So if you would turn with me this morning to Proverbs, I only have a couple of verses to read this morning, which is a little bit unlike tradition for me, but Proverbs chapter 23 is where we're gonna be at. Proverbs chapter 23. As you turn, I wanna begin with a question this morning, and it's a simple question, but very difficult to answer. And the question is, what do you value? What do you value? Now, that answer or that question could be answered in many different ways. We could talk about all different types of things that we value. We could talk about how we might value our family. It'd be a very positive thing, I think. We might value our church. Again, very, very positive. We might value our jobs. Some of us might say that we value money. And to some degree, we all value money. And I don't mean to err and to sin, but we all have a value for money, and that's fine. We might value our status and our station and whatever it is that we do, whether we're at school or whether we're at work or our position in the church or those types of things. There are many things that we actually value in this life, and that's not necessarily wrong. But to answer that question, what do you value, can be very challenging to do. And so I would suggest there's two ways to very easily determine what it is that you value. The first is to look at your bank account or your credit card statement. Because we can say a lot of things about what we value, but where we spend our money actually reveals what we truly value, doesn't it? And that's kind of interesting. hits hard at home. This isn't something that I've mastered myself. Now, I'm not saying that because you spend more in your monthly mortgage or your rent, then you do give to a church that you value your house more than your church. We have to live, of course, those are those types of things. But When you look at where you spend your money, you begin to realize what it is you really value about certain things. I even challenge, I teach college and I challenge my students at some point in one of my courses to go look at a budget of a local government and find out where they spend their money. Because where they spend their money is what they actually do, despite what they actually say, which is revealing. And the same would be true for us as well. The other way, and this is probably a more modern way that I would say we value, to find out what it is that we value, would be to look at what we scroll through or search on or watch on any of our many devices. And all of a sudden we realize that we spend a lot of time looking at certain things. Now, why do I bring all that up to make you feel bad? Well, maybe it's not me if you do feel bad. But I bring that up because I want us to know what it is that we actually value. And that's one of the great ways that we do that. What do we spend our time doing? What do we spend our money on? Well, I'm going to look at Proverbs chapter 23. I'm going to read verses 22 through 25. They're kind of together and to really fully understand The one verse that I want to talk about today, you have to read all of them. So verse 22 of chapter 23 of Proverbs, it reads as follows. Hearken unto my father that begot thee, and despise not thy mother when she is old. Buy the truth and sell it not. Also wisdom and instruction and understanding. The father of the righteous shall greatly rejoice, and he that begotteth a wise child shall have joy of him. The father and thy mother shall be glad, and she that bear thee shall rejoice." So Proverbs are designed to be short wisdom sayings. They're designed to give us wisdom about how we should live and what we should do. And you could certainly take a chapter and read that every day. And of course, in about a month, you'll read mostly through Proverbs, depending on how many days are in a month. You could take another approach and read a few verses every day, and sometimes even just one verse, and receive tremendous wisdom out of it. That's the purpose of this scripture, of the wisdom that God has given us through this literature, is to be able to see and understand the truth that is set before us. And a number of weeks ago, I came across this verse, and I thought it so peculiar, verse 23, buy the truth and sell it not. And so we're giving wisdom here that scripture tells us that we're supposed to buy something, but we're not supposed to sell it. And as I said, I read the verse before and the two after because to fully understand this, we have to appreciate what is being said. And so we see here that it begins to a call to us to have childlike faith, like a child does to their father and to their mother. And so the scripture is telling us, it's getting ready to tell us something that's very fundamental and very basic to who we are. And we should receive that as a child would and to be obedient as a child should be. And we see all through scripture, we are reminded that we are to be obedient to our parents. And then we see what comes out of that, which is good things. And so we're to listen to our father that teaches us and not to despise what our mother teaches us. And that is to buy truth and to sell it not. And we see the outcome of that in verses 24 and 25 that the righteous greatly rejoice that there is a wise child and shall have joy of him thy father and thy mother shall be glad and she that bear thee shall rejoice and so we can look at this and say well the very simple instruction that we're given that our mothers and fathers give us will make them proud and make them happy if we abide by it and again it is our job to be obedient to what God is telling us in verse 23. Now this buy and sell thing, I think it may sound kind of strange. And it's really what caught me. And I've read this verse, who knows how many times and I just suddenly realized, well, buying makes sense to me. But how do you sell the truth? What is it we're actually talking about? It seems very strange to talk about buying and selling something that isn't physical, doesn't it? But this isn't the only time. In fact, if you want to flip back a few pages to Proverbs chapter four, we see some very similar instruction. This time it uses the word, chapter four, verse five, get wisdom, get understanding, forget it not, neither decline from thy words of thy mouth, Forsake her not, and that her is talking about wisdom, especially when you look at Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the wisdom literature, when you see the word her, it's talking about wisdom, it's personifying wisdom. So, forsake her, or wisdom not, and she shall preserve thee, love her, and she shall keep thee. Again, it's talking about wisdom. And then it goes on and says, verse seven, wisdom is the principal thing, therefore get wisdom, and with all thy getting, get understanding. Now this is a very common way, especially in wisdom literature and even in the Old Testament, to teach. We are saying the same thing multiple different ways repeatedly to drive the point home of what the scripture is trying to tell us. And so while that may sound confusing, it's saying get wisdom, get understanding, and do not forget it. neither decline from the words of the mouth." Don't move away from what God is telling us. And then it says, "...forsake her," I'll just use the word wisdom, "...forsake wisdom not, and wisdom shall preserve thee, love wisdom, and wisdom shall keep thee." See, wisdom is very vital to what we're actually talking about. And the scripture tells us over and over again to buy, to get, to store up wisdom, and then to make sure that we keep that wisdom. And from this, we can learn just, you know, a number of really wonderful truths about how we are supposed to live. And in verse 7, wisdom is the principal thing. That is the thing that we should desire most in life. Because when we have appropriate wisdom, when we have God-fearing wisdom, when we know what it is that we're supposed to do, and in particular, how we are supposed to do it, then it guides everything else in our lives. When you have wisdom, when you have raised a child, if you will, in the way they should go, it's what that Bible verse is talking about, to have wisdom, then no matter what choices come before them, you know what to do. Now, there may be times in your life when you say, well, Ben, there's lots of times in my life and I don't feel like I have wisdom over particularly what to do. But wisdom being the principal thing is often more a general concept. You might come to me and say, well, what is the purpose of my life? What am I supposed to do next? What are we supposed to do as a church? And I might tell you that I don't know specifically, but I do know generally. And that is to love the Lord your God with all of your heart, your soul, your strength, and your mind. That's not always satisfactory for a lot of people, because what we want today is the quick and the easy fix. We want someone to come and put their finger right on the part that hurts and say, do this, and that goes away. That's what we want in medicine, isn't it? That's why we want the pills instead of the workout routine. That's why I want the instant fix instead of the long haul. We in our society, and I don't think it's any different then as it is today, we want instantaneously what it is that we think that we want, rather than the general solution, which is usually the right thing. So get wisdom, get understanding, forget it not, don't sell it as it says later in the scripture. And wisdom is the principal thing. First among all the things that we are possibly to gather unto ourselves, we are to get wisdom. Wisdom before wealth. Wisdom before power. Wisdom before so many other things. But this is not the direction of our society, is it? In fact, we don't even hardly talk about wisdom. So let me go back to Proverbs 23. There are other places in scripture where it talks about getting these things. You can read Matthew 13 about the hidden treasure, the pearl of great price, which gives us advice for how we are together these things. But let's go back to this concept here, buy the truth and sell it not. I said, this is a hard concept when we think about things that are not physical. But as I tried to point out with money and how we spend our time, everything costs us something. everything. There is nothing free in this world. There might be one thing that's free, but it costs someone else something, which is what's so beautiful about it. And when I say there's nothing free, there's nothing that doesn't cost anything. We have a limited amount of time. Maybe as I begin to progress in my life, and I'm suddenly a little older than I thought I was a few years ago, I'm beginning to realize that time is something that we don't get any more of. And I don't know how much of it I have. And so at any moment, my time, my measure of time could be gone. And so there is no such thing as getting more time, which means that we can waste time. And when we're not using it appropriately, we're selling it to something else. When you choose to watch a movie or a TV show, you're selling your time. And that's not always bad. When you choose to be here, as opposed to somewhere else, you have sold your time. Does that make sense? When you choose to be in school for a certain degree, for a certain effort to go somewhere, you have sold your time. When you choose to be at work, you are selling your time. Every moment there is a decision to either keep or sell your time. Now, why does that really matter? Because I want us to understand that you are making a choice about everything that you do, and it will either be buying up and going toward wisdom, right? Going toward knowledge, doing what the Lord has you to do, or it will be the other way. It is the same for those of us who have a testimony in Jesus Christ, and the same for those who do not. You are, and the Bible tells us very clearly over and over again, you either are forgiven and belong to an almighty righteous God who wants to give you wisdom, who wants to give you everything you need for this life, or everything that He knows that you need for this life, or you are actually the enemy working against Him. And there is no in between. Our society sells this lie constantly. Well, I hope I'm good enough to get into heaven. No one has ever been good enough to get into heaven. Let's confront that just for a minute here, because I think it's really important. I've grown partial of saying this recently. Think about Adam and Eve for just a minute. So Adam committed how many sins? One. And he was cast out of the garden. Now, if you could work your way back into God's good graces, couldn't he do just like one good thing and then get right back in? You see, it was impossible. It was impossible. So this idea that the world tells us, well, I'm going to try and be good enough and hope at the very end that God lets me in, it's a complete lie. complete boldface lie. Adam couldn't do it. Trust me, no matter how old you are, you cannot do enough good to get back in. It simply doesn't work that way. And so we all have choices because we all are born into and continue to sin, are on the outside of God. So we have to decide how we're going to use our time, how we're going to use our talents, how we're going to use our money, how we're going to use our minds and all the things that God has given us to do. And we can either waste that away by selling it or we can buy truth. Everything costs something. See, Christ paid the ultimate penalty for us. As the song says, rightfully so, he purchased our sins at Calvary. He had to pay with his life. It cost him his life to buy my freedom, to redeem me. And we too often forget in our society, because whether we like to admit it or not, we're a society that has abundance. And we forget what it's like to be in need. We forget that we're always trading something in our lives. Everything costs something and there is no neutrality. You could summarize that verse and might be able to say, well, spare no cost to get wisdom or to get knowledge or to get truth and hang on to it with all you have. What truth am I talking about? Well, we'll get to that in just a second. But let me back up just for this buy and sell part for just a minute. Buy could be interpreted as get, or to collect, or to procure. And it shares with it the same basic concept we saw in chapter 4, which is to get wisdom. We are to get the truth. We are to exchange something for it. We are to get it. That's how we work in our society. If I want something, I exchange my time that goes into the form of money from a job, for example, that I trade with someone else. I get it from them. This is how these things work. And so the Bible says we are to get it. We are to collect it. We are to procure it. And when it says to never sell, sell means to surrender. So get and never surrender truth. Get and never surrender truth. This is why is fundamentally vital and a major part of the founding of this country that has made it what it is, is it allowed the gospel to spread as it has, as it says, we are allowed to speak our minds and to communicate how we so desire and see fit. It is vital because we cannot give that away or we no longer have truth or the access to truth. We must buy, get, procure, and never, ever, ever give up the truth. Well, the scripture explains what it means by truth when it goes on and talks about wisdom, instruction, and understanding. So let's just unpack those for just a minute. Wisdom, you could say, is practical knowledge. It's the application of knowledge. Now I have a son who'll be 18 in a couple of days and a daughter who'll be 16 at the end of the year. And so I've taught both of them to drive. I don't know if we have any young drivers in here or any of you who remember teaching someone else to drive. So we talk about knowledge. Let's just start there for a minute. Knowledge is a red light means to stop and a green light means to go. Okay, you got that? That's the basic knowledge. If we say wisdom is practical application, wisdom is how hard you step on the brake. Because a new driver, lots of jerky, too hard. They come up short of the red light. Or they don't stop quick enough. Wisdom is that application of knowledge. Wisdom is something that as we get older and go through time, we realize how maybe a soft answer can turn away wrath. But a soft answer doesn't mean you're a pushover either, does it? It's two different things. Wisdom is knowing how to do that. We should become more wise. We should gain knowledge and be able to apply it in the right way. We should know, just like when we're driving, just how hard to put on the brake to be able to stop right where we're supposed to. That is the application of wisdom. And I feel like that's maybe one of the best explanations that I can give to wisdom. And so ask yourself this very important question, are you wiser now than you were last year? Have you grown in wisdom? Because the Bible says you should ask for it and God will give liberally to anyone who asks over and over again. That's what set Solomon apart. He asked for wisdom. He didn't ask for knowledge. He asked for the application of that knowledge. How do you make good choices? How do you make sure you're doing the appropriate thing? How do you know when to intercede and when not to? How do you know the answers to give? How do you know the direction you should go? All of that comes down to the application of knowledge, which is wisdom. Now, he goes on and says instruction. I think you could probably translate this from the Hebrew a little bit more accurately and say discipline or the idea that you're going to abide within a certain moral code, right? That you're supposed to behave according to what God has told you to do. Well, this can get really tricky too, because God has told us to do certain things and has told us not to do certain things. There's this idea that our faith and our religion is a thou shall not type of religion. And there's certainly thou shall nots in there. You have them on the outside of your windows here. I like that. But there are certainly thou shalts as well. And so we talk about instruction and we talk about being disciplined. We talk about being moral people. There are certainly things we should refrain from, but there are also things that we should do. And a good, well-balanced preaching will tell you what both of those things are. Because to simply only give thou should not, you leave not knowing what you should do. You should love the Lord. What does that mean with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind? It means you'll never arrive. It means that throughout your entire life, you're to be closer to be more like Jesus. What does that mean for a husband? That means that your children and your wife should look more like Jesus at the end than when you got them. What does that mean for a church leader? It means that you should care over the flock and take care of people, that they should learn to grow in wisdom and in truth and knowledge and be more like Jesus. We must make sure that we discipline ourselves. And again, this is something our culture hates doing. We hate waiting. We hate discipline. We hate having to control ourselves. But this is why there are certain times when it is very, very good. to discipline ourselves, to withhold something from ourselves, to demonstrate the fact that we can do it and that we should do it and that we are ultimately in control of ourselves. Now, we're never going to win that battle. The Apostle Paul, as great as he was, cried out, why do I do the things that I don't want to do and I don't do the things that I want to do? He struggled like we do with moral instruction and discipline. He was not perfect, but he was fallen. But he pursued Jesus Christ. And even near the end of his life, he would say over and over again that I might know him. He strove after God. He might take two steps back, but he'd immediately try and take three steps forward. The measure of our lives is simply that there is no marker where we finally arrive. It's always closer and closer and closer through discipline. through knowledge of the scripture, through knowing him, through spending time in prayer. And that is our goal. And we should, from time to time, whether it's every month or once a year, look back and say, have I progressed from where I should be? What is it that's keeping me? What is it that's entangling me and keeping me out of discipline and in a direction I shouldn't go? Understanding, or you might say discernment, That's the ability to perceive the difference between two or multiple things, to discern what is true or what is wrong. We have this in all areas of our lives, and we ignore it because so many times it kind of seems intuitive to us. That means we don't realize it's happening. We get a funny feeling about somebody walking too closely behind us. We don't really know why, but we'd be wise to listen to that and maybe go a different direction. We have a feeling about a friendship that maybe we shouldn't be friends. Maybe you should listen to that. You might have a certain discernment or a feeling revealed to you that this is, in fact, a good thing. Or, for hopefully many of us, we walk in and meet someone, whether it's downstairs in your food pantry or at the local Walmart or wherever you're at, and you know that this other person is a believer because you can discern the difference hopefully, between those who God controls and those who Satan controls. And remember how it started. You're either controlled by God or controlled by Satan. There is no in between. So this discernment is something that we absolutely should have, this understanding, this ability to know the difference between this and to that thing and to make an appropriate decision. And so here's where we try to wrap all this up together. Let me just read this again. Buy the truth and sell it not. Also wisdom, instruction, and understanding. The point that I hope all of us understand is no matter your age, all of us have time. Don't know how much time that is. And all of us make choices every moment of every day. And those choices, whether we think it or not, we are either actively buying truth, we are getting wisdom, we are getting and maintaining morals and discipline, we are getting discernment and understanding, or we are selling it. And you may not think you're selling it, but I would argue that just being passive is a way of selling. I think being passive and doing nothing is a way of surrendering what you have. I think this is especially a problem among our culture today. And I think it strikes both the young and the very old. And I think it hits all of us in between. I have for years gone to visit church members in nursing homes and other types of facilities. And it just saddens me to walk by and see so many sitting there just watching endless television shows, nothing that uplifts the Lord, nothing that actually encourages the soul, just over and over again. I'm saddened by the number of people I see who scroll endlessly on social media. Do you know, in America, the average social media user will move their thumb like this all the way to the top of the Statue of Liberty every day. I don't know if anybody's ever been there to seen it. I've not been that close to it. But it's pretty tall. And I bet if I told you, if we went and stood outside of it that today, you're going to take your thumb up that entire building one inch at a time. Yeah, right. But that's what we do. We are selling our time. We are giving it up. And let's be honest, most of us are not gaining wisdom in this, are we? We're not growing in discernment. We're not loving the Lord. We're not getting wisdom or practical knowledge from it. No, we are selling our time. We are selling truth, our wisdom, our instruction, and our understanding to a slate of nothingness. And just so you know, this hurts me to say it too. I've not arrived. Never think a pastor has arrived. No one's arrived or perfected in this life. But this is a real serious challenge. And so I want us to really consider what are you buying? And what are you giving up? What are you getting? And what are you selling? Because some of us, it doesn't have to be an age thing, may not have much time to sell. And the question is, You're going to buy with what time you have left, or you're going to sell. You're going to gather the things that God wants you to have, or you're going to give them away. As I mentioned at one point, this is true for those of us who are saved, those of us who know the free pardon of sin, and for those of us who are not. Let me start real quick with those of us who have a testimony and know that God has saved us. God purchased us with his own son. That cost him something. I don't know if you ever thought about this before. Jesus Christ hanging on the cross cried out, I'm sure in pure agony, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? You see, for the first time ever in what we call history, which there is no time, but let's just, for our sakes, God looked away from his son. They weren't in perfect harmony. Why? Because my sin and your sin was cast on him. And God looked away. And the Old Testament says he crushed his son. Who killed Jesus? It wasn't the Romans and it wasn't the Jews. God did because he had to punish him because of you and because of me. It's not just the evil ones we like to blame in our history. God had to punish his son even for the quote, good people who maybe go about your lives doing okay things. It cost God and Jesus Christ something to purchase us. And when we have been purchased, when we have come to God and repented and received in our faith the forgiveness of our sins and become one of His children, how much more ought we to continue to buy His truth, to grow in wisdom, to continue steadfastly in morals, to make good decisions about life for however much time we have? How shall we possibly waste it? that over and over and over again. You see, there is so much more after we are saved. That is merely our new birth. And then we must move on to be more like him. So these verses are talking about. And for those who have not experienced the forgiveness of God, we'll have good news for you. It says buy, but you can't buy it. but you can get it. The Bible actually tells us, come and buy without price. You see, the reality is the gift of God, that sacrifice that I tried to explain to you, is literally the free pardon of sin. You don't have to earn it. In fact, I told you at the beginning, you can't earn it. You just simply have to get it. Well, how do you get it? Well, when the Lord works in you, I think people know it. You know when he speaks to your heart, if you will, and says, you're not okay. You don't know me. You don't love me. You're not a part of me. In fact, you are part of the enemy. And you have an opportunity when he does that. And you can either repent to Him, confess your sins, beg for Him to save you, put your faith in Him, and do that until you are whole, until you feel that hope that is indescribable, that peace that you cannot understand, and you know that God has saved you and you have become one of His and He has adopted you, that He has paid the penalty in the sin that no one can pay except for Him. That is the moment of salvation. That is the moment that you become one of His. And until that time, you are not buying or getting truth. You are not gathering wisdom. You are not gathering understanding or discernment. You are not able to live a disciplined or moral life. Instead, you are exactly doing the opposite. And every single moment that passes by, you are selling yourself. So if God is speaking to you today, whether you need to know him for the first time, or for some of us, maybe we're realizing I've been selling what God gave me short. I know what you're talking about. I know that I've experienced that I know that I'm saved. But boy, have I been wasting some time. I've been selling it all. And I think maybe we all have a little something to repent for it, don't we? Because the reality is we don't know whether he'll come back soon, whether he'll take us out soon. But either way, we must buy the truth and sell it not. Also wisdom and instruction and understand because the father of righteousness shall greatly rejoice with us. Pray with me as we close. Lord, we come to you today. Lord, I ask that you would be with us and in us. Work through and among us. Show us the ways that we have sold what we have so dear to the world and to each other. Lord, I pray that you would help us to redeem the time. The scripture says is redeem the time for the days are evil and the days are short. Lord, let us be about your business. Let us be about the things that you would have us to do. Let us and help us to grow in wisdom and an understanding and knowledge. Help us to be disciplined and follow after you to keep our morals according to what you have taught us and give us discernment so that we can understand the spirits that are battling in this world to know what the truth is, to know which direction to go. Lord, I pray for all of us, for those, my brothers and sisters who are among us, who have a testimony, who have been saved. And Lord, I pray for those who do not know you yet or that you would use this message to speak to their hearts, into their soul or that you would draw them to you before it's too late. And dear Lord Jesus, help all of us to use our efforts, our time, our talents, our money, our gifts, everything we are to buy truth and to never give it up and to never waste it. In your name we pray. Amen.