True Wisdom (Proverbs 1:7) | Louis Azuma

Speaker: In your Bible, turn over to the Book of Proverbs.

My lovely wife made this cool graphic for us.

It's bright and summery and all that.

But, uh, the Book of Proverbs.

Old Testament, right?

So right after Psalms.

And if you don't know what a proverb is, right, a proverb is

something kinda like, um, birds of a feather flock together, right?

Or, uh, the early bird gets the worm.

I don't know why the first two I thought of were about birds.

But it's like a short little saying.

And that's what a lot of the Book of Proverbs is.

It's short little sayings that are God's wisdom to help people like us live life.

Um, but the first part of the Book of Proverbs is all about what wisdom is,

and that's where we're gonna start, okay?

Um, so we're gonna be in Proverbs chapter one.

So hopefully I stalled long enough for you to be there.

Um, but the, the reason we need wisdom is kinda like, uh, if you

play any board games, there's a difference between knowing the rules

of the board game and knowing the strategy of the board game, right?

There's, there's, uh, this game that Shay and I like to play, and

there's, there's certain strategies.

If you know them, it makes the game a lot easier, right?

Um, you can know the rules of the game.

You can read the rule book.

You can understand, oh yeah, I'm not supposed to move this piece here.

You can't do that on this turn.

Or maybe, like we were playing pickleball earlier, you can know the rules.

Oh, don't go in the kitchen unless the ball bounces in the kitchen, and

you gotta … You know, the score is weird 'cause there's a third number in

it and no one knows what that means.

You can know the rules of pickleball, but if you don't know the strategy, you're

not gonna be very good at it, and that's kind of how wisdom works in real life.

Wisdom is knowing the strategy for living life, right?

You can know a lot of information about God, right?

You can have a lot of verses memorized.

You can know a lot of things about the Bible.

You can maybe have grown up in church your whole life and, and know a lot of stuff.

You can have good theology in your head.

But that's like knowing the rules of the game.

If you don't know the strategy of the game, all that

information is kinda useless.

Right?

You're not putting that information to work, and that's what wisdom is.

Wisdom is the strategy you need to live inside the rules and to, to win, right?

To win the game.

That's what we wanna do when we, when we play a game.

And in life, you don't just need rules from God.

You need God's strategy for living life.

So wisdom, in a sense, is, is God's strategy for living life, okay?

So we're gonna look at Proverbs chapter one, verse seven.

And the reason we need wisdom Is because, um, it's really

actually a life or death matter.

Maybe you've never thought about your life like this, but the Book of Proverbs

portrays us as going down a path.

Right?

Every day, you're making decisions, and you're becoming a certain type of person.

You are either becoming someone who is walking on the path of life or someone

who's walking on the path of death.

You're not just taking steps toward a destination.

You're actually becoming your destination.

You are either becoming more wise or more foolish with the

way you live each and every day.

And so what we're gonna see in, in this one verse tonight is that God is

putting two options before you, the path of wisdom or the path of foolishness.

The path of wisdom is the way God designed the world to work.

Right?

God made the rules of the game, and so He knows the best

strategy to play by the rules.

If you try to play your own strategy, then you're not gonna be nearly as

good as the person who made the game.

Right?

God made you.

He made life.

He made the world.

And so His strategy is the best way to live.

Even think about it like this.

Maybe you're thinking, "Why is wisdom so important?

I thought the Bible was all about love."

Right?

Love God, you know.

It's the greatest commandment.

Jesus didn't say, "Get wisdom."

He said, "Love God."

Well, think about it this way.

If you have love but not wisdom, you don't know how to use your knowledge maybe.

Y- you know a lot of things.

You really care.

If you have love and not wisdom, you can have a lot of good

intentions and hurt people.

You ever done that?

Maybe there's a situation.

Maybe you're trying to help, and you had really good intentions.

And then you actually mess something up.

Right?

Like one time, I was, um

It was Father's Day.

And I was like, "Oh, I'll tell my friend happy Father's Day," for, you know.

And then he was like, "Actually, um, my dad isn't alive anymore."

Right?

Good intentions.

Really, really unwise decision on my part.

Right?

So I loved him, and I wanted to s- "Oh, hey, tell your dad happy Father's Day."

He was like, "Sorry, uh, I can't do that.

My dad's not here anymore."

Right?

So I, I was super awkward.

I felt horrible and … Right?

Good intentions, no wisdom.

So we don't just wanna be loving people.

We wanna be wise people, right?

So all that to say is we're gonna be jumping into the Book of Proverbs.

So if you're not there already, verse seven is where we're starting, okay?

Here's what it says.

"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.

Fools despise wisdom and instruction."

Okay.

So in poetry like this, so you kinda see there's two halves to this verse, right?

The first half, "Fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge,"

then you have that semicolon, "Fools despise wisdom and instruction."

That's part two.

So a lot of times when you're reading a proverb or something

similar, that, something in your Bible that's, like, indented.

See how in my Bible it, it's indented in the sides, whereas,

like, over here it's not?

That means it's poetry.

So when you're reading something like that, there's usually parallelism.

So here, knowledge is parallel with wisdom and instruction, okay?

And then, um, the fear of the Lord is parallel with fool.

So just, that's a pro tip for reading Proverbs.

Um, but what's happening here is it's saying that the fear of the Lord, whatever

that means, is how you get wisdom.

That's the starting point for wisdom.

Whereas if you don't want wisdom, if you're a fool,

you're not gonna fear the Lord.

You're gonna say, "I don't, I don't need God's wisdom.

I, I'm good enough on my own.

I don't need to learn from God.

I wanna live the way I wanna live.

I wanna play by my rules.

I have the best strategy for living life."

That means you're a fool.

You're someone who's saying, "You know what, God, I know you made me.

I know you know me, but my way is better."

And that's foolish.

And so the foundation here for wisdom and knowledge is the fear of the Lord.

So we'll start, we'll start there, is that the fear of the Lord, embracing

what God says is, is the right way, is the best way to live, right?

We have to say, "You know what, God, my way isn't the right way.

Your way is.

My way isn't as good as your way."

And so for our first point tonight, you can put it like

this, embrace God's way of life.

Embrace God's way of life, right?

God's strategy for living life.

I don't know if you've ever tried to cut a, uh, a lemon in half, you know,

or an orange, cut one of those in half.

Um, you know how you're, you're not supposed to cut it from the side with the,

you know, the stem sticking out, right?

You don't cut it that side.

You cut it the other side, right?

'Cause it's way easier to cut it that way in half than the other way, right?

Or when you're cutting against the grain on something, right?

When you're cutting wood, you're, you're supposed to…

You're not supposed to cut across, like im- See this carpet?

You're not supposed to cut, like, that way.

You're supposed to cut this way, 'cause it comes apart easier, right?

Living by God's wisdom is like cutting with the way you're supposed to go, right?

It, it's, it makes sense, 'cause God designed the world, He designed you, and

so that's the way you're supposed to live.

And so when we say, "God, I want to live a life that's pleasing to you," or we say…

Maybe you just say, "I don't, I don't know if I wanna please God.

I just wanna be happy."

God's way is the best way to live.

And so the starting point of being a wise person is admitting, "You know what?

God, you're way smarter than me.

When you say to do something, it's not just because you're like, 'Oh, whatever.'"

You know, God's like, "You should just listen to me,

'cause I said so, and whatever."

Right?

God's saying something.

He's giving you commands because He's way smarter than you, and

His strategy is way better.

So the f- starting point for being wise is actually saying, "I'm not wise.

I need help.

I need someone smarter than me.

I need someone who knows the world better than me.

I need someone who knows me better than me."

Okay.

Sometimes you don't even know why you feel the way you feel.

You ever been there?

You feel something and you're like, "Uh, I don't know why I feel

this way, but that's how I feel.

I don't know why I'm anxious right now.

I don't know why I'm sad right now.

I don't know why I'm angry right now, but I am."

Or maybe you, you, you learn things about yourself, you're like,

"Oh, well, here's why I feel that way," and you're like, "Oh, wow.

That's crazy."

God already knew that.

God, God's never learned anything.

Think about this.

God's never been taught anything in His life, right?

God obviously, eternal life, right?

But God's never had the experience of, "Oh, I never knew that."

Isn't that crazy?

Whereas think about you literally didn't know anything at one point in your life.

Like, you literally knew zero things at some point in your life.

So God's way of life is the best way to live, and that's the

starting point for being wisdom, is saying, "God, I need your wisdom.

I don't just need your help, I need you to teach me."

And that's what we're talking about when we talk about the fear of the Lord.

The fear of the Lord is saying, "God, you're God, and I'm not.

You are the standard.

I have to live by your rules."

That's what the fear of the Lord is.

It, it's saying who I am and who God is.

I'm recognizing those two things, right?

He's way smarter than me.

He's existed for way longer than me.

He made me.

He owns me.

He made the world.

He made all of these…

even these ideas, right?

God just didn't make things.

When you think about it this way, God didn't just make

things, God made concepts, right?

Like peace or love or joy or trust.

Those didn't exist at some point.

Like, there was a point where God made those things.

Right?

Or you could say God always loved in eternity.

I get that, right?

But there was a point where those didn't exist within humans, right?

Or like time never existed, and God made it.

And all these crazy things, you, you realize I'm so small, right?

Imagine if, uh, you were playing, you know, a, a board game with

like a three-year-old, right?

Maybe some of you have done this before.

And your three-year-old sibling is like, "You know what?

Here's what you should do," right?

Let's say you're, you're playing chess, right?

And the three-year-old's like, "You know what?

You should move your queen here."

You'd be like, "No.

Why would I do that?

Why would I listen to you?"

Right?

The gap between you and the three-year-old is way smaller than

the gap between us and God, right?

That's the perspective we need to have when we approach God and His

wisdom, is God, you're God, I'm not.

Now, you won't be wise unless you embrace God's way of life.

'Cause your own way of life has problems.

There's things you don't know.

There's things you never thought about before.

There's things you've never considered.

There's factors.

There's, there's all these things that you have no control over, even.

So embracing God's way of life is the starting point for getting wisdom.

But then where does wisdom come from?

All right.

Well, the only people who gather wisdom are people who have a humble heart.

And we've kinda been talking this already, but point two is humble yourself

Humble yourself, right?

And this is in relation to the fear of the Lord, right?

It's I'm seeing God rightly, but now I need to see me rightly.

When you think about my way of living is not always going to make me happy,

'cause I don't know how to make me happy.

If you think about it, m- let's say your main goal in life isn't

to love Jesus, your main goal in life is to be happy, right?

You don't know what's gonna make you happy all the time.

You think you do, but sometimes you try things and they don't make you happy.

Sometimes you try things and they leave you depressed, or they leave

you sad, or things happen to you that you have no control over,

right?

We are very small and limited, right?

We- there's, there's so many things we can't do, have, we

have no control over that we've never even thought about before.

And so seeing ourselves rightly is also really important

if you're gonna get wisdom.

If you're gonna live a life that's happy and successful and fulfilling,

it comes God's way, not our way, 'cause our way, we don't know very much, right?

Even think about five years ago, how much you've learned in five years,

and then think about how much you will learn in the next five years.

There's so much that you don't know, and the more you learn, the more

you realize, "I don't know stuff.

I need help."

And hopefully you learn that now rather than learning that later, right?

'Cause it's better if you learn it now

A lot of times, um, we want to be wise in our own eyes, right?

A lot of times we think, like if, uh, you ever, uh, I feel like I've talked

about this before, but you know that stat of like 70% of think- people

think they're above average drivers?

Everyone's … If you ask someone, "Oh, are you a good driver?"

Most people are like, "Yeah, I'm a pretty good driver."

Well, if 70% of people are above average drivers, then that's

not how math works, right?

It should be that 49% of people are above average drivers, right?

And then 49% of people are below average drivers.

And then, or I guess 49 and a half, right?

And then there's 1% in the middle that are the actually average drivers, right?

But we are almost infected by this disease of thinking that we're not that bad.

We can figure things out.

And one of the first things that Jesus actually needs to save us from

is us thinking that we're okay , that we don't need his wisdom, or we just

need a little bit of help from Jesus

Us, our, our sense of not needing God is actually a huge problem because

we think, "Oh, I, I have enough wisdom to, to figure this out."

There, there's a sense of, of hopelessness that you need to feel because I, I

want you to just feel that, oh, I, I don't … I can't do this without God.

I can't live the way I w- the way I should, the way that, the best way

to live unless c- I get God's wisdom, and that's what Proverbs 2:6 says.

Proverbs 2:6

It says, "For the Lord gives wi- gives wisdom.

From His mouth come knowledge and understanding."

All right, wisdom doesn't come from reading a ton of

books apart from the Lord.

Wisdom doesn't come from taking a lot of classes or going to a good college

or having good parents unless the Lord gives you wisdom through those things.

Wisdom doesn't come from watching a lot of YouTube videos or, or f-

being really smart or having a high IQ or a good SAT score or anything.

It comes from the Lord

And so we need to be saved from our own sense of thinking, "I can figure this out.

I have the wisdom I need to tackle any problem."

We humble ourselves and we say, "God, you are the master," right?

"I am the disciple."

That's what disciple means.

It means learner, right?

I'm here to learn.

God, you're the one who's gonna teach me, right?

It would be silly if you showed up to, let's say, y- you went to the,

um, the Rangers baseball practice, and you were like, "All right, guys, let

me teach you how to take BP," okay?

"Let me teach you how to field grounders.

Let me teach you…"

You know what?

Um, you know what?

I don't know any Rangers players, 'cause they're not that good.

Um- Corey Seager.

Yeah, he's always hurt though.

Um- I know.

Mackenzie Gorham.

Let's, let's just go, let's go with- Adams.

Never heard of him.

Yeah, let's go with Corey.

Let's just say, hey, the Rangers shortstop, Corey Seager.

You're like, "Hey, Corey Seager, you know what?

Here's what you should…

Here's, here's how you should change your swing," right?

That would be silly.

That would be absurd.

He would laugh at you, right?

Speaker 2: What?

His swings are like, "Stop."

Speaker: He would laugh at you, right?

He'd be like, "What do you know?"

He would take zero advice from you, right?

And again, when you think about this, Haley just said I

should have picked the Dodgers.

I do know more Dodgers players.

Um, mostly because they're more fantasy relevant.

Um-

Anyway, um- Paul

Speaker 2: has all of them.

How

Speaker: would you know?

That is true.

Um, anyway, that idea, right?

Of coming … If, if, if you … Let's say you wanted to learn how to play baseball,

and you showed up at the Rangers practice, you wouldn't be there like, "Oh, hey guys.

Here's, here's all the things you should do."

You would say, "I'm here to learn from you," right?

"You're the pro.

I'm the student."

That's how we need to approach God, right?

We don't approach God's word and say, "God, um, I'm only gonna listen to

things I like," or, "I'm only gonna listen to things that make me feel

good," or, "I'm only gonna listen to things that are easy for me to do."

When you come to God, you say, "God, you get to set the terms.

I'm just here.

I'm just here to learn," right?

"You get to tell me how I should feel.

You get to tell me what's good.

You get to tell me what's attractive.

You get to tell me what's important.

I don't get to decide that because I'm dumb."

Right?

Compared to God, I am so dumb.

So God gets to decide those things, and that's part of humbling ourselves

is here's God and here's me.

And it's not that God is like, "You're so terrible.

You're the worst," right?

It's, the idea is God wants to help you.

He's offering you His wisdom, and He wants you to have it.

But the problem is is we don't want it.

The problem is not that, oh, w- uh, you know, God's like, "Well,

you're a horrible person and, and you need to listen to my wisdom.

Otherwise, you're gonna die," which is true, but it's more

so, "I want to help you.

Here's my wisdom."

And we're like, "Nah, I don't need that."

That's really what it's like.

So we need to have the right heart posture before God if

we're going to be wise people.

And that's something really interesting, that wisdom is not about your brain power.

Wisdom's not about your test scores or your GPA.

Wisdom is not about your vocabulary or your reading

comprehension or anything like that.

You can be really wise and not very smart.

You can be really smart and a fool because wisdom is about your heart.

Wisdom is a moral quality.

It's not an intellectual quality.

So maybe you're out there and you feel like you know a lot of stuff, or you

feel like you're really smart, and you feel like you got things figured out.

You might be an utter fool

if you're rejecting God and His word.

And maybe you think, "I just, I'm not very smart.

It's hard to read the Bible.

I don't really get it.

I, I just feel like I'm behind people and, and I don't, I can't keep up with them."

And you could still be a really wise person.

You could still live in a really wise way because wisdom is about your heart.

So how do I get it, right?

Well, okay, I need to have the right perspective about God.

I need to say His way is better, His way is good, and my way is usually bad.

Then how do we get it?

Well, it starts with the heart, but it also has to do with our effort.

So point three, diligently pursue God's wisdom.

So in Proverbs 2:6, right, we saw that it was the Lord who gives wisdom, right?

Proverbs 2:6

And maybe when you think about that, you're like, "Oh, well, I just need to

ask the Lord, and he'll give me wisdom?"

How does that work, right?

It, it's very passive it seems like.

The Lord gives wisdom.

Okay, great.

He gives it.

I just receive it.

We're good, right?

Well, right before verse 6 in Proverbs 2, here's what it says, okay?

I highlighted all of the action words here, okay?

This is all the stuff we're supposed to do to get wisdom, right?

"My son," right, Proverbs is written from a dad to his, his son.

He says, "Hey, if you receive my words," okay, that's passive, right?

That's how I receive wisdom.

God gives it.

I receive it.

Great.

How do I do that?

Well, I treasure up the commandments.

That means I think they're really important.

They're, they're precious to me, right?

You think about Gollum, right?

He's like, "Oh, my precious," right?

Which we just taught Beckham to say at community group last night.

Um, which was hilarious, by the way.

Um, but you treasure them, right?

You hold onto them.

You're like, "These are so awesome.

These are so important.

I love these."

And then you- … you make your ear attentive to wisdom, right?

When you're attentive to something, y- y- it, it shows.

You can see.

I, I, I can see right now which one of you are attentive and which one

of, of you aren't because of your posture, because of your expression.

I can, I can see what being attentive is, right?

Incline, literally inclining, right?

Lean in, like, you know, like a incline on, on a treadmill, right?

Incline your heart.

You lean in to God's word, right?

So being a wise person, to receive wisdom from God, something we're supposed to

do, right, is, is to lean in, right?

Not necessarily with your body, but with your heart, right?

With a, with a heart that says, "God, I'm here to, to learn," right?

When you open your Bible, when you read it, you s- "God, I'm here to learn.

I need your wisdom."

And then you receive it, and you treasure it up, right?

And then but verse three, look at this.

You call out for insight.

There's, like, this active, like, "I need it, God.

Please give me wisdom.

Please, I, I want wisdom."

You raise your voice, right?

You s- you know, "Hey, I need it, I need it, I need it."

You seek it like silver and search for it as in, for hidden treasures.

It reminded me of when I was a kid, um, my dad and I would play FIFA all

the time, and when we played FIFA, we did the mode where, like, you

each controlled one player, and then the rest of the team was computers.

And my…

I really didn't like playing with my dad, 'cause he would always…

They had this option where you could call for the ball.

My dad would always call for the ball, all the stinking time.

Like, "Oh, I'm open, pass it."

And, and, like, the, the computers, they have to pass it when you call for it.

That's how it works.

It was the most annoying thing.

Like, I never got the ball.

But then I realized, oh, it…

he's just calling for it, so he's getting it, right?

It's like the saying, you know, like, the squeaky wheel gets

the oil or whatever, right?

Um, there, that's, which that's a proverb, by the way.

Um, but you're calling out for it, and so he got it, right?

Part of your responsibility, if you wanna be a wise person, is to, to lean in, to

be attentive, to ask questions, to, to call out for it, to search for it, right?

We don't just…

When we say the Lord gives wisdom, well, how does the Lord give wisdom?

He gives it through your pursuit of it.

You have a responsibility to put yourself in the way of God's wisdom, right?

You can't make yourself wise, but you can put yourself in the way

of where God's wisdom is, right?

You can spend time in God's Word.

You can ask questions about God's Word.

You can not give up when it's hard to read God's Word.

You can pray every day.

Pray.

Ask God, "Make me wiser."

You can spend time around wise people.

That's why we put you in these small groups with these leaders,

is 'cause these are people who are wiser than you, who can help you.

You can ask them questions.

Or if, if you never talk to your leader about anything that's

going on in your life, you're not gonna grow very much in wisdom.

The more you share with your leader and the more involved they are in your

life, the more you can grow in wisdom.

Same with your parents

If you're not involving wise people in your life, if you're not seeking after

God's wisdom, and wise people could also be, right, wise people on YouTube, right?

Or wise people in sermons, or wise people in books, right?

But, um, you have a responsibility to put yourself in the way of wisdom

And so that's why we say diligently pursue God's wisdom, right?

Not just half-heartedly, not just sometimes, not just when it's easy,

not just when you feel like it.

If you've ever done something hard, you know that the difference between people

are really good at something hard and people that aren't very good at something

hard is they don't give up, right?

If, if there's…

Maybe you're playing an instrument or you play a sport and you're like, "Why

is that person so much better than me?"

A lot of times it's because they practiced when you didn't.

They kept practicing when you gave up.

And so our pursuit of wisdom is, "God, I need your wisdom."

Right?

And I'm gonna keep praying when other people may have given up praying.

I'm gonna keep studying and asking questions when other people may

have said, "That's too confusing.

I'm out."

I would have been honest about something I'm struggling with 'cause I needed

help from a wise person when someone else would have been, "I'm, I'm too

scared they might not like me anymore."

That's what pursuing wisdom looks like.

And the best part is that God is ready to give wisdom, right?

He's not, like, hiding it for you to be, like, digging through,

you know, all this stuff for it.

God has given, he's offered it to you, and you just have to put

yourself in the way of it and take it.

It's there for you

So hopefully, um, when you think about wisdom, you don't just think about,

"Oh, uh, that's for smart people," or, "That's for people that know a lot of

stuff," or, "That's for- I can't be wise."

You can, because it's a heart posture.

It starts with saying, "God, I n- You are way better.

Your way is the best way to live, and I want that.

Your way is actually the way I'm gonna be happy, 'cause You made me, You

know me, and I don't know very much.

I need You, God.

I, I need, I need everything You have to say in as much of it as I can."

And then you pursue it.

Uh, you don't just say, "Oh, well, I need it, and I'm gonna wait

for God to, to give it to me."

You put yourself in the way of God's wisdom, and He'll give it to you.

James chapter 1 says, "If you lack wisdom, pray for it, and God will give it to you."

James 1 · chapter mention

That's what he says, right?

And so maybe that's something you wanna do.

You say, "I'm just gonna ask God for wisdom every single day."

God will answer that prayer.

He's not hiding wisdom.

He's offering it to you.

So hopefully you see your need for wisdom, and hopefully you see

the, the joy of having wisdom, of living in such a way that is along

with the, the grain of life, right?

Uh, this is the way it's supposed to go.

It's the way it's supposed to be.

That's what living wisely feels like.

So let's pray, and you guys will go to your small groups.

Father, we need your wisdom, not just because we want to, um, make it about us,

but because your wisdom really shows us that everything's about you, and we are

happiest when our lives are serving you.

We make terrible gods, even for ourselves.

Um, we're never gonna make us as happy as you can, and we're gonna let us down.

Other people are gonna let us down.

Um, pleasure or money or success, these things will all let us down

'cause they're, they're not enough.

We need the joy that you offer, and a lot of that comes by living wisely.

So I pray that you help us, everyone in this room, grow in wisdom.

Help us to pursue wisdom when we don't feel like it.

Help us to have humble hearts that are ready to receive your wisdom.

Help us to even compare our wisdom with your wisdom and, and find that

your wisdom is far better than our own.

So I pray that you make us desperate for your wisdom, and I pray that you help us

to be receptive to it each and every day.

We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.