Let's open to Proverbs 8, and we're gonna just try to survey a few more things. This is just a really big, full chapter, and I know I haven't done it justice even in the three weeks that we've been in it, but let's just try to touch on some things that are there. Looked sort of at section six through 21 last week where wisdom is sort of making her case, telling us of all the rewards that flow from her and she speaks to us of excellent things, things worthy to be known, of incontestable equity, purposeful and good, things that we need to know that are confirmed by the hand of God, the treasure of wisdom, Remember last week we talked a little bit about the infatuation with objects and how we have this desire to control and possess, and this chapter talks about that problem. We talked about how wisdom is very practical, but it's not aimed at worldly merit. Its aim is in knowing and living before the face of God. for what we might call a straightness or a moral uprightness and excellence. And that excellence we're not talking about is, it's not self-serving, it's for others. It's an excellence in the love and ministry and the life lived for others. You know, when we think about the things that Proverbs and Ecclesiastes are talking about, not just to old people, but to young people, I think one thing that's hard when you're young is you're learning to be strong, you're learning to find your call, you're learning who you are. And so it's understandable that sort of a pride and a self-reliance takes root in your heart, even though you may not think so. Good morning. And so one thing that this passage is cautioning us about is not to take the treasures of spiritual growth and let them become pride or self-reliance or self-will. That everything that we learn and grow into is meant to be poured out. As God pours into us, we pour out. Wisdom is spiritual, but it's transformative in lots of physical and external ways. It allows the external world to be ordered and to function better. So one thing we were talking about last week is that there are material and immaterial benefits of wisdom. When you think about the modern charismatic movement and the sort of name it and claim it thing where The idea is taught that you can see how much a person is blessed or loved by God if they have a car, a really nice car, or a big house. Yes, there are material blessings that flow out of a relationship with God, but that's not how you gauge a relationship with God. It's an internal blessing that finds its way in material expression. I think Satan loves the idea of saying the more you have and the more you acquire, the more God, that proves that God loves you. That is precisely what he wants you to think because it will destroy you. It'll doom you if that's your metric. That is not to say that being poor is some pious and desirable thing. You're supposed to work, you're supposed to find something to do with your gifts, but the history of our faith, the history of God and his people is that the humbleness of just having what we need and enough Daylight, to keep us going, is a way to create reliance upon Him and not just on our own machinations. So we talked about the transformative nature of wisdom, a wisdom establishing justice and mercy and fairness and compassion in a society, and those all have material benefits. They are fruits of wisdom, and they have direct impacts on every facet of society. What is that that keeps? It's a generator. Oh, okay. Oh, I guess this room's on a generator. Well, I think it's a charging it, yeah. Oh, okay, okay. The electricity is charging the generator. Is that what's happening? No. We looked at verse 12. This is kind of where we were ending last week. I, wisdom, dwell with prudence, and I find knowledge and discretion. We talked a little bit about prudence. Remember me saying that's just not something people ask. Hey, we're getting ready to go out tonight. Is this prudent? Is a 12-pack prudent? No one uses the word prudent, but it's a good... John is a 12 pack of dr. Pepper prune. No, I'm really thirsty. Well, that's gonna make you more thirsty and dehydrated You know, we we talk about resourcefulness and prudence Charles bridge is one of my commentators. I wish I could just read you two whole pages of him What he one way that he summarizes what's going on in this chapter is he says? God is telling us how Christ coming and being our wisdom will be what he calls a divine intuition in your life. In other words, you will feel another mind and another inclination at work in your decisions and in your judgments when you're in communion with God. That's a very hard thing to explain or to demonstrate to our non-believing friends who are saying, prove it. Prove God is real. Prove that you're not hallucinating or making this up to comfort yourself. And one thing that I would say, you know, you can't lead You really can't lead someone to Christ with evidence in the sort of forensic legal sense. That's not the way it works. It's faith in God who has proved himself trustworthy. But what I can do is provide circumstantial testimony. And one of those things is this intuition There are many times where I can tell that in the flesh I want to do X and that there is a very strong compulsion which is Y. to do otherwise. I find it when my temper flares. I know that sounds hard to believe. I find it when I'm anxious, when I'm nervous, when I'm confused. I find that another mind informs my weakened and fleshly mind. And I think this is what Bridges is talking about, a divine intuition. So when we use words like prudence, and knowledge and insight and wisdom. We're talking about a divine intuition that helps us evaluate what is a way to do this thing. This can be studying, this can be pursuing friends, the managing of my money, how I act at a football game, all realms of life with a divine intuition. And I just think that's a very helpful way to absorb what we're reading in this passage. This divine intuition is a gift that's given to us by the Holy Spirit. It's received by faith and that's what drives the sanctification that's developing in us. Are all of y'all, I don't want to presume everybody has the same church background, but I also know just from my time around y'all that you're literate about the doctrines of grace and you understand them. Does everyone in here understand that sanctification is that process of learning and growing after you've been justified and you're involved in it? You know, we stress in the Reformed faith that God is the one that's doing the saving. But when you're saved, you are involved now, and that's a synergistic. Salvation is monergistic. God is doing it. Sanctification is synergistic. You're participating. And it's passages like this where Christ, as wisdom, poetically, is saying to us, this is how you are involved. Prudence is one way that you're involved in your sanctification. So then we come to verse 13 in chapter 8 where we see the fear of the Lord is the hatred of evil. Fear of the Lord can be demonstrated in a variety of ways. We've talked about that over the first few weeks and it has many applications. Some of the things that we've talked about when we've discussed it is reverence and obedience, wise heeding, submission is a form of fear in God, worship is a form of fear in God. We're not just talking about cowering, we're talking about praising and honoring and revering and doing what he asks. Tell me what you think of that language. The fear of the Lord is hatred of evil. Why is the fear of the Lord necessarily the hatred of evil? Why is that? Why does it say that? Yes, sir. That's exactly right. So the reason we want to know all the different aspects of what fear is, is because one, component of fear and revering him is learning about what pleases him, what displeases him, and imitating that perspective. We know that he despises evil. His ultimate plan is to stamp it out, to take it away forever so that in heaven with him there is no prospect of evil. So he's in the prospect of stamping it out now. Believe it or not, he stamps it out with storms. He drives it out with storms. As a matter of fact, storms of difficulty, just like physical storms, root out deadness. They root out things that are evil and wrong and don't have no place. It is amazing if you stop and think about it, how the picture of a diseased tree or some area that's overburdened or that's overgrown or that has not been built correctly is an exact analogy of what God does in human souls that are encrusted with things that don't belong and they must be plucked out and it must be blown away and burned up. There is an exact analogy in things that God does in His creation with a storm. You know, we think of it in terms of the impacts on us and the pain and the loss and whatnot, but God is actually very merciful in storms sometimes because he is taking away things that will kill us or that are weighing us down to death. Storms are actually very, very helpful. We were driving along thinking this morning, we're all, we think we're so modern and wise. We are one two, three hour windstorm away from pity and not knowing what to do. Just remember that as young people. It's fine to have your laptops and it's fine to be swiping all day and just know in your hearts, well I guess it cannot be fine in some cases, but you know what I mean. Don't swipe all day. But it's just good underneath that to say, God, these are just things that I do my daily life with. You are my sustenance. You are my life and my strength. Well, that's correct. True religion is to hate sin because it displeases God. It's destructive to the soul. All of God should produce a dread of sin because evil is directly contending with His purposes and His degrees. So then we come to verses 15 and 16 in chapter 8. By me kings reign, and rulers decree what is just. By me princes rule, and nobles, all who govern justly. I think during the course of this study, we will want to talk more about the wisdom of the civil magistrate, or the lack of, and how we as civilians interact with it. So I won't go as deep on this particular verse as probably needs time, but let me say this. All kings, rulers, leaders rule, according to this passage and many, many others, by the discretion and the wisdom of God. Not in their might, despite their flawed perception of themselves, nor their eloquence, or when they think they're being eloquent and they sound dumb. and their promises and their policies. Wisdom declares that authority is not rightly exercised where it is not just. This is why Christians are understandably vexed all the time in a pluralistic society where authority is discharged that is not just. It happens all the time. As a matter of fact, we have great moral conflict almost every day. because our leaders are doing things that are not just. They're doing things that, were they actually asking their people, we would say, no, we don't want to do that. That's not just. So we must be wise in bearing witness to what is just, but God does and will exercise. Good morning. does and will exercise control over human agents of government. We may not understand his timing and his ways. I can tell you in my 59 years, you almost never will understand his timing and his ways, but I can tell you if he says wait, waiting is good. If he says no, no is good. If he says, trust me and go forward, it is good. Even you say, there's no way I can go forward. Trust him and go forward however you can. He does and will exercise control over human agents of government, whether we understand his timing or not. His words and his ways are not ours, but he has declared this. Romans 13, one and two says, let every person be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God. This passage is teaching this as well. And those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore, whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. We can build a theology from that. It doesn't mean there's not a time that we cannot resist. Our country is founded on the premise of resisting when it is just. That can be very difficult to ascertain. There's a lot of people talking about resisting now. I don't think the conditions exist for us to resist, but to be sure, there are plenty of individual ideas and concepts and agendas that we have to resist, but that is biblical, that God has set governing authorities. The Lord said, give to Caesar what is Caesar's, so we have to be discerning about what is Caesar's and what is in the realm of God. God is the only and the ultimate sovereign. His rule is all wise, it's boundless, it's unchallenged, and his purposes will stand. David Thomas says, it, wisdom, inspires all the good actions of kings. All the good actions of kings, every measure of their government, every righteous enactment, and every loyal act derives the inspiration from wisdom. It presides over the universe. All good in earthly rulers proceeds from it. as sunbeams proceed from the sun. Whatever is wholesome in their laws, wisdom suggested and inspired." That's what this passage is telling us. Wisdom makes the world function. It makes our faith function. True religion is a strength and a support to a just government because it directs the governed and those who govern about what is right. That's why you need to be a good citizen. That's why you don't need to just be a complainer. Yes, it's about voting, but it's also about being involved as a citizen, being involved as a neighbor in your community, in your city, in your society. Lead. Be in these institutions. inform them what is good and just. It's not always about being separate and anathematizing everyone and saying, I don't care what happens to you, you're evil. No, we are reformers. We reform things. We don't just give them over to Satan and watch them burn. We reform things and say, this thing can be reclaimed with wisdom and justice, and we're going to live and serve that purpose. And then in verse 17, I love those who love me and those who seek me, diligently find me. That kind of thought is all over scripture. You can find that everywhere. We think of seeing that famously in Matthew 7, where the Lord says, Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives. And the one who seeks, finds. And to the one who knocks, it will be opened. Jeremiah 29 says, For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will hear you. You will seek Me and find Me when you seek Me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile." Now, he's talking to Israel, but that absolutely applies. You know, we think of Gentile believers who are engrafted into the church. We have our own diaspora. We have been scattered over all the world as believers. We're in Greer and Easley and South Carolina and Canada and we're all over the place. And the Lord is always calling us back to Him and always saying, seek me, seek me where you are on your campuses, in your communities after the storm and I will be found and I'll lead you. Bridges, who I quoted earlier, says, now behold the grace of this divine person to His loving children. None by nature are interested in it, but such is the freeness of His grace that He first implants love in their hearts and then He cheers them with the assurance of His own love. Thus the first kindling of the flame is of Him. We love because we are drawn. We seek not by the impulse from within, but by the grace from above. And seeking we find. For those of you that might have grown up in the Reformed faith, as I did, who had many, many, many, many conversations with Arminian friends who said something to this effect. Oh, so you're one of those Presbyterians. You're just, you know, you're the frozen chosen. You're a puppet. Everything's just a puppet. That's not what this passage says. That's not what anything in the word says. Salvation is described to us in Scripture as a broken and fallen heart that does not desire good things naturally. And God changes our desires so that we willingly seek Him. And it's as Bridges says here, the kindling flame is ignited in us and in what we call volition, We earnestly seek because our instinct and our desire has been changed. It would be like going from not having any hunger, therefore food being irrelevant, to being given a desire of hunger and seeking food. So God is always initiating and inflaming and seeking, and He loves it when we, in return, seek and respond. So just remember that when that game is played with you of, oh, everything is, you're a puppet and whatnot. You see what I'm doing right now? That's a volitional act. I'm thinking in my mind, I'd like to raise my hand, I'd like to wave to y'all. That's a volitional act. We're all volitional. The question that our Armenian friends are just sort of sidestepping is, no one, there's no functioning, rational human being who says we're not volitional. That's not the question. The question is, can you resurrect your own soul in your spiritual capacities? Mr. Settle, who some of y'all, some of you young people may remember Mr. Settle, who was my pastor when I was your age, used to say, probably about the time of y'all's age, he said this one Sunday morning, y'all may remember this, and all of a sudden I got it. He said, a frog is free to fly. A frog doesn't have the capacity to fly. Remember? That changed my whole mind. Man is free to choose God, but in his fallen nature, he does not have the capacity. That freedom does him no good. We're all volitional. The question is, can you enliven your own soul? So just don't be boxed in by that. When we're talking about seeking, we're talking about the response unto a God who has ignited our souls and given our soul life. He has raised us from the dead. That's why Jesus called it being born again, because it's like you're being alive again. Wisdom loves those who seek her. God's heart warms with sympathy for the faithful hearer and doer. Love strives and seeks after God once it's been enlivened. It's in response to His love which sought us first. And this passage and many others tells us that if we seek Him, we will find Him. And then we get into the sort of last stages of the chapter 22 through 31. Let me read this here, something of an autobiography of wisdom. The Lord possessed me at the beginning of His work, the first of His acts of old. Ages ago, I was set up at the first, before the beginning of the earth. When there were no depths, I was brought forth. When there were no springs abounding with water, before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth. Before He had made the earth with its fields, or the first of the dust of the world, when He established the heavens, I was there, wisdom, Christ, the Trinity. When He drew a circle on the face of the deep, when He made firm the skies above, when He established the fountains of the deep, when He assigned to the sea its limit so that the waters might not transgress His command, when He marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside Him like a master workman, and I was daily His delight, rejoicing before Him always, rejoicing in His inhabited world, and delighting in the children of man." In this poetic idiom, the Holy Spirit speaking through Solomon gives insight on the work of the Trinity in creation. Only God can tell His own story from the beginning because His activities are outside of time. And so what He does is He tells us His story in Christ. Christ, He has placed in time and He tells us the story of Him, of the Trinity and His activities through Christ and His prophets as well. Before the beginning, what we would call the beginning, was God. He brought forth the depths. He established the heavens. He set the limits of the sea, the foundations of the world. We remember Job raising his complaining to God and getting God's ire up. And God says to Job, where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Who has laid the measures thereof? That's why we say to our non-believing friends, God created the world. And they ask us about evidence and we say, well, we start with what God has said and we work out into the book of nature as we find it. Wisdom in the person of Christ was there beside God, and this passage says, as a master workman. And he was daily God's delight, rejoicing before Him always. Don't miss in this passage that God deployed Christ the wisdom of God in the act of creation. The Trinity fashioned the universe, all of its physical properties, the mountains, the deeps, its expanse, and then as He did that, all the attending quantum superstructure that makes the universe function, all of its moral laws, all the rationality that binds it together, And then He placed man into this prepared environment that God had designed and executed all things. And then this passage tells us, because the Trinity were the only one there to witness it, they exalted in what they had done. This is good. This is what we had in mind. This was our plan. As God made the world, the Godhead rejoiced to share their triune love, to display God's power, to give fellowship to man and provide him a place and a purpose in the world. And I want to say this, these are not scientific statements that are given to us here about the making of the world, but they are true statements. about the origin of the universe, its maker, and its design, which is why the smart thing to do when your friend who is a materialist says, how do you think we got here? Take them to this passage and say, well, this passage says that God deployed His wisdom who is Christ in His creative power and brought everything into being, and they delighted in it. They delighted in one another, the Godhead, as they did that. Start there. And your friend may sneer at you and say, look, I know that's not a scientific statement, but you asked me about origins. That's all I can tell you of origins. And then when you tell me your little story about everything banging out of nothing into functional being, I think we'll be having a very delightful little exchange. But start there. God made everything knowing full well the ruin that we would make of His beautiful world. And He still brought us forth, and He's abided with us ever since in patient compassion. Redemption is not an afterthought. It's a purpose of the Godhead, and they had intended to reconcile and accomplish these things before all time. Christ was not a reluctant messenger. He was sent in the fullness of time to save us. He did so with all of His heart, His life, and His love to please the Father, to bring us the Spirit, and to rescue us for Him. And then we come to the final exhortation here of this passage in verses 32 to 36. And now, O sons and daughters, listen to me. Blessed are those who keep my ways. Hear instruction and be wise and do not neglect it. Blessed is the one who listens to me, watching daily at my gates, waiting beside my doors. For whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from the Lord. But he who fails to find me injures himself. All who hate me love death." So the passage tells us to seek counsel, hear instruction, submissively and continually throughout your whole life. Every season of life has its own new wisdom. I don't know that this is true for everyone, but our testimony and maybe y'all's testimony to the young people would be this. I feel like God prepares you and the intensity goes up. He prepares you and the intensity goes up. And things, if I could tell you what you're gonna have to face at 30, something that's going to happen in your life, you right now can't handle it. You can't handle it at 30, but Christ in you will be pleased to show you what you are to do then. Every season of life is going to require seeking, listening, patiently trusting. It doesn't ever stop. You're going to have to submit when you're 50, when you're 70. Your back doesn't bend down as far in your submission. You can't get up as quick after your prayers, but you do all of the same things. You seek counsel. You hear instruction. You watch. You wait. You seek. And God brings His plans and purposes. And you move as He moves. And you trust Him. And He says to us in this passage, you're blessed when you keep His ways. Obedience will reveal more of God to you. And disobedience will separate Him from you more. Now, people get into a very legalistic way of applying that. That obedience, therefore, is sort of a formula. It's not a formula. It is a heart desire to not transgress someone you love. Marriage isn't a formula. Relationship with God isn't a formula. It is a heart seeking to love and serve and know and out of that knowing to have peace and purpose. In God's wisdom, this passage tells us, you will receive favor. And with that favor, you'll multiply wisdom and you'll multiply it in your life and in others. This passage has been very clear. If you ignore or forsake wisdom, it says something very shocking to close. It says that you court death. You love it and you court it. You seek it like a guy chasing a girl, a girl chasing a guy. You're courting death. And what we would say is sin is self-injury. That's why I was joking with you about, hey, don't be afraid to ask the word, is this prudent, to use the word. Sin is self-injury. And your friend who asked you to do the dumb thing isn't gonna be there to help you when you've self-injured. Well, I mean, they may be there in the hospital, but when you're in rehab, oh, I had to go back to Akron. So there you are, self-injured. This passage basically ends by saying doom comes to those who reject the call of wisdom. So we end here. Proverbs 28, 14 says, blessed is the one who fears the Lord always, but whoever hardens his heart will fall into calamity. I'll just end with one statement that Joel Beeky makes. Because we have to commune with God to know and receive His wisdom and apply it to our lives, we have to be prayerful. We have to pray to God. We have to say, Give me more of yourself today." And Beakey says, prayer helps us to cling to the altar of God's promises by which we lay hold of God Himself. And all I've tried to do here in chapter 8 is say, when you lay hold of this wisdom, it's not just legalism. Since wisdom is Jesus, You lay hold of it and believe it. You're having a relationship with him. You lay hold of Christ. That's all I've really been trying to tell you in chapter eight. Would you close us in prayer? I will. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the word that we have heard today about wisdom. And we thank you as we know where to seek it. And we thank you for the work of the Holy Spirit. It opens our eyes to it. helping us to understand what the Father would want us to understand. And we recognize seeing that, how things will look different to us. Decisions will be made that left to ourselves would not be made. And we thank you for that. We thank you for that guidance and your desire for us to know that. Uh, through the work of the spirit, we pray that you would be with us, uh, through the days ahead, especially with the situation outside. And, uh, we, as John has already prayed that you give us protection and pray for patience through. through all this also and look for ways to serve others and be gracious to those that you see in trouble or perplexed about things. Now, as you go with us to the next service, may our worship be pleasing and acceptable to you, for we ask all this in thy name. Amen.