Wisdom Calls Us To Practice
Proverbs 3:19-35 ·March 8, 2026· Joel Passmore
Part of: Proverbs, Wisdom Books
Pastor Joel Passmore continues the sermon series "Wisdom Calls" by showing that wisdom isn't meant to sit on a shelf; it must be lived out through generosity, trust, and integrity toward our neighbors.
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Good morning, new creation. It's so great to see you, great to worship with you, great to hear your voices as we sing to the Lord today together. It is a great day to praise the Lord. Amen.
Steadfast love never ceases. And I hope that today in this service you get many reminders of that, of where to put your hope and just how great of a hope that is.
We're preaching in a sermon series on Proverbs 1-9. And so far I've opened up the series with different comparisons at the beginning of a sermon. I've compared wisdom to putting oil on a cast iron pan and seasoning it. I've compared wisdom to playing basketball instead of just watching it. I've compared wisdom to the leaving and cleaving, the leaving and holding fast of marriage, leaving one thing and holding fast to another. This week I'm going to open by comparing wisdom to a vintage guitar.
Being a guitarist, I like to learn about vintage guitars. I like to see them when I can or at least read about them online. Especially like a lot of guitarists, I like to look at examples of some of the best of the best from the best eras of craftsmanship. There are certain periods of time when guitarists know some of the best instruments were built. So it's really fun to see like Martins from the 1930s or Telecasters from the 1950s, Stratocasters from the 60s.
These are the best of the best of these instruments. I see them come up in episodes of Antiques Roadshow or Pawn Stars. You see them listed online at like Reverb.com and things like that. And I like to click through the pictures and read the description. Daydream about buying them, but I don't have $40,000 nor would I spend it on that even if I had it. But there's a pattern to what I've noticed about a lot of these instruments. Many owners of these instruments inherited them from someone.
Inherited them from a parent or grandparent. And they've held on to them for years. They've treated them with care because they know that they're special. They know that they're valuable. They know the instrument's reputation. They know the quality. A lot of these owners, they can tell you all the specs of the guitar. Look at all the original parts that it has. Nothing's been replaced. Look, I even have the case that it came with. The things that came in the case originally.
They know the serial number. They know exactly when it was made. They know everything why this guitar is so special and so valuable. But many times, they've never played them. Because they can't play guitar. They've inherited them. And they're precious objects. They have value. So they treat them as precious and valuable. But they've never produced a sound out of them. And I just look at them and I think, what a shame. Just give them to me. And that instrument is made to be played.
Not sitting in a case. To own something that you know is really valuable and is capable of making beautiful and powerful music, but to not be able to do it yourself, that's a shame, right? Wisdom is like those vintage guitars. Possessing it is not enough, right? You might have it handed down from your parents. You might know that it's precious wisdom, that it's valuable, extremely valuable. But you have to play it. You've got to practice it. Otherwise, you will never get to personally experience the value, the beauty, the power of that wisdom.
You can't just recognize wisdom's value. You have to use it. Wisdom is not to be admired. Wisdom is not meant to be put on your bookshelf. Look at that beautiful piece of wisdom that my father, my mother, my grandmother gave to me. It's meant to be in your hands, in your life, making music, making a beautiful sound. So in this sermon series on Proverbs, Wisdom Calls, we're in chapters 1-9. And in the last few passages, we've already heard from a wise parent who has handed down wisdom to their child, like those vintage guitars.
But today, we're going to see together in chapter 3 how it's meant to be used. We're going to begin to talk about how is wisdom supposed to be used. What is it supposed to sound like? Not just look like. The first place is in our relationships with our neighbors. So let's turn to Proverbs 3. Let's see what the Lord has for us. Let's get ready to hold in our hands wisdom and be prepared to practice it in our lives.
This is the Word of God. Let's lean on it, rely on it, receive it eagerly. And let's believe, church, that He intends His Word to go forth with power and produce fruit. To overturn strongholds in you and in me and in the world. That's the power of the Word going forth. Let's believe that as we read and come to it together. Starting in verse 19. The Lord by wisdom founded the earth. By understanding, He established the heavens. By His knowledge, the deeps broke open and the clouds dropped down the dew.
My son, do not lose sight of these. Keep sound wisdom and discretion. And they will be life for your soul and adornment for your neck. Then you will walk on your way securely and your foot will not stumble. If you lie down, you will not be afraid. When you lie down, your sleep will be sweet. Do not be afraid of sudden terror or of the ruin of the wicked when it comes. For the Lord will be your confidence and will keep your foot from being caught.
Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due when it is in your power to do it. Do not say to your neighbor, go and come again. Tomorrow I will give it when you have it with you. Do not plan evil against your neighbor who dwells trustingly beside you. Do not contend with a man for no reason when he has done you no harm.
Do not envy a man of violence and do not choose any of his ways. For the devious person is an abomination to the Lord. But the upright are in his confidence. The Lord's curse is on the house of the wicked, but he blesses the dwelling of the righteous. Towards the scorners he is scornful, but to the humble he gives favor. The wise will inherit honor, but fools get disgrace. Pray with me.
Lord Jesus, help us. Unstop our ears. Unburden our hearts so that we hear eagerly your word with open hands. Lord, help us to see the places in our life where this word needs to touch down and produce change. And Lord, may that change be a change of direction, but also a change of intention. That we would intend, because of the working of your spirit in us, we would want and hope for you to be glorified further in us. As you change us and make us people that resemble you.
Lord, continue the work of salvation you have begun in us. In Jesus' name we pray. Wisdom calls us to practice. Wisdom calls us to practice. Now, the heart of this passage is verses 27 through 32. That's where we're given three ways to practice wisdom towards our neighbors. So that's the heart, but there is an important principle to set up first before we get there. Before anyone can be neighborly, you have to be secure. The instinct for self-preservation is too strong.
Protecting ourselves is too strong of an instinct to overcome and override with any command to do something for other people. So the first eight verses are going to address this. The security of wisdom. Before we get to the practice of wisdom, we have to talk about the security of wisdom. So the passage starts and it goes back. Back. No further back. Way back. All the way back to the beginning of the world. The creation of everything that we see.
At the beginning of time, God made something out of nothing. He made it by simply speaking, by the word of His power. But this passage points out something different than Genesis does. It says, the Lord by wisdom founded the earth. That doesn't mean that wisdom is some universal principle that God found that was before Him that He used. It's just a metaphor. It's saying that wisdom was His tool for fashioning the world. Just like we use a hammer for driving in nails or a crochet needle to make a scarf.
God used His wisdom. His wisdom. To make light and make land. To separate waters. To create plants and animals. To make men and women. By wisdom, God created life. And as we begin to explore the cosmos with our God-given abilities to reason, to think, to investigate and understand, we find that the world that we inhabit is constantly singing praise and bearing witness to its maker. The seed pattern that you see in a sunflower, the shape of a snail shell, and even the family tree of honeybees, they all reveal the same mathematical concept called Fibonacci's sequence.
So it's almost like math is the sheet music that God has given out to the insects and the plants, and they're the choir singing. And it doesn't matter whether we go as big as galaxies or we scale all the way down to atoms. We hear the same song being sung in the world. Physicist Paul Davies writes this, The laws of physics seem themselves to be the product of an exceedingly ingenious design. The force of gravity, the forces within atoms, even the distances between the sun and the earth, and the earth and the moon, each of these could not differ by even the smallest amount without life on this earth being impossible.
Look at God. There would be no life, no universe, without these things being finely tuned and set. Even the properties of water, its boiling point, its melting point, are precisely set for life to happen on this planet.
And speaking of water, that's what verse 20 talks about. Verse 20 talks about the water cycle. By his knowledge, the deep broke open, and the clouds dropped down the dew. It's amazing, isn't it, that water all the way out there, in oceans and lakes. Somehow it travels thousands of miles up in the sky and comes down to water our crops and fill our reservoirs. We know the science of all of this far more than the people who first read Proverbs, but science only tells us how, it doesn't tell us who.
God tells us, Mother Nature doesn't bring you the rain. I do. Mother Nature does not make the light in the day. Mother Nature does not make the seasons happen. Mother Nature does not produce food from the earth. God does all of that. There is no Mother Nature. There is only God, ruling the earth. By His wisdom, He created life and He sustains life. Planets orbit and rotate. Day and night cycles. Plants grow. DNA replicates and atoms bond. All in a predictable and harmonious way.
Not by accident, but by design. By wisdom, God created life and God sustains life. And it's this wisdom that we're called to follow. Do not lose sight of these. Keep sound wisdom and discretion. You young people don't know this, but there used to be a time when you wanted to go someplace with your friends and they would say, I'll lead the way. There was no GPS. They would start driving and you would do everything you could to keep up with them. And you would hope that they were conscientious about the fact that someone was following you because otherwise you would never get to that beach house you were going to, that campsite you were going to.
You had to see them. You had to follow them. That's the same way with God's wisdom. There is no other way to get where we want to go, where God wants to take us without us keeping our eyes on His wisdom and following Him. That's how important this is. There's no other way. They will be life for your soul like rain on a field where crops have been sown. The same wisdom, dear church, the same wisdom by which God created the earth and the whole universe and sustains life on it can touch down and impact your life.
Follow it. Hold fast to it. It will be life for your soul. That's a promise. This is why we have security. This is what I'm moving towards here. God's wisdom gives us security. You can walk on your way securely and your foot will not stumble. God's wisdom is not trivial knowledge to impress your friends. It's not letters after your name to get a fancy job. God's wisdom means real safety, real security in a very unsafe world. If you lie down, you will not be afraid.
Nothing ruins a good night's rest like anxiety. Am I right? It can wake you up in the middle of the night. But when wisdom that founded the world is fixed in your mind and running your life, your sleep will be sweet. God's wisdom is better than NyQuil. It's better than a glass of red wine. It's better than pills. That is how we get sleep that is sweet. When we are resting in the wisdom of God. And our lives are running according to the wisdom of God.
So do not be afraid of sudden terror or the ruin of the wicked. There's many exhortations in Scripture like this. Many times when God or His messengers appear to people and the first thing they say is, do not fear. Do not fear. He knows there is so much we could worry about. I fight it. You fight it all the time. That's true in every age, by the way. We might think that, oh, there's so much more to worry about now. You know, I don't know. I don't know much about history, but I think plenty of other people have had lots of stuff to worry about.
God is telling us to actively resist fear. Fight it. And fight it in part by keeping sound wisdom. The Lord will be your confidence. If His ways are strong enough to create the world and sustain the world, then they are certainly strong enough for your life, for your family, for your problems, for your work, for your heart.
So the author wants to give us security by pointing us to the wisdom of God. And now he transitions. Because we're secure, we can transition now and talk about the practice of wisdom. We're never going to do this unless we remember that we are secure in Christ. But once we are, we are called to practice it. Just like those vintage guitars, wisdom is meant to be practiced and used. But you can't practice wisdom in isolation.
This passage pivots at verse 27 and it gives us three ways to live wisely and all of them have to do with neighbor relations. It's important to see this is the first practical thing really that this book of Proverbs comes to. The very first way to live wisely is towards your neighbors.
The security we have in God obligates us to foster life among other people and in community. Now listen, these instructions, these three instructions, they're really basic. There's nothing earth shattering about this. Do good. Don't harm. Avoid evildoers. There you go. That's what they are. Three little, three groups of two things each and that's the three groupings. Do good. Don't harm. And avoid evildoers. The temptation, at least that I feel when I read this passage, is to read through them kind of quickly.
Be like, okay, I know this stuff. Just keep going. Give me something really good, God. But we're going to slow down just a little bit and try to understand them in terms of wisdom. Why would this be the things that God points us to first about wisdom? And I think we begin to learn something when we see them that way. Here's the first. Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due. Now, I don't know about you, but I would have expected it to say don't withhold good from those in need.
But you see how it phrases it from those to whom it is due. When a person is in need, they are owed some help from the community. That's what it's telling us. To help someone is not just an opportunity, it's an obligation. And we should see it that way. The help could be money, but it could also be accountability. It could be friendship. It could be counsel or correction or encouragement or prayer. It depends on what the need is. But they are due.
When a person is in need, they are due some help. So don't withhold good when it is in your power to do it. And that phrase too is insightful, isn't it? Security in God is a form of power. But the question is what are you going to do with it? What are you going to do with that power that you have? When you have some resources, you have something that could help somebody else.
And the Scripture says help and help quickly. Do not say to your neighbor, go and come again. Tomorrow I will give it when you have it with you. Lying to your neighbor is bad, but this is worse. This is being dismissive of the need while putting on a show of caring. It's hiding a callous heart with a facade of caring. This kind of deception is a poison pill to our character when we begin to go down that road. As the old saying goes, help which is long on the road is no help at all.
No one benefits when we do this kind of thing. But God's wisdom offers us a way out. And here it is. Giving quick and generous help teaches us how God responds to our need. Giving quick and generous help teaches us how God responds to our need. When Adam and Eve were naked and ashamed, God did not wait. He clothed them. He covered their shame and He promised them immediately that someday their offspring was going to defeat the serpent. The lying serpent.
When David was stuck in his self-deception about Bathsheba and Uriah, God sent Nathan in to convict him. Which was a mercy. Which was the help that David needed. When Peter was guilt-ridden about his denial, Jesus took him aside and restored him. When you and I need forgiveness, God never says come back tomorrow. He gives it to us right when we ask for it. Right when we need it. So we're called to love other people and help other people in the same way.
Here's the next set of instructions. Do not plan evil against your neighbor who dwells trustingly beside you. Now we're beginning to talk about taking advantage of people. When you live near someone, you see a lot about their life. Whether you want to or not. You know when they come and they go. You know when they're away on vacation. You know whether the dog that they have is a threat or just really loud.
Wisdom doesn't take advantage of this information for personal gain. I mean, just stop and think about everything you know about your neighbors that nobody else who doesn't live near them knows. That's a lot of information you could use to your advantage. If you wanted to, don't take advantage of the information that you have. Trust is essential in a healthy community. So wisdom promotes trust by using that information for good. Neighbors also know when a tree has fallen.
Neighbors know when you've lost power. When you've lost your job. Neighbors know when a dog gets loose. Nikki and I and the girls were walking last summer and we happened to notice a house on fire that we were able to, I mean, we just happened to be walking along.
Those moments of vulnerability are the time to do something. To do something good. To bring over a casserole. To offer comfort and prayer. To hop the fence and get the garden hose and start spraying it on the garage. To move towards other people in compassion with what you see and what you hear and what you know about them. They're living beside you trustingly. How are you going to use and steward that trust? And something else that fosters peace among neighbors is graciousness.
Do not contend with a man for no reason when he has done you no harm. Living near other people it gives us so many opportunities to bring accusations.
This is a warning against quarrelsomeness because wisdom values peace. When I was learning how to drive I don't think I've told the girls the story yet I was probably a year or two into driving. I know exactly where it happened. It was up in Richmond. I know exactly the intersection where it was happening. I was at a red light and listening to music and having a good time and then the light turned green and I put my foot on the gas. Problem was I was not the first one at the line so I just bam right into the car in front of me.
Just a total bonehead move right? The kind of thing that a distracted driver or a teenage driver can do sometimes. So here's what happened. The guy kind of like waved with his hand or something and we went through the intersection and we pulled into a parking lot of a strip mall and he got out and I got out and I was like oh man now what do I do? And he looks at his bumper and he's like you know you've been driving long and I was like no, no I haven't and he looks at his bumper and you know there's maybe a little scuff or something and he's like well listen you know this car is kind of old anyway have you learned something from this?
And I was like yeah I have and he goes okay well let's just move on and he gets in the car and he just you know that was it and I was like I don't even know if my parents know about that story I thought about this story because I heard recently from a friend of mine that somebody the church that he's at had a similar kind of you know auto accident similarly minor and they're getting sued for like $300,000 for all of these exaggerated claims of injury when there's no way that the injury happened in that kind of small situation right?
We live in a very brittle culture don't we? Very litigious hair trigger ready to sue other people into oblivion and what is that impulse it's just any minor infraction is just an opportunity any vulnerability is like aha I've got them now I'm going to use this to exploit to get everything I can but don't we all need some times where we learn our lesson but we don't have 10,000 times the consequences that we could otherwise I mean I really didn't do anything to this guy's bumper and now that I think about it it was a few years later that I was rear-ended by some kid and I did the same thing pulled off and he was all panicky and I looked at my bumper and I looked at my bumper don't don't don't we all need some times like that right don't we all want some opportunities given to us like that where we can learn without like being thrown into debtor's prison for the rest of our lives for something very very minor how do we get there except for graciousness and who's going to be the first one to offer graciousness that's my question for you will you be the first to offer graciousness that's what it's being called for here how we treat people who are vulnerable shows how much we believe in grace how we treat people who are vulnerable shows how much we believe in grace will you take a chance to be different from the world to promote trust to not take advantage when someone is in a vulnerable situation here's the last pair here it starts with this do not envy a man of violence well why
in the world would anyone envy a man of violence well I'll tell you why because in the near term people like this get what they want when a wicked person succeeds and God's way is taking longer to pan out than we would seems more desirable maybe I'll do that instead but there is a great danger in this envy is the first step of moral confusion and wisdom rejects the shortcut that selfishness and injustice seem to offer us the quicker path to get what we want envy is the first step in that direction but God says don't choose any of his ways don't emulate or admire anything about those who oppose God any part of their way of life no matter how good it looks the devious person is an abomination to the Lord no amount of prestige status wealth or influence is worth that on the other hand the upright are in his confidence it means free access to him speaking to him him listening and responding wisdom knows that this is far better a long time ago I was a little little kid I probably was like six or seven and we were on vacation somewhere and I was in a gift shop and the gift shop had these gemstones and it had this one bin where it was all these gemstones piled together and it was like a tag that was like you know each gemstone a dollar and I'm like running my hands through them and like trying to find something good and I pull it out and I hold it up and I'm like this is a gold nugget this is gold and I look at the price and I'm like it's a dollar someone's made a big mistake this is
gold in here I'm like already thinking about what I'm going to buy I'm so excited and I go over to my parents and I'm like look what I found it's only a dollar it's gold it's gold and they're like that's that's pyrite that's fool's gold but I was so excited about it but I didn't know it just looks shiny but it's not valuable at all listen wisdom wickedness offers you fool's gold and it might get you excited it might get your heart racing but closeness with God is the real treasure if I daydream about the ease and pleasure of evil don't let yourself do it you're just daydreaming about fool's gold there's no value there not only is it fake but in Christ you already have the real thing you have the treasure already so let's end briefly with the outcome of wisdom you've heard about how it so many choices opinions perspectives we we feel like we're living in a constant middle ground this passage ends with three verses and these three verses land with a thud in front of us they cut through all the noise these three verses presents us each one with a contrast between two outcomes these verses tell us that in the end there is no middle ground there is no gray area at the end of life there are only two outcomes if I put the contrast together one includes curse scorn disgrace the other blessing favor honor two very different outcomes no happy medium no middle ground one outcome belongs to the wicked the scorners the fools the other two the wise the righteous the humble these verses are
God's reality check for us in a world filled with many shades of gray in the end there are only two outcomes our decisions in this life matter and they matter eternally but listen these three verses are not just God's reality check they're also God's offer of rescue look at that middle verse of the three toward the scorners he is scornful but to the humble he gives favor in the New Testament this verse is quoted twice and it says God opposes the proud but gives grace to for help humble enough to receive it from someone who looked weak and puny who was mocked and rejected who suffered and died sometime after today's service I want you to read these last three verses again and I want you to think of Jesus on the cross he was disgraced he was scorned he endured and received the Lord's curse he did all that in your place so that you wouldn't have to the outcome that's listed in this verse he took it so that you could get the in in him the Lord will bless you in him the Lord will give you favor and in him you will inherit honor to you you you you you you you you