I'd like to invite you to turn your Bibles to Proverbs chapter two. Look at the first six verses. I've been asked to deal with the subject of true knowledge and ask Christian. I said rather than true knowledge or truth, I really would rather deal with the idea of wisdom, the idea of wisdom in the book of Proverbs. And so Proverbs two, beginning of verse one. My son, if you receive my words and treasure my commandments within you, make your ear attentive to wisdom and incline your heart to understanding. For if you cry for discernment, lift your voice for understanding. If you seek her as silver and search for her as for hidden treasure, then you will discern the fear of the Lord and discover the knowledge of God. For the Lord gives wisdom and from his mouth come knowledge and understanding. Let's pray together. Our God and our Father, we're so grateful for the opportunity to be here tonight and to allow ourselves to again bathe in your word, Lord, that we might not just know ourselves better, which is true, know you better. but also, Lord, to acquire the great gift of wisdom. And just pray for our attendedness tonight, Lord, and pray for those, Lord, tonight who are sick and away, traveling and so forth. We just pray for our friends, church family, loved ones tonight, and we just commit ourselves to you in Jesus' name, amen. In the secular world, the academic world, knowledge, wisdom is often associated with the field of philosophy. One of the things that I was shocked when I went into seminary graduate school and even postgraduate work was how much emphasis was placed on philosophy. I thought I'd be doing way more theology than probably we really did, way more this, that, and the other thing than we really did. There was a lot of philosophy and I really, I was kind of taken back by that. Even in the evangelical seminary, great emphasis in reform circles on philosophy. Some of you may know that the word philosophy itself comes from a compound word. The prefix phila means to love, like Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love, philos, and the root is Sophia, which means wisdom. So philosophy literally means the love of wisdom. Some of the earliest philosophers were the Greeks, of course, and the earliest are referred to often in philosophy as what they call the pre-Socratics. Those are the philosophers that came before Socrates. And they were attempting to discover the meaning of the universe in terms of, in their mind's eye, what constitutes ultimate reality, what is the purpose of the universe, what is my purpose in the universe, and so forth. And the pre-socratic philosophers believed that the answer to these questions would come as they sought out the nature of three things, being, essence, and motion. Being, essence, and motion. And what you really find when you study these people is that whether they knew it or not, wittingly or unwittingly, what they really were doing was searching for God, and they didn't know it. A philosopher by the name of Thales, who is sometimes credited as being the first of the ancient Greek philosophers, the first of the pre-Socratics, Looking for the ultimate reality, the purpose of the universe, the purpose of his existence, by searching the ideas of being and essence and motion, offered the first suggestion, and he said that it was all found in the substance of water. Water. And how would you come up with something like that? Well, Thales observed that water is everywhere, that everything, every living thing needs water, that water appears in various forms, liquid, frozen, gas, that there is motion with water. He observed tides, he observed rivers, he observed the falling of rain. And he saw that water maybe really is the essential issue to existence, to meaning, to the universe, water. Pretty simple, but these are pretty Socratic. This is a long time ago. Others would come after Thales, and others would say, no, it's not water, it's wind. They'd look at the same thing. Movement, motion, essence, breath, life, all those sorts of things. Another would come along and say, no, it's earth. Another would come along and say, no, it's fire. From these elements, water, wind, earth, and fire, not only did we get the 80s group, earth, wind, and fire, but we also were given the idea, the concept of the four elements, or as they would refer to it, the four essences. The four essences. In their wisdom, philosophy, and their search for the meaning of everything, they turned rather than to a creator, they turned to his creation and offered the four elements, wind, water, earth, and fire. By mid 500 BC, another philosopher came along whose name was Anaximander, and he said no. Ultimate reality, N. X. Mander said, ultimate reality, and here's the idea, as he said, must be boundless, ageless, and immeasurable. Three things. Boundless, ageless, and immeasurable. Let me put those three concepts into theological terms. That ultimate reality must be omnipresent, Ultimate reality must be eternal, and ultimate reality must be infinite. Boundless, omnipresent, ageless, eternal, immeasurable, infinite. And he was looking, Anne Aximander, was looking for something beyond the four elements. And he called this boundless, ageless, immeasurable essence, he referred to it as quintessence, the fifth essence, from where we get the word quintessential. What does quintessential actually mean? The fifth essence. If you look up the word quintessential, what does it say? Ready for this? The most perfect. He was searching for the most perfect. But doing so, not by looking for a creator, but looking at the creation. As time went on, Philosophy took turns, and you've heard of ancient philosophers like Plato and Socrates, Aristotle, Epicurus, Democritus, later philosophers like Immanuel Kant, Descartes, John Locke, David Hume, Machiavelli, and others. And what happened in the world of philosophy is these people really shared either an ignorance of or an abject denial of the existence of God. And so in their quest for philosophy, the love of wisdom, they turn their focuses to what probably isolates most people from the world of philosophy, and that is they turn their attention to more abstract concepts. For instance, they turn their attention to the realms of metaphysics. Metaphysics deals with the study of ultimate being and ultimate reality. Beyond metaphysics, they turned their attention to epistemology. Other than Christian, anybody know what epistemology is? It is, huh? It's the science of learning or acquiring knowledge. You know, I remember a seminary having John Frame. He's famous in our world, but he's got this strange voice, and he, let's talk about this demology. It's like, oh my gosh, here we go, you know? The study of ethics. What is moral? What is the defining issues of values? Logic, the study of reason and argument and all of that. And essentially, the world of the Socratics and post-Socratics really turned to really abstract quests of understanding truth. And again, and I believe this is just my take, who am I, I'm not an expert on any of this, but it really did so in the quest for the quintessential with the rejection of the true one most perfect. There may be some exceptions. If so, I apologize to those ancient philosophers who believed in God and were trying to find him. And today we've all heard of various philosophies that truly today shape our culture. Nihilism, famously brought about and articulated by Friedrich Nietzsche, associated with all kinds of terrible things in the history of our world. Existentialism, Soren Kierkegaard, if you ever heard of him. Stoicism, philosopher Zeno. A big one was hedonism. And hedonism, by the way, is one of the oldest philosophies to exist. Has anybody ever heard of the Epic of Gilgamesh? It is a poem that was written somewhere between 1,200 and 2,000 years before Christ. It is a collection of, I think it's five, four or five Sumerian poems, but it is about a king in his quest for mortality who pursues it by denying himself no pleasures. And so way back 2,000 years before Christ, you have hedonism, pleasure, life's ultimate goal, the meaning of existence, pleasure. Descartes and Spinoza, as well as others, gave us rationalism. We live in a culture really defined by relativism, particularly what we call cultural relativism, which says what? That truth and morals are all relative, and so you and I therefore can't judge anybody or anything, cultural relativism. And the question that I, through all my thoughts about any of this, is any of this really, or any of these ideas really wisdom, ultimately wisdom? And actually, there is an entire section of the Old Testament that we refer to as the wisdom literature, wisdom literature. Wisdom literature consists of five books. See if you can name them. Ready? Anybody? Job, Proverbs, Psalms, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon. The wisdom literature. And so we might ask the question, oh, this is God's word. What does God's wisdom literature tell us ultimately about wisdom? Put on the brakes there, I'm gonna take you down a side road, and I promise you get back on the main road. Fair enough? Have any of you ever heard of the name Cornelius Van Til? Cornelius Van Til not only earned his PhD from Princeton, but also later became a professor at Princeton. And he left Princeton when Princeton had become, it was becoming increasingly more liberal. And he became one of the founding professors at the original faculty of Westminster Seminary, Reformed Seminary, Profound Reformed Seminary in Philadelphia, PA. But above all those things, Cornelius Van Til is known as the father of what's called presuppositional apologetics. Let's say that together. Presuppositional apologetics. Say it one more time. Presuppositional apologetics. When we talk about apologetics, it's not about apologizing, it's rather about making a defense. Defending the Christian faith. How are we as Christians to defend the Christian faith? Cornelius Van Til said, you can't defend the Christian faith apart from presuppositions. Now, I've got to say this at this point on the side road is, I've read more about Van Til and presuppositional apologetics written by others than I have actually read Van Til's treatment of presuppositional apologetics. And if you've ever read Van Til, you would understand what I'm saying. Not a lot of fun. Very brilliant guy, speaks in that kind of... Have you read him? It's hard to read, isn't it? Very hard to read. However, presuppositionalism claims that apart from presuppositions, no one could make sense out of your own human experience. Again, John Frame commenting on presuppositionalism says this, a presupposition is a belief that takes precedence over all other beliefs. A presupposition, Frame says, is therefore that which serves as the criteria for all other beliefs. A presupposition, again, Frame, an ultimate presupposition is a belief over which nothing can take precedence. Now my point is this, as Christians, we hold strong presuppositions. I mean, simple things like the presupposition that we believe in the existence and the person of God. We believe in the presupposition that Bible is God's inerrant and infallible word. We believe in the presupposition that man is fallen and sinful and apart from grace is lost forever, eternally. I mean, I could go on and on. Lots of presuppositions. And these are the presuppositions that form the lens through which we view all things, or at least we should view all things. Van Til wrote this, the central tenet that the Christian must at all times presuppose is the supernatural revelation of the Bible as the ultimate arbiter of truth, and error in order to know anything. Let me read that again. The central tenet that the Christian must at all times presuppose is the supernatural revelation of Bible as the ultimate arbitrator of both truth and error in order to know anything. He went on to say, Christians can assume nothing less because of our human thoughts which presuppose the existence of the God of the Bible, end quote. As Christians, we face the reality of our presuppositions. And we are, I believe, in this culture seeing this reality like never before. For instance, let me give you an example. A Christian says to an unbeliever, look at the universe. Did you know the Bible declares that the heavens declare the glory of God? Today in our culture, the unbeliever turns back to the Christian and says, when I look at the universe, all I see is the result of cosmic incidents. And further, I don't believe there is a God. And even further, I believe the Bible is a man-made book. And at that point, guess what happens? The conversation is broken down. Why? because we don't share the same presuppositions. And again, it used to be 20 years ago, 30, 40, 50 years ago, people, Americans in our culture, held shared presuppositions. Even if you weren't a believer, you'd been exposed to them. You had at least some notion that the Bible was at least to be revered. But that is disappearing, you do get that. And now you make these simple statements, faith statements, that presuppose various things that used to be common, and now they're not even on the radar anymore. What's the problem? The problem is different presuppositions, different lenses through which we view all things. The whole Van Til thing I just went through, that's my side road, let me get back onto the main road, fair enough. I say all that to say this, that when it comes to wisdom in the Old Testament literature, and in particular the book of Proverbs, wisdom is absolutely presuppositional. There is no wisdom, true wisdom, apart from biblical true presuppositions. The pursuit of true wisdom, the pursuit of an apprehension of wisdom demands accurate presuppositions. I'm going to ask a question. What is the most familiar verse in the book of Proverbs concerning the subject of wisdom? I'm going to tell you where it is. It's in Proverbs 9-10. And does anybody know it? I'll start you off and you'll know it. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Stop. Stop. Where, according to the wisdom literature of God, does wisdom begin? With the fear of the Lord. And even that phrase, let's all say it together, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Even that phrase, that verse, Proverbs 9, 10 is loaded with presuppositions. It presupposes, first of all, that there is a Lord. It presupposes that this Lord that is, is to be feared and awe and revered. It presupposes that this Lord who is feared and awed and revered is the source of true wisdom. And on top of all that, it presupposes that all this is true, everything I just said is true because it is recorded in the inerrant Word of God, because the Bible says so. It's a load of presuppositions. Proverbs tells us that the absolute and essential starting point for the acquisition of knowledge is a belief in God, an all reverence and adoration of God, an understanding that God is the source of all wisdom, and that the scriptures are the repository of God's wisdom. That's where wisdom begins. In contrast, The wisdom literature of the Old Testament also tells us this. Psalm 14 verse one. Let me start you off and see if you can fill in the verse. The fool says in his heart that there is no God. There it is. Suppositions. The fool categorically presupposes that there is no God. And the wise, conversely, presupposes that there is a God. A few verses. Proverbs 2, verse 6, for the Lord gives wisdom. From his mouth comes knowledge and understanding. Daniel 2.20, Daniel answered and said, let the name of God be blessed forever and ever, for wisdom and power belong to him. Or James 1.5, what a statement. But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God. Not if anybody lacks wisdom, get to the library, take some courses, ask God, who gives to all men generously without reproach and it will be given to him. And so in Proverbs, we're talking about wisdom in Proverbs, the fool is God rejecting, the wise is God believing. Further, in Proverbs, the fool is obedient to God, or disobedient to God, and the wise is obedient to God. And again, markably, wisdom has nothing to do with aptitude, it has nothing to do with intelligence, it has nothing to do with education or acumen, it has nothing to do with any of that. I'm back to where we began, Proverbs chapter 2, just make a few points and we'll take some prayer requests in here in a second. Proverbs 2, notice verse 1. My son, if you receive my words and treasure my commandments with you. Again, stop there. As I said before, Proverbs contains a conversation It's a conversation between a father and a son. But in this section here, the father is God and the son is the reader. And the father's instruction to his son, God's instruction to the reader, is to do what? Verse one, to receive my words and treasure my commandments within you. And here is the source of true wisdom. It is receiving, obeying, knowing the Word of God. God the Father is giving His Son, the Christian, His words, His commandments, words that call us to believe them and commandments that then call us to obey them. And that's true wisdom. It comes from God alone, God the source. Wisdom, if wisdom is solely through an all-wise God, then that wisdom, God's wisdom, must be revealed to us. And I believe at some level, the wisdom of God is revealed to us in some modicum through the way God created us, the Imagio Dei in His image, some measure of wisdom. But ultimately, it must be revealed to us, and it is revealed to us both through the written word and Jesus, the living word. And apart from the revelation of God, we live in a foolish world. We live in a foolish world. Second thing I draw your attention to in verse two is the call to make your ear attentive to wisdom and to incline your heart to understanding. We've been called to the scriptures, but in verse two we're being told how it is we are to handle the scriptures. When we study the scriptures, when we read the scriptures, what are we doing in that process? Is it just the acquisition of facts? Are we reading it just as a story? Verse two tells us that we need to incline our ear and be attentive to find wisdom, wisdom and understanding. to study the scriptures with the intent and purpose in order to acquire wisdom and understanding. Stop there. Yes, there is a distinction between wisdom and knowledge. Do we know this? There are smart people that are not wise. However, you cannot possess wisdom without knowledge. You can be knowledgeable and not wise, but you cannot be wise and not knowledgeable. How many times in my little life on this earth as a pastor, I've heard professing Christians say things or kind of assume things like, well, I don't really need to study the Bible, or I don't need to hear the scriptures exposited. I remember one time way back when, had nothing to do with graces, way before that, the church that Bill Hybels had come from in Chicago was interested in me. And a search committee guy got on the phone, began to talk to me about philosophy of ministry. And I told him that I was a Bible expositor. That was my calling and my passion. And he said, are you kidding me? He said, do you think we really need to hire somebody that's going to come up here and tell us what the Bible says? I said, you got the wrong guy. I was like, you get this, you hear, we don't need that. I don't need to know the scriptures. I don't need to know theology. I don't need that. And basically all that gets reduced down to all I really need is a personal relationship with Jesus. But what would a personal relationship with Jesus be apart from the scriptures, exposition, theology? You know what it'd be? It'd be foolishness. It'd be foolishness. Why? Because you don't know who God is. You don't know who you are. You don't know the premise or the basis of approaching God. You don't know. You hear a lot of that. Again, there is no wisdom apart from knowledge. Biblical ignorance always, in the most well-meaning of people, results in foolishness. And again, I think the point is that we need to be careful to make sure that our knowledge, theological knowledge, biblical knowledge, all of that is leading ultimately to wisdom. Not just facts, not just the ability to articulate, to know a lot, but leading to wisdom. I'll say it this way, I believe what the scripture teaches us is this, that wisdom is the application of true knowledge. We learn a lot But if we're not applying it to the way we live, we're missing wisdom. A. W. Tozer says this, ouch, here it is. In his work called The Knowledge of the Holy, he says this, in the Holy Scripture, wisdom, when used of God and good men, always carries, here's what he says, a strong moral connotation. It is conceived as being pure and loving and good. Wisdom among other things," Tozer would write, is the ability to devise perfect ends and to achieve those ends by the most perfect means. That's profound. Perfect ends and to achieve those ends by the most perfect means in the most godly way. Godly end being reached by godly means. It sees, tells her again, wisdom sees the end from the beginning. So there can be no need for guess or conjecture. Wisdom sees everything in focus, each in proper relation to all, and is thus able to work towards a predestined goal with flawless perfection, end quote. When I read that, you know what I think? I'm not very wise. Packer. in his work titled, Knowing God, says, wisdom is the power to see and the inclination to choose the best and highest goal together with the surest means of attaining it. Wisdom is in fact the practical side of moral goodness. As such, it is found in its fullness only in God. He alone is naturally and entirely and invariably wise." And so back to where we started from, the search for and the attempt to acquire wisdom apart from God is foolishness. When I was studying this, I had this flash and I actually wrote it down. Do you know from the very beginning of scripture, we are warned explicitly about the danger of pursuing wisdom apart from God. You know where? Let me read it for you. Now the serpent. was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, D, has God said you shall not eat from the tree of the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, from the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat, but from the fruit of the tree of the middle of the garden, God has said, you shall not eat it or touch it or you will die. And the serpent said to the woman, you surely will not die, for God knows in the day that you eat of it, your eyes will be open and you will be like God and you will know good and evil. Wisdom. And when the woman saw the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable, want to finish this in, to make one wise. She took the fruit, ate, she gave it also to her husband, and he ate. And what happened? Her pursuit for wisdom, apart from God, plunged her, her husband, and the world, us, into sin and death. Why? Because God is the only source. of wisdom. It's ultimate blasphemy in some ways to pursue wisdom apart from the All-Wise God. Back to Proverbs 2 verse 3 and 4. For if you cry for discernment, you lift your voice for understanding. If you seek her as silver and search for her as hidden treasures. Here's the quest for wisdom. The quest for wisdom. The idea of this pursuit Not just a pursuit, a life pursuit for wisdom is reiterated throughout the wisdom literature. God's call to pursue wisdom with no bars hold. How does wisdom come? I want to reread the text and then we'll be done. But I want to reread Proverbs 2 verses 1 through 6. And when I reread it this time, I want to emphasize a word that is repeated throughout these six verses. Ready? My son, here it is, if. You will receive my words and treasure my commandments within you. Make your ear attentive to wisdom and incline your heart to understanding. For if you cry for discernment, lift your voice for understanding. If you seek her as silver and search for her as for hidden treasure, then you will discern the fear of the Lord and discover the knowledge of God. You know what we have here? We have the repeated use of the Hebrew participle im, translated if, and then you have then. You have before you and I have before me kind of the ultimate if-then of true wisdom. If you receive, if you treasure, if you're attentive, if you incline, if you cry out, if you seek, if you search, then. If-then. And the then again, then you will discern the fear of the Lord, and discover the knowledge of God, for the Lord gives wisdom, and from his mouth come knowledge and understanding. Any thoughts, questions, comments? I don't know that there's anything more important in this world than wisdom. With all his miserable traits later on in life, God was truly amazed that Solomon asked for wisdom, wasn't he? You didn't ask me for gold, you didn't ask me for silver, you didn't ask me for this, that, the other thing. He says, you asked me for wisdom, and because you asked me for wisdom, I will give you everything else that you didn't ask for. There's a point in that lesson, right? There's a point, how important wisdom is. As a pastor, yeah, I need to know theology and Bible and all that, but I'm gonna tell you, in the real day-to-day, what I need most is wisdom. Wisdom. dealing with people, dealing with philosophy of ministry, dealing with young couples, dealing with A to Z wisdom. And you know, you pray, I pray as a pastor that, you know, God have I through all these years of Bible teaching and so forth, and also time in this position in this office, my hope is I have, and then my desire is to contribute, whatever modicum of wisdom I have to serve the church well for the glory of God. Wisdom's a biggie. As an elder, we're constantly searching for God's wisdom. Constantly. Huh? Amen. Any thoughts, comments? Truly. Did you hear what she said? As a parent, you try your whole entire life to impart wisdom to your kids. I tell my kids, I say, you know, I have people that drive 20 minutes, 30 minutes to come counsel with me. And I'm sitting in front of you, you won't listen to a word I'm saying. It's kind of true.