And I was like, hey, this is like a no-strings-attached kind of thing you can ask for. So I just prayed for wisdom. But that was foolish and simple and young because I did not think about this kind of passage. All the things I'd have to let go of if I was really going to take hold of wisdom.

14:03This middle part of this passage gives us three things. Three big things that we all like to keep hold of. that we need to let go of if we're going to really take hold of wisdom and apply it to our lives. Three things. Here's the first one. Let go of your understanding.

14:26Let go of your understanding. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. But to do that, do not lean on your own understanding. One reason why God's wisdom doesn't get through to us is that we already have our own beliefs in us about what's true and what's good, our own ideas about life and the world and ourselves.

14:57Imagine the doorbell rings and happy day, it's that new couch that you ordered that's being delivered, right? So you open up the door, you gladly let the delivery man inside, he drops off all these packages, and now you're trying to figure out where to put it. Well, if you go to your living room and you say, well, I can't give that away. That's my aunt's. And I can't get rid of that. I'm just too attached to that. Oh, we can't let that go. It was the first piece of furniture we ever bought.

15:35And we can't let that go. It might be valuable. If you keep on going that way, you ain't got no room for that new couch. You've got to be willing to get something out of that room to let it go to goodwill, to your friends, who just got an apartment and needs some furniture, you've got to let it go. You've got to get it out of that room. Otherwise, that couch, you know where it's going? It's going right back to the person who sent it to you. You're going to reject it.

16:13Even though you bought it, even though you asked for it and paid for it, it's going back because there's no room for it in your living room. My friends, that is our minds and our hearts. We have to be willing to see the things and say, you know what? that belief has got to go so I can make room for God's wisdom. We all have a mixture of beliefs, many of which have not come from God, but have come from our upbringing, our childhood experiences, our culture, from how we were treated, from who we hung out with, from our social media feed.

16:57These beliefs become the furniture in our minds that we can't bear to be without. not only do you want to keep it if you're anything like me you want to be around people who tell you that you should keep it that's called an echo chamber by the way and if you don't know it the people who design social media have designed your feed to be an echo chamber because we want to hear from people who agree with us that couch is fine you point at this armoire in your living room and you're like, I should get rid of this.

17:40There's no place for it. And your friend's like, no, no, no, it's cool. You should keep that thing. And then we think, yeah, maybe we should keep that thing.

17:54We want to be around people who reinforce the things we already believe. Because it is unsettling to introduce new ideas and to toss out old ones. That's why it's so important to not lean on your own understanding. The way out is to let God's Word overrule your thinking. Be not wise in your own eyes. Listen to God and change your mind.

18:21And the Proverbs regularly tell us the opposite of what we expect. Look at these three. 16.32 Whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty and he who rules his spirit than he who takes the city. Gentleness is stronger than brute force. If you had to choose between an hour and a gym, and an hour with the Lord becoming a more patient person, you better choose the second one. Because strength is of no avail unless you can control yourself. Get your anger under control.

19:06We think strength is powerful. It's mighty. We think gentleness is weak. That's a wrong belief. Get that furniture out of your mind. It's gone. Take it to goodwill. Let somebody else have it. Proverbs 11.12 Whoever belittles his neighbor lacks sense, but a man of understanding remains silent. A sharp tongue and a quick wit are not virtues. They are character flaws. But how much does our culture prize the quick barbed insult? The burn that really tears somebody else down.

19:49A man of understanding remains silent. Here's one more. 25-21. If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat. If he is thirsty, give him water to drink. The right way to handle a conflict and enemy isn't retaliation and it isn't ghosting. It's kindness.

20:20That inclination we all have for revenge, that's not of the Lord. That needs to be gotten out of our minds and our hearts and replaced with this kind of truth, this wisdom. Let the wisdom of God challenge and reshape your beliefs. Every one of them. It's scary and you are going to feel the ground shift beneath you. But what is happening is that you're learning to trust. You're learning to trust God instead of yourself.

20:54Some of the things that God's Word might challenge might be deeply held beliefs about who you are. About the way life and relationships work. But you can trust the Lord. as you embrace what He says, it will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones.

21:20My belief is that God is frustrated with me for sinning. That He's just about to lose His patience for the last time. That I've put my faith in and why can't I get my act together? But His Word tells me that my Savior didn't come for righteous people. He came for sinners who struggle like me and like you. So when my old self tries to tell me, Joel, you've done it again. You better hide from God.

21:56The wise Holy Spirit in me cries out, Abba, Father. And reminds me that I am an adopted child of God. And that the right move is to move towards Him, not away from Him. This is refreshment to my bones. Is it refreshment to your bones? Oh, it's good news. and it's not what we would tell ourselves. We do not lead ourselves into refreshment. God leads us there. Here's the second thing. All three of these are so tempting to go further on. We just don't have time.

22:37I'm going to cover everything that the author does here. Second thing is this. Let go of your security. Honor the Lord with your wealth. Wisdom won't get through to us if anything other than Jesus makes us secure. we'll never seek wisdom if we think that life is really found in our stuff and our bank accounts and our paychecks honor the Lord means treat him as weighty give him the lead voice in how you spend your money let his wisdom and his principles guide how you spend it how you use it God's trying to get our attention here wealth and material things are snares to us They become objects of adoration and sources of provision and that is a bad combination.

23:30We adore them and we think that it provides for us. That's the making of an idol right there. That's why God's wisdom comes out swinging. Give Him the first fruits of all your produce. Now this is a big ask. A farmer doesn't receive a steady paycheck, right? There's plenty of times in the year where he is working without any crop coming up. He's tilling and he's planting. No crop. He's watering. No crop. He's putting up fencing. No crop. Week after week after week.

24:07The first fruits is the first thing that comes up out of the ground. The first thing that reaches ripeness. That's what he's been looking forward to all these months after all his work.

24:22How hard is it to give that up? It's very hard. It's very hard. But this is exactly what the Proverbs call us to give to God. The first share. Not the leftovers. When we have guests over, as long as we have enough time, we don't serve them warmed up leftovers. We make something fresh for them.

24:54Here's the point. All your possessions belong to God. You are a caretaker, a manager. Thinking of Him first instead of last, it reminds you of that. So fix it in your mind. What would please the owner of these resources? He's made me manager. What does he have in mind? What vision does he have for how this would be stewarded and directed? But once again, there's a promise. This passage is just scattered with promises. Every other verse is a promise.

25:32Then your barns will be filled with plenty and your vats will be bursting with wine. You can't out-give God. I said that last week. He sees generosity. He sees righteous stewardship. He sees mercy. And He rewards it with more to manage. So let me amend what I said before. You can't out-give God, but you should try. You can't out-give God, but you should try. Go ahead and try to put him to the test. He literally asks you to put him to the test. Did you know that?

26:04He asks you to test him when it comes to how you spend your money. Look at Malachi 3.10. Bring the full tithe into the storehouse that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need. Put me to the test, He says. Go ahead and try. You can't outgive me, but try.

26:38You know why you can't outgive God? Because He gave His one and only beloved Son for us. That we could be forgiven and redeemed by faith in Him. And if that weren't enough, He gives us so much more. So much more. So lean in. Honor the Lord with your will. The first fruits.

27:03Here's the last one. Let go of your autonomy. My son, do not despise the Lord's discipline or be weary of His reproof. This might be the hardest one. We don't like authority. We don't like being corrected. So when the two things are together, watch out.

27:33But wisdom won't get through if we resist anything that He tries to teach us. Most kids want to learn how to walk. You've seen Oakley around. She's standing up. she's getting the hang of it. She wants to learn how to walk. Her parents don't have to push her to want to learn how to walk. But most things that children have to learn are things that they also don't want to learn. Like patience. And sharing. And gratitude. And serving. And diligence and forgiveness.

28:15They don't want to learn those things. None of us do. and that's where the discipline comes in. Proverbs 22.15 says this, Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him.

28:37Here's another one of those pieces of furniture that needs to get kicked out. People are basically good. Leave a child alone, and he or she will naturally choose the right thing. Read Proverbs.

28:50Watch a kid, yeah. Read Proverbs, watch a kid, and be like, oh, the Word of God is true. We adults are the same way. Folly is bound up in the hearts of adults as well. Discipline drives it far from us. Many things that we want to learn are things that we don't want to learn. And so God disciplines us. Some sins have a direct negative consequence. A hangover is God's discipline.

29:23Sometimes God gives a punishment for a sin. Moses didn't enter the promised land because he disobeyed the Lord. God's rebuke sometimes comes from the Holy Spirit inside of us. And other times it comes from somebody else that has the Holy Spirit who speaks into our folly like the prophet Nathan confronting David.

29:51And God also allows hardship into our life. Joseph's imprisonment. Paul's ailment. This too is discipline. No matter what form it takes, it's hard. It's difficult. We complain. We despair. God, how could you do this to me? I thought you loved me.

30:23The most important thing to know is this. His discipline is an act of love. The Lord reproves him whom he loves as a father, the son in whom he delights.

30:40I'm going to take an analogy that C.S. Lewis made and relate it to a friend of mine who's an artist. She's a professional artist. And she paints these beautiful pictures that she spent hours and hours on. And she sells them. She's like a legit professional artist. It's awesome. We went to school with her at VCU. But she also teaches a class at VCU for people who are just learning to draw. She does like three or four little paintings on the back of pieces of cardboard.

31:09She does like 45 minutes on a single one, puts it down. She uses it as a way to teach technique to her students. She has hundreds of these little drawings that she's made, right? She spends hardly any time on those because she doesn't care much about them. They're literally sitting in little bags. And she's like, you want some of these? Have them. I don't care. She's not doing that with the works that she's spending hours and hours and hours on and selling.

31:37Well, our preference, C.S. Lewis said, is for us to be like one of those simple paintings that God doesn't care much about. Stop spending so much time on me, God. Can't you just be done with me? But what we're asking for is to not be a masterpiece. We're asking for less love, not more love. When we ask Him to stop what He's doing on us. If those paintings could talk, C.S. Lewis said, they would groan at the paint being scraped off. At all the attention it's getting.

32:11The attention feels difficult. but it's because God is putting so much work into us making us more beautiful making us more like Him preparing us for an eternal weight of glory that surpasses all comparison don't ask for less love learn to see all of your circumstances through His fatherly love because if you belong to Him by faith in Christ then you are His adopted child and He always loves you.

32:49He never stops loving you. Everything in your life, including the hardship and the suffering, is accomplishing an eternal glorious purpose in you. He's making you a work of art.

33:10Look at your circumstances through His perfect fatherhood and remember your Savior is a son who obeyed His Father too and suffered. but he suffered in a way that none of you if you belong to Christ will ever have to he endured the wrath of God the forsakenness in that three hours of darkness on the cross in Christ you will never have to suffer in that way you will never experience that wrath your father will correct you discipline you, reprimand you but he will never condemn you because Jesus took that condemnation for you All He does for you now is for your good.

33:57To drive out sin, to help you treasure Him, to give you more life and more joy and more contentment in Him. So this is what this passage calls us to let go of. To leave behind so that we'll hold fast to wisdom. And then it concludes with six verses all about the good that wisdom brings to us. I'm going to sum it up like this. Be blessed. Be blessed. In the Bible, to be blessed is not merely to be fortunate, to be comfortable, to be happy. It's much weightier than that.

34:34To be blessed is for everything to be made right. Everything in your life and your heart to be made and working as it should. And it comes from being reconciled and in fellowship with God. These last six verses, this is what wisdom invites us into. It's the life and it's the good that all of us crave. The verses begin and end with the word blessed.

35:03I'm not going to describe it. I'm not going to read it for you again. What I'm going to do is just encourage you to read it again. Read the last six verses of this passage on your own. Read it knowing that God does not lie. God does not make false promises. Read it reflecting on your own desires and your own hopes. Read it asking God to help you press in. Read it and ask Him to show you what you need to let go of so that you trust Him more. Read it and believe that He will answer.

35:45That He will be faithful. The last verse of this passage, it compares wisdom to a tree of life. There was a tree of life in the Garden of Eden. Adam was kept from it after he sinned. the tree is mentioned again in revelation john sees it beside a river that flows from the throne of god he sees this tree as fruitful and the leaves of that tree revelation says are for the healing of the nations in between genesis and revelation sits proverbs and again the tree of life is mentioned. And it's being offered to you.

36:27Come and sit under this tree. Eat of its fruit. Proverbs is calling you. God is calling you. As we humble ourselves to receive the wisdom of God, the Word of God, the salvation of God in Jesus Christ, we are fed from that tree and we are blessed with eternal life.