You'd Do Well to Hunt for Wisdom

Jesus, thank you so much for this incredible family.

God, you have blessed us with the most amazing, genuine people.

Everyone here is who they are.

And really who we are is your children.

That's who we are.

We belong to you.

Just like we sang out this morning, we belong to you, Jesus.

And we love it.

So speak into our hearts exactly what we need this morning.

Literally, just from your word to our hearts.

Help us walk out of here more ready to receive the life that you have for us than we were when we came in.

And we ask all this in your name, Jesus.

Amen.

Well, last week was a treat, right?

That was awesome.

That was great.

I really think I was telling some friends that Paul Young, if you weren't here last week, Paul Young, author of The Shack, came and he spoke, and it was one of the most thought-provoking, the most deep, the most profound messages I've ever heard.

I've listened to it three times.

I loved it because it made me think, made me ask questions, which is good sometimes.

The best teacher I ever had in high school, Dr.

Hedges.

She was the best teacher I ever had because she made me think instead of just giving me the answers I needed for the test.

She was also the most frustrating teacher I ever had because she made me think instead of just giving me the answers that I needed for the test.

It was very frustrating.

But later in life I grew to appreciate that.

And the message was like that.

It was just so thought-provoking, so profound.

If you haven't listened to it yet, listen to it online or grab a CD, it was really cool.

Now I can promise you that this morning will be none of those things.

It will not be deep, it will not be profound, and I'm actually really glad that I don't have the pressure of having to stand up here and deliver something like that.

In fact, we're starting a new series this morning called You Would Do Well.

You'd do well.

And I very much doubt that there's gonna be anything that any of us hear in the next month that we've never heard before.

We're not gonna hear anything that's gonna be revolutionary to our thinking or really profound.

I know it sounds like I'm giving you a lot of excuses just not to come for a few weeks.

Not a good salesman, I guess, but but this is what I love about what we're gonna talk about.

The subject matter isn't profound.

But if we apply it to our lives, the results will be.

Every morning we're gonna walk out of here with something that we have the opportunity to do.

And if we do these things, we take these actions, we will see profound effects in our lives.

We're borrowing this whole you do well phrase from a verse in Acts chapter 15.

Acts 15 · chapter mention

We talked about Acts 15 a few months ago or weeks ago.

The summer runs together.

And uh, and it's a simple dilemma that the early church was in where all these people are coming into a relationship with Jesus and they want to know what to do.

It's the most frustrating thing in the world when we don't know what to do, when we're at a new job and we haven't been properly trained, and we just feel like we we don't know what to do.

Tell me what to do, please.

That's the most horrific experience.

Just tell us what to do.

And that's where the early church was.

These people want to know, okay, what do I do?

I've accepted Jesus, I believe in Jesus, I believe this message now what?

What do I do?

And there were a lot of different opinions of what was important, what wasn't.

James, the leader of the early church, kind of took the reins and said, Hey, look, we're not gonna make it too hard for anyone who's starting out in their journey with Jesus to progress in that journey.

We're just gonna give people some simple actions to take that'll make a big difference.

And so he said to the early church, hey, you would do well to focus on these few things.

And they were very simple.

It wasn't a laundry list.

It was actually only three.

One was abstaining from sexual immorality, the other two were these cultural issues that really don't even apply to us anymore.

The spirit of what he was saying was this: focus on a few basics and apply them to your life, and you will do well.

You will benefit.

And I love that because that's that's God's heart for us, right?

What Nathan shared a few minutes ago during Lord's Supper, that he gives to us freely.

He's our dad.

He loves you so much and he wants you to do well.

He wants you to succeed.

I mean, sometimes we grow up with this image of God like he's waiting for us to make a mistake, and when we do, he's like, gotcha, finally.

You you tripped up and now you're gonna pay the price.

And that's not God, because that's not a dad.

Not a good one anyway.

We all want our kids to succeed.

We want our kids to do well.

And that's how God is with us.

And the amazing thing about God is that he lets us choose to follow him or not.

He doesn't force himself on us.

One of my favorite verses in all of scripture is in Revelation, and it's it's Jesus saying, Hey, I stand at the door and knock, and if you'll open it up, I'll come into your life.

We'll share a meal together as friends.

And it's Jesus.

He could knock the door down, he could walk through it, open a window.

I don't know, he could get in if he wanted to.

But he knocks.

He gives us the ability to accept, he also gives us the ability to reject.

And that's that's a great sign of love.

One of the ways that we know God loves us so much is he gives us the choice to reject him.

As parents, we've all been rejected by our kids at some point.

Isn't it wonderful?

First time that happened with me, Liam was two, and he would always get up.

As soon as he could get out of bed, he would get up at like five and crawl into bed with Megan and I and lay right in between us, and somehow, I was too tired to put him back.

He would, in his sleep, or maybe it was conscious, I don't know, he would push me further and further to the edge of the bed.

And I would wake up right before I would fall off and try to push him back, and no matter what, I would end up again on the outside.

It was like subconsciously he was saying, I don't want you here.

One morning I opened my eyes and I looked at him, and he's two and he's beautiful.

And I'm at the edge of the bed, and he slowly made my pillow his pillow, and I'm just looking at him.

I'm thankful to God that I have him.

I mean, it was this incredible moment.

I'm like, God, thank you so much for this boy.

He's changed my life.

I love him so much.

And then he opened his eyes as I'm having this conversation with God, and I'm like, oh, this is perfect, because our eyes locked, and I'm right about to say, I love you, son.

And before I can say that, he goes, go away.

Just whispers it, just whispers, go away.

And I love him, so I did.

So God, God gives us that choice.

And and everything we're gonna share in the next few weeks in this you do well series, these are all things that God has said, look, do these things, take these actions, you will do well.

I'm your dad, I want you to succeed.

I've never promised you that life's gonna be easy, I've never promised you that you're not gonna have problems.

In fact, God promises us the opposite.

He's He's honest.

He says, You're gonna have troubles.

But do these things and you'll do well.

So each morning we're gonna look at a different piece of advice from Scripture with the hopes of applying it to our lives so we will do well, because God wants us to take that choice.

In Proverbs chapter 2, it says, My child, listen to what I say and treasure my commands.

Proverbs 2 · chapter mention

Tune your ears to wisdom and concentrate on understanding.

Cry out for insight and ask for understanding.

Search for them as you would for silver, seek them like hidden treasures.

Then you will understand what it means to fear the Lord, and you will gain knowledge of God, for the Lord grants wisdom.

From his mouth come knowledge and understanding.

He grants a treasure of common sense to the honest, he is a shield to those who walk with integrity, he guards the paths of the just and protects those who are faithful to him.

And I just learned that I cannot see nearly as well as I used to.

So we'll do that.

So King Solomon wrote these words 3,000 years ago.

And he is the wisest man not named Jesus that ever walked the earth.

He had over 700 wives, so he is also the dumbest man that ever walked the earth.

Saying.

And see, I love that because one of the great things about the Bible is that it doesn't whitewash the heroes, it doesn't record their victories, but not their failures.

In fact, you will not find a more unbiased account of history in any any history textbook that exists than you will in the Bible when it comes to the people that we have in it.

So here we have Solomon, the wisest man that ever lived, and he has this whole area of his life that he is just stupid in.

And that's encouraging that if the wisest man in the world, the wisest man that's ever lived, had a whole area of life that he struggled with, that should give a lot of us hope.

And he tells us to search for wisdom.

If you look at the descriptions of these verbs, they're pretty intense, right?

It's cry out for wisdom, listen carefully, tune your ears, seek it, search for it like you would for hidden treasure.

Do everything you can to find wisdom because wisdom is valuable.

In fact, later in Proverbs chapter 8, verse 11, he says, wisdom is far more valuable than rubies.

Proverbs 8:11

It's far more valuable than rubies.

Nothing you desire can compare with it.

Solomon knew a little something about rubies.

On top of being the wisest man that ever lived, he's also the wealthiest man, most likely, that ever lived.

In fact, silver was viewed as worthless in his kingdom because gold was so plentiful.

You see, he understood that everything he had was because of wisdom.

God came to him when he was very young as a king and said, Look, tell me what you want, I'll give it to you.

I don't know if this was an audible conversation he had with God or if he just recognized that God was his dad and wanted to bless him and had a conversation like that.

But God says, Look, tell me what you want, I'll give it to you.

He could have asked for wealth, he could have asked for peace in his reign, he could have asked for the love of his subjects, but he asked for wisdom.

And that's ironic because that shows that he already was pretty wise.

And God gives him this wisdom, and as a result, he has everything else.

He has the wealth, he has the peace, the love of his subjects because he has wisdom.

So Solomon understood that everything he had was due to wisdom, and all the wisdom that he had came from God.

So he tells us search for wisdom, seek out wisdom.

We live in a world that doesn't make us search for things that much anymore, right?

We don't have to search that hard to find whatever it is that we're looking for most times.

And that's kind of a new phenomenon.

If you were to talk to someone just a hundred years ago and try to explain the concept of a search engine, something like Google, yeah, you just ask any question about any subject you can think of, and you can figure out the answer.

How do radio waves work?

I don't know.

Oh, that's how it works.

Just don't ever ask it why you're coughing because it'll tell you that you're dying.

But search engines, I mean, this is a new thing.

You don't have to look that hard to find stuff.

Even things like Amazon.com and eBay have taken the rareness out of most things in this world.

You can find anything very easily.

When I was a kid growing up, my parents, they're gift givers.

They love giving gifts to their kids.

Even when we didn't have very much money, my parents always gave us toys and other things because they loved to bless us.

And I remember what would always happen is they'd buy us a new toy, and then we'd open it up and we'd play with it and we'd love it, and then we'd look at the back of the box that it came with.

And on the back of that box would be all these other toys that belonged to the same collection, and we didn't know they existed until we saw the box.

My parents should have taken them out of the box first.

But because we saw them, we wanted them, and then my parents, because they love giving us gifts, wanted to get us those things, but this is before you could go online and just buy it.

And so they would search and they would seek and they would go to department stores and toy stores.

And I remember when my little brother was younger, I was old enough to tag along on a lot of these trips with my mom.

She made friends with all the people that worked in the receiving department of all these different stores, and they would call her.

They would call her when a new shipment of Ninja Turtles or something came in and say, Rhonda, we think we have the one you've been looking for.

I mean, she had like a network.

And it was just to bless us as kids.

And there's something really cool and a really cool illustration about God's love there.

But I've never had to do that as a dad.

I'll go to Target, and if what we're looking for isn't at Target, maybe I'll swing by Walmart if it's on the way.

And if it's not there, I'm just going to Amazon and I'm buying it.

That's what I'm going to do.

I've never had to search that hard to find something for my son or my daughter.

When I was younger, I collected baseball cards, but not just any baseball cards, uh, Ken Griffey Jr.

baseball cards.

When I was in like the fourth or fifth grade, he was the next Hank Aaron.

He was going to break every record.

That didn't happen.

But I have a lot of his baseball cards.

I amassed a collection of over 400 unique Ken Griffey Jr.

baseball cards.

And I used to get this magazine called Beckett Monthly, and it would itemize all the baseball cards that had ever existed and tell you what their value was.

There was a big market for that at the time, and I would be fourth, fifth grade calculating how much my cards were worth.

And that was at the peak of his career, and I had some rare ones.

My collection at that time, according to Beckett, was worth$5,000.

I was in the fifth grade, so I was set for life, right?

Never gonna need anything.

I don't need my parents.

I got$5,000 of baseball cards.

I couldn't sell it for$50 if I wanted to today.

Because nothing is rare anymore.

You don't see baseball card shops.

I mean, my dad used to take me to baseball card shops.

We used to go four hours to Kansas City, Missouri to baseball card shows to find these cards.

I wouldn't sell them now anyway because of those memories with my dad, but eBay alone took all the rareness out of those things.

If there's only ten that exist, as long as seven of them are for sale all the time, they're not rare.

Nothing is rare anymore.

When I was in college, my my good friend Andy was a big Wayland Jennings fan.

And he had this Wayland Jennings vinyl album in its original sleeve on his wall.

It was his prize possession.

And one day, horsing around, I knocked it off the wall and damaged it.

And he freaked out.

And he was on the football team.

And so I was highly motivated to fix this problem.

And I told him, Andy, I'll replace it.

And he said, Oh, Justin, there's no way.

You're never gonna find this thing.

eBay had only been out for two or three years at the time.

So I went to my room, got on my computer, found it on eBay in about two minutes, bought it for 10 bucks.

It came a few days later and I brought it to him.

It was in better condition than the one that he had in the first place.

But you know, he never hung it on his wall.

It didn't mean anything to him because its value in his mind was directly associated with how rare he thought it was.

And once he knew that it was just a few clicks away, it just wasn't that valuable.

Nothing is really rare anymore.

Except for wisdom.

Right?

What Solomon wrote 3,000 years ago, it's just as applicable today.

You cannot download wisdom.

You can't buy wisdom.

There will never be a day when we have enough wisdom.

Even Solomon, the wisest man that ever lived, didn't have enough wisdom, or surely he would have had a few fewer than 700 wives.

That's over two anniversaries a day.

So all the pressure you feel once a year, guys, just imagine.

Although it would make it pretty easy, because anytime a woman came up to Solomon, whether he realized he was married to her or not, uh, and said, Did you forget something?

It's our anniversary, right?

I knew it.

I knew it.

Here's some gold.

You know, that's the Solomon.

He was wealthy, a lot of wives.

Even the wisest man alive didn't have enough wisdom.

And so when he says, search for wisdom, seek it, what he's telling us is we absolutely need wisdom.

And we need it bad.

We don't realize sometimes how much we do need it.

Wisdom is really the solution to any problem that we face.

We may think we need more money, we may think we need more time, we may think we need a new spouse.

I don't know.

We may think we need any of those things.

What we really need is wisdom.

We have the wisdom to manage our money, the wisdom to manage our time, the wisdom to appreciate, understand, and value the people that God has put into our lives.

So many of our problems would be solved right there.

Even medical issues.

Wisdom is so often the answer, right?

I'm not saying God doesn't heal people miraculously, he absolutely does.

I know a lot of people in this room that have experienced that.

I've seen my son healed in a way that doctors were like, I don't know, what happened?

He's better though.

Here's the bill.

When God heals you, they still charge you for it, which I think is a little unfair.

But medical wisdom heals people all the time.

And that's actually biblical.

In Acts chapter 28, Paul and Luke are traveling and they become shipwrecked.

Acts 28 · chapter mention

They're on this island.

And Paul prays for this man, he lays hands on this man, and the man is healed.

Through prayer, it seems like a miraculous healing.

And then there's a verse right after that that says, Many people came and were healed.

But the Greek word that's used for healed in that particular verse means receive medical attention.

And see, Luke was a doctor.

Luke wrote that.

And so what Luke actually said is many people came and received medical attention.

And so Luke's saying that many people came, and as a doctor, I helped him out.

He used his medical wisdom to bring healing.

Wisdom is the answer that we need.

And the great thing about wisdom is that we are promised wisdom by God.

One of the most often quoted statements that Jesus ever made, it's often taken out of context as well.

It's in Matthew chapter 7.

Matthew 7 · chapter mention

Jesus said, Keep on asking and you will receive what you ask for.

Keep on seeking and you will find, keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you.

For everyone who asks receives.

Everyone who seeks finds.

And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.

And this has been interpreted to mean all kinds of things.

If you want a car, a really, really nice one, just keep on asking.

And God does that, sure.

But Jesus was talking about the Holy Spirit.

And he's saying, look, I don't hold out on my kids.

The very first temptation that Satan got away with with people was to trick us to believe that God was holding out on us.

And God does not hold out on his children.

He doesn't hold out when it comes to giving us his spirit, and he doesn't hold out when it comes to giving us wisdom.

Almost the same exact wording, James 1.5 says, if you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you.

So how does he give it to us?

We don't just wake up with a lot more wisdom.

He gives it to us when we learn to look for it.

When we seek it.

When we search for it like it's treasure.

The kind of seeking that Jesus describes, keep on asking, keep on searching, keep on seeking.

The kind of seeking that Proverbs 2 describe, to cry out, to listen to search.

It's active searching.

So many of us in this room have received something because we were actively looking for it.

Maybe it was a job.

You needed work, and so you actively looked for a job.

You went to every business that had a now hiring sign.

You put your resume out there, you asked friends, you did whatever it took.

And you may have a job this morning, right now, because of that active searching.

Doesn't mean that God didn't give you that job.

It just means that He gave it to you through the actions that you took.

He honored that.

Active searching.

That's what it's telling us to do when it comes to wisdom.

So, how do we actively search for wisdom?

Where do we look?

We could come up with this laundry list, but we don't have time this morning.

There are three simple actions, though.

Three simple actions that if we applied to our lives, and look, don't feel a pressure to apply all of these at once, just one would have a profound effect on all of our lives.

These are three actions that will help us find the wisdom that we're searching for.

In Proverbs 13, 20, it says, walk with the wise and become wise, associate with fools and get in trouble.

Sure many of us have experienced the second half of that verse.

No, I have.

If we are actively searching for wisdom, we will look for wise friends to surround ourselves with.

Now, whether we like it or not, we all have criteria for the friends we choose.

Maybe it's someone that shares an interest that you share.

I understand that.

I've lived here for eight years.

I am still actively searching for someone who is as passionate about Duke basketball as I am.

And if that's you this morning, I cannot wait to embrace you after this is done.

Because I haven't found you yet.

And I do want to warn you, I'm serious.

I've painted myself blue.

I can spell Sheshewski, so you need to know what you're getting into.

Okay?

We want friends that share interest, we want friends that make us laugh, we want friends that accept us.

I've worked with teenagers for over 10 years, and oftentimes the only criteria that is used to choose a friend is acceptance.

And acceptance is great, but I've seen some really good kids be accepted by some really poor influences over the years.

That alone is not good enough criteria.

That's not what we would want for our children.

That's not what God wants for us.

So a great question for us to ask ourselves is is wisdom part of the criteria we use to choose friends?

Are we looking for wise friends?

That's one of the greatest things about being involved here, is I have met so many wise friends.

I am never the wisest person in a room, and I love it.

If you're ever in a room with me and I'm the wisest one there, you need to leave.

If my wife is with me, by default, I am never the wisest person in the room.

We talk about joining teams and helping out.

Most of the people I know here is friends I got to know through serving on teams.

And I've made more wise friends by simply being involved here than I've ever met anywhere else in any part of life doing anything else I've ever done.

If we're actively searching for wisdom, we will look for wise friends to surround ourselves with.

Proverbs 1522 says that plans go wrong for lack of advice.

Many advisors bring success.

See, I love this because this is Solomon again, writing Proverbs.

And he says, get advisors.

So here's the wisest man on earth admitting that he has advisors.

And I wonder sometimes, like, what did they do?

He's the wisest man on earth.

Maybe one of them suggests that at one point, hey, like, what about one wife?

Just a thought.

I see, I wonder when I read Proverbs, I wonder what percentage, I don't know the answer to this, but what percentage of the statements that we read were things that Solomon thought of himself, and what percentage were things that he heard from a wise advisor?

That he simply repeated.

Just like that whole, it's hard to be aggressive if you're confused thing that I blatantly stole.

See, his wisdom came from the fact that he was looking for wisdom.

So he surrounded himself with advisors.

Do we have people in our lives that exist for the sole purpose of giving us advice?

I have a few people in my life like that, and I treasure these people.

They are not my friends.

We do not hang out.

We're not even Facebook friends.

Not saying I wouldn't like to be their friend, but we're just not friends in the sense that we hang out a lot and spend a lot of time together.

We have a completely one-way relationship, and I love it because it's all about me.

It's all about them giving me what I need.

It's fantastic.

I have a counselor that I go to once a week.

I've been there for four years.

He's professional.

I need professional help.

And so I go there once a week for four years, and literally I just get from him advice, wisdom, direction.

He helps me make decisions.

I walk out of there every single week with less stress, with more clear understanding of what I need to do, mainly who I need to apologize to, which is mainly my wife.

And it's wonderful because I don't give him anything.

And I'm not, I'm just being honest.

Like, there's a lot of relationships that are two-way, and a lot of times you have relationships that are all about what are you giving.

And it's nice sometimes, selfishly, to have a relationship where it's just a person helping you.

That's really cool.

And in the context of having an advisor, that's the whole point of it.

You're not being mean, you're not manipulating.

That's why you're going into that relationship.

I've got other people that are a little bit less formal in that role.

They're not a paid counselor.

I've got a guy that I've known for over a decade, and he's always been in kind of a teacher mentor role for me.

And we meet twice a year.

We meet for lunch.

And all I do is ask him questions and soak up everything that he tells me.

My former youth pastor lives in North Carolina.

I call him every once in a while.

Because I look up to him and I just ask him questions.

It's entirely one way, but it benefits me so greatly because I'm getting advice.

I have advisors.

The normal thing to do is to go to people that have the same struggles that we have and ask for advice.

And I get that.

I do that all the time.

There's safety there, right?

They're not going to judge you for the struggles you have, but rarely do I get really helpful advice.

And what if instead we went to people who thrive in the areas we struggle and ask them to be our advisor?

It sounds very important, like, will you be my advisor?

It's very regal.

But you can call it mentoring, you can call it coaching.

There's definitely some area of life that all of us in this room struggle with.

How helpful would it be to have an advisor in your marriage, to go to marriage counseling, or to find a couple that you really respect and you'd say, hey, I would love to have your marriage.

Can we meet every once in a while?

And you just share with me how to have what you have.

I'll give you this it's the secret, man.

We're in Georgia.

No one turns down Chick-fil-A.

No one.

All you have to say is, Can I buy you lunch at Chick-fil-A?

And they're there.

Done.

They may be so flattered that you've asked them to advise you, they may buy you Chick-fil-A.

Win-win.

See what just happened?

Could be marriage, could be finances.

I know several financial advisors, that's what they do for a living.

There's other people that are just really good with money that you might know, and you can come to them and have the humility, because it does take some humility, pride gets in the way, but we can deal with that and say, hey, you're good with money.

I'm not.

Can you help me?

Can we meet?

Can you spend an hour just looking through what I do and tell me what I'm doing wrong?

I mean, most people would be thrilled to have the opportunity to help like that.

Most of us like to do the things we're good at, right?

Give those people that chance.

It could be parenting, it could be any part of your life.

You know what?

It could even be spiritual.

It really could.

In Ephesians 1.8, the Bible says that God has showered his kindness on us, giving us all wisdom and understanding.

Okay, wisdom and understanding.

You'll see that phraseology a lot in scripture where it's knowledge and understanding, wisdom and understanding, and it can seem redundant, but it's not because it's two different words.

And when he says understanding, Paul used a word that meant the knowledge of human affairs.

So he's saying, look, practical wisdom.

How to be successful at your job, how to organize your life.

But the word for wisdom is this word Sophia, and it literally means a knowledge of divine things, like an understanding of deep, eternal, spiritual things.

And God gives us both, and they're both important.

I know people who just get God very easily, a little bit differently.

Some of those people cannot make a meeting on time to save their life.

Like one or the other, right?

Sometimes we really struggle with the divine wisdom stuff, the just getting God and understanding how he works.

And sometimes we we really thrive in the other.

If you're like me, you struggle in both, and you just surround yourself with advisors and do what you gotta do.

But you can find someone that you recognize and you see that they just they get God and you want to get God like that, and you can say, Hey, can you be a spiritual advisor for me?

Can I meet with you and you just tell me whatever God's told you?

What's helping you grow close to God?

I want that.

And just as a disclaimer, if that person is kind of full in terms of the number of people they're doing that with, ask them for a referral.

You may, I mean, it sounds weird, but the counselor I've seen for four years every single week that's helped me through an addiction, through major issues and relationships and all kinds of things.

I never met him before I started going to him for counseling.

I was referred to him and it's been awesome.

So you might think of someone that you really respect spiritually, but they might be full.

Just say, hey, well, who's someone that's poured into you, or who's someone that you have poured into that is ready for that and trust their referral, but get an advisor.

If we're actively searching for wisdom, we will look for wise friends to surround ourselves with, and we'll look to wise advisors to help us in the areas of life we struggle.

One more action.

So pretty much the most cliche thing a guy in a church on a stage can say is read the Bible.

Like I really can't think of a more cliche thing to say.

But the Bible just works, right?

And it shouldn't.

I read Moses.

The Bible credits, well, not the Bible, it's people credit Moses with writing the first five books of the Bible.

He probably didn't write the part in Deuteronomy where he dies.

I'm just guessing.

But he's credited with writing the first five books.

And he lived 3,500 years ago, and this is Moses' life.

He was a Jewish man raised as a prince in Egypt, killed somebody, became an outlaw and a shepherd, and then ended up leading over a million Jewish nomadic people who lived in tents traveling in the desert.

So Moses and I don't have a lot in common as far as life goes.

I couldn't sit next to Moses and be like, I know, right?

Like when the tent falls down, it's the worst.

There's not a lot of common ground, yet when I read Exodus, I relate to Moses.

I mean, his self-doubt.

All the stuff like, God, you've got the wrong guy.

Have you been paying any attention to my life?

The frustrations, the impatience, the temperament issues.

I mean, I relate to Moses, and I shouldn't.

Because our lives are so different, completely different points in history.

But that's God's word.

It is timeless.

It works.

In fact, 2 Timothy 3.16 says, all scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives.

It corrects us when we're wrong and it teaches us to do what's right.

In other words, it works.

And all of us could use something that works.

Ten minutes a day.

Ten minutes a day in the Bible, it's life-changing.

The wisdom that you'll encounter.

And there are definitely barriers that exist to getting into God's word.

I understand that.

Most of those, though, have been removed over time because there are people that will tell you if you don't read the Bible every day, you're going to hell, and they're just wrong.

And if they ever say that, just ask them where the Bible says that, because it doesn't.

There's value in reading it every day, but we're not supposed to do it out of a duty.

Most people that have ever lived, that have ever followed God in human history either A, could not read, either B lived at a time when the Bible hadn't even been written, or at least most of it hadn't been written, or C, even if it had been, they didn't have access to it.

They couldn't get to it if they wanted to.

We live in a unique time that we have this unparalleled access to God's word.

It's awesome.

There are still a few barriers that exist internally.

I don't know where to start, I don't know what translation to read.

You can grab a one-year Bible.

We have some at the source.

You can even grab them online.

And you don't have to worry about where to start.

You just pick the day.

If you know what day of the month it is, you know what to read.

And if you read it every single day, you read it in a year, and it takes like 15 minutes a day.

It's awesome.

You can get an app for your phone, like the UVersion Bible app.

Just search Bible app.

You can grab the Bible Gateway app.

And man, translations, galore, you can make notes, you can highlight stuff, you can ask questions, you can look up commentaries, you can define words, it'll read it to you.

Come on.

And it's free.

All scripture is useful.

If the worship team wants to come back up, wisdom is still hard to find.

It is rare.

It always will be.

But God does not hold out on his kids.

If we searched for wisdom, if we hunted for wisdom, we would do well.

And that comes through looking for wise friends to surround ourselves with.

It comes from looking to wise advisors to ask us, to help us in the areas of life in which we struggle.

And it comes from looking into scripture to get answers that we cannot get anywhere else.

And it just works.

If you're here this morning, God loves you.

He's your dad.

He wants you to do well.

He's given you this treasure of wisdom in this world to find.

And I love it because it's like a game of hide and seek, right?

He's a dad.

I love hiding from my son.

But I always want him to find me.

The Bible says that God actually enjoys mystery.

But he wants us to find him.

He wants us to find his wisdom, his truth, his love.

Search for wisdom, and you will do well.

Let's pray.

Jesus, thank you so much for all the wisdom that you give us.

Thank you for how much you love us.

I pray that every single one of us this morning understands that we are your children and that you have great things for us.

We pray in your name, Jesus, that we would search for the wisdom that you have for us, that we would seek it like hidden treasure.

Because you promise that if we do that, we find it.

And so we ask all this in your name.

Amen.

Oh, hey, let's stand.