"Wisdom's Beauty" Proverbs 3 Sunday Evening Worship Service

Proverbs chapter three.

I'll read it for us in its entirety and then we can work our way through more or less verse by verse tonight.

But I want to read the whole thing so you get uh um your mind around the the full flow of it before we go back and start working from the beginning.

Proverbs 3.

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'll add to you.

Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you, bind 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 Yahweh with all your heart, and don't lean on your own understanding.

In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your stra make straight your paths.

Be not wise in your own eyes, fear Yahweh, turn away from evil.

It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones.

Honor Yahweh 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, don't despise Yahweh's discipline, or be weary of his reproof, for Yahweh 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 is better than gold.

She's more precious than jewels, and nothing you desire can compare with her.

Long life is her right hand, 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.

Yahweh 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, don't lose sight of these.

Keep sound wisdom and discretion, for 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 the ruin of the wicked when it comes, for Yahweh will produce your confidence and will keep your foot from being caught.

Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it's in your power to do it.

Don't say to your neighbor, Go and come again, tomorrow I'll give it, when you have it with you.

Don't plan evil against your neighbor who dwells trustingly beside you.

Don't contend with a man for no reason, when he's 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 Yahweh, but the upright are in his confidence.

Yahweh's curses 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 will get disgrace.

This is the word of God, and I pray that he would give you a spirit of wisdom to live by it.

Having gone through Proverbs 1 and 2, we have heard the call to wisdom.

Proverbs chapter 1 was the wisdom's invitation, the invitation to come and seek for wisdom.

Proverbs 1 · chapter mention

And if you remember in Proverbs chapter 1, there were two dueling voices.

Proverbs 1 · chapter mention

There was the voice of wisdom, with the father telling the son or daughter.

Remember, this is targeting like the 12, 13, 14, 15-year-old in that window there.

It's the father or mother telling the children, hey, choose wisdom.

And then you have the voice of the unrighteous person that's whispering in the kid's ear, saying, It's the sinner's voice in chapter one.

Come with us, let's kill some people and take their stuff.

And the wisdom says, Don't do it.

And then at the end of chapter one, it's wisdom calling in the streets.

So you have the father's voice saying, Hey, choose wisdom.

You have the sinner's voice saying, hey, don't choose wisdom.

And then at the end of chapter one, you have wisdom's voice saying, Hey, look at me.

Then in chapter two, it was kind of wisdom's war.

Remember, chapter two was the father begging the child to choose wisdom, saying, Please choose wisdom, not death, like the sinners are telling you, because that way goes to hell.

The grave opens up that way.

That's very bad to go that way.

So you almost get this begging sense from the parents of please choose wisdom.

Comes from Yahweh, choose it.

But then you get the counter in chapter two.

What happens to those who don't choose it?

And chapter two describes that at length.

In fact, it's most of the chapter we looked at that last week.

Those who rejoice in unrighteousness, who walk in the path of darkness, all their ways are crooked, and their ending is very bad.

Their house, verse 18 of chapter 2 says, sinks down to death.

Nobody goes back from that way.

And so there's this war in your mind.

Do you want a fruitful life of wisdom, pleasing to your parents, pleasing to the Lord, or do you want the rebellious life of sin?

And if you remember last week we looked at chapter 2, the human heart just naturally inclines towards sin.

It falls towards sin.

It's just easiest for go to it to go the sinful way.

That's where the heart wants to go.

The human heart is just so inclined to tend towards sin, to rebel against parents, and to rebel against wisdom.

That's just a natural way things go.

Nobody has to be taught to be a sinner.

It's the voice of the unrighteous that's on their shoulder enticing them, but nobody has to be taught that way.

And so by the end of chapter two, you've got this war.

The parents pleading for wisdom, the voice of wisdom calling for you to follow wisdom, and then the voice of the unrighteous saying, hey, how about death and hell?

Let's go do that.

And so at that point, you're the reasonable person, and oh, I wish there were more reasonable people.

But the reasonable person, by the end of chapter two, would be like, wisdom, sign me up.

I'm all in.

And so now you've signed up.

But what exactly is wisdom?

In chapter one, it told you it was the ability to pursue equity and justice and righteousness.

It had this moral element to it.

But what does it actually look like?

And that's where chapter three comes in.

Chapter three is the picture of wisdom's beauty.

Now that you've signed up for it, now that you've said, okay, I'm in on wisdom, I'm gonna follow wisdom.

What is that again?

And chapter three says, okay, I'm glad you chose wisdom because wisdom is beautiful.

Wisdom is beautiful.

There's this sense in which the, you know, the 13, 14-year-old, they don't know the dangers of hell.

They don't know the dangers of the sinner.

They just don't know.

In their mind, the voice of wisdom is out there, and they see older people that are walking in wisdom, and that that's that's fine for them.

And the voice of sin is out there, and the path of sin is out there, and they see people loving life that way and living for the flesh and enjoying it.

And yeah, they hear the warnings that it ends badly, but they're actually kind of torn.

I mean, the the 14-year-old is stuck there and torn, like, which way am I actually gonna go?

And let's say they're nudged over towards wisdom, and now chapter three steps in and shows you the beauty of what you signed up for.

In a sense, this is a little bit like how Isaac found his wife.

If you recall, he sees his servant come back with the woman with all the candles, but her all the camels, but her face is veiled.

And so Isaac is kind of on the hook here.

If you remember in Genesis, he marries her before he sees what she looks like.

There's a little bit of faith involved in that, isn't there?

It's like I that servant who made my father the promise, I really hope I can trust that guy, because he just showed up with a wife for me, and I don't know what she looks like.

There's a little bit of that sense in Proverbs 3.

Now that you've signed up for wisdom, now that you've chosen wisdom, what does she look like?

Did you make the right choice?

And I want to reiterate something before we get into this passage tonight that I did say last week, but I it's so important from last week that it's just been on my heart and I want to say it again.

The middle of chapter two is where wisdom comes into the person's heart.

And I really do think that provides you, chapter two around verse 10.

I really do think that provides you with the window here of what conversion looks like in this person's heart.

Yeah, when this person was younger, when they were a five-year-old or six-year-old or ten-year-old even, certainly they were obedient to your parents.

Certainly they were.

Certainly they had a sense of the fear of the Lord in them, or it's natural in that sense for little children to fear the Lord.

I mean, their hearts are prone towards evil, but they have faith like children.

There's an innocence about them, even Jesus taught that.

But there's really something to be said for coming to that threshold of life, being 12, 13, 14, 15, and looking at the diverging paths and weighing them out.

That's what the path of sin looks like.

That's what the path of righteousness looks like.

And there's that wrestling in the heart that takes place at that point in life.

And it's at that point when the person's heart says, Given this, given the trajectory of the sinful life and the trajectory of the godly life, I choose wisdom.

And the language in chapter 2, verse 10 implies that that's conversion.

That's when the spirit enters that person's heart, regenerates them, seals them, points them in the direction of holy living.

I know the spirit-filled life is a New Testament thing.

That's gonna happen in the New Testament where the Spirit seals you for your life, but regeneration is still an Old Testament concept that seems to happen in chapter 2, verse 10.

There's something that's at that threshold where you're looking, which path am I going to go?

And the person has to choose which path to walk on.

They have to make that choice for themselves.

Their parents can't make it for them.

It can't be contingent on where they grew up and who drove them to church.

It's their decision as they look at the path.

The language of Proverbs 2 is they look down the street and they see the street of wisdom and they see the street of hell and they weigh out the allurement of hell against the beauty of wisdom.

They weigh it in their heart and they choose to follow wisdom.

That's conversion.

Now that they've signed up, Proverbs 3 shows you who you married.

Proverbs 3 takes the veil off and says, This is what wisdom looks like.

You're gonna follow her for life.

It's the beauty of wisdom.

In fact, that'll be the outline tonight.

Wisdom's beauty, and I'll give you three descriptions of wisdom's beauty with lots of sub points.

We have lots of sub points tonight because this is a very intricately woven chapter.

Wisdom's Beauty.

First description of wisdom's beauty is that it is perennial.

It's perennial.

In other words, it comes up every season of life.

There is never a season of life where wisdom is not beautiful.

Wisdom is beautiful to the teenager, wisdom is beautiful to the high school student, to the college student, wisdom is beautiful to the young adult.

Wisdom is beautiful to the newly married.

Wisdom is beautiful to the parent.

Wisdom is beautiful to the empty nester.

Wisdom is beautiful to the person who is retired.

Wisdom is beautiful to the person who is about to leave this world into the next.

That's the nature of wisdom.

And it is such a contrast with folly.

Folly is not beautiful at every stage.

Folly and sin and the enticement, the riches and the bloodshed, that's beautiful from the top of the street.

You look down it and you're like, that street looks fun, and everybody from the top of the street looks like they're having a good time.

That's the allurement of folly.

What a contrast with wisdom.

Every stage of human life, wisdom is beautiful.

Once you get on the road of folly, every stage just gets worse.

The person is compelled down the road of folly by the idea that something more promising is ahead.

That's not what compels you down the road of wisdom.

What compels you down the road of wisdom is the beauty of wisdom at every stage of life.

Now, this is described most clearly in verses 1 through 12.

This chapter, I'm sure you noticed even in your headings in the ESV, is broken up into three sections, and I'm going to put the second and third section different where the ESV heading is, but still, there's three different sections in Proverbs 3.

And the first section in verses 1 through 12, and to help you get your mind around the way Solomon is arguing this here, this is meticulously arranged.

It's 12 couplets, and it is six commands and six rewards.

It's really 12 commands, one positive, one negative.

They're paired together.

But all of the odd verse numbers are commands, all of the even verse numbers are rewards.

You may not have noticed that, so I'll put it on the screen for you so you can really uh soak it in here.

Here's all the commands.

This is what Solomon commands you to do.

In verse 1, don't forget, but let your heart keep.

You see that in verse 1.

My son, do not forget my teaching, but let your heart keep my commandments.

And that structure, do not, and then let is gonna kind of cover all the rest of these imperatives.

So don't do these six things, but let your heart do these six things.

Once the person has the Spirit of God striving with them and is in love with the Lord and wants to grow in beauty, then there's a let there's a natural growth, a natural spiritual growth that will take place.

So let your heart keep them.

Don't feed your heart sin that's going to distract you.

Don't get tempted by the highway to hell, so to speak, in Proverbs 2.

Stay on the right path by letting your heart keep the commandments.

This is the word Torah.

Let your heart keep the law.

Let your heart do what God commands you to do.

So the first command: don't forget.

Don't forget what the law says.

Don't forget what the voice of your parents told you.

Hold on to that for the rest of your life.

In fact, the word guard there, it's translated in the ESV, do not forget my teaching, which is a great way to translate it.

The Hebrew word means guard.

Guard my teaching.

So how do you guard the teaching of God?

Well, you guard it in your mind.

The idea is that you have it memorized, and that's why they don't forget, it's a very good way of saying it.

The idea is that you have this memorized.

One of our ICS principals told me this morning that his previous school that he taught at, all of the eighth graders had to memorize the Sermon on the Mount.

They couldn't get out of eighth grade unless they had Matthew 5, 6, and 7 memorized.

They had to recite it to him personally or they would not graduate.

That's kind of cool, I think.

That's Proverbs 3 right there.

Here's the voice of wisdom.

Memorize it and then guard it.

Yeah, don't just cram it in your head, and eighth graders are great at cramming.

Don't just cram that in your head and then wake up your freshman year and it's gone.

No, guard it, keep it, remember it all of your days.

That's this idea.

Don't forget my teaching.

In fact, it's probably likely that these 12 verses were meant to be memorized by the young person because of the way they're structured.

So it's very easy to memorize the, you know, negative imperative, positive imperative reward all the way through.

So don't forget these teachings.

Guard them.

Verse 3, the next imperative.

Do not or let not or do not let steadfast love, that's the word for his sed, covenant love.

Don't let God's covenant love and faithfulness forsake you.

Now think about the logic of that command.

Don't let God's covenant love forsake you.

Does God's covenant love ever forsake anybody?

Of course not.

It's an immutable covenant.

God's covenant of grace with people, his hised, his covenant love grabs you, holds you, and God will never forsake his covenant.

But the covenant comes with curses, of course, which we'll see throughout Proverbs 3.

When you sin, when you reject God, it comes with chastisement and discipline.

And that's when it's so easy to let your heart grow bitter against God and to wander and to apostasize from the faith, to go away from the narrow path and go back onto the wide path.

And so the imperative is don't let steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you, meaning you don't forsake them.

And instead, the positive part of that command is bind them around your neck.

And that phrase, if you remember, is at the end of Proverbs 3, too.

You're supposed to put on Proverbs 3, the end of Proverbs 3, also, it's at the very end of the chapter.

You're supposed to put it on, put Proverbs 3 around you like a necklace.

That's language of beauty.

You're supposed to take these this structure.

You're supposed to take Proverbs 3 and wear it and show it off.

You know, necklaces say a lot about the person.

What they wear on their necklace.

If not, everybody wears a necklace, but I've noticed this especially with guys.

The guys that wear necklaces and have them outside their church, their shirt, they're showing something.

Like they're they're telling you something about themselves.

Proverbs 3 should be worn around your neck.

When a woman wears a necklace, it's generally to display beauty.

No woman would put her a necklace going, oh, this is the ugliest thing I have.

Let's try this today.

It's meant to display beauty.

Wear Proverbs 3 like a necklace.

Treasure it as beautiful.

It's a display of who you are.

This is the exact language from Deuteronomy 6.

Parents teach your kids to walk in the way of the Lord.

Write the law down, bind it on their heads, their hearts, the doorposts, all of it.

Bind them, verse 3 says, around your neck.

Write them on the tablet of your heart.

There's this new covenant language.

Of course, the law can't be written on your heart.

The law is written on tablets of stone, but the new covenant can be written on tablets of flesh.

It's the new covenant that will be written on your heart.

Again, this is language of conversion.

This is the person who is putting their heart and confidence in the Lord.

God's law is written on their heart.

The next command, verse 5, trust and acknowledge, and don't lean on your understanding.

This gets to the middle of this little section here, verses 5, 6, and 7 is a center, which remember in Hebrew is generally the most important part of the poem, is the middle.

So you see the negative and the positive reversed.

It's the positive first.

Trust in Yahweh.

The negative next.

Don't lean on your understanding.

Don't trust yourself.

No self-trust.

Instead, trust Yahweh.

That's the constant war.

That is the constant war.

A person who says, you know, I want to be a Christian, I just don't know.

They're still trusting themselves.

The pathway to wisdom is to stop trusting yourself and start trusting the Lord.

And this word for trust in the Hebrew has a connotation of being on your face.

I was wondering, what does that mean, be on your face?

And one commentator says you're on your face, you can't see what's going to happen to you.

You can't see what's going to happen to you.

You're trusting whatever's around you.

Somebody else is going to have to protect you.

You're on your face, you get run over by a horse.

You don't know.

It's the people around you that have to protect you.

So that's trust the Lord.

Stop trying to guard your own life.

Instead, let the Lord guard your own life.

I found an illustration from a Puritan at the Saguasahana River, whatever that river is called over in Pennsylvania.

I have no idea how to say it.

But this guy gave a story, uh, Puritan gave a story about trying to cross it, and he didn't know how thick the ice was, and so he was crawling across on his face and waiting for the ice to crack and just listening to it.

And then a chariot pulled by a team of horses just galloped across the ice, almost running him over.

That was a local.

He knew how thick the ice was.

That's this image.

Trust the Lord.

He knows how thick the ice is.

Trust him, not yourself.

Trust him.

Don't lean on your own understanding.

Verse 7, the next imperative.

Don't be wise in your own estimation, but fear Yahweh.

Turn away from evil.

Don't be wise in yourself, but fear Yahweh.

This is the command that wisdom is so interwoven with the fear of the Lord.

People always ask, isn't fear of the Lord bad?

Doesn't perfect love drive out fear, John says.

Are Christians supposed to fear the Lord?

And the answer is absolutely.

But you do need a category distinction in your mind between the way a son fears his father and the way a servant fears his master.

Or slave fears his master.

There's two distinctions.

A son might fear his father, is in the case of Proverbs 3, a good kind of fear.

That's a fear that's rooted in love, isn't it?

You don't want to let your dad down.

The servant or the slave's fear is rooted in hate.

He doesn't like his master, he doesn't want to be punished.

The son's fear is rooted in grace.

And the father is so kind to the son, so he has a healthy fear for him.

The slave's fear is rooted in law.

He doesn't want to be punished for disobeying his master.

The son's fear produces a shyness towards sin.

You know, a Christian wants to cover sin.

A Christian is embarrassed of sin.

Not the non-believers, the non-believers are celebrate sin.

But the non-believer fear, the slaves' fear, but they have a shyness of God.

They're afraid, they want to avoid God.

The Christian is embarrassed of sin, like Adam in the garden.

The non-Christian is embarrassed of God and wants to be away from him.

The son's fear hates sin because it ruins his fellowship with his dad.

The slave's fear hates disobedience because he doesn't want to be punished.

He hates punishment.

The son's fear grows throughout his life, making him faithful to his father.

The slave's fear grows throughout his life, making him hate his master all the more.

This is why Proverbs 28, verse 14 says, Happy is he that fears.

Proverbs 28:14

Happy is he that fears.

When the Christian fears the Lord, like verse 7 says, they grow in faithfulness, they grow in fellowship all the way until the end of their life, where they see God face to face.

Their perfect love has cast out all that slave-like fear from their life.

That's the command in verse 7.

To fear the Lord.

The command in verse 9, honor Yahweh with your money and with your firstfruits of all your produce.

Give Yahweh your wealth.

And how do you do that?

You're going to see at the end of the chapter, we'll describe how you do it.

Verse 11, don't despise discipline.

Don't be weary of the reproof.

Embrace the discipline.

God disciplines those whom he loves.

And so when you take this all together, there's certainly a trajectory in these rewards.

I'll leave them on the screen for another second.

Look at the trajectory of these rewards.

Listen to the voice of wisdom, retain it in your mind, act on it, worship because of it, give it away, and then repent of your failure to live it out.

And that's a cycle.

You hear it, you listen to it, you keep it, you act on it, you worship God because of it.

You're generous in the way you live your life towards others, and you repent of your sin.

Again, you hear wisdom, you hold it with your mind, you then act on it.

You act on it towards God through worship, towards others through generosity, and then you repent of sin and you repeat.

That's the commands of wisdom.

That's the beauty of wisdom right there.

And this goes your whole life, every stage of life.

Now you have the rewards of wisdom.

The rewards of wisdom.

This is the even verses.

Long life.

You'll have a generous life, it says in verse 2.

And it'll be a peaceful life.

I mean, you don't want to live a long life if it's filled with strife.

Rather, a short life with peace than a long life with strife.

But here, wisdom will give you a peaceful life no matter how long you live.

The next reward is in verse 4.

You'll have favor and good success.

Favor and good success.

Things will go well for you.

You'll have straight paths in verse 6.

That's the contrast with the wicked who are curving this way and that and end up in hell.

You have straight paths, and that speaks ethically.

You walk in a straight line, you do the right thing in verse 6 all your life.

And it's God who's doing this to you.

You acknowledge him and he makes your path straight.

In verse 8, healing and refreshment.

This isn't health, wealth, prosperity.

This is the idea of rejuvenation, an inward renewal based upon your confidence in God's wisdom.

Verse 10, you have full barns and lots of wine.

It says bursting with wine.

Your vats will be bursting wine.

This is the phrase that's, you know, the Hebrews have so many different ways to describe wine, but this is the phrase for the fresh wine.

So the grapes are put in the vat, and the juice just starts to come out.

This phrase is used later in the chapter, too, so I'll explain it now so we don't have to do it later.

You put the grapes in the vat, and before you even crush the grapes, the freshest of the juices are just naturally squeezed out from the weight of the grapes, and that runs out of the vats.

That's the richest wine, that's the most potent wine, that's the first pass of the before you've even mushed the wine with your feet.

It's started coming out.

That's this word.

If you follow wisdom, that'll be your life.

Like it just, the good stuff naturally comes out of your life.

You don't need to be disciplined, you don't need to be crushed.

It just naturally comes out of your life.

Verse 12.

This is the one that's not like the others, isn't it?

Oh yeah.

Your final reward for wisdom?

Discipline.

Yay! Just what I wanted.

Well, the wise person wants it, this is the point.

Because it's the constant correction.

The wise person wants it.

A father disciplines the son whom he loves.

Fathers don't get to discipline their next door neighbors, kids.

They don't get to discipline the random kid throwing the fit at Walmart.

Nope, not allowed.

You'll go to jail.

You get to discipline your own kid.

And so the wise person embraces wisdom is beautiful, and with that comes his own discipline.

The implication is that this wisdom covers your whole life.

It's perennial.

It goes from cradle to grave.

It goes from the time you're the 14-year-old kid deciding which path you're going to walk down in life, all the way to when you're older and you rebel and God chastens you all the way to the end, all the way to the end of your life.

The long, rich, full life is the language it uses.

So, first of all, wisdom is perennial, it lasts your whole life.

Secondly, wisdom is beautiful.

And wisdom's beauty is valuable.

It's not just perennial, it's also valuable.

This is verses 13 down through 26.

13 down through 26.

This is the middle section of Proverbs 3.

Wisdom has such value to you.

Blessed is the one who finds wisdom, the one who gains understanding, because it's better than silver and it's more precious than gold.

Verse 15 is better than jewels.

Nothing compares to her.

This is the language of value.

It reminds you of Job 28.

People make mines for gold, mines for silver.

They'll risk their lives to go on the ground to get out of diamond.

Wisdom is better than that.

Specifically, wisdom is valuable to people.

Verses 13 through 18.

It's so valuable to people.

Because, verse 16, it gives you long life.

She offers it.

She has riches and honor.

In other words, you are esteemed because of your wisdom.

You'll be respected.

This is one of the qualifications for an elder, somebody who's respected by outsiders outside the church, somebody who's respected inside the church.

Why do people respect somebody who's an elder?

Not the title, it's not cause and effect.

It's not like they become an elder and suddenly they're respected.

No, they become an elder because they're known for wisdom.

People value how they navigate life.

That's what wisdom offers.

Her ways are pleasant, verse 17.

All her pasts are peaceful.

Remember, who cares if you live a long life?

If it's constant strife.

She's a tree of life, verse 18 says to those who lay hold of her.

Those who hold her fast are called blessed.

This is the language Jesus picks up for the Beatitudes.

This word here, translated in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, is the word that Jesus uses, Makiros and the Beatitudes, for happy or blessed.

He's drawing that from this.

You will have a long life.

You will be blessed when you hold fast to wisdom.

That's compared to the tree of life.

Think back to the tree of life.

Put in the garden.

You eat of it, you live forever.

Adam and Eve sin, they're kicked out of the garden.

Remember why they were kicked out of the garden?

So they wouldn't get their hands on the tree of life.

Otherwise, they would eat it and live forever.

They already ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, so it's that second tree, the tree of life, that they were protected from.

Because God is doing that as a mercy to them.

If they eat and live forever, they'll eat as wicked sinners.

Now they need redemption.

Which comes through the death and resurrection of Christ, which comes to a world with death.

And so the tree of life is hidden, it is obscured.

But here it is offered.

Not the actual tree, but figuratively.

There's this tree that is offered you that if you pursue wisdom, this is what Adam and Eve neglected to do.

If you pursue wisdom, you can live forever.

And of course, that for eternal life comes through faith in Christ.

That's wisdom.

And he understands, it's by understanding that God offers it to you.

And if you hold on to the tree of life, you're blessed.

There's nothing better you can receive than the tree of life.

And just like Adam and Eve, there's blessings and curses with it.

If you reject God's covenant, you're cursed.

If you honor him and put your faith in him, you're blessed.

That's the promise here in verse 18.

So, first of all, wisdom is beautiful because it's valuable to people.

Secondly, wisdom is valuable to God.

God also uses wisdom.

Now, here's where you need a little bit of a nuanced understanding.

God uses wisdom not because he learned it.

God uses wisdom because he is it.

Wisdom is who God is.

Specifically, wisdom is God's Son.

All the contents of God's mind are in the Son.

God communicates all of Himself to the Son.

The Son is wisdom.

There's a whole chapter on this in Proverbs chapter 8.

Proverbs 8 · chapter mention

We'll get to that in a few weeks.

Proverbs chapter 8 is all about the Son.

Proverbs 8 · chapter mention

The Son is the mind, in the New Testament language, the Son has the mind of God.

The Son, the mind of Christ is the Word of God.

The Son is the wisdom of God.

He is the wisdom of God incarnate.

Before the incarnation, he is the wisdom of God personified.

All of the thoughts and beauty and majesty and wonder and wisdom of God is encapsulated and personified by the Son.

And so when it says in verse 19, Yahweh by wisdom founded the earth, it means that literally.

It means Colossians chapter 1, by the Son, the world was created.

Colossians 1 · chapter mention

It means John chapter 1, in him all things were made.

John 1 · chapter mention

In the beginning was the word, the word was with God, and the word was God.

He was with God in the beginning, and all things were made through him.

That's what this is stating.

God, his wisdom is the Son, and the Lord makes the universe through the Son.

And by understanding, he established the heavens.

All six days of creation, the Son is sovereign over all of them.

By his knowledge, verse 20, the deeps broke open and the clouds dropped down to dew, the hydrological cycle.

And this is just standing in for all the psalm we read earlier, Psalm 104.

This stands in for all of that, the flooding of the earth, the way the rain falls on the earth, the way the animals hunt their prey, all of it displays the wisdom of God.

I mean, there's such intricate rules and physical laws in our universe, laws of motion, laws of entropy, nuclear laws that govern the way molecules and atoms and electrons work.

There's just so intricate.

That didn't just happen.

It's designed by God based upon his wisdom, which is himself.

God's wisdom is his self.

The wisdom is valuable to you.

Verse 21 through 26, back to the sun.

My son, don't lose sight of these.

Keep them.

You can hear the voice of the parrot just begging the son.

Do these, please.

They'll be life for your soul.

And here's the necklace language again.

They'll be adorned around your neck.

If the sun guards wisdom, if this child in verse 21 guards wisdom, then wisdom will guard them.

In verse 26, Yahweh will be your confidence.

He'll keep you from being caught.

Verse 24, a blessing of this.

If you lie down, you won't be afraid.

You'll get to go to sleep.

The fool can't sleep at night because he's so worried about everything.

What if the wall falls down?

What if a burglar breaks in?

What if a lion's in the street?

The fool has all kinds of reasons to be awake at night.

And Solomon just says, listen, the wise person trusts the Lord, lies down, and says, the Lord is watching out from my house.

If there's an earthquake, it's from the Lord.

If there's a lion, it's from the Lord.

I'm trusting the Lord.

And you really do.

And so you get to go to sleep.

And this is probably the clearest picture, other than in Matthew 6, where you have wisdom fighting anxiety, where fear of the Lord goes to war against anxiety.

You take off anxiety, you put on fear of the Lord.

You put off worry and you put on confidence in God.

And here they're just paired so wonderfully.

You'll go to sleep without being afraid of the earthquake, verse 25.

If Yahweh in verse 26 is your confidence.

Wisdom is beautiful because she lets you sleep at night.

For the young person, that may seem so trifling.

Because the teenager has no problem sleeping at night.

Alright, maybe a little bit at night, but they have no problem sleeping in the morning.

But as you grow older, you value this so much more.

The confidence in God's goodness just to lay down and close your eyes and know.

God, look, I could stay up all night worrying about this, or you could stay up all night worrying about this.

I need to sleep more than you do.

So you got this, Lord.

Wisdom lets you do that.

Your confidence, verse 26, is in the Lord.

You put off fear and you put on confidence in the Lord.

Thirdly, wisdom is beautiful because it's perennial, first, because it's valuable, second, and thirdly, because it's ethical.

Wisdom is beautiful because it gives you an ethical life.

A life that is godly, a life that is on the straight path that honors the Lord.

It's ethical.

This is verse 27 at the end of the chapter.

And it's ethical.

The first way you see the ethics is how to be a good neighbor.

How to be a good neighbor.

This is a very practical place where wisdom plays out.

Horizontal wisdom on full display.

Don't be obnoxious to your neighbors.

Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due.

When it's in your power to do it, if somebody needs something good, do it for them, please.

Don't make an excuse for why you don't have to do it to them.

And if you don't have the capacity to do good for somebody, you don't need to do it.

I mean, that's the wonder of God's wisdom is it's so accurate.

It doesn't say you have to do good to everybody at all times.

That would be impossible.

You would be run dry.

There's the regulative principle on it.

Do good to others when you have the capacity to do so.

If you don't have the capacity to do it, don't sweat it.

John Milton's poem on blindness has a great line.

Well, God exacts day labor from those whom light is denied.

You know how talking about blindness.

Is God gonna judge him for not being able to see when he's blind?

Of course not.

Is God gonna judge you for not doing good to somebody when you don't have the capacity to do it?

Of course not.

But if you do have eyesight, if you do have the capacity to do it, to do good, then do so to your neighbor.

Don't say to your neighbor, oh, you need something?

I'll bring it to you tomorrow.

When you have it in your pocket.

Don't be that person.

Do good for people.

Lend when they ask you, Jesus says.

If they need help, help them.

Now, of course, people always run to like, what about the homeless guy with the sign?

He was on the sign uh on the street corner this morning.

Perhaps some of you saw it, just you know, give me money.

You know, I'm homeless, give me money, so you know, for beer kind of sign.

And you think, oh, do I have to give that person money?

And of course not.

That wouldn't be doing good for them, that would be enabling them.

And wisdom is being able to know the distinction between that.

So it's not talking about giving to somebody who's taking from you.

Proverbs will have a lot say about that later.

This will all be fleshed out later in Proverbs.

But for now, that's just that disclaimer.

When you can genuinely do good for somebody, just do it.

It's not enabling, it's generosity.

Don't say to your neighbor, or don't plan verse 29, evil against your neighbor who dwells trustingly beside you.

That's implying that your neighbor, you know, hasn't done anything to you, so don't devise evil to them.

Don't contend with a man for no reason when he's done you no harm.

Implication is that there are times to contend, there are times to fight.

Even Solomon will say that.

There are times to go to war when you know you're provoked and there's a just war kind of thing.

But for no reason, don't get angry at your neighbor for no reason.

Grow up.

Wisdom helps you do that.

Secondly, wisdom helps you not envy the bad neighbor.

Not envy the bad neighbor.

That's verse 31.

Don't envy a man of violence and don't choose any of his ways.

Did you and I used to live in Granada Hills, Los Angeles, a suburb of LA, and there's this massive house there that has been occupied by a guy named Almago, which means the magician, and he is a very prominent, well-known drug dealer.

He has uh tennis courts in his front yard, a swimming pool in his front yard, big gated thing.

He's pretty well known in the San Fernando Valley because he drives amazing cars.

Uh the minimum cost for a car for him is$175,000, and he brags about it.

Uh and he would go to soccer games.

He'd go watch his kids play soccer, and he'd be surrounded with all of his like 86 girlfriends at the soccer games and his whole entourage at the soccer games and always driving amazing cars, and he'd hang outside donut shops, outside of Krispy Kreme Donuts in LA, showing off his cars, and he was kind of known for that.

He was so generous with his$175,000 cars.

Also, he murdered all kinds of people.

You know, that was pretty well known.

He ordered a hit on one rival uh drug dealer in town.

He had his men ambush that guy's uh Mercedes Benz on the 101 freeway right through LA and shot it up a million times.

When they arrested him for that, they found 2.7 tons of weed in his car.

They seized his house with all five of his cars that were there, none of them worth less than$175,000.

So he wasn't just boasting, along with$175,000 in cash, apparently, to buy a new car.

He served four years in jail.

Four years.

And then they let him out, and the judge said he's being released because if anyone has been changed by jail, it's been him.

Okay.

So he's back in his house with the swimming pools and tennis courts, and he started a network of food trucks.

He has a whole network of food trucks in LA now.

And uh some you've eat if you've gone to the Shepherd's Conference, you may have eaten at one of his food trucks in the parking lot at the Shepherd's Conference.

Uh, El Mago, a feared millionaire drug dealer chopping up onions in a food truck, making you street tacos.

Can you imagine?

Still showing off his cars.

There's a little bit of that life.

You see him with all of the girls and all of the cars and all the cash and the swimming pool and the tennis court in his front yard, and you're like, I could be that guy's friend.

By the way, he was killed this week in the streets of LA.

Police have no suspects.

Yeah, the Lord probably killed him, right?

I mean, that's what it comes down to.

This is Salman's point in verse 31 here.

Don't envy a man of violence.

You look at a guy like that, remember, this is the teenager who's on the narrow path now, and he looks over the fence at that dude driving the Nissan GTR with$100 bills blown out the back window.

You're like, oh man, that looks so fun.

Maybe I could just swim in a swimming pool.

And Solomon comes back up and says, Hey, don't envy that guy.

Don't envy him, why not?

Because wisdom is able to tell the difference between the righteous life and the crooked life.

Verse 33, don't envy him.

Because, verse 32, because he's an abomination to Yahweh.

Verse 33, Yahweh's curses on the wicked.

Verse 34, he scorns that person.

Verse 35, he will get disgrace.

He will get disgrace.

The contrast with the righteous person.

Notice all verse 32, all the way to the end.

It's another set of contrasts.

I won't put them on the screen because you have I have confidence you can see them yourself.

Abomination versus confidence in verse 32.

Verse 33, curse versus blessing.

Verse 34, scorners versus humble.

Verse 34, scornful versus favor.

Verse 35, honor versus disgrace.

You may be tempted to see the wealthy and the violent prosper, and you may look at them and say, oh man, look at that guy in his life over there.

I want that.

And then you go back to these the dichotomy.

Do you want to be cursed by God or blessed by him?

You want to be humble and receive his favor, or do you want to be a scorner and get scorned by him?

Basically, when you die, do you want to give honor, the word inherit here, do you want to give honor to your children, or do you want them to look at you with disgrace?

It's hard for the teenager to project that far down the road.

It's so hard.

For the 15-year-old to project to when he's 80, the end of his life, and grandkids.

Does he want to leave a legacy of righteousness and faithfulness to his family?

Or a legacy of disgrace?

I mean that's the choice.

And so Proverbs 3 here shows you the beauty of wisdom.

The beauty of wisdom.

It doesn't fade with age.

It gets more beautiful with age.

More valuable than anything that could be offered you.

Its beauty is ethical.

It shows itself in a righteous life.

It's all forward-looking for the teenager.

He's looking down the life and it's forward-looking, and he has to get his heart to believe the promises of wisdom and the promises of God.

And that's why this is such a strong argument for them.

It's not just a teenager believe the promises of wisdom.

It's teenager look at wisdom and see her as beautiful.

And if you see her as beautiful, you'll be drawn to her.

And she will never leave you or forsake you.

God, we're grateful that you give wisdom to those who ask for it.

And that you make an appeal for us to trust you, to seek you, and to serve you with all of our life.

I pray that you would grant them wisdom.

I pray for, I know there's many, many teenagers here tonight, and I pray for their hearts as they are on that divergent path, looking at the narrow gate, looking at the wide gate, wondering what kind of life they will lead.

I pray that you would make wisdom attractive to them.

I pray that their young hearts would contemplate wisdom and embrace her as a friend, as more valuable than gold.

We're grateful for the way you made the world.

It's in your son's name, we pray.

And now, for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to iBc.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with both.