Cutting Against the Grain: Why Life Keeps Falling Apart Proverbs 1:1–7 - Pastor Rajiv

There are people in this room who were never really taught how to live.

Nobody sat you down.

You learn money by going broke.

You learn marriage by watching one fall apart.

You learn to survive from adults around you who are barely surviving themselves.

Now that's one group.

There are others of you who have every credential there is.

You can run a business, you can manage a team, you can solve problems that most people can't solve.

And yet, you still don't know what to do with your anger.

Or your child, maybe a wayward child, or why you've got everything you wanted and you still feel a hollow inside.

See, we all have different lives that we've lived, but we all have the same problem, the same ache.

None of us knows enough to be the experts on our own life.

And look, if you're here this morning, maybe for the first time, or you're here, you've been coming here, and you're not sure about this whole Jesus thing or Christianity thing, hear me.

I'm glad you're here.

And understand, you don't have to sign some contract to be able to be here and listen in.

But I do want to ask you something.

If you could just be honest about one question with me as we go through this morning, has the way you've been doing life, has the way you've been doing life up to this point actually worked for you?

In fact, for all of us, let me ask all of us something.

Who actually taught you how to live?

I mean, think about that.

Someone taught you to read, someone taught you to drive.

If you have a trade of some sort, somebody taught you that trade.

But the biggest skill of all, how to actually live, how to pick a person that you want to marry, how to handle money when you're scared, what to do with your anger, how to make wise decisions, how to raise a kid when nobody raised you right.

Who taught you that?

Now I would venture to say that for a lot of us, the honest answer is nobody.

Or, you know, my parents kinda.

So what do we end up doing?

We've been guessing.

And a life built on guesses ends up with tear marks all over it.

Now look, you may not be able to tell by looking at me, but I'm not the guy you want teaching you how to build you something.

I'm not very handy with tools.

Okay, now, sure, I can I can hang a picture on a wall.

I can assemble a crib, you know, put a crib together if the little diagram is clear enough for me to see.

I can do all that.

But if you ask me to build a deck or put a fence around your property, oh my goodness, I will mess that up.

I know, because I have before, Sarah will tell you.

But back in middle school, I took one class that taught me something that I've never really forgotten.

Class was Wood Shop.

Our biggest project that year was a key holder, right?

A board you hang by the door with hooks for your keys.

Now, we got all fancy with it.

We cut fancy designs around the edges.

We carved out, you know, curved letters that spelled K-E-Y-S, and we nailed them on the front of the board in case anybody wondered what this thing was actually for.

Now, I was proud of this thing.

I can still smell the sawdust.

I can still see my workbench.

But here's what I remember most.

Before our teacher let us touch a single tool, before he let us do do anything with the wood, he taught us one rule.

He said, read the grain before you cut.

Read the grain before you cut.

You see, wood has a grain to it, lines that run through every board in one direction.

The tree grew that way.

The wood carries that design inside it.

You didn't put it there.

It's just there.

And the rule was simple.

Cut with the grain, and the wood, it works with you.

Smooth, clean.

You cut against it, and the wood fights you.

It tears, it splinters, it chips in places you never wanted it to chip.

That's a picture of a human life.

Your life has a grain too.

You didn't put it there, and most of us have spent years cutting against it, wondering why everything keeps splintering.

That's why this morning we're gonna be opening this book today called Proverbs.

It's one of the oldest, richest books of wisdom in the world, 3,000 years old, and it reads like it was written for our Tuesday.

Now we're gonna live in this book for the next few weeks.

And Proverbs, let me tell you, Proverbs pulls no punches.

Your money, your mouth, sex life, who you let close to you, the thing you keep going back to that you know is killing you, all of these types of things.

This book has something to say about it.

Something to say about all of it, which is why we're gonna live in this book for the next few weeks.

So here's how it starts.

We're gonna go to Proverbs 1, verse 1.

Proverbs 1:1

The Proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel, for gaining wisdom and instruction.

Is that a fire alarm?

It's something.

Uh talk to Ray at the end of the service.

I'll start again.

The Proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel, for gaining wisdom and instruction, for understanding words of insight, for receiving instruction and prudent behavior, doing what is right and just and fair, for giving prudence to those who are simple, knowledge and discretion to the young.

Let the wise listen and add to their learning, and let the discerning get guidance, for understanding proverbs and parables, and the sayings and riddles of the wise.

Okay.

So a king wrote this letter, or this book, Solomon, son of David, king of Israel.

I want you to hold on to that.

Remember that, because it's going to matter later as we go on with the sermon.

But I want you to look at what this book is saying.

Look at what this book says it is for.

It uses a series of words: wisdom, instruction, insight, doing what is right, just, and fair.

It's like God is piling the table with everything you were never handed growing up.

In fact, that first word, wisdom, let me tell you what it actually means because it's probably not what you think.

See, the Bible's word for wisdom, it's not a classroom word, it's a workshop word.

It's the same word, chokma.

Okay, that's the Hebrew word, chokmah, that titles the whole entire book of Proverbs.

And it's the same word God uses.

Hear this, for the craftsmen he chose to build the tabernacle, the tent where the people of Israel met with God.

So among the very first people of the Bible, the Bible says God filled with the with the Spirit of God were not priests or prophets, they were craftsmen.

Men working wood, men working with metal and stone, men with sawdust on their arms.

That's the wisdom word that God's talking about here.

So when the Bible talks about wisdom, I know often we can go here, we we start picturing a professor.

No, no, don't do that.

Picture a craftsman, somebody who can feel when the cut is going wrong.

You see, wisdom is mastering of understanding.

Wisdom is a skill.

It's a skill at the material called your life.

And here's what Proverbs is claiming: God made the world by wisdom.

Life has a design.

Money has a grain.

Marriage has a grain.

Friendship has a grain.

Your words have a grain.

You live God's way, and yes, yes, life still gets hard.

Nobody promised it would be easy.

But you live God's way and now you're cutting with the grain.

You're working with the world the way God actually built it.

You live against it, and things splinter.

So the question for you isn't whether you you trust someone to teach you.

The question is whether you will trust yourself or the God who made your life.

Now, I do want to do a quick sidebar here, because I don't want anyone to misunderstand or misread Proverbs.

This isn't, let's make a deal.

This isn't, you know, uh a deal where you obey God and He guarantees you an easy, prosperous life.

That's not what Proverbs is promising.

Proverbs shows us how God made life to work, and usually wisdom bears good fruit.

But we live in a world broken by sin.

So sometimes you do what is right, and the wood still breaks in your hands.

I mean, remember, the book of Job is in the Bible too.

But understand something, when that happens, God's not distant from your pain.

Remember, Jesus entered suffering himself, and nothing done God's way is ever wasted.

In Christ, God will make all things right in the end.

So that's my little sidebar.

Let's go back to the passage.

I want to address who this book is actually for.

Because sometimes this gets missed with people.

This book is written for the simple and the young, the people just starting out.

But is that it?

No.

It's also written for the wise, who are told to keep listening and keep learning.

So Proverbs is a book for the beginner and the expert, the new Christian and the person who's walked with Jesus for 50 years.

Understand, nobody graduates from God's school of wisdom.

And listen to how this whole book talks to us.

Verse 8 says, Listen, my son, to your father's instruction, and do not forsake your mother's teaching.

See, it's not a list of rules, it's a voice.

My son, listen, my son.

So when you open the book of Proverbs, you're not picking up a rule book.

You're pulling up a stool next to a father who wants to teach you.

And look, some of you have never heard that voice.

Nobody ever sat you down.

And look, we're gonna come back to that voice because this book is headed somewhere.

You know, I'll just tell you now, it's he it ends at the cross.

That's where it's headed.

But I want you to stay with me here because here's the thing, not many people warn you about.

God wrote a book this good, this good, and laid out the grain of your whole life, and we still cut against it every single week.

Why?

See, here's the strange part.

We don't cut against the grain because we're stupid.

I mean, I don't think I'm stupid, but I cut the grain against the grain every week.

We do it because we think we we we're so convinced that we know better.

Guys, show of hands.

No, I'm kidding, you don't have to raise your hands.

But guys, have you ever driven somewhere new?

You're driving somewhere new, and your wife says the GPS is telling us that you gotta turn right.

And something in your gut goes, uh, you know, I know this area, so you turn left.

Babe, GPS just recalculated.

Uh you ignore that too.

Three wrong turns later, and you're sitting in a parking lot you never meant to be in.

And your wife, she gives you the look.

You know which look that is.

Right?

We laugh about that.

Why?

Because everyone's done it.

But church, we do that with our whole lives.

We have a maker who says, this is the way, and we say, Well, I've got a gut feeling.

And we drive straight into the wreckage.

So, where does that voice come from?

That voice that says, I know better.

Well, it's actually the oldest voice there is.

You go back to the garden in Genesis, the serpent comes to Eve with one promise: eat this, and you'll be like God.

You won't need anybody to tell you how to live.

You can decide for yourself.

And here's the part we often skip.

The Bible says that the fruit was desirable for gaining wisdom.

See, the first sin was reaching for wisdom on our own terms.

Be your own teacher, trust your own eyes.

And when that happened, the whole world began to splinter.

Sin begins when we trust our own wisdom more than God's.

And that same voice is still speaking today.

It's in the songs, it's in the movies, it's in the podcast, it's the advice everybody hands you.

Follow your heart, trust your God.

Nobody knows you like you, so you do you.

And in fact, it's gone even smarter than that.

It's gone smarter than just merely following your heart.

Now it says your feelings are the truest thing about you.

Your pain is the final authority.

Anyone who tells you differently, anyone who tells you that you're wrong is a threat to your peace.

I mean, I'm sure you heard a sermon like that a hundred times this week.

You just didn't know it was a sermon.

And look, it can sound like freedom, but it's the same lie from the garden.

It's just wearing new clothing.

And we wonder why everything keeps splintering.

Why is everything still tearing?

Now, let me also clarify this because again, I don't want to misunder anyone to misunderstand this.

There's a drive, there's a motivation underneath this.

That's not the problem.

Okay?

You wanted to survive.

You wanted to provide.

You wanted to protect yourself because in your mind, well, nobody else is gonna do it.

Some of you figured out a whole new country, some of you have moved here from a whole new country with no map and no one to call.

And you and you're and you're trying to make it through.

Some of you have been mother and father at the same kitchen table.

And then some of you have built something real just on your own gut instincts.

Let me say this: that grit can be a real gift of grace from God.

So those motivations underneath isn't the problem that I'm addressing.

The problem isn't that.

The drive is not the problem.

The driver is the problem.

See, sin says, I will run my life my way.

In fact, let me show you how far down this goes.

My younger brother, he also took wood shop.

But he missed the first class.

The first class is the class where the teacher shows you the machines, tells you what to touch, what you should never ever touch.

Well, second class, all the students are ready to get to work.

They're about to start their new project.

My brother steps up to the jointer machine.

Now, a jointer has a flatb and sharp blades running underneath, and you push the wood across it to shave and smooth out the edges.

He'd seen one before, figured he knew enough.

So he ran on instinct.

He pushes the wood through.

What do you think happened?

His hand slips and chops the tip of his finger off.

I could call to the nurse's office, and before I could even enter in, the principal tells me, tells me what happened, that, you know, tip of his finger's gone.

We're waiting for the ambulance.

And I'm thinking, is this some some weird joke?

Like, what is going on?

But I look, sure enough, there's blood all the way up and down the classroom halls.

He missed the class.

He ran on instinct.

And there's no getting that tip of the finger back.

Now listen, most of us, most of us have a version of that story.

Ours just doesn't necessarily show up on our hands.

In fact, let me share one of my stories.

When I came to faith, nobody really discipled me early on.

Nobody sat me down.

So I ran on instinct all the way to India.

I was gonna save my people single-handedly.

I was gonna be the Moses of India.

In fact, I even tried to become like the people I wanted to reach.

I changed how I talked, how I carried myself.

Why?

Because I thought if I could do all those things, they would accept me.

And then if they accept me, they'll accept my Jesus.

Well, they saw right through it.

In fact, one guy said it to my face.

He said, the only reason you're acting like us is because you're trying to convert us.

It's like, ugh.

All the trust I was trying to build, my own instincts wrecked it.

But thankfully, God was patient with me.

Over years, he grew me up.

But I've never forgotten what my own instincts built when I was trying to be my own teacher.

Sometimes I still make the mistakes, but I don't forget.

Now, I would venture to say there are some of you in the room right now, in your minds, you're pushing back at this.

And it's fair.

You're probably thinking something along the lines of, I've learned plenty without any of this.

I've had mentors, I've had books, I've had podcasts, people who don't believe in Jesus and they seem to do just fine.

And you're right.

A good mentor is a gift.

I thank God for the people who taught me.

A good book is a gift.

A good book can change your entire year.

Listen, I want you to learn from every wise person you can find.

I mean that.

But also understand, even the best of them, they eventually run out of road.

Let me explain what I mean.

A budget can tell you to stop spending.

It cannot make you stop wanting what you can't afford.

A great book can tell you to be patient with your kid.

It can't reach in at nine at night when you're exhausted and make the anger just go away.

The best mentor alive can tell you the right thing to do in your marriage.

In fact, most of the time, we probably already know what we're supposed to do.

Advice can tell you what's right, but it can't change what you want.

Here's the other thing I want to mention.

The wisest mentor again, I'm all for mentors.

I preached about it a few weeks ago.

The wisest mentor can help you make a better choice for tomorrow.

But there's not a whole lot he can do about 10 years ago.

He can't give back what you broke.

He can't undo the call you shouldn't have made, the years you can't get back, the person you can't unhurt.

And advice only points forward.

And some of you, there's some of us in this room that are carrying a weight that's all behind us.

And here's the last thing I'll say on this.

The wisest, most successful man who ever lived, who knew all the right answers, still lived like a fool.

Hear every saying wise saying in this book, he said them.

So what's my point in that?

If wisdom were just about good information, he would have died the wisest man who ever lived, but he didn't.

So hear me.

Mentors are a gift, books are a gift, podcasts are a gift.

I want you to use every one of them, but they cannot change what you want.

They cannot undo what's behind you, and they cannot save you in the end.

See, you don't need a better teacher.

You need a savior.

You need wisdom with a face.

And I'm about to read the last verse in the passage for this morning.

Before I do, let me be honest about myself, about my own qualifications.

I went to seminary.

If some of you don't know what that is, it's basically a fancy word that I went to a school that taught me how to teach and know about God and how to preach and do all the things I'm doing up here.

I went to seminary.

I built companies before I ever preached.

And my gut still tries to overrule God.

At least twice a week.

So what I'm about to read, I'm not reading down at you.

I'm sitting underneath it with you.

Okay, so here it is.

The verse, the entire book of Proverbs is really built on.

Verse 7.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.

Now I know how that word fear might land for some of you.

That word does not mean what Florida taught you.

Right?

If you're swimming out west of here and you meet a 15-foot alligator, you feel a kind of fear, the kind that makes you swim faster than you've ever swam before.

The fear that that fear runs away from what it fears.

That's not the fear that I'm talking about here.

That's not this word.

There's another kind.

In fact, I see it in my own house.

When I walk through the door, my kids, when they were young, they wouldn't run away from me.

They ran at me.

Every time I'd walk through the door.

In fact, earlier this week, after a lunch meeting, I barely got inside the door, and my little daughter Elena, she shouts, Daddy, and she runs as fast as she can and she jumps and leaps into my arms.

Those same kids would be crushed to disappoint me.

Not because I would ever hurt them, but because they love me.

Right, kids?

I need affirmation right now.

No, I'm kidding.

Because they love me.

That's the fear of the Lord.

Not the alligator.

It's the child in mid-air.

Love that big, respect that big at the same time for the same person.

Okay, let me break it down this way.

Here's what the fear of the Lord means.

You take God seriously because he's holy.

You trust him because he's good.

And in Christ, you love him because through Christ, God is your father.

You hold those three together: holy, good, father, and you've begun the fear of the Lord.

And verse 7 doesn't stop there.

The verse calls it the beginning.

And when I say beginning, or when scripture says the beginning, it's not talking about kindergarten.

It's not something you outgrow.

He's saying it's the foundation.

The wisest person, even in this room, stands on the fear of the Lord again tomorrow morning.

You never graduate out of it.

You never graduate past it.

Fear of the Lord.

It's the beginning.

But then verse 7 takes a turn.

But fools despise wisdom and instruction.

Now, let me be clear on this.

The fool is not the person with no schooling.

The fool is the one who looks at all of this and says, you know what?

I got this.

I'm good.

I know enough.

That's the fool.

It's not a brains problem.

It's a worship problem.

And that road has an end.

And it doesn't end in a parking lot, it ends in death in front of a holy God.

And I want to let that land.

Because it's serious.

This isn't a fender bender.

It's not a hard season.

We're talking about a holy God, but someone choosing a life that's calling him a liar and running their own life their way.

And understand, if that were the end of the sermon, if I just said, Oh, let's pray, that'd be really disheartening.

Every one of us could be in trouble at that point.

Because every one of us, at some point or another, have tried to live our life our way and neglected the wisdom of God.

But thank God it's not the end.

Remember verse one?

A king wrote this book?

I mentioned I wanted you to hold on to that.

Solomon.

God told him to ask for anything.

And he asked for wisdom.

Not money, not power, wisdom.

And God made him the wisest man who had ever lived.

He wrote 3,000 Proverbs.

He wrote the book we're in this morning.

But here's how his story ends.

In 1 Kings, it tells us that Solomon grew old.

His wives turned his heart after other gods.

And his heart wasn't fully devoted to the Lord his God.

This guy had 700 wives.

His heart turned toward other gods.

He even built places of worship for idols near Jerusalem.

Solomon had every word of this book, and he still drifted.

Not because the words were weak, but because somewhere along the way, he stopped listening to the Father and started trusting the King in the Mir.

See, he had the words in his hands.

He just stopped listening to the voice.

And if you're honest with yourself, for many of us, maybe all of us, so have you.

There are times so have I.

You can have the book open.

You can have this God's word open and your heart somewhere else entirely.

So listen, we don't need another Solomon to give us better advice.

No, we need someone greater than Solomon to rescue us from our foolish hearts.

And one day, Jesus stood in front of a crowd and essentially said exactly that: that someone greater than Solomon is here.

Jesus didn't just teach the wise life, he lived every line of it.

The spirit of wisdom rested on him.

He delighted in the fear of the Lord, the very thing the rest of us tend to run from.

Where we resisted the Father, he trusted him.

Where we ran our own lives, he obeyed.

Where Solomon's heart wandered, Jesus never did.

Jesus is truly the wisest, the wise, the ultimate wise king that we've always needed.

And do you know what that king did for a living?

He was a carpenter.

He was a carpenter.

See, here's something I want you to know about this book.

This book that we're going to enter into over the next few weeks.

In this very book, wisdom isn't just a thing you get.

Wisdom is described as a person.

A person who was there beside God when the world was made, calling out in the streets, begging people to come and live.

Solomon wrote that, and he couldn't become that.

You see, this whole book is reaching for a wisdom that's not just an idea, but a person.

And then wisdom walked into our world.

The one who made every tree spent years in a workshop shaping wood with his hands.

And then those same hands were stretched on a wooden cross.

And at that cross, Jesus carried every foolish act of self-rule.

Every time we said, I know better.

Every time we pushed God aside and took the wheel of our life.

And I want you to think about what that actually means.

See, the wisest man who ever lived was treated like the worst fool who ever lived.

He stood in the place of people who had rejected God's wisdom.

He took our judgment, our self-rule, the sin of self-rule, and took that punishment upon himself.

And understand, that's not God paying you back.

That is God paying for you to the world.

The cross looked foolish.

But it was the wisdom of God.

Through the weakness of a crucified Savior, God was rescuing people who could never rescue themselves.

And three days later, God raises him from the dead.

You see, Jesus isn't a memory.

He's alive.

And by his spirit, he is present with his people.

I want you to understand where Jesus begins.

Advice can tell you what is right.

Jesus changes what you want.

Advice can point you toward tomorrow.

Jesus forgives what is behind you.

Advice can improve parts of your life.

Jesus saves your whole life.

Wisdom is not merely a list of principles.

Wisdom has a face, and his name is Jesus.

And look, I'm not going to stand here and lie to you.

Some of you are carrying losses that don't come back.

Coming to Jesus doesn't grow the fingertip back.

Some wreckage stays wrecked in this life.

But Jesus does more than just patch up your old life.

He forgives your sin.

He cleans your record.

He gives you a new heart and promises that one day He will make all things new.

Remember the voice this whole book speaks in?

My son, listen, my son.

Some of you have never heard that voice.

No father ever sat you down.

Nobody taught you how to live.

But when you come to Jesus, God receives you into his family.

You're no longer left to teach yourself.

You have a father who will forgive you, lead you, and teach you.

So what do you do?

Wisdom begins when you stop trusting yourself and put your life in the hands of Jesus.

The Bible calls this repentance and faith.

Repentance means you stop crowning yourself, you turn from running your own life your way.

Faith means you put the full weight of your life on Jesus.

You trust his death to forgive you, his resurrection to give you life, and his wisdom to lead you.

And if you don't know Jesus, but today you want to know him, today you want to place the trust of your life into his hands, you can do it right where you're sitting.

Jesus, forgive me.

Teach me.

My life is yours.

And when God brings you to that place of repentance and faith, he does for you that you could never do for yourself.

By his spirit, he gives you a new heart, begins changing the things you want.

You're not left to change yourself.

Jesus begins his work within you.

And here's the difference between you and Solomon.

Solomon wrote and read this book as a king collecting wisdom.

You get to read it as a child sitting with the Father of all creation.

You get the author in the room with you.

So tomorrow morning, before you hit the floor and your gut takes the wheel, ask God to teach you.

Pray something like this, Lord, you built today.

I didn't.

I'm not the expert of my own life.

Show me the grain.

I trust you.

That simple prayer is the fear of the Lord with work boots on.

But don't stop there.

Open the book.

Proverbs has 31 chapters, a month's worth.

Read one chapter of Proverbs a day and see how it starts to transform your thinking.

Don't do it to earn anything, not as homework.

Because the teacher who lives in you now speaks to you through these words.

So open up the book.

Open it tomorrow and hear your father's voice.

Listen, whether you've been coasting in life or doubting or carrying 20 years of wreckage, I want you to hear this.

Because some of you think you're too far gone.

I want you to know you are not too far gone for Jesus.

So come to his workbench.

Not to a program, to a person.

The carpenter who built the universe stretched out his hands on wood that he made.

He died for our foolishness.

He rose to give us life.

Understand, church, we were never meant to be our own guide.

So trust the one who made you.

Let's pray.

Father, we came in this morning, sure that we knew how to live.

And God, I just I'm thankful that you've shown us that we've been guessing along the way.

We've cut against the grain of the lives that you made.

And we've got the splinters to prove it.

Thank you for not leaving us to teach ourselves.

Thank you that when wisdom finally came, it came with a face and with hands.

And those hands were stretched out on a cross for fools like us.

In Jesus Christ, you paid for us.

Teach us.

Teach us to live.

Not from a distance, but your hands over ours.

Every day.

We're not the experts, but you are.

And we are yours.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.