The Posture and Pursuit of the Wise
Text: Proverbs 3:7 ESV
Introduction
I was provoked by a question at the end of last year that almost anyone could benefit from asking, “If you had to pick three words to describe yourself, what would they be?” (I.e., Fun-loving, funny, faithful, even-tempered, godly, loving, empathetic, confident, ambitious, sensitive…). This might be easier for some, but harder for others. It could be helpful to ask a friend, parent, mentor, spouse, or family member what words they would use to describe you. What might they say? It would be good practice in growing in self-awareness. Self-awareness is key in our walk with Christ because accurate self-assessment is needed for relevant and realistic application.
But as we begin a New Year, I was struck by another question, that non-Christians cannot ask, because they largely remain unchanged, but Christians should be asking and aspiring towards, “What three words would you like to be true of you by year’s end?” What would I like to become more like, more exemplary of, more emblematic of, more a model for? These are the questions that disciples ask because you are not stuck with who you are, rather you are being conformed into Christ-likeness. God has purposes in store for you and these include character-building, personal purification, gospel-groundedness, strong-security, and fruit-bearing (Philippians 1:6). The God of this world wants to grow close to you, and He wants to put to death in you this year all that Jesus died for!
Did you know that there is hardly a ceiling on how you could answer the latter question: “What would you like to be true of you by year’s end?” Anything that Jesus is (apart from His divinity) is available to you. Anything! (I.e., selflessness, humility, empathy, compassion, honesty, faith, fruits of the Spirit…) You say, “I want to be different this year!” Well, you can be!
Two verses (or commands) come to mind that spur me to this truth:
1. God says,
“Work out your salvation with fear and trembling”
(time, effort, methods)
“because God is at work in you to will and to work according to his good purposes.” (Philippians 2:13 ESV)
Why should you be involved in this great work? Because God is at work in you (forgiving you to free you), but He doesn’t work apart from you.
2. If God doesn’t work apart from you, what must you do?
“Train yourself for godliness…” (1 Timothy 4:7 ESV).
So, what are your three words that you will train towards?
I would like to put forward Proverbs 3:7 as a starting place for finding three words that would define your new year. Now these three words are in the context of Wisdom so whether you are aiming at wisdom or you just want to grow in baseline and foundational Christian character listen up: Proverbs 3:7 says, “BE NOT WISE IN YOUR OWN EYES (HUNGRY), FEAR GOD (HUMBLE), AND TURN AWAY FROM EVIL (HOLY).”
So, my three points for this sermon are, in the context of wisdom:
1. Wisdom is Hungry.
2. Wisdom is Humble.
3. Wisdom is Holy.
And I believe there is one path to get there: A personal worship habit with God through His Word! It is a holy habit, necessary and vital, for this year and every year! And yet only a third of Christians think so.
1) Wisdom is Hungry
Now, the passage does not say, “Do not be wise.” It says do not be wise in your own eyes. The goal and ever-increasing fruit of the Christian life is wisdom. But wisdom is not an untied and untethered thinking. It’s tied and tethered to God’s truth. So, I want to tell a story that defines wisdom for us before going into some of the traits that can help you assess whether you are wise in your own eyes or not!
Now, to follow Don’s lead a month or so ago, let me speak directly to the children and families. Children, did you know that out of all the books of the Bible, Proverbs is directed at you? Many of the sections, especially the first chapters, are directed at you. They start with the lines like, “My Son…”. Children, you ought to ingest these parts of the Bible that are so relevant to your life. You see, wisdom doesn’t start when you are old. It takes root and germinates when you are young (studies show that one of the biggest indicators of someone reading the Bible in their old age is if they read it in their young age). The gospel of Luke tells us that Jesus, when he was a boy, grew in wisdom and stature before God and man. So, we don’t grow in wisdom by being wise in our own eyes, but we can grow, and it should be evident and visible in other people’s eyes. Remember, the goal is wisdom. Wise children hunger for it. I want Grayson, Jackson, Callum, and Molly to hunger for wisdom and so we have been defining what does a wise son, as opposed to a foolish son, do. We have explained a wise son this way—a wise son does what he is supposed to do, when he is supposed to do it. So, how do they know what they are supposed to do? Well, Jesus gives us an illustration for this!
So, lets explain wisdom with a story that my father-in-law was reading to my boys over Christmas break. I’m going to paraphrase it like this. It is told at the end of Jesus’ most famous sermons. And you have two men: Let’s call them Sammy and Sunny. Sammy and Sunny want to build a house. They go out with their tools, nails, and hammer, and they are going to construct a house to live in. This house is going to resemble their life. What are they going to build their life upon? There are two options. You can build your life upon Stone (like Sammy) or upon sand (like Sunny). Now, sand might seem nice in the moment—it’s soft and warming to your feet in the sun—but what happens to sand when the rains come? Does it stay in place or wash away?
But if you build your life and home upon the stone, what happens when storms or the sun comes? Your life is intact, it stays together, and it’s sturdy and secure and satisfying. You will enjoy your life if it’s built upon the stone. And this is what Jesus says,
"Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock” (Matthew 7:24 ESV)
and
“[E]veryone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.” (Matthew 7:26 ESV)
So, in essence, what is wisdom? It is building your life upon God’s Word. It is the “skill of living a godly life.” It is the skill of applying God’s word to all of life. We see you are not wise because you know God’s Word, but you are wise if you know it and use it. You can read the word—that’s what heady people do—but if you’re hungry, you will apply it. Wisdom is knowing and doing. It’s the combination of the two. It’s not just knowing with no doing, and it’s not doing without knowing why. It’s both!
Question, how do I know if I am wise in my own eyes?
Now, if you are wise in your own eyes, you aren’t too concerned about what God says. In fact, you won’t care what others have to say, and you won’t say or ask a lot of God in prayer. I think those are at least three litmus tests for if you are wise in your own eyes—
1. Do you search diligently for wisdom in God’s Word? (Are you asking, “where is the stone so I can avoid the sand?”)
“I love those who love me, and those who seek me diligently find me.” (Proverbs 8:17 ESV)
Now, I wanted to bring you into probably the most concerning sentence I have ever heard come out of a man’s mouth. When I asked him, “what would it look like to take a next step in your faith.” He said, “I think I am fine. I would like to stay where I’m at.” Christians are not fine; they are hungry. They don’t want to stay where they are; they want to go where they have never been. The disciples said, “increases our faith”, not “maintain it”. John the Baptist said, “May you increase and may I decrease,” not “Jesus, we are getting a little imbalanced, can we balance this thing out?!”
2. Do you ask others for advice? Do you truly have voices that can overrule yours? (Homes, dating/relationships, jobs, school selection, church membership…)
“Plans are established by counsel; by wise guidance wage war.” (Proverbs 20:18 ESV)
So, don’t make your plans apart from people! And pick the ones who have a track record of wisdom, those who have made a habit of building their decisions upon God’s word. Be known by the company you keep.
“Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm.” (Proverbs 13:20 ESV)
“The ear who listens to life-giving reproof will dwell among the wise.” (Proverbs 15:31 ESV)
3. And then our final litmus test, “Do you pray? Are you asking for wisdom?” If you are not, it’s probably because you are wise in your own eyes.
“If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.” (James 1:5 ESV)
Christianity and status quo are strangers. Don’t make them neighbors.
So, in each one of these you are promised wisdom. If you go to God’s word, it will cling to you. If you hang around wise people, you will become like them, and if you ask God directly, then you will have it. But the insidiousness of sinful, prideful, self-wisdom will keep you from those things, and therefore you will only play the fool.
One Other Word
As I was going over this theme in my mind last night, I was looking for another word to capture the opposite of hunger and a synonym of being wise in your own eyes, and the word “stubborn” came to mind. Stubborn. No one likes to be around a stubborn person. They are defiant, entrenched, refuse to consider, do, think, or say otherwise, and they are so stubborn they often follow their stubbornness to their own demise. As I was looking over God’s word, it is a word used very often of God’s people. Phrases like, “refusing to listen,” “following their own heart,” “follows their own counsel,” “far from righteousness. You see, God wants to take your stubborn life of “I” and break and bend it into a little “C.” If the founder of our salvation was perfected through suffering, so shall we be (Hebrews 2:10).
So, I want to conclude this section of Hungering for God’s Word with this: Being wise in your own eyes and Being wise in God’s eyes are incompatible. When you are drinking from the polluted fountain of self, you will not drink from the well of wisdom in God’s word. In Peter we are called to:
“Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation- if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.” (1 Peter 2:2-3 ESV)
You say, “Well, I don’t desire it, so I’m not going to delve into it.” And that’s exactly the process God has for us to desire Him. He says, “Delve into it, and you will desire it” or “try it, and you will build a taste for it.”
Being wise in your own eyes will keep you from wisdom because it will keep you from God’s word. So, don’t let it. Commit to reading a Proverb a day for the month of January and commit to asking someone from our body about what God is teaching them? In these two things, we are building a hungry, not wise in our own eyes, culture!
2) Wisdom is Humble
Let’s now look to “Fearing God.” We have talked about being hungry, now let’s look to being humble. We can also define wisdom this way, “The fear of God in action.” Or “applied humility.” Well, what does it look like to apply humility? It’s almost inevitable, if you are not wise in your own eyes. Or to put it another way, humility is the posture of the wise. If wisdom is not in your eyes, but in the eyes of another, namely Jesus, then a humble man is the one who has his eyes fixed on Jesus. He is not taking long looks into the mirror, but long looks at his master because the best picture of wisdom is found in a person—the person of Christ. We are told in 1 Corinthians 1:30 that wisdom has a name—Jesus Christ.
“And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God,” (1 Corinthians 1:30 ESV)
So, the Proverbs find their fulfillment in a person.
So, what does this humble person do: they receive with meekness the implanted word (James 1:21). So, as you R.E.A.P. through the Proverbs, I would ask that you Read one a day. And then Evaluate yourself in what you read. Let them convict you, burden you, break you, expose you…and humble you. Let them remind you of all that you are not, yet all that Jesus is. You see, humility is rightly evaluating the gap between you and God. It’s far, terribly far. And when we read God’s word, we are reminded of that gap—and the vast distance of that gap. When we don’t spend time in God’s word, the gap shrinks.
So, as you R.E.A.P. through Proverbs, or through Mathew for that matter, you will read and then evaluate. If I am reading Proverbs 17:27, and I read it after a confrontation with Sara, I will evaluate myself as having missed the mark of wisdom…
“Whoever restrains his words has knowledge, and he who has a cool spirit is a man of understanding.” (Proverbs 17:27 ESV)
You see, I spoke in an unrestrained manner. I wanted to bring up something that Sara had done, and it was an appropriate word, but it came at a very inappropriate time. We were stressed; we were trying to get our family settled after all day flights from Atlanta; Molly was screaming….and it’s in that context that I make my remark about something I perceived in my wife’s life. I did not have restraint, and I did not have a cool spirit. So, I have read and then evaluated myself and then I turn to Christ, who expressed nothing but restraint, and maintained a cool spirit before his torturers, and that Christ died for me. I then Ask, “God forgive me.” So, God’s wise word takes me to God’s wise Son and His sacrifice for me.
And this is how God’s word humbles us! And if you are not in God’s word, REAPing, you will find it very hard to be humble. So, be hungry. If you are hungry, you will be humbled, and if you are humbled, you will be holy!
3) Wisdom is Holy
The text says, “Turn away from evil.” You see as we read God’s word, then evaluate ourselves and Christ in light of it, and then we Ask for forgiveness and then freedom. And then we Practice a new way of life. Jesus said in Matthew 3:8,
“bear fruit in keeping with repentance…” (Matthew 3:8 ESV)
We ought to have lives that are free from what we have just been forgiven of. We have lives of foolishness replaced by lives of fruit.
And so, when we Read, Evaluate, and Ask only, we stop short of practice, and James would tell us that we deceive ourselves and are only wise in our own eyes!
“But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. (James 1:22-23 ESV)
So, how does application help our holiness—
1. It builds foresight. It forces us to ask, “When will I need this?” We are reminded of the Proverb,
“The prudent sees danger and hides himself, but the fool walks on in and pays the consequence.” (Proverbs 22:3 ESV)
It leads us to anticipate when the next sinful trap is upon us and doesn’t catch us as nearly by surprise. Why is this important? Because the Devil is a prowler (1 Peter 5:8).
2. It commits us to action based off of conviction and not just fleshly emotion. When I have made an application, in a sober and spiritually minded moment, I don’t have to work as hard to consider what I want to do in the moment of sin. I have already determined that. Oftentimes, a previous commitment can carry us when conviction in the moment feels lacking.
3. Application gives us traction down a new path that we never thought possible. It rewires our responses and hardwires us with new habits and patterns. It breeds confidence and trust that God is shaping and changing us. It gives us something to point to, and it’s measurable and tangible evidence of God’s mercy of maturity.
Let me offer another motivation for R.E.A.P.ing from God’s word. Over the last 17 years of ministry, I have been blessed to have many men confess their sins, slaveries, and idolatries. They often share about a particularly intense and heightened season where failing rather than freedom seems to persist. When I ask the question, “what does your time with God look like in this season?” It’s crickets. I don’t remember a time where a man has been studious and spiritually vested in God’s word and he is not experiencing victory. Now, he may be suffering, but he’s not just blatantly sinning.
The Only Hungry, Humble, and Holy One
So, in closing, we see it from the front cover of the Bible in Adam and Eve’s fight against Satan in a garden to our Savior’s fight against Satan in the wilderness. Not being wise in your own eyes is crucial. If you are, like Adam and Eve, you will not hunger, remember, or follow God’s Word. You will look to self, instead of Scripture, and you will fall, fail, and follow your own evil, stubborn heart. As the Proverbs so rightly comment,
“Before a haughty spirit comes a great fall.” (Proverbs 16:18)
But, Jesus, in the wilderness before the same snake, did not succumb to his own self-made conclusions, but took note to quote the very wisdom of God back to His enemy. Satan’s three temptations were followed by three Scriptures and three applications (Matthew 4:1-11). In the first, Christ hungered for God’s Word over bread (Matthew 4:1-4). In the second, when asked by Satan to throw Himself off the temple, He was humble and did not seek to promote Himself by having God’s angels rescue Him (Matthew 4:5-7). And in the third temptation, when He was asked to taint his innocence and bow to Satan, He was holy (Matthew 4:8-11). Oh, what a hungry, humble, and holy Savior we have in Jesus! Where we fail, He won!