sovereign Lord and our God, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Lord, we long to know you. We have this desire as your people burning within us, and we would ask that you would grant to us your Holy Spirit. who has inspired this word and illumines for us its understanding. We ask, O Lord, that we would know you, particularly through and in your word, and bless us as we hear. Give us those ears, we pray, through Christ. Amen. You may be seated. Everyone, I think, or most everyone, loves an underdog. There's a prison, a maximum security prison in New York, the state of New York. It's called Eastern Correctional Facility. And some years ago, it partnered with Bard College. And in partnering, they made it possible for certain inmates to obtain a degree through Bard College. In 2013, the inmates who were enrolled in Bard College wanted to join the debate team. And so they formed their own debate team in the prison of the college that was there in the prison. But because they couldn't be with their peers who were in the college, they ended up acting and debating as their own team. And so they began to schedule their matches against other colleges and then they went and they debated and they won. And there was one particular instance in which they beat West Point in a debate. And these are the Oxford style debates. This is where points are scored and kept and you have to persuade people to your side. So there's a real winner and a real loser. Well, in a rematch with West Point, they lost. So they wanted to do something special. And they decided that they would challenge Harvard debate team to a debate of this prison inmates on a debate team challenging Harvard, who had just been crowned champions in the world of debate. This was like in 2015 or something like that. And so the debate topic was, should undocumented children be given access to public school should they be allowed to go. So it's a hot topic. The inmates took the negative, which is a super unpopular opinion, that children would not be allowed access to public school. So they took the unpopular opinion against Harvard, underdogs. They won. They beat Harvard in the debate, persuading the judges that it would be better for undocumented children not to be given access to public school. That is a feat. True underdogs. Our hearts, I think, rise within us, because we love an underdog, and we love to hear how an underdog overcomes all of the obstacles to win. All the passage that you have before you speaks to the underdog just a little bit. Particularly, it speaks to the wisdom of the underdog. But oddly enough, what it tells us is not everyone likes the underdog's wisdom. And that's really what we're going to get at. But having wisdom is better than having might, particularly military strength. Having wisdom is better than having might. But, but, don't expect that everyone will appreciate your wisdom. That's the downer. Don't expect that everyone will appreciate your wisdom. All right, so just think of this in two points. The first one is the value of obtaining wisdom. Kovalet, the preacher, he's making the case that wisdom is better than other things, and this is the third or fourth time that he has given this, wisdom is better than, in spite of whatever things he shows as obstacles. So the value of obtaining wisdom, I want to start there. I want us to think about the value of obtaining wisdom as a believer. But secondly, the second point is going to be that not everyone is going to appreciate your wisdom. And that's a big stress of our living in this world that just because you have wisdom, That doesn't mean that you're going to be appreciated, even if you're right, like this poor wise man was. All right, the value of obtaining wisdom. So let's consider this city. Now, this is purported as a true story, that is, that Kovalev, the preacher, says, I observed this. And this has been his methodology all along. He observes things. We presume this is a real set of events. However, there is no likeness to a real event that we know of. but it is nonetheless purported to be that way. In some ways, it doesn't really matter. In my view, it reads like a parable. So if you're familiar with Jesus's parables in the New Testament, the characters are very flat, right? They're one-dimensional for a purpose. The plot is simple. It's not complex. It's not Russian literature that Jesus is giving, otherwise none of us would understand it. It's something very simple. And then the end stress, has a twist, and many of Jesus's parables have that twist. Or you can think of Nathan and King David, right? You're the man. David, you're the guy that took the little lamb from the poor person, right? There's this twist that you're not expecting, and you get to the end, and boom. And it has this. Regardless of whether it's true or not, it's told very much like a parable with a point. And I think that's what he's wanting us to get at. He wants us to understand the benefits that the wise person has. He wants us to understand that, but he also wants us to understand in the twist at the end, that just because you've obtained it, that doesn't mean you will be appreciated. But what are the benefits? Well, I derive two benefits from this parable, and they are benefits that as believers, we ought to seek in our desire to know and have and obtain wisdom. The first one is that this wise man sustained life in the wisdom that he gave. So by persuading the army that was besieging the city, he saved life. But that's an easy statement to make. Think about it. No one went to war, so husbands and fathers were not lost, wives were not widowed, children were not fatherless, businesses and farms were saved, that life went on pretty normally without any death that would affect any city. Women were not harmed in any egregious way as the war might bring upon women in that way. Lives were saved. lives were maintained, lives were sustained in really specific and very good and beneficial ways, because he was wise. And in his wisdom, he was willing to be wise rather than mighty. So keep that in mind, because that's the comparison Koholint makes it at least twice, that it's not might makes right, it is wisdom will bring these benefits. In this case, he's persuasive enough to overcome the obstacles of siege warfare that was surrounding the city. So that's pretty significant. But that is a benefit that we should recognize that those of us as believers who desire to be wise should be wise to the degree that it may and can and ought to save lives in a multiplicity of ways. The second benefit is that he delivers the city from a trap. So this poor wise man delivers the city from a trap. Interestingly enough, the words that are used here are odd. So it says that an army came and laid siege and made siege works. Now there's a word for that in Hebrew, siege works. It's those ramp things that they would build up against the city so that they can overcome the wall and breach it, that kind of stuff. But that's not the word that's used. Every translation, I think, uses the word siege works because that's what they're getting at. The word that Kovalet uses is the word net. You'll see it in verse 12, just right above it. And that word net is often used in the Proverbs as that which entraps, right? Yeah, the bird escapes the hand of the fowler, the one who's trying to trap it in the cage or in the net. And this is what he's really getting at, that the city was besieged, that's for sure, but the city was in a trap. And you think about the way traps are laid, traps are laid to be devious, right? They're to be deceptive. You know, in the cartoonish version, right, there's that little box thing with the rope and the stick that holds it up, and there's a little piece of bait underneath it, like that, right? It's meant to be deceptive so that, you know, when the critter or whatever goes in, pull the rope, and the stick falls, and boom, because there's something in there that's desirable. And this is what is happening here. There are these nets all around. The sea is about to enter into a trap, and the wise man is able to overcome, with his wisdom, the deception that comes with the nets. That's no small feat. Death is not, which was inevitable, is not actually inevitable. Think about the grand thing that when we think about the benefits of wisdom, life is saved, traps are avoided. And by the way, this idea of nets and traps particularly is useful, we see it in verse 12, we see it a lot in the Proverbs, that it is a warning, it's usually a warning to men to not be deceived or trapped by the adulterous woman, but it's a general understanding that sin itself lurks, and in lurking, it tends to deceive, and in deceiving, it tends to trap a person. That's generally how this is used. And this is why I say, I'm not going to quibble with it, but it really comes off as a parable that is giving some serious warnings on this side, the benefits of being a wise person into the degree that you would avoid being entrapped into sin. So the wise person, or the person here, all of us here, need to be aware that you and I are to be wise in our dealings, that we do not go through our lives simply bouncing around, I'm using an old person analogy, like a pinball, in a pinball machine from bumper to bumper, bing, bing, bing. That's not how our lives are lived. Not as Christians, it shouldn't be that way anyway, but as Christians, that's not how our lives are lived. And we need to live them with the pursuit of and the application of wisdom in our lives so that among the things that we see is that you and I are not entrapped in sin on any regular basis. We're not giving ourselves over to deception. We need to be aware. And this is what the wise man is. But the Bible itself is filled with telling us that wisdom and life are friends. So they're just playing a little bit on the idea that wisdom, the benefit of wisdom is bringing or sustaining life, that the Bible is filled with this. Wisdom and life are just friends throughout the Bible. So if you want life, you need wisdom. And if you want wisdom, you get life. This is beautiful. But we can't go through the whole Bible. We won't. Proverbs 15, verse 24. The path of life, so the way of wisdom in Proverbs, the path of life leads upward for the prudent, for the wise person, the path of life goes upward, that he may turn away from Sheol beneath. So it avoids death. One goes up One goes down, so to use sort of the imagery of heaven and hell or life and death as up and down in that sense of a path going up and down. And so the friend of the prudent here is life, the path of life that is for us, to avoid, in that case, death or shiol in that sense. But Psalm 1 is really, really powerful to bring this out. I chose Psalm 15 this morning because I wanted to introduce this concept of Christ the man, so in his humanity, doing that in our place, our stead, what we are incapable of doing that is a full obedience that then is applied to us. Because this is, among the ways, this is how we obtain wisdom. So Psalm 1, we're not gonna read the thing, you can turn there if you'd like, but there's this contrasting of values, right? Who does the man, that's just the man, who does the man associate with? Does he or do you walk in the counsel of the wicked? That was the first one. Do you, or does he stand, or he does not stand in the seat, I'm sorry, in the way of sinners? And he does not sit in the seat of scoffers. His delight is in the law of the Lord. And so you have this wonderful contrast there that the wise person, the wise man, avoids or is not associated with the sitting, the standing, and the walking in the way of the wicked, the sinner, the scoffer. That's the evil path that brings you to death, but rather the wise person, the wise one is the one who does not do those things, but more than that, he meditates upon the law of the Lord, the instruction of the Lord. All right, so I'm always cautious about using that word law. I don't want us to think of like, I don't know, he's like for reading, I don't know, the US code or something like that. The instruction of the Lord, how does the Lord tell us to live? His law, in that way. But like Psalm 15, it begs the question to answer, well, I'm frequently, maybe not frequently, occasionally, hanging with the scoffers, the sinners, and the wicked, in terms of giving myself over to them, right? You do too. And like in Psalm 15, I have also been the one who is not worthy to come into the presence of the Lord because I have sinned in ways that the Psalm very particularly describes as one who is not worthy to come in. which is why we understand that these Psalms are messianic in this way, that the Lord Jesus Christ is the one who can and does and has done these things for us on our behalf, that he is the one who does not walk this way. He is the one who meditates upon the law of the Lord. And in being the righteous one, he unites us to himself. He credits to us that righteousness of obedience. so that we ourselves are now in Christ, united by faith. So that then we can then walk as we are. by avoiding these things and by meditating upon the law of the Lord. So we understand Christ did it for us first, and then we walk that out. We read this morning in Jeremiah that when he comes in this new covenant, this covenant of grace that unfolds in the New Testament, pardon me, that he says, I'm gonna put my law upon your heart. I'm gonna enable you by the Spirit to do these things. So I'm gonna bring you to myself and I'm gonna empower you to do it. And so in Christ, then, you walk this path. You obtain and live in the wisdom that you have from God. Jesus himself tells us that he's the wisdom of God. Actually, Paul tells us he's the wisdom of God. Jesus tells us that he is the way of life, right? I am the way, the truth, and the life. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians, this is the wisdom of God to send the Lord Jesus Christ. And so by trusting in him, in his work, and especially his death at the cross, you are given this new life. united to Christ. So you don't merely imitate, or you do imitate, but you're united first to Him, spiritually, like branch to a vine, in which you have life that comes from the vine itself. So then you have to ask yourself, in these ways, where am I obtaining these things? Do I listen to the counsel of the scoffers and the or is my delight in God's instruction, in His law? Because this is how the wise man walks. The wise man walks delighting in what God has for us by speaking these things to us, by writing them down for us so that we get our counsel and our way of life from the Word of God itself. Wisdom, in the biblical context then, ultimately works itself out in godliness. And I've said this many times before, that when you read through Proverbs, this wisdom is a moral wisdom, particularly. So, towards what the Bible Ecclesiastes and Proverbs is talking about, it's not so much wisdom to, you know, I don't know, do calculus or something like that. It's towards the idea of living properly, morally and uprightly. That's what it's aiming at. So that wisdom then, among the ways that we obtain it, is from the very humble and submissive place of listening to the word of the Lord and receiving it by faith. Something that seems simplistic and yet, you know, often is challenging for a lot of us, that we would hear the Word of the Lord, receive it by faith, and then walk in it. Empower each week, which is why each week I call you to faith and repentance. It's not because you're not that, it's because we tend to forget, we tend to walk our own ways, we're prone to wander. And as your shepherd, I'm prone to call you back. And sometimes you have to take that crook and drag you back, but I'm prone to just call you back. And that's the idea of how we think through the receiving of this instruction from the Lord that we might then go out into the world each week and walk in it well. That is the value of wisdom. and it is which all of us, as God's people, are to be striving towards obtaining and living in. But the end stress of this, actually of this parable, of this story, tells us, secondly, don't expect everyone to appreciate your wisdom. I just want us to pause, because like good underdog stories, I think we all love an underdog, We all love the story, right? Celeste Stallone made a career out of this. I mean, how many times can you tell the same story over and over again, but he's been doing it for 40 years? Some of you will get it. Most of you won't. The same exact story of the underdog overcoming all the odds. He made a career out of it. Why? Because we love it. We eat it up. This is what we want. We love to be the ones that overcome. except that none of us really want to be the underdog. We love the story, but who really wants to be the underdog? Who wants to be the person that is actually not favored? Who wants to be the person that's weaker than your opponent? Who wants to be the person who is not as smart as your opponent? Who wants to be that person? Well, no one. When we assess ourselves, we assess ourselves very well and positively. I'm bigger, stronger, faster, smarter, whatever it is, then. That's how we do it. So we don't say, like, well, I know this person's bigger than I am, and I know they're smarter. We don't do that. So we love the story, but we don't want to be the one. We love the tenacity, the courage, the strength, the perseverance. We love all of that, but we don't want to be it. But what's worse, we're told, is that it could be the case that we may not be appreciated. if we were the underdog who overcame. Think about this guy, and think about what the story says about him. It says that he saved an entire city with his wisdom, that he was despised, he was unheard, and he was forgotten. Now you would think that you'd build a monument to this guy, And in its worst forms, you would think that maybe you would, you know, commit idolatry with it. But that's not what they did. They did the exact opposite. They didn't care. But then they piled on by despising the very person who brought to them wisdom. So I want us to think about this just for a few more minutes. This is why I think we don't really want to be underdogs because we could be in this position right here. If you are wise, there's a good chance that you will be cast aside. As with other ventures in life, things will not go your way. Now I want to posit this in certain categories. Now certainly, as a person, as a man or woman who is godly and wise, that we should be able to hear one another here in the church. Paul says this, that we are to admonish one another. But he doesn't have in mind that you just recklessly go and you know, yammer on it, people. What he has in mind is that we are filled with the Spirit, wise in God's Word, and that when we see someone doing something they shouldn't be, that we should be able to tell them, you're doing something wrong, you're sinning, you're, you know, whatever it is, we should be able to admonish them in a way that they should hear it, because they might be trapped, they might not see it, but they are in sin, and we should be able to see it. So that, in that context, as wise Christians, we should be able to do that. That's one thing that we should think of. The idea of being despised and forgotten, that, Lord willing, should never happen within the context of a church. Although I wouldn't say that it probably never happened, but it ought not to happen. But I think more of where this is applicable is in the world itself. It may be very clear, and I want to be very clear about where I think he's leading with this, But it could be that simply that as a wise, godly person, the world will ignore you. And this is something that we don't really like to hear. But it's a very fact that Koholet, the preacher says, is built into the way the world is right now. That is, filled with sinners. under the curse, you know, of God where he curses the ground and he puts the world in the bondage, that this world in which we live, this is it, and that it might be that you have all the right answers and nobody cares. Like a poor wise man who saves a city and is despised. Life. He saved life. Businesses. Farms. and they despised him. I want us to catch that. I want us to understand that he uses very harsh language for someone who we would otherwise commend and ought to be commended. What seems to be the case is that the 1980s John Hughes movies were not far from the truth. You know, the teen movies where there were these hard and fast categories of the jock and the pretty person and the ugly person and whatever these categories were. I say that for this reason. If you'll notice here, social class and wealth win out all the time over wisdom. That's what he says. He was a poor man. How many of you listen to poor people? I'm not gonna ask for a show of hands. I'm gonna say most of, I'll include myself, most of us don't. Oh, he's a poor person? What is he now? That's indicative of what's happening here, that he is a poor person. and that in some other sense, the expertise of others has won out. So wealth and social class are impressive to people, to the broader masses. We will be very willing to listen to those who are wealthy and of high social standing. I had nothing other to say than just look around. This is the case. But it wasn't just true with John Hughes in 1985. It's true today, and it was true 3,000 years ago, when the poor wise man was despised, and everyone went on with their business, apparently ignoring the fact that this guy was wise, but recognizing that he was poor. I'm not trying to make class warfare here, I'm just pointing out that this is how this comes off, and that this is indicative into our own sin nature. This is what he says that he ends this. Again, I have to be honest with you, I mean, I read through the book, I studied the book, but I just was not prepared for the amount of times that Koholet was gonna talk about man's sin nature. It's in almost every chapter that he draws our attention to the fact that man is sinful, like he does here at the end of this one. I mean, we don't think of books of wisdom as simply being tracks on man's fall, and yet he has given it to us, but he draws us in this way that it's not just simply he wants us to understand the fall in some theoretical sense. He wants us to understand that there are effects to the fall of man that include, among other things, that wise people will be despised, particularly if they're poor. He just wants us to draw that connection there, that the way that people think, outside of Christ particularly, is that social class and wealth mean something when it ought not to. All right, so that's where it's drawn, but he does that. But I want us to consider it this way, because this is how the New Testament draws it out, I think. So let me just apply it in like this. Consider the foolishness of what I am doing right now. what Reverend Warren does now for us a couple of times a month, what Matt does at least once a month. Think about it. We stand up here and we exhort to you the Word of God. Paul says, you know what that is? Foolishness. Because the world loves its own kind of wisdom, which in and of itself is foolishness because it does not lead you to life. This does. Jesus was rejected. The Pharisees argued about his hometown, and they didn't say this, but like Nathaniel says, what good can come out of Nazareth? They argue about his hometown and whether he's worthy to be who he says he is, and they argue about the fact that, you know, Jesus even points it out, that their own hypocrisy of he comes eating and drinking and hanging out with sinners and they don't like that and John the baptizer comes and he's very austere they don't like that and you know this but they're looking at the external outward things that go along with the man who's giving the word and they reject the man and they reject the word and they put those two things together and they say you know what Jesus you hang out with sinners so your message is invalid You're from some backwater town, your message is invalid. Jesus, you know what? John was austere, but you know what? He's weird, and his message is invalid. These are like poor wise men who are despised. They're treated as fools for some external thing by which they are judged, Jesus's hometown, or the fact that he hung out with sinners, or something like that. Or for Paul, that he didn't seem to always speak well, that his rhetoric was not up to par with the famous philosophers of the day. and it was rejection after rejection. Not everyone all the time, but I'm just pointing out how we can understand that there is a rejection of poor wise men in this way. Well, the Gospel proclamation is that way. Not everyone agrees to it and will hear it. So Jesus, John the baptized, Paul, all of them bringing to the world the message of salvation, all of them rejected in some form or another, and all of them rejected because of some external thing that had nothing to do with the actual message, but was a stumbling block to hearing the message, so that in their own poverty, in their own weird way, whatever it happened to be, they were rejected. just like the poor wise man who had the words of life, but apparently nobody cared about that because, well, among other things, for them, he was poor. So here's how we can apply this, and this is really one simple statement. Rejection of the truth, that is the truth that you proclaim to your friends, your neighbors, however it is, that truth that you proclaim can and will be rejected. It's hard for us to hear because we want everyone to accept it. We want everyone to believe it. We think everyone should be qualified to get it, but that's not the case. But more than that, we'll be despised. Like it's one thing that you share the gospel and somebody says, no, thank you. Okay, that was nice of them. They're polite. It's another thing when they take rocks up and they start throwing them at you. It's another thing when they take you, go to your house and take you and drag you to the middle of the town and tie you up and set you on fire. That seems drastic. It seems like it's way more of a response than necessary, and yet that kind of rejection is part and parcel with those who bring the foolishness of the message of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's on everybody. And that's kind of, I think, what Colette wants us to get, is that this is part and parcel of the bigger picture in which, at times, wise people will be treated this way, but not always. But that doesn't mean that you don't pursue wisdom. It just means that you have to understand that all the results are not the formulaic, oh yes, I have the wisdom, I have the answers, everyone will love me. That last part is the part that's not congruent with the world in which we live. So consider, just to bring it to a close, Colette's assessment. I would say it this way, the New Testament says it this way, men love darkness more than they love light. It doesn't mean all men, it just means some. But he also goes on to say that having wisdom and not being appreciated is better than a king among fools. I mean, I think many of us might like to be king among fools, but being king among fools is pretty bad. So I'd rather be the poor wise man, right? That's what he's getting at. Wisdom is better than folly. These are the things that he's told us throughout the book, up to and including where we are right now, that wisdom is better than military might, of which we have to understand that he is saying something about our nature, that wisdom is better than just sheer raw power. Wisdom does not emphasize a might makes right. In chapter nine earlier, he says, wisdom is better than when bad times come. He's told us over and over again something about wisdom and it's better than, but the results are not always the ideal results. And that's where I think for our purposes, we should understand that end stress. I think maybe most of you fit the category of, yes, we're striving to obtain wisdom that's good. Not all of us, I think, like the idea that we will not be valued after we spout off our wisdom, truly. And it may be the case that that's what happens. So let me conclude this way. I want you to notice how Koholet, the preacher, Koholet is the Hebrew word there, Koholet continuously brings you to a very real point of frustration. He's done this over and over and over again. Man is sinful. The world is broken from what it's supposed to be, you know, under the curse of God and the ground and the bondage that we see in Romans 8, and it's held this way. It's the way it is until God makes the big changes. And so Colette's remedy is always very much short of massive big fixes. His fixes for these problems are always the small fixes, and it usually starts with you, so that you enjoy the benefits and the good things that God has given to you, like eating and drinking and working and your family. He has mentioned that over and over again, that that's the fix, but not the ultimate fix, but it points us in that direction. And there's some satisfaction in that. But this also fits into that category. Chase after and obtain wisdom. It brings benefit to yourself and in some cases to others. It sustains life. It keeps you from the sin of entrapment to sin. But just know, not everyone is going to appreciate your wisdom. And in fact, you may be despised for it. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the word that sets us straight in terms of our own thinking. I pray that the harshness of reality would not keep us from the chasing after and obtaining wisdom. That in you, our Lord and our God, that we would have wisdom. That we would meditate upon you, upon your word, day and night. That we would receive life and instruction. Keep us from temptation. We pray these things through Christ. Amen.