Proverbs 8:1-36 – Wise Up

Good morning.

Um, today's reading is from Proverbs chapter eight.

And the question for city teens and city kids is this.

What are some of the blessings of wisdom?

Okay, so you can talk to this about uh talk about this with uh the city kids leaders or your parents or family at the afterwards, okay?

So what are the bl some of the blessings of wisdom?

Does not wisdom call?

Does not understand raise her voice?

On the heights beside the way, at the crossroads she takes her stand.

Beside the gates in front of the town, at the entrance of the portal she cries aloud.

To you, O men, I call, and my cry is to the children of man.

O simple ones, learn prudence.

O fools, learn sense.

Here I will speak noble things, and from my lips will come what is right.

For my mouth will utter truth.

Wickedness is an abomination to my lips.

All the words of my mouth are righteous.

There is nothing twisted or crooked in them.

They are all straight to him who understands, and right to those who find who find knowledge.

Take my instruction instead of silver, and knowledge rather than choice gold.

For wisdom is better than jewels, and all that you may desire cannot compare with her.

I, wisdom, dwell with prudence, and I find knowledge and discretion.

The fear of the Lord is hatred of evil.

Pride and arrogance and the way of evil are perverted speech I hate.

I have counsel and sound wisdom, I have insight, I have strength.

By me kings reign, and rulers decree what is just.

By me princes rule, and nobles all who govern justly.

I love those who love me, and those who seek me diligently will find me.

Riches and honor are with me, enduring wealth and righteousness.

My fruit is better than gold, even fine gold, and my yield than choice silver.

I walk in the way of righteousness, in the paths of justice, granting an inherent inheritance to those who love me, and fulfilling their treasuries, or filling their treasuries.

The Lord possessed possessed me at the beginning of his work, the first of his act of gold, or acts of old.

Ages ago I was set up, at first before the beginning of the earth.

When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water, before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills I was brought forth, before he had made the earth with its fields, or the first of the dust of the world.

When he established the heavens I was there, when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, when he assigned to the seas its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command.

When he marked out of the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him, like a master workman.

And I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in him or in his inhabited world, and delighting in the children of man.

And now, O sons, listen to me.

Blessed are those who keep my ways, hear instruction, and be wise, and do not neglect it.

Blessed is the one who listened to me, watching daily at my gates, waiting beside my doors, for whoever finds me finds life, and obtains favor from the Lord.

But who he who fails to listen, who he who fails to find me injures himself.

All who hate me love death.

And so reads God's word.

Welcome to if you joined us while we're singing.

My name is Mark.

I'm one of the pastors here at uh at City.

Let me say uh a little bit more about that New to City meeting.

Uh, that is that um it's the the first of two that kind of work back to back.

And so this is really if you're interested in exploring more, making city your home, exploring uh membership here with us, or even just finding out what that is and why we have uh church membership.

We'll uh we'll start at probably around about 20 past 12 upstairs in the lounge.

So you'll see a set of stairs, head up, and there's sofas up there if you've never been up there, and the meeting will last around about an hour, and we'll do the second of those two um next uh next week.

And so if you are uh available or planning on coming to that, that's we're gonna be about 20 past 12 uh upstairs for like I say, around about uh an hour or or so, and then send you around or send you off to the rest of your rest of your Sunday.

Um, I wonder when the um the last time was that you uh you took some bad advice.

Uh somebody said something to you, whether it was uh advice about a relationship, or maybe it was uh some job advice, maybe it was an investment tip, uh and you thought, yes, uh that's that's the way to go.

And it turned out to be pretty terrible advice.

You listened to somebody that you shouldn't have.

Maybe the person was well-meaning, but the advice was still bad.

Maybe it was somebody that you respected.

And even though there was a little niggle in the back of your head, or maybe you felt kind of family pressure, social pressure to go along with the advice, even though it was kind of niggling away in the back of your mind of there's something not quite right about this.

Maybe the advice actually fit with what you wanted to do anyway.

And so you thought, yeah, there you go.

Somebody else has told me what I what I want, and it turned out to be to be bad advice.

Sometimes bad advice comes from our own hearts.

Sometimes bad advice comes from the the little voices that that speak to us.

It can be bad advice to say, don't rock the boat, just keep the peace.

Just put that, put how you're feeling down and don't express it.

That can be bad advice.

Maybe it's the the bad advice of that self-loathing voice, you know, that voice that says, Well, you're pretty useless at that anyway.

I wouldn't even bother trying.

Nobody's gonna think that that's a good thing for you to do.

Why would you even give that a go?

You can't do that.

It's a little voice giving you some bad advice.

Or, if it's not a self-loathing voice, it can be the bad advice of the overconfident voice.

You can do this, you don't need anybody else's help.

Don't ask for help.

You've got this.

This is all on you, this is on your shoulders, you've got to bear this.

People should appreciate you more.

I can't believe that they didn't say thank you.

Sometimes the worst advice can come from within us.

Bad advice is everywhere.

It's outside us, it's in our families sometimes, it's with our friends, it's on our media, what we consume, and it's in our own hearts.

Bad advice can be hard to escape.

How great then that wisdom calls to us, that God comes to us and wants to give us some good advice.

He wants to be a good and loving counselor and mentor.

He puts forth wisdom and says, Listen to her.

She's gonna give you some good advice in all of the clamor of bad advising voices.

She's gonna raise her voice this morning over all of it and say, Listen to me.

I'm gonna give you some good advice for your life.

Taking bad advice can change the whole course of your life, can't it?

You can have listened to some people that have advised you in such wrong ways that actually you think that's that diverted the whole course of my life.

That that changed who I am.

That's the power of counsel, wisdom.

In the same way, receiving God's good wisdom can transform us, our destinies, the world around us, the relationships that we are in.

As we look at this passage, let me bring to your attention the uh the first point this morning, which is that in an effort to give us good advice, do you know what wisdom does?

She tells you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear.

Wisdom tells you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear.

We're in verses 1 to 11.

If you if you have a Bible, you should follow along with me in Romans chapter 8, or you can look it up on your phone.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

We're in the English Standard Version.

Verse 1 says, Does wisdom, does not wisdom call?

Does not understand raise her voice on the heights beside the way at the crossroads?

She takes her stand beside the gates in front of the tide at the entrance of the portals.

She cries aloud.

To you, O men and women, I call.

My cry is to the children of man.

That's all humanity.

O simple ones.

Oh, thanks.

Learn prudence, oh fools.

Doubling down there.

See, wasn't right.

Learn sense.

Hear, and I will speak noble things.

From my lips will come what is right.

She tells us what we need to hear.

We all have a thing, and I alluded it to it just a moment ago.

We all have a thing called confirmation bias.

Imagine you're uh you're coming to a crossroads, like our graphic there.

You've got a decision to make, and you speak to 10 friends, and nine of them go against what you want to do.

Nine of them say that way of going would be crazy.

Don't do that for X, Y, and Z reason.

And one of them is just as nuts as you are.

And they say, Oh, yeah, no, absolutely, that sounds that sounds great.

And you're excellent.

Testimony of two or three witnesses.

Here we go.

Told you what you wanted to hear.

And you've gone along with it.

Wisdom's not like that.

She doesn't just tell us what we want to hear, she tells us what we need to hear.

And like we saw, if you've been through the whole series, you might be thinking, we've been here before, because in chapter one, second half of chapter one, we get another speech from wisdom.

And again, she's in public.

And that's worth bearing in mind because biblical wisdom, God's wisdom for you, it's not hidden away somewhere.

Christianity is not some mystical religion where you've got to try and uh and through a series of actions or uh pilgrimages or good deeds, kind of find the hidden keys and secrets and be initiated.

Wisdom's public.

She's standing there at the at the crossroads.

She's on the street calling, she's at every decision point.

That's why, again, our graphics are wonderfully designed by Gus.

Is a fork in the road.

Because wisdom stands there where the city logo is.

She's right at every decision point.

She's at the gate that is that you have to walk past her.

You can't miss her.

She's right there.

You can kind of go like this and pretend that you don't want to listen to her.

But also the gate is the place where important decisions are made.

Remember our church weekend away just about five weeks ago?

The end of Ruth chapter four.

There's a big decision about inheritance and who's gonna take Naomi's land and Naomi and Ruth to uh to look after them as well.

Where does that whole negotiation happen?

That happens at the gate.

That's where the uh the men of the town would gather to make these big decisions and wisdom saying, I'm there.

I'm right there.

If you want to make a big decision about your life, I'm just by your shoulder.

I'd like you to listen to me.

I'm talking to you.

Don't listen to the bad advice, it's just going to confirm what you want to hear.

Let me tell you some things that actually you need to hear.

And who's she calling to publicly?

Well, we laughed about it a moment ago.

She's she's talking to the simple, the fool.

That is, wisdom doesn't call to people who have it all figured out.

Wisdom doesn't call to people who have it all together, who are intellectually smart.

If you met some people that are very, very clever, highly educated, and yet just kind of lack sense.

And if you're sitting here going, oh no, I've never met somebody like that.

It might be thee.

Wisdom doesn't call to those who are well-initiated, well-grinded.

It calls to those who need help.

Have you ever made a decision that you ended up regretting?

Are you still choosing things that you end up regretting or are ashamed of?

Are you living with the consequences of the bad advice that you've taken in the past?

Or perhaps you're paralyzed and overwhelmed by the decisions that you need to make and you're not quite sure where to turn.

Wisdom's calling you.

That's exactly who wisdom is for.

She says, come and listen to me.

I'm not gonna, you're not gonna make you feel worse about yourself than you already do.

I know that there's mistakes, I know that there's foolishness, I know that there's stuff that you regret.

I know that you feel trapped and paralyzed and unable.

I'm going, I want to help, right?

I want to help you.

That's the same with Jesus, isn't it?

What is it Jesus says about his own ministry?

He doesn't come for those who are well, but for the sick.

It's the sick who need a doctor, he says to the religious leaders, because the religious leaders think, well, I've got this all sorted.

It's the people whose lives have taken such a turn, either by the circumstances of the world or their own sin.

They're the ones who think, oh, Jesus, I'm so glad you're here, because I actually really need you.

I actually really need some help here, please.

Wisdom is calling you.

Imagine that she is speaking right now to nobody else in this room but you.

She's looking you right in the eye and she's saying, Let me help you.

Why do you keep on going down this road that you're going?

Let me help you.

Will you not listen to me?

Learn from me.

I am here for you.

Not put off by your mistakes.

I'm not hampered by your self-loathing.

I can help.

Will you not talk with me a while?

And what does she say?

She tells the truth.

Here, for I speak noble things, from my lips will come what is right, for my mouth will utter truth.

Wickedness is an abomination to my lips, but all the words of my mouth are righteous.

There is nothing twisted or crooked in them.

She tells you the truth.

She tells you what's really going on by yourself, by the world, by your relationship with God.

Remember, we looked at in the last couple of chapters this idea of the forbidden woman.

Again, this is not a criticism of women in general.

It's just in Proverbs, there's there's two women that you get to choose from.

There's Lady Wisdom and there's Lady Folly.

And because it's a father talking to a son, they say, You're going to be taking you're going to fall in love basically with one of those women.

I'd really love it if you fall in love with Lady Wisdom rather than Lady Folly.

And those women are different.

Lady Folly flatters you.

Lady Folly, it could also be known as Mr.

Wrong, right?

You just think of it in those terms, if that makes more sense to you.

Lady Folly, Mr.

Wrong, flatters you, tells you what you want to hear, gives you bad advice, leads you into danger, and you don't realize it's danger until you're too far into it.

But wisdom tells you what you need to hear.

She speaks the truth.

Even if that truth is hard.

How are you at hearing hard?

How are you at hearing hard true things about yourself?

You know, that conversation.

Nobody enjoys those conversations unless you're an absolute sadist.

You sit down, you have coffee with somebody, they've asked to meet and you're like, You think it's just to hang out, and they say, Oh, I just wanted to kind of address a couple of things that I've noticed or that you said, or what happens?

How do you respond?

Does your does your mental legal team spring into action to give them 47 reasons about why they're wrong and another thing?

That's what mine does.

And then I go away and I sleep on it, and I wake up the next day and I go, oh yeah.

You're probably right.

There's least some stuff there that needs to be worked on.

How are you at hearing true hard things about yourself?

Folly will flatter you.

Folly will want you to take those shortcuts.

Peter last week was uh he gave this illustration about walking the long way round rather than through a park in the dead of night near where he he used to live.

Folly will say, walk through that unlit park.

Lady Wisdom says, no, no, go the long way around.

Come on.

Take the longer way.

It'll take more time and you'll be more tired when you get home.

But you will get home.

Folly speaks crookedly.

What does that mean?

Here's what foolishness does foolishness justifies sin in your own mind.

There's something you want to do.

Normally it's somebody that you want to date with our young congregation, right?

And you know that that's probably not right.

And you think about it, you pray about it, and you come up with you know half a dozen reasons about why it's fine.

Well, that's because you're listening to Lady Foy.

She likes to justify your heart's desire in your own mind to say that it's okay to rationalize things out.

Wisdom's not like that.

Wisdom's straight with you, not because she's cruel, not because she's a killjoy, but because she loves you.

One of the things that we'll see later, I'm kind of giving away, is that she rejoices over you, she delights in you, she wants to see you flourish.

And that's why she has sometimes harder conversations with you.

You can wonder, if wisdom is so public, why don't more people listen to her?

Well, this is precisely the answer, isn't it?

She's here to help, she's standing at the crossroad.

She's in public, she's raising her voice, but she's saying things that we don't always want to hear.

She's saying things that mean that we might have to change how we Behave, how we think, how we feel.

We don't like that.

It's the same with Jesus.

We like it.

People like it when Jesus says, Don't judge others.

We like it when he says, Do unto others as others would you would have them do to you.

Or when he looks at the woman caught in adultery and says, Neither do I condemn you.

Love that.

Love that, Jesus.

Love the Jesus who he he he cuddles the lambs.

That Jesus with his flowing hair and the nice lambs.

And he's he's kind of inoffensive.

He says nice things that you put on calendars with waterfalls.

But we struggle, don't we?

And our world struggles.

When he says things like he says to the to the rich young ruler, sell all you have and give it to the poor.

Oh, um, all?

What does all mean?

What's the what's the Greek word for all?

Sell?

Did I lend it?

Or in the same breath that he says to the woman caught in adultery, neither do I condemn you.

The very next line is go and sin no more.

Oh, it's a bit judgy, isn't it?

Jesus.

And you say, you know, don't judge, you say what I did was wrong and sinful.

Or he says to us all, take up your cross and follow me.

We kind of think with the cross, Good Friday, yeah.

So we're all wear crosses, crosses kind of become sanitized.

You think about it, you think, well, what's Jesus saying?

Jesus is saying, choose the path that identifies most closely with me, even if that means shame and ridicule and ignominy and ultimately death.

Take up your cross and follow me.

Oh, really?

In every area of my life?

With with the things that I choose for my career, with the person that I fall in love with, with my money, with my sexuality, with take up all of it.

Repent, he says, for the kingdom of God is at hand.

That is, turn from the way that you're going and do a 180 and follow me instead.

Couldn't you just cuddle a few more lambs, Jesus?

Transformation, growth, deepening in wisdom begins when we recognize that there are things about ourselves, the choices that we're making, the world that we are in, that we need to hear, even if they are hard to hear.

Or will you listen to wisdom?

It speaks truth to you and tells you what you need to hear.

Secondly, wisdom both instructs and empowers.

Wisdom instructs and empowers.

We're here in verses 12 to 21.

Imagine you're uh you've planned a road trip, you're you're getting ready to head off, you're gonna drive for the next uh six hours or so.

Uh you're heading out west or up to Donegal or down to the Dingle Peninsula or something like that, and you're you're getting ready to set up.

You've spent the night before uh on Spotify getting your driving playlist ready.

It's got a wonderful ebb and flow to it as the scenery changes, stuff to keep you awake, stuff to help you reflect on the way.

Google Maps, you've checked it out, you've gone for no tolls uh because you're cheap, uh, and because there's no time pressure.

You want to just enjoy the road.

You've marked out your route, you've hit start on Google Maps, you put the key in the ignition, and me.

Because there's no gas in the car, there's no petrol in the car, there's no fuel.

You're not gonna go very far.

With that in mind, look at what wisdom says in verse 14.

I have counsel and sign wisdom.

I have insight, I have strength.

What wisdom is saying here is I know the way, and I help you get there.

I have wisdom, I have insight, rather, and I have strength.

You can have the best route mapped out for your road trip or for your life.

And if you've got no fuel, you're stuck.

Other world religions, world views, offer us essentially the road map.

So here's the here's the rules, here's the here's the way that you need to go, the things that you need to do or not do.

No, it's up to you.

Try your best.

If you haven't got the capacity on your own, well, if you run out of fuel, that's kind of on you.

No, not to just kind of criticize other world religions and other worldviews.

Some of you pursue Jesus like this.

You think that he has told you what you need to do.

You might even say, Well, I believe in grace, save by grace.

Yes, absolutely, grace alone, gloria.

But in the end, all of the fuel is coming from you.

It's all my own effort.

You're focusing on your service, your strength, your effort, your initiative.

You wonder why you get burnt out and jaded.

You wonder why you begin to struggle.

And the offer of wisdom, the offer of Christ is both let me show you the way, and let me by my spirit empower and enable every step of that journey.

Come to wisdom, and you'll not only know the way to go, but you'll have the strength to get there.

Come to Jesus and you'll know the way to go, but with every step you take, you'll know what it means to rest.

Because it is his power, his power that work in and through you by his grace.

Maybe you say, Oh, well, I'm I'm pretty, I'm pretty tired.

Pretty tired of pursuing my spiritual life the way I have been.

I'm pretty pretty burnt out and pretty exhausted, and pretty jaded, not really doing well.

I quite like that.

If that's true, can I have that?

How do I get that?

Let me read you verses 12 and 13.

I wisdom dwell with prudence.

I find knowledge and discretion.

The fear of the Lord is the hatred of evil, pride and arrogance, and the way of evil and perverted speech I hate.

I have counsel.

In sign wisdom, I have insight.

I have strength.

So I want some of the I want I I I want the insight.

I need the insight.

I also need the I need the strength.

How do I how do I get that?

The only way to access it as verses 12 and 13 say is humbly.

She hates pride.

Wisdom hates arrogance.

She hates the way of evil.

Say you wanna want to walk in my way?

You gotta humble yourself.

You gotta acknowledge your need.

You gotta acknowledge that you've been thinking and acting wrongly about this.

You've got to turn from your evil, turn from your self-loathing, from your independence.

You may sit here, I'm not evil, I'm not going around being ostentatiously wicked to people.

I'm doing okay, yeah, but shouldering it all yourself, you're trying to do it all in your own strength.

That independence, that self-autonomy is wickedness.

It needs to be turned from.

You can't get my insight, you can't get my strength until you put down the burden of trying to do it all yourself.

Come to me, you all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

You access the strength and the insight that wisdom offers by humility, by repentance.

We must repent of our prideful refusal of his help, of his grace, and return like the younger brother with empty hands and receive graciously from the Father.

If we do that, if we do that and grab hold of Christ in that sort of way, it'll transform us.

It'll transform you.

I promise that it will.

Maybe it's in your family, maybe it's in your workplace.

You have people that you have soft influence over, they're on your team, or or if you're in a position of authority, you have harder influence that you're able to exert.

The world, well, it leads by power and position and authority.

The one who grows in wisdom leads by love, leads by service, selfless sacrifice, listening, hearing, caring.

What sort of person would your friends, family, colleagues respond to more?

The one with worldly exertions of power or the one who is seeking to serve and is pursuing the flourishing of the whole team rather than just safeguarding their position?

You've so many so many bosses, don't you don't you, who are actually just fearful that their position is going to be under threat, or that their own uh lackings, competency-wise, are going to get exposed.

That actually what they do is they lead out of that anxiety.

They lead out of that fear.

But actually, if you can be assured of who you are in Christ and where he has placed you, you leave in a way, lead in a way that causes all to flourish, yourself included.

What's more, while we come to wisdom, while we come to Christ with empty hands, wonderfully, at the end of this little section, 17 to 21, he doesn't let us leave empty-handed.

I love those who love me.

Those who seek me diligently find me.

Riches and honor are with me, enduring wealth and righteousness.

My fruit is better than gold, even fine gold, my yield more than choice silver.

I walk in the way of righteousness, in the paths of justice, granting an inheritance to those who love me and filling their treasuries.

Wise financial decisions lead to reward.

Wise relational decisions reap dividends emotionally.

Wise spiritual investments yield gospel fruit in our lives and in the generations after us.

That is not to say that in this world we will not suffer loss.

That is not to say that in this world we will not suffer lack.

But Christ gives life abundantly to those who pursue wisdom.

We come to him with empty hands.

But we leave with grace, with his favor, with blessing.

This is some of the things that wisdom offers offers us to tell us the truth, the things that we need to hear, to not just instruct, but actually empower, to give us the strength to move forward.

And then finally, in this section, wisdom turns now to basically say, well, why should you listen to me at all?

That's what verses 22 to 23 are about.

So the third point is why listen to wisdom?

When taking advice from someone, it's good to have their credentials, an idea of who the person is advising us.

We uh here at City uh have been using an asset management consultant, because I don't know if you noticed, but we're stuck in a cinema screen, uh, and we'd like to not be.

And so we're looking at how to purchase a building in the city, which is a miracle in and of itself.

And so we've engaged this guy, and he is excellent, not just because he's great and personable and all of those things, but because of his experience, because of what he has done in the past.

He has credentials that give us trust and assurance to work with him going forward.

Here, wisdom, in a similar sort of way, offers us her credentials so that we know well, why should we listen to her?

There are four big headlines uh as to why we should listen to wisdom.

Let me give them to you all at once, and then I'll briefly unpack them.

The first is that we should listen to wisdom because wisdom was there before creation.

Verse 22 and 23.

The Lord possessed me at the beginning of his work.

The first of his acts of old.

Secondly, that wisdom was there during creation.

So wisdom was there before.

Wisdom was there during creation, 27 to 29.

When he established the heavens, I was there, when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, when he assigned to the sea its limits so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked at the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him.

I was there during creation.

What's more, wisdom is the active agent of creation.

Not just that wisdom's an observer of what God's doing, but involved in it.

Verse 30, then I was beside him, like a master workman.

I was daily his delight.

And that's fourth and finally, the wisdom rejoices in all that God has made.

She, wisdom, was there before creation.

That is that wisdom, the reason why you should come and listen to her what she is saying, not just here in Proverbs, but in all 66 books of the Bible, Old and New Testament, is that wisdom isn't just something new and disposable.

Wisdom is ancient and eternal.

Moreover, wisdom is wonderfully outside us, outside of all of this creation, but certainly outside of us, and so can speak objectively, helpfully, carefully to us.

She was before us.

Wisdom is infinite, and so wisdom can speak into our finite lives.

Wisdom was there during creation.

I love this.

Because wisdom was there during creation.

Here's why you should listen to wisdom.

If wisdom was there during creation, wisdom knows the way the world works.

If wisdom was there during creation, wisdom knows the way that you work.

There is no point asking me how to fix your car.

I can change a tire, I know which one's the battery and which one where the wiper fluid goes, but if your car ain't working, don't call me.

I'll give you a Bible verse.

And the number of a mechanic.

You gotta ask a mechanic.

Why?

Because they know the way the car is supposed to work.

Wisdom knows how the world works.

Wisdom says that she was there when God assigned the sea its limit so the waters might not transgress his command and not overflow and go where they're not supposed to go.

God sets limits in his world, sets limits in our lives.

Wisdom saw that he was doing that, and wisdom understands why he did that.

We think that limits are bad things.

We think that limits are curtailments on our freedom.

We think that limits are kill joy.

And we should try and throw off those shackles, those limits, and live however we want.

G.K.

Chesterton in his book Orthodoxy talks about the goodness of limits.

Let me read a little quote from him.

You might fancy some children playing on the flat, grassy top of some tall island in the middle of the sea.

So long as there is a wall around the cliff's edge, the children could fling themselves into every frantic game and make that place the noisiest of all nurseries.

But when the walls are knocked down, leaving the naked peril of the precipice and cliffs below, they did not fall over.

But when their friends returned to them, find them all huddled together in terror on the very center of the island, and their song had ceased.

See what Chestergen's saying about the goodness of limits?

This is why wisdom understands the way the world's supposed to work, understands the way that you're supposed to work.

And wisdom said limits are good things.

In the same way, it's good to have a wall around that cliff edge, because when the wall's there, you can play whatever game you want.

You can be as rambunctious and exuberant and free because there's a limit.

You take the wall away, and there's the raging ocean below you, suddenly there's fear.

Suddenly there's, I don't know where to turn, I don't know what to do, I don't know how to act, I've got to stay safe, I've got to stand in the middle of the island, I've got to you feel paralyzed, you feel fearful, you feel trapped.

Whole generation of people say, You can be whoever you want to be.

No limits.

Oh, I have no idea what I want to be.

No idea who I should be.

And there's this exorbitant pressure to try and be someone, to do something, to matter.

Wisdom knows how the world works.

Wisdom was the agent in creation.

That master workman that is that wisdom's fingerprints are all over our world.

Wisdom's fingerprints are all over you.

The way you think, the way you feel, the way you act.

Imagine that you could open up the access panel of your brain.

And you could look at every component in there.

Every single one would have the fingerprints of wisdom stamped on it.

In order to know how the world works, we must go to wisdom.

We must listen to what the master workman is saying.

What's my marriage for?

Well, wisdom made it.

Ask her.

What's my sexuality for?

Wisdom made it.

Ask her.

What's all my stuff for?

Wisdom made it all.

Ask her.

What's my life for?

Wisdom made it.

Ask her.

Fourthly, she rejoices.

She rejoices not just in the world.

Not even just in God.

She rejoices in you.

Wisdom doesn't make the world and walk away.

Wisdom doesn't make seas and sex and sport and food and friends and language and lovers and say, don't touch, can't have it, hands off.

Wisdom says, all of this is brilliant.

I love it, and I love you, and I love that I've placed you in it.

Enjoy it.

Wisdom wants you're good.

That's why you should listen to her.

Wisdom wants you to flourish.

Wisdom knows that that happens when we rejoice in the same things that she rejoices in.

In God, in his world, and in one another.

Wisdom longs for that harmony of those three things at the center of your lives.

To have joy at every level of your being.

And Christ is the personification of that wisdom.

Remember what Paul says of him in Colossians?

All things were made by him and for him.

He rejoices over you.

He longs for your good.

Will you not listen to him?

Finally, wisdom concludes.

After all of this exuberance, the final line kind of leaves a kind of flat note, maybe a little bit you think.

All who hate me love death.

Oh, thanks.

But there's an invitation here, and there's a warning.

Invitation.

Say, come listen to me.

I'm here.

Come and find me.

Whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from the Lord.

All those who hate me love death.

Choose life, not death.

Choose wisdom, not folly.

Choose what you need to hear, even if it's hard, not what you want to hear.

Choose the infinite counsel rather than self-interested self-help advisors.

Choose how the world really works rather than trying to mold it to your own desires.

Choose wisdom.

Choose life.

Choose Christ and know his life.

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