Proverbs 8 verses 22 through 36, these are God's words. Yahweh possessed me at the beginning of His way before His works of old. I have been established from everlasting, from the beginning, from before there was ever an earth. When there were no depths, I was brought forth. When there were no fountains abounding with water, before the mountains were settled, before the hills, I was brought forth. While as yet He had not made the earth or the fields or the primal dust of the world, When he prepared the heavens, I was there. When he drew a circle on the face of the deep, the clouds above. When he strengthened the fountains of the deep. When he assigned to the sea its limits so that the waters would not transgress his command. When he marked out the foundations of the earth. Then I was beside him as a master craftsman. and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him, rejoicing in his inhabited world, and my delight was with the sons of men. Now therefore listen to me, my children, for blessed are those who keep my ways. Hear instruction, and be wise, and do not disdain it. Blessed is the man who listens to me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors. For whoever finds me finds life, and obtains favor from Yahweh, but he who sins against me wrongs his own soul. All those who hate me love death." Amen so far the reading of God's inspired and inerrant word. There's something of a metonymy here, a representation, a use of the part to represent or talk about the whole. I remember a couple weeks ago when we first began thinking about wisdom, speaking in this way in this chapter, We noted that just as God is love, but love is not God, Christ is wisdom, but wisdom is not Christ. In other words, wisdom is an attribute of His, but He is more than wisdom. But now we come to verses 22 through 36, and we discover or rather hear wisdom describing itself or speaking for Christ as a whole, for the Son, God the Son as a whole. And we see that in the timing of wisdom's relationship with God. We see that In the mechanism, if we can use that word, we really can't use that word. There just is not a better way of saying that. Maybe the way that we would say it is it's referring to a personal property and what that property is. the mechanism of wisdom's relationship with God, and then the affect, or the character, the nature, or at least a great part of it, of wisdom's relationship with God, and then the necessity of our relationship with wisdom. So first, the timing of wisdom's relationship with God, and that is from everlasting. Yahweh possessed me at the beginning of his way. So wisdom belongs to the Lord. This person belongs to the Lord and the Lord belongs to him. Therefore also, not just at the beginning of creation or even at from everlasting as verse 23 goes on to say, but from the beginning of Yahweh. which there is no such thing, he's outside of time, but it's a way of speaking that shows the complete entire divinity of God the Son, who is being personified in one of his attributes here. that it is from everlasting because he is Yahweh. He is as much Yahweh as Yahweh is Yahweh. To use words to try and say what we have such difficulty understanding. And it's not just the timing, than with relation to the Lord, but the timing with relation to the world tells us the same thing. Because as verses 23 through 29 do such a good job recapping or summarizing in poetic fashion, Genesis 1, 1 through 10, what we see the scripture doing here, what the spirit is doing here, is he's making sure that we see that God the Son, who's being personified in his attribute of wisdom here, God the Son is not in the category of creature. He's in the category of creator. And so all of the cults that want to make Jesus the highest of the creatures, They have a real problem with this poetic description of God the Son by means of one of his attributes. And that problem is that verse 22 says that the Son is as Yahweh as Yahweh. He belongs to Yahweh from the beginning of Yahweh, not just from the beginning of the creation. But then verses 23 through 29, by repetition and poetic imagery, very strongly, very emphatically put Christ in the category, not of creature, but of creator. And this, the New Testament does several times, perhaps following Proverbs chapter eight, but the Spirit adding for us, John 1, Ephesians 1, verse 3, Ephesians 3, verse 9, Colossians 1, verse 16, Hebrews 1, verse 3, every one of those four texts proclaiming Christ as the creator of all created things. So the timing shows that Jesus is very God of very God. And then there is the, The nature or the mechanism of his relation to the Godhead, the personal properties, and what we mean by that is the way that the Bible speaks differently of each of the persons, so that it belongs to the father to beget and not to be begotten. It belongs to the son to be begotten of the father. It belongs to the Father and the Son to send forth the Spirit, and it belongs to the Spirit to be sent forth by the Father and the Son. So personal properties. And one of the places that we get this then, especially for the Father and the Son, is this language of brought forth. In verse 24, when there were no depths, I was brought forth. Verse 25, before the mountains were settled, before the hills, I was brought forth. And that is the same idea that is behind the word that the New Testament invents in first century Greek to talk about the sun, mono, only, geneis, begotten, but it's just one word in the Greek. Only begotten which is why you'll see it sometimes only hyphen begotten as one word in the English because it's it's identifying not just that Jesus is the son who is the eternally begotten of the father but that the manner of begetting or What is being communicated by the idea of begetting there is not exactly what we mean when we beget or are begotten. It's something that does not make the father higher than or before the father. or the cause of the Son. To speak in any of those ways is to speak of the Son in a way in which He is not God. Rather, He is the eternally begotten, always being begotten of the Father. It's just the word that God has given us and beyond which we cannot go. And that word is used repeatedly. especially in John, John 1.14, 1.18, 3.16, 3.18, and 1 John 4.9, but also in Hebrews 11, verse 17, that Jesus is the only begotten. So you have something of the timing of wisdom of the son's relation to Yahweh, which shows that he is very God of very God. And then you have the nature of his relation, this eternal begetting. And then you have the character or the affect of his relation, and that is mutual delight. If you look at verse 30, then I was beside him as a master craftsman, and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him. So not only is the Son the pleasure of the Father or the pleasure of the Father and the Spirit within the Godhead, I was daily His delight, but the Father is also the pleasure of the Son. The Son, wisdom, was rejoicing always before Him. Yahweh, who is especially being characterized now as, in this place, as the Father. And so there's this everlasting delighting and being delighted in rejoicing over and being rejoiced in being rejoiced over that is the character or the Affect is not exactly the right word because god is not affected but is the character of the the relation within the godhead that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit live, exist, are, from everlasting, from all eternity, in Himself, the one God, in mutual delight, mutual enjoyment, delighting in one another. And that this is the mutual delight within the Godhead is actually what leads to the creation. rejoicing in his inhabited world, and my delight was with the sons of men." That God in his intra-trinitarian, within the Trinity, intra-trinitarian joy and adoration and love and fellowship, determines to create these image bearers. whom he is going to redeem and bring into that delight and adoration and fellowship. So the character of the relation between the son and the father there in verse 30, and that as a cause not just for creation generally, but especially for the creation and redemption of the elect. And therefore that glimpse into how God treasures and delights in God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit with one another, and especially the Father and the Son. In this case, that glimpse presses upon us the necessity of delighting in the Son as the Father does and models for us to do. And as his character defines morality for us, so that it is morally required to delight in the Son, and delighting in the Father as the Son does, through whom, by whom we were created, in whose image we were created, and in whom we may be redeemed, from whom we are to be learning, according to this passage, that the one who created us and redeemed us and from whom we are learning and to whom we are being conformed, He delights in his father from all eternity. And so we are we are to delight in him, too and this This delight is learned by listening God addresses us with words the word Addresses us with his words and so the Lord Jesus personified his wisdom in this place Addresses us he says now therefore listen to me children. I Blessed are those who keep my ways, hear instruction and be wise, and do not disdain it. Blessed is the man who listens to me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors." And so this delight in the Lord Jesus is expressed in part in this eagerness and longing for him. watching daily, waiting at the posts of my doors. This desire for Him above all else and this diligence to have Him by the means or through the means by which He gives Himself to us, especially in and through and by His word. Now it's important that we be eager for him and long for him and seek him in this way because failing to do so is not merely being apathetic about spiritual things. Failing to do so, verse 36 describes as he who sins against me. So those are the two options. Those are the two categories in which each of us falls into one of those two. Either we are listening and hearing and listening and watching daily and waiting to find him, or we're sinning against him. And this is because of who he is and how valuable he is. If we don't desire him in this way, if we don't seek him and long for him in this way, we're not responding rightly to who he is. We would be sinning against him. to be spiritually apathetic, to not desire and long for and seek for Him. And not only would we sin against Him, but if He's our Creator, if He's the only Redeemer, if He's the only way to be brought into this joy that is within God Himself, the triune God Himself from all eternity, sinning against Him, says verse 36, would be wronging your own soul, hating Him, Another word that he uses now for apathy towards him is hating of him. This dovetails well with what we heard in the preaching at the end of Matthew 13 on the Lord's day. hating Him is to love death. So what life is, what we are created to have, what we're redeemed to have, is to come to delight in the Father and in the Son, the way that the Son and the Father delight in one another. And that's what He's bringing us into. And He brings us into it, especially by His word. So the fear of the Lord is not just this like key by which you get to other wisdom. It is the first and great wisdom to come to know God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, to value Him above all else, to desire and learn from Him and be conformed to Him in His own love and His own joy. That is the great wisdom. That is where you find life. For whoever finds me, finds life and obtains favor from Yahweh. that is where you find life. For whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from Yahweh, so that all of the other wisdom, wisdom in loving our neighbor as ourself, wisdom in loving one another as Christ has loved us, which is imitating him in the verse 31 aspect, that our love and delight in God is what produces our delight in the sons of men, but those things are secondary to coming to long for, desire, be diligent to have by means of the word, the Lord himself. All right, let's pray. Our gracious God and our Heavenly Father, we pray that by the ministry of your Spirit you'd give each one of us to know what it is to love you and desire you, particularly to love Christ and desire Christ, whom you have made unto us the wisdom of God and the power of God. to whom you unite us by faith. We pray that your spirit would pour out your love in our hearts and make us to rejoice in the hope of your glory. And that as he dwells in our hearts, that you father with the son would come and make your home with us by faith until the day that the tabernacling of God with men becomes not only faith, but sight. And so keep working in each of us, we pray. Make us to know what it is to delight in you and be diligent, to wait for you, to watch for you, to find you, to find favor from God and to find life. For we ask it in Jesus' name, amen.