August 3, 2025 • 31 mins
In this message from the book of Proverbs, Pastor Joe Liles unpacks what true spiritual wisdom really means. Diving deep into Solomon's teachings, he reveals how knowledge of God isn't just about reading scripture, but living it.
Key Highlights:
- Explore the biblical definition of wisdom from Proverbs
- Learn how to transform scriptural knowledge into daily faith
- Understand the powerful concept of "the fear of the Lord"
Quotes from the Message
"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge." - Proverbs 1:7
"If you only come to learn and you don't apply it, you are not living a life of faith. You're learning about one."
We Hope This Message Inspires You To:
- Start daily conversations with God
- Look beyond yourself and see how your faith can help others
- Understand that wisdom is about application, not just information
Perfect for new Christians, seekers, or anyone wanting to deepen their understanding of faith. Join us as we explore what it means to truly live out your beliefs!
#ChristianWisdom #FaithJourney #DearYoungerMe
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Pastor Joe Liles (00:02):
So we are going to start a series today,
and the series is called Dearyounger me, and it is a series,
oh, thank you so much. Andrea, Iappreciate that. It is a series
about wisdom. And I have beenthinking about this series for a
while, and it's a series that Ithink, as we get into a school,
(00:23):
we get back into the fall, andwe try to understand what we're
learning in school and howimportant that is. And as some
of us are raising kids, andother of us are getting into new
jobs and new careers anddifferent things like that,
there is a whole avenue in ourlife of, what does it mean to
have wisdom in our life, andwhat does it mean to learn from
those around us? And so wetitled this series, dear younger
(00:45):
me, and it's really about, howdo we learn to rely and trust on
God, but also realize that whatwe share with others is meant to
be something that we gain inwisdom from them, and they gain
in wisdom from us. And that'salso true about life, as much as
it's true about our relationshipwith God, we should be where
(01:06):
sharing wisdom in both sides.
And so I wanted to start bysaying I think there's a lot of
different places and people wereceive wisdom from, and I think
that's true of every one of usin our life, is that we at one
point have received wisdom fromsomeone in a beautiful way, and
just so we know what we'retalking about. I one time
received wisdom about thedifference between knowledge and
(01:28):
wisdom, and so sometimes weconfuse those, and this was the
best way that I have everunderstood it. And it still hits
me to this day when someone asksme about it and and here's the
difference, knowledge is knowingthat a tomato is a fruit wisdom
is knowing that you do not puttomatoes in fruit salad, right?
See, we're saying knowledge isgreat wisdom, right? And we're
(01:53):
going to get to that in asecond. But I want to hear from
you all in a fun way, what issome of the best wisdom that you
guys have had in your life? Andwhat we're gonna do is that we
have our ushers over here andour greeters and our worship
coordinators, and they're gonnacome around and we have wisdom
because we're using old chaircards. And so we're gonna have
this there's wisdom. They'resitting in a drawer. We're gonna
(02:15):
use our old chair cards. They'realso volunteer cards. So if you
turn it over and you're like, ohmy gosh, kids city volunteer, I
didn't know this was for me. IsGod talking to me? This is a
Holy Spirit thing, and youshould just fill your name out
on both sides and then do that.
But with that, we are giving youcards right now, and we want you
to take a second to write downlife wisdom. Okay, we're gonna
(02:38):
do two things. We're gonna dolife wisdom, okay? AKA wisdom
that you received about life,about daily life, right? This is
different from faithful wisdom.
This is daily life. So for myexample, my dad, when I played
football, right? And I wasplaying football, and I was
trying to become the player thatI was going to be, and I wasn't
there yet. I kept on missingtackles. I was a linebacker, and
(02:58):
I wasn't hitting hard enough,and he kept on saying, like, You
got to be the hit toward, notthe hit T, right? You know,
like, and I was like, okay, he'slike, he who hesitates is lost,
right? These are things thatstayed with me all my life.
Those are little life wisdoms,right? Little Life wisdoms that
I have never let go. And so I'mwondering, what are yours? So I
want you to take a second, and Iwant you to write wisdom that
(03:21):
you have received in your life.
Next to that wisdom, I want youto write the relationship to the
person. You don't have to writetheir name, just the
relationship to the person inyour life that gave you that
wisdom. So take a second rightnow. I want you to think about
that. What is wisdom youreceived in your life? If you
have nothing to write right now,I have more questions. So I just
(03:44):
there's a lot of, how many ofyou are struggling to write
something right now aboutwisdom? I see you looking at me.
I see you like, I cannot thinkof a thing right now. I was
like, What happened to all mywisdom? Which means that you
have a lot of knowledge in life,but not necessarily wisdom in
life. So take a second. We'regonna work through this. While
that's happening, I would lovefor you to shout out some wisdom
(04:04):
in life. So let's just, let'swe're gonna gain some wisdom
today as a church. So who hassome wisdom in life? Who's got
some wisdom, right? Shout out apiece of wisdom. Cucumbers are
also a fruit Thank you. That'svery much. I appreciate that.
That's gonna go into myknowledge bucket, and I don't
know if I want those in fruitsalad. Yeah, that's very true. I
appreciate that. What's someother wisdom that we got out
(04:25):
there? Seek, first tounderstand, then to be
understood. All right, that'sfrom church member. You can
write that on your card if youdon't have anything church
member at the neighborhoodchurch is what you're gonna get.
That's really good. All right,what's some other wisdom? I love
that one. Treat the janitor withthe same amount of respect that
(04:47):
you treat the CEO, right? Levelthe playing field. It's a
beautiful space, beautifulnarrative. Right? Church member.
Thank you very much. Appreciatethat, right? All right, what are
one or two more, one or two morewisdoms that you received in
life? You. It. I'm not gonna saythat one out loud, because a lot
of people will be mad at me. Ifyou're not five minutes early,
(05:07):
you're late. Yeah, I apologizeto everyone in my life. Is what
I'm so sorry. I just cannot.
Man, I set up a meeting thisweek, and I was, I mean, I was
prep. I was I'm be there 15minutes early. I got there three
minutes late, and I was like,man, it's like, every time I set
it up so, but it was raining,which is not an excuse. So let's
just say that out loud. I'mlike, it's raining. I'm going
(05:30):
slower. Ah, man, it's true, butit's not true. I could have been
early. I could have been early.
So if you're not five minutesearly, you're late. Thank you
for humbling me during themessage. I appreciate that. One
more piece of wisdom. Yes,always be nice to the people
that make your food. That ispractical wisdom. Very practical
(05:52):
wisdom. That is because whenthey go in the back to get it,
you have no idea what goes on.
Just a note, this is very true.
I went to Texas Roadhouse lastnight. Just got in off a plane.
We went to Texas Roadhouse. Welove the roles at Texas
Roadhouse, so we go there. Theyalso have steak, but it's more
about the roles. So with that,we went to Texas Roadhouse, and
I showed up in the drivethrough, and they said it was
gonna be ready at 945 and Ishowed up at 930 Oh, apparently
(06:15):
I'm early for food, huh? That'sinteresting. Okay, I had to
process that one with mytherapist this week. Okay, it's
gonna go great. So with that,what happens is, we showed up
early for food, and she said,she said, Yeah, your food's not
ready yet. We'll text you. Isaid, Yeah, I got the text. Just
wanted to roll through and sayhi and so you can meet me. Just
like, what? And I was like,Yeah, I'm super excited. I was
(06:36):
like, you guys, I guess, puttingthe rolls into and she goes,
yeah, we'll do rolls. I'm like,like, you guys putting the rolls
in, you know, saying she's like,do you want extra rolls? I was
like, the rolls, you know, she'slike, she's like, look, look,
look, we got you. And I waslike, That's so awesome. That's
great. And so, and with that,she gave us like, 14 rolls,
which was awesome, so, which wasonly about 3000 calories. So I
(06:58):
mean, we ate those on the wayhome, and our family is now
better for it, so it's a reallywonderful deal. So there is
wisdom out there. So here's whatI want you to do. You now have
that wisdom in your life that isdaily life wisdom. Now, wisdom
that we're gonna talk abouttoday is a little bit different.
So I want you to think aboutthose cards now. Here's what we
wanna do with those cards,actually, is we wanna share
wisdom out to the world. So ifyou wanna leave those today,
(07:19):
this is our hope is that we cantake a snapshot of it right, and
we can actually put it on oursocials and say, Here's wisdom
from our church for the life ofthe world. Now, here's what we
also want you to do on thatcard. Wisdom today is about
faith. Wisdom and the messagetoday and throughout this series
is going to be about your lifewith God, not just daily life. I
(07:41):
think sometimes we get a laws ofwisdom in daily life, but we
lack the wisdom, or we make itkind of commercialized wisdom,
right from faith, right? We makeit this thing that we should be
talking about a relationshipwith God and wisdom when we come
forward, we should be talkingabout how to love your neighbor
and what's commanded in theBible, and bringing that into a
wisdom of how we understandothers and moving that into
(08:02):
daily life. So here's what Iwant you to do. I want you to
draw a little line. I want youto write wisdom from faith below
that, and then I want you tothink about who has given you
wisdom and faith, who has givenyou knowledge and a way to apply
it in your life and relationshipwith God. That is wisdom and
(08:26):
faith. It is the application ofyour knowledge of God in daily
life that's wisdom. So I wantyou to write that line, and I
want you to think about that whohas given you wisdom and faith,
and I want to you to write whatthat wisdom is. We should be
(08:49):
sharing our knowledge of God. Weshould be sharing it in a way to
increase other people'sexperience and their
relationship with God so thatour knowledge doesn't just stay
as knowledge, it becomes part ofour relationship and becomes
wisdom. We apply what we knowabout God in our daily life and
(09:13):
make it wisdom. If you come tochurch every Sunday, and you
open your Bible every week, andthe only thing that you do is
learn and have knowledge of God.
You are not living your life offaith. You know a life of faith,
but you are not living it.
(09:33):
And that might be hard for someof us to hear, because Sunday
and Bible reading might be ourapplication. We might open that
up, and we might learn moreabout God. We might have
knowledge of God, understandingof God, a theology about God.
But unless we apply that to ourdaily life, we are not living a
life of faith. We are learningabout a life of faith. We have
(09:56):
to take it outside of thesewalls and as a church, we can.
Only do so much to do that foryou. We can teach the kids and
give them questions to takehome. We can say, here's what
you ask your children. We canset up youth programs and youth
dates. We can set up missionprojects on Thursday nights at
for the love. And we can set upthese different things that go
around and help us go out andraise money with beer and hymns
our strategic partner. And wecan set up these opportunities.
(10:18):
We can do Bible studies and lifegroups and men's groups we can
do all of that. But if you onlycome to learn and you don't
apply it, you are not living alife of faith. You're learning
about one. And there has to be amoment when we take what we are
learning and apply it to a lifeof faith that is wisdom, and
(10:43):
then we have to share it. Thisis our one mission, to take
learning and apply it to a lifeand then move forward. The
beautiful part about this, whichwe're going to get to the
Scripture. The beautiful partabout this is that when you take
learning and apply it to yourlife in wisdom, and you apply it
to your life. And faith is thatyour learning increases, because
(11:04):
when you get that wisdom and youapply it, you are in a new life.
You are transformed into a newcreation. You are in a new
relationship, and therefore youhave to learn new things. When a
relationship shifts in yourlife, you have to learn new
things. When you go from being afriend with someone to then
dating someone, you have tolearn new things. When you go
(11:25):
from dating someone to thenmarrying someone, you have to
learn new things when you changethese relationships in your
life, you have to learnsomething new. The same is true
in your relationship with God.
You have to learn something newwhen you transform in your life
and apply it to your life. Andthat's a beautiful place to be,
because then it means we're in aconstant state of learning about
God and applying it to our life.
(11:46):
Learn about God, apply it to ourlife. Learn more about God,
apply it to our life, and inevery different scenario, we can
learn how to walk with Godthrough all parts of our life if
we share the wisdom. Becausewhat I'm going through for first
time, you might have beenthrough four times. You might
have wisdom that I don't evenknow about yet, and I don't even
(12:07):
know if I want it yet. I haveteenagers for kids, you know
what? They don't want my wisdom.
They don't care about it. Theydon't want it. They look at it
and they're like, maybe, and I'mlike, but I've been through it.
And Jess and I get to eachother, we're like, we've been
through it like we've gonethrough this moment in life. We
remember this like we can tellyou what it is, and like, Ah,
(12:30):
let me try it my way. Let mejust take a walk this way. And
it's the same thing we do in ourrelationship with God. The same
thing we do is that. So I wantyou to write down your faith
wisdom. What are you learningfrom faith? And then I want you
to hear about wisdom in thescriptures. So think about that
as we're talking through themessage today. So if we're going
to be in Scripture, we loveBibles in the Church. We love
(12:51):
Bibles in the church. And so ifyou got a Bible, raise it up. We
love to see Bibles. That'sgreat. Yes, yes, bring a Bible
to church. That's great. So ifyou don't have a Bible and
you're on the Bible app, raiseup your smartphone. We have the
Bible app. Also. You can justjump onto the Bible app. You'll
see our service loaded up there,dear younger me, you can follow
notes and scriptures, differentthings like that. We're going to
(13:12):
be in the book of Proverbs. Now,the book of Proverbs is about
wisdom sayings. So these aresmall, little sayings given to
move our relationship forwardwith God, to help us understand
God, our relationship with God,understand our life and apply it
to a life of faith. These arethe wisdom sayings now in a
little background of whereproverbs comes from. Proverbs
(13:32):
was written by King Solomon. AndKing Solomon is the son of King
David in Bathsheba, right, ifyou go back into that story. So
we're kind of following anarrative now, and David had
many sons, but one of the sonswas wanting to be king, but
David had promised that Solomonwas going to be king, and so he
anointed Solomon as king in histime. And so on. Became king,
(13:54):
and mostly Solomon is known as avery peaceful king. He built the
first temple in Jerusalem. So hewas helping out the Israelites.
He he kind of came into a timeof building wealth and
prosperity in the kingdom ofIsrael, which is really
beautiful. And so he had thiswonderful kind of peace and
prosperity narrative to him. Buthe also fell away from God at
times. And he fell away fromGod, and he walked away from
(14:15):
God, and he used relationshipsin an effort to get him farther
in the kingdom and to advancedifferent different
relationships with otherkingdoms around him. And so we
have Solomon, who's thiswonderful character, but he's
also known for writing wisdom.
He's known for writing theseProverbs, right? And it's not
the only Wisdom literature thatwe have. In Scripture, we also
(14:36):
got Psalms, we have Proverbs, wehave Ecclesiastes, we have the
book of Job is also consideredwisdom. And so we have these
different books of wisdom inscripture where we get these
sayings about how to daily liveyour life with God, how to apply
your knowledge of God into yourdaily life. These are what the
wisdom books are. So we're goingto start off right away. We're
(14:57):
going to start off right awaywith King Solomon, right. About
wisdom in the book of Proverbs.
So if you find Psalms, Proverbs,you'll find it Psalms is large.
You can turn to that in the OldTestament, we're going to read
verses one through seven tostart in Proverbs. And
excitingly, we have our Bibleson order coming for August. So
we have new Bibles are going togo into our Bible boxes. We have
three different Bibles. If youdon't have one, they're going to
(15:17):
be here next week. We're goingto have a Lutheran Study Bible.
We're gonna have a studentBible, student study Bible in
there also, and then a kid'sBible, which is gonna be
awesome. And if you don't haveone, there's gonna be a card
inside that you can fill out,and we'll get you a Bible at our
welcome desk. And so you cancome up and we'll give you a
Bible. That same Bible will handto you. And so that way you can
use it every single Sunday. Sothis is Proverbs, chapter one,
(15:37):
verses one through seven. Andhere's what it says, for
learning about wisdom andinstruction, for understanding
words of insight, for gaininginstruction in wise dealing,
righteousness, justice andequity, to teach shrewdness to
the temp, to the simple,knowledge and prudence to the
(16:02):
young, let the wise also hearand gain in learning. And the
discerning acquires skill tounderstand a proverb and a
figure, the words of the wiseand the riddles. Verse seven,
the fear of the Lord is thebeginning of knowledge. Fools
despise wisdom and instruction.
(16:29):
Fear is the beginning ofknowledge. Let's talk about
wisdom. So this whole first partis an introduction to wisdom.
It's an introduction that goeson, understanding the words and
insight, gaining instruction inand wise dealing. See, wisdom
integrates knowledge, right? Italso integrates understanding,
moral insight. It integrates areverence for God. Is what
(16:50):
wisdom does. And so what we'redoing, as you can see, is we're
taking the knowledge of God. Wecan say that we've learned these
things over our life. And effortto ask you about your knowledge
of God, you'd probably startwith what you've read in
Scripture. If you think aboutyour knowledge of God, and if
you think about how far thatknowledge goes, where did you
learn that knowledge from? Solet's just kind of break this
(17:12):
down a little bit. So how manyof you believe you know God?
Raise your hand if you know God.
Everyone should raise their handright now. You're learning about
God. It's okay. This isn't atrick. Like, people like, Ah, I
don't know. You might bring meup, and then I'm gonna have to
talk about this. It's gonna be ano. And so how many of you know
God? How many of you know God?
Be strong about that. Okay,that's great. So we know God.
Okay, now I want you to thinkabout this. Where did you gain
(17:32):
that knowledge from? Okay, wheredid you gain that knowledge
from? How many of you, by showof hands, gained that knowledge
from church? Okay, which meansyou gained it from a pastor? Can
I say that out loud, not from achurch, but from a pastor who
gained it, probably from aseminary, right? Who gained it
from other early authors, right?
You see, our knowledge isunfolding here, right? But then
(17:54):
at that time, each one of thosepeople has life experience that
they apply to the knowledge ofScripture to make it wisdom for
you all, I bring in my lifeexperience into the scripture
when I'm teaching you from thefront about what wisdom is. So I
want you to think about if yougain that wisdom from church,
that's wonderful. That's oneplace. How many of you gained
wisdom from maybe a mentor, orsomeone in your life that was
(18:15):
like a faith mentor? That'sgreat. Okay, so you have
knowledge of God from a mentor.
That's great. How many of yougained knowledge of God because
you went through a tough timeand you couldn't go through it
without knowing more about God,right? How many of you have done
that? Do you see how we start tomake our relationship to God
based on things that arehappening in our life? What
(18:39):
begins to happen is churchhandles a relationship. Someone
in your life handles arelationship, an experience in
your life handles a relationshipto God, and we start to make God
an action based on somethingelse that we do, or someone else
that we know.
(18:59):
Church is the first action, thesituation that happened, is the
first action. The person in ourlife is the first action. We
receive our knowledge from God,from other spaces outside of
God, first. So part of what Iwant to say is that if we're
looking at this, that wisdomintegrates knowledge. It's an
understanding, it's a moralinsight. The first thing I want
(19:20):
to tell you is that if you wantto gain knowledge about
knowledge about God, this is adaily identity in your faith
with God. If you want to takethat knowledge and apply it, you
have to begin to walk with Godin that knowledge before
something happens that you needGod in that knowledge. So you
need to start in the Scripturesdaily. You need to start with
prayer daily. You need tointegrate this knowledge into
your relationship with God rightnow. So when something does
(19:43):
happen, you can access thatknowledge, not wait for it
afterwards. We don't want torespond to things in life. We
want to prepare with God forthings in life. And so you need
this knowledge to begin with,which means it leads me back in
to say, how do you gain inknowledge every. Single day with
God, and do you need the churchto do that? Do you need someone
(20:05):
else to do that for you? Do youneed a situation to do that? Or
can you step into that dailyknowledge yourself? Can you
begin in that way? See what wehave here is an incredible way
where we're looking at, whatdoes it mean to have a fear of
the Lord as the beginning ofknowledge. But if we go back a
little bit, it did talk about inthe verse. In here, it said it
(20:25):
was talking about what it meansto be simple. And I want to take
you forward just a tad, right?
So if you turn over to verse 22say in Proverbs, we're just
going to turn forward a littlebit into verse 22 and I want you
to hear this because it'sspeaking about, what is Wisdom
speaking to us? So theypersonify wisdom in this
character of a woman, andthey're talking about, she's
(20:46):
crying out in the street andshe's crying out to you. We need
to listen to wisdom. And thenverse 22 comes, and it says
this, How long, oh, simple ones,will you love being simple? How
long will scoffers delight intheir scoffing and fools hate
knowledge. How long? Oh, simpleones. Will you love being
(21:06):
simple? I think we land there alittle bit she said of being
simple in our faith, and here'swhy. Simple in our faith is
always concerned about ourself.
(21:30):
A simple faith is alwaysconcerned with yourself. The
fear of the Lord is thebeginning of knowledge. The fear
of the Lord is the beginning ofwisdom. Knowledge is the
beginning of wisdom. If we startby learning about God, then what
we are called to do is not justapply that to ourselves. That's
(21:52):
simple. What we're called to dois apply our knowledge and our
interactions with God to others.
You have to know God so well inyour life that it's no longer
for you, that it's for the sakeof others. That's the extent
that we need knowledge of Godwhere it extends beyond ourself.
(22:12):
Otherwise, we are in a simplefaith where I hear about God and
I just apply it to myself. Ihear about God and I just apply
it to myself. I'm too busylearning about God. I can't deal
with you right now. I just applyit to myself. That's a simple
faith. Well, we're talking aboutbeginning in knowledge of the
Lord and where wisdom begins.
It's knowledge that God hascalled us to take this and to
(22:33):
move it into other people'slives, that you have a calling
to reach in other people'slives, not just with the simple
faith anymore, but with the truewisdom of our nature, with God.
There's a whole narrative herewhere we need to take this
knowledge and move it now iswhat I want you to do. I want
(22:53):
you to turn over a little bitmore into verse nine, or sorry,
chapter nine, verse 10, and Iwant you to hear a little bit
more about this fear, because itwas something that stopped me in
the text This fear is thebeginning of our knowledge of
God. Fear is the beginning ofour knowledge with God. Am I?
Ooh, I don't know if I likethat. I don't necessarily want
to fear my relationship withGod. I want to look to my
(23:14):
relationship with God with joyand with hope and with a
promise. When you say fear, Ihave some questions. If I'm
going to fear my relationshipwith God, I mean, I fear a lot
of things that go on in life, soI don't need that in my
relationship with God. So Iwanted to understand more about
what it means that fear is thebeginning of knowledge. And
here's what it says in chapternine, verse 10, the fear of the
(23:35):
Lord is the beginning of wisdom,and the knowledge of the Holy
One is insight. The fear of theLord is the beginning of wisdom
and the knowledge of the HolyOne is insight. What it means is
(23:57):
that fear is truly to be in aweof God. Fear is to be in awe of
God. But when you are in awe ofGod and the relationship that
you have with God, it also meansthat fear means that we know our
place in the kingdom, our callin the kingdom, if we are in a
(24:22):
simple faith with our knowledgeof God, we raise up our place in
the kingdom to be just about us,that God only came for me, that
God is only here to watch overme, and God only calls me to
work with myself and myrelationship with God, we should
fear God in that moment. But ifwe have an understanding of the
(24:46):
nature of God, the Creator ofthe heavens and the earth, who
sent His only Son to die for uson a cross, what ends up coming
about is that we know our placein the kingdom, which means that
we have a fear that says becauseof who God is and. Who God made
me. I know my place in thekingdom, and my place in the
kingdom is trusting God to sendme to those who need to
(25:06):
understand my experience of Godand what I've been through. The
fear of God is the beginning ofwisdom. The fear of God is the
beginning of taking yourknowledge and applying it to
your life so that you mayunderstand your place in the
(25:29):
kingdom. So I want you to take alook back at your cards real
quick. There's a reason that Ihad you write down wisdom if you
have space in your cards, ifyou've written so much wisdom
that you can't have any morespace in your cards, raise your
hand, because that's awesome. Ifyou wrote one and you're like, I
can't think of anything else,that's okay. It was a surprise
test today, but you started withdaily life wisdom. You started
(25:53):
with wisdom from faith thatother people have given you.
Here's the third wisdom. Withyour knowledge of God, what
wisdom would you give to othersin faith, with your knowledge of
how God has been in your life,how would you guide others in
(26:16):
faith? What would you tell them?
What is the wisdom? That youwould give them about who God
is? I want you to write thatdown. Take a second. This is a
moment where we're doing thisright now. What would you tell
them about your relationshipwith God? If you're finding this
hard, it's because we don't doit often enough. If you met with
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people every day, if you talkedwith people every day when they
hit your heart and you calledthem and you shared with them
what God's doing in your life,our pens should be flowing right
now. I had this conversationlast week. I had this
conversation the other week. Iwas talking about this one the
other in fact, other, in fact, Ihad a conversation yesterday
(27:03):
with God gave me a revelation.
It was a wisdom. In the middleof a conversation, I was at the
men's breakfast, and I wastalking with one of the
presenters, Marty, and he wasover there, and he was talking
about his relationship to sheepdog and how he came. He was
talking about his life of faithand his testimony, and he was
talking about spiritualmaturity. And he said, Yeah, you
know, we need to get to a spaceof spiritual maturity. I said,
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Great. I said, How should wedefine spiritual maturity,
though? I said, That's so hardto define when you're
spiritually mature, right? Andhe goes, Yeah. He goes, it's
really stepping in and really,really thinking about the things
in your life and thinking aboutthem with God first in your
life. And I said, Yeah. I said,it's almost like we need to
discern before every decision,discern before decision, discern
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before decision. And it just hitthis moment. I was like, That's
spiritual maturity. And I gotthat because I was talking about
someone and their experience andtestimony and their relationship
with God. That's where wisdomcomes from. In conversations
about God. So take that. Askyourself, What wisdom do you
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share? Because I know, and Ibelieve that God has been in
your life all along, and youhave wisdom from God to share,
and that is something we shouldnever keep for ourselves,
because that would be simple.
And all God's people said, Amen,let us pray, heavenly and
gracious Father, we come beforeyou today knowing that we have
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times have walked into a simplerelationship of faith. Simple
word is only concerned withself, not simple in its nature,
or simple because we don'tunderstand. Enough about you or
have enough knowledge of you,simple because it only concerns
ourself. It does not think ofour community. It does not think
of our community of faith. Itdoes not think of our our people
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around us who hurt and whostruggle.
Does not think of those who areostracized and marginalized. It
it just thinks of inside of mycomfort, and that's very simple,
Lord. So in that, Lord, we askfor forgiveness. We ask for
forgiveness that we have notshared wisdom that has come from
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you. But today, Lord, what myhope is that from these small
moments of hearing wisdom, thesesmall moments of hearing where
you have been in our life, thatit would not stay with inside
the walls of these church thattruly we would find ourselves in
conversations about ourtestimony, about our life with
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you, that that would be thefirst thing that we talk about,
And that, Lord, you would putpeople into our lives who need
to hear this wisdom, who areabout to come into something in
their life. Would could benefitfrom knowing how we've
experienced that with you in ourown so watch over us. Lord. Help
us gain knowledge in you. Helpus apply it to life with you.
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Help. Us to lead a life that isworthy of the calling that you
have given us. We pray thesethings in your holy and precious
name And all God's people said,Amen. You guys enjoying our
wisdom. Series start, so if youwant take.
So we are going to start a series today,
and the series is called Dearyounger me, and it is a series,
oh, thank you so much. Andrea, Iappreciate that. It is a series
about wisdom. And I have beenthinking about this series for a
while, and it's a series that Ithink, as we get into a school,
(00:23):
we get back into the fall, andwe try to understand what we're
learning in school and howimportant that is. And as some
of us are raising kids, andother of us are getting into new
jobs and new careers anddifferent things like that,
there is a whole avenue in ourlife of, what does it mean to
have wisdom in our life, andwhat does it mean to learn from
those around us? And so wetitled this series, dear younger
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me, and it's really about, howdo we learn to rely and trust on
God, but also realize that whatwe share with others is meant to
be something that we gain inwisdom from them, and they gain
in wisdom from us. And that'salso true about life, as much as
it's true about our relationshipwith God, we should be where
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sharing wisdom in both sides.
And so I wanted to start bysaying I think there's a lot of
different places and people wereceive wisdom from, and I think
that's true of every one of usin our life, is that we at one
point have received wisdom fromsomeone in a beautiful way, and
just so we know what we'retalking about. I one time
received wisdom about thedifference between knowledge and
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wisdom, and so sometimes weconfuse those, and this was the
best way that I have everunderstood it. And it still hits
me to this day when someone asksme about it and and here's the
difference, knowledge is knowingthat a tomato is a fruit wisdom
is knowing that you do not puttomatoes in fruit salad, right?
See, we're saying knowledge isgreat wisdom, right? And we're
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going to get to that in asecond. But I want to hear from
you all in a fun way, what issome of the best wisdom that you
guys have had in your life? Andwhat we're gonna do is that we
have our ushers over here andour greeters and our worship
coordinators, and they're gonnacome around and we have wisdom
because we're using old chaircards. And so we're gonna have
this there's wisdom. They'resitting in a drawer. We're gonna
(02:15):
use our old chair cards. They'realso volunteer cards. So if you
turn it over and you're like, ohmy gosh, kids city volunteer, I
didn't know this was for me. IsGod talking to me? This is a
Holy Spirit thing, and youshould just fill your name out
on both sides and then do that.
But with that, we are giving youcards right now, and we want you
to take a second to write downlife wisdom. Okay, we're gonna
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do two things. We're gonna dolife wisdom, okay? AKA wisdom
that you received about life,about daily life, right? This is
different from faithful wisdom.
This is daily life. So for myexample, my dad, when I played
football, right? And I wasplaying football, and I was
trying to become the player thatI was going to be, and I wasn't
there yet. I kept on missingtackles. I was a linebacker, and
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I wasn't hitting hard enough,and he kept on saying, like, You
got to be the hit toward, notthe hit T, right? You know,
like, and I was like, okay, he'slike, he who hesitates is lost,
right? These are things thatstayed with me all my life.
Those are little life wisdoms,right? Little Life wisdoms that
I have never let go. And so I'mwondering, what are yours? So I
want you to take a second, and Iwant you to write wisdom that
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you have received in your life.
Next to that wisdom, I want youto write the relationship to the
person. You don't have to writetheir name, just the
relationship to the person inyour life that gave you that
wisdom. So take a second rightnow. I want you to think about
that. What is wisdom youreceived in your life? If you
have nothing to write right now,I have more questions. So I just
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there's a lot of, how many ofyou are struggling to write
something right now aboutwisdom? I see you looking at me.
I see you like, I cannot thinkof a thing right now. I was
like, What happened to all mywisdom? Which means that you
have a lot of knowledge in life,but not necessarily wisdom in
life. So take a second. We'regonna work through this. While
that's happening, I would lovefor you to shout out some wisdom
(04:04):
in life. So let's just, let'swe're gonna gain some wisdom
today as a church. So who hassome wisdom in life? Who's got
some wisdom, right? Shout out apiece of wisdom. Cucumbers are
also a fruit Thank you. That'svery much. I appreciate that.
That's gonna go into myknowledge bucket, and I don't
know if I want those in fruitsalad. Yeah, that's very true. I
appreciate that. What's someother wisdom that we got out
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there? Seek, first tounderstand, then to be
understood. All right, that'sfrom church member. You can
write that on your card if youdon't have anything church
member at the neighborhoodchurch is what you're gonna get.
That's really good. All right,what's some other wisdom? I love
that one. Treat the janitor withthe same amount of respect that
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you treat the CEO, right? Levelthe playing field. It's a
beautiful space, beautifulnarrative. Right? Church member.
Thank you very much. Appreciatethat, right? All right, what are
one or two more, one or two morewisdoms that you received in
life? You. It. I'm not gonna saythat one out loud, because a lot
of people will be mad at me. Ifyou're not five minutes early,
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you're late. Yeah, I apologizeto everyone in my life. Is what
I'm so sorry. I just cannot.
Man, I set up a meeting thisweek, and I was, I mean, I was
prep. I was I'm be there 15minutes early. I got there three
minutes late, and I was like,man, it's like, every time I set
it up so, but it was raining,which is not an excuse. So let's
just say that out loud. I'mlike, it's raining. I'm going
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slower. Ah, man, it's true, butit's not true. I could have been
early. I could have been early.
So if you're not five minutesearly, you're late. Thank you
for humbling me during themessage. I appreciate that. One
more piece of wisdom. Yes,always be nice to the people
that make your food. That ispractical wisdom. Very practical
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wisdom. That is because whenthey go in the back to get it,
you have no idea what goes on.
Just a note, this is very true.
I went to Texas Roadhouse lastnight. Just got in off a plane.
We went to Texas Roadhouse. Welove the roles at Texas
Roadhouse, so we go there. Theyalso have steak, but it's more
about the roles. So with that,we went to Texas Roadhouse, and
I showed up in the drivethrough, and they said it was
gonna be ready at 945 and Ishowed up at 930 Oh, apparently
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I'm early for food, huh? That'sinteresting. Okay, I had to
process that one with mytherapist this week. Okay, it's
gonna go great. So with that,what happens is, we showed up
early for food, and she said,she said, Yeah, your food's not
ready yet. We'll text you. Isaid, Yeah, I got the text. Just
wanted to roll through and sayhi and so you can meet me. Just
like, what? And I was like,Yeah, I'm super excited. I was
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like, you guys, I guess, puttingthe rolls into and she goes,
yeah, we'll do rolls. I'm like,like, you guys putting the rolls
in, you know, saying she's like,do you want extra rolls? I was
like, the rolls, you know, she'slike, she's like, look, look,
look, we got you. And I waslike, That's so awesome. That's
great. And so, and with that,she gave us like, 14 rolls,
which was awesome, so, which wasonly about 3000 calories. So I
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mean, we ate those on the wayhome, and our family is now
better for it, so it's a reallywonderful deal. So there is
wisdom out there. So here's whatI want you to do. You now have
that wisdom in your life that isdaily life wisdom. Now, wisdom
that we're gonna talk abouttoday is a little bit different.
So I want you to think aboutthose cards now. Here's what we
wanna do with those cards,actually, is we wanna share
wisdom out to the world. So ifyou wanna leave those today,
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this is our hope is that we cantake a snapshot of it right, and
we can actually put it on oursocials and say, Here's wisdom
from our church for the life ofthe world. Now, here's what we
also want you to do on thatcard. Wisdom today is about
faith. Wisdom and the messagetoday and throughout this series
is going to be about your lifewith God, not just daily life. I
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think sometimes we get a laws ofwisdom in daily life, but we
lack the wisdom, or we make itkind of commercialized wisdom,
right from faith, right? We makeit this thing that we should be
talking about a relationshipwith God and wisdom when we come
forward, we should be talkingabout how to love your neighbor
and what's commanded in theBible, and bringing that into a
wisdom of how we understandothers and moving that into
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daily life. So here's what Iwant you to do. I want you to
draw a little line. I want youto write wisdom from faith below
that, and then I want you tothink about who has given you
wisdom and faith, who has givenyou knowledge and a way to apply
it in your life and relationshipwith God. That is wisdom and
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faith. It is the application ofyour knowledge of God in daily
life that's wisdom. So I wantyou to write that line, and I
want you to think about that whohas given you wisdom and faith,
and I want to you to write whatthat wisdom is. We should be
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sharing our knowledge of God. Weshould be sharing it in a way to
increase other people'sexperience and their
relationship with God so thatour knowledge doesn't just stay
as knowledge, it becomes part ofour relationship and becomes
wisdom. We apply what we knowabout God in our daily life and
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make it wisdom. If you come tochurch every Sunday, and you
open your Bible every week, andthe only thing that you do is
learn and have knowledge of God.
You are not living your life offaith. You know a life of faith,
but you are not living it.
(09:33):
And that might be hard for someof us to hear, because Sunday
and Bible reading might be ourapplication. We might open that
up, and we might learn moreabout God. We might have
knowledge of God, understandingof God, a theology about God.
But unless we apply that to ourdaily life, we are not living a
life of faith. We are learningabout a life of faith. We have
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to take it outside of thesewalls and as a church, we can.
Only do so much to do that foryou. We can teach the kids and
give them questions to takehome. We can say, here's what
you ask your children. We canset up youth programs and youth
dates. We can set up missionprojects on Thursday nights at
for the love. And we can set upthese different things that go
around and help us go out andraise money with beer and hymns
our strategic partner. And wecan set up these opportunities.
(10:18):
We can do Bible studies and lifegroups and men's groups we can
do all of that. But if you onlycome to learn and you don't
apply it, you are not living alife of faith. You're learning
about one. And there has to be amoment when we take what we are
learning and apply it to a lifeof faith that is wisdom, and
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then we have to share it. Thisis our one mission, to take
learning and apply it to a lifeand then move forward. The
beautiful part about this, whichwe're going to get to the
Scripture. The beautiful partabout this is that when you take
learning and apply it to yourlife in wisdom, and you apply it
to your life. And faith is thatyour learning increases, because
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when you get that wisdom and youapply it, you are in a new life.
You are transformed into a newcreation. You are in a new
relationship, and therefore youhave to learn new things. When a
relationship shifts in yourlife, you have to learn new
things. When you go from being afriend with someone to then
dating someone, you have tolearn new things. When you go
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from dating someone to thenmarrying someone, you have to
learn new things when you changethese relationships in your
life, you have to learnsomething new. The same is true
in your relationship with God.
You have to learn something newwhen you transform in your life
and apply it to your life. Andthat's a beautiful place to be,
because then it means we're in aconstant state of learning about
God and applying it to our life.
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Learn about God, apply it to ourlife. Learn more about God,
apply it to our life, and inevery different scenario, we can
learn how to walk with Godthrough all parts of our life if
we share the wisdom. Becausewhat I'm going through for first
time, you might have beenthrough four times. You might
have wisdom that I don't evenknow about yet, and I don't even
(12:07):
know if I want it yet. I haveteenagers for kids, you know
what? They don't want my wisdom.
They don't care about it. Theydon't want it. They look at it
and they're like, maybe, and I'mlike, but I've been through it.
And Jess and I get to eachother, we're like, we've been
through it like we've gonethrough this moment in life. We
remember this like we can tellyou what it is, and like, Ah,
(12:30):
let me try it my way. Let mejust take a walk this way. And
it's the same thing we do in ourrelationship with God. The same
thing we do is that. So I wantyou to write down your faith
wisdom. What are you learningfrom faith? And then I want you
to hear about wisdom in thescriptures. So think about that
as we're talking through themessage today. So if we're going
to be in Scripture, we loveBibles in the Church. We love
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Bibles in the church. And so ifyou got a Bible, raise it up. We
love to see Bibles. That'sgreat. Yes, yes, bring a Bible
to church. That's great. So ifyou don't have a Bible and
you're on the Bible app, raiseup your smartphone. We have the
Bible app. Also. You can justjump onto the Bible app. You'll
see our service loaded up there,dear younger me, you can follow
notes and scriptures, differentthings like that. We're going to
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be in the book of Proverbs. Now,the book of Proverbs is about
wisdom sayings. So these aresmall, little sayings given to
move our relationship forwardwith God, to help us understand
God, our relationship with God,understand our life and apply it
to a life of faith. These arethe wisdom sayings now in a
little background of whereproverbs comes from. Proverbs
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was written by King Solomon. AndKing Solomon is the son of King
David in Bathsheba, right, ifyou go back into that story. So
we're kind of following anarrative now, and David had
many sons, but one of the sonswas wanting to be king, but
David had promised that Solomonwas going to be king, and so he
anointed Solomon as king in histime. And so on. Became king,
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and mostly Solomon is known as avery peaceful king. He built the
first temple in Jerusalem. So hewas helping out the Israelites.
He he kind of came into a timeof building wealth and
prosperity in the kingdom ofIsrael, which is really
beautiful. And so he had thiswonderful kind of peace and
prosperity narrative to him. Buthe also fell away from God at
times. And he fell away fromGod, and he walked away from
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God, and he used relationshipsin an effort to get him farther
in the kingdom and to advancedifferent different
relationships with otherkingdoms around him. And so we
have Solomon, who's thiswonderful character, but he's
also known for writing wisdom.
He's known for writing theseProverbs, right? And it's not
the only Wisdom literature thatwe have. In Scripture, we also
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got Psalms, we have Proverbs, wehave Ecclesiastes, we have the
book of Job is also consideredwisdom. And so we have these
different books of wisdom inscripture where we get these
sayings about how to daily liveyour life with God, how to apply
your knowledge of God into yourdaily life. These are what the
wisdom books are. So we're goingto start off right away. We're
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going to start off right awaywith King Solomon, right. About
wisdom in the book of Proverbs.
So if you find Psalms, Proverbs,you'll find it Psalms is large.
You can turn to that in the OldTestament, we're going to read
verses one through seven tostart in Proverbs. And
excitingly, we have our Bibleson order coming for August. So
we have new Bibles are going togo into our Bible boxes. We have
three different Bibles. If youdon't have one, they're going to
(15:17):
be here next week. We're goingto have a Lutheran Study Bible.
We're gonna have a studentBible, student study Bible in
there also, and then a kid'sBible, which is gonna be
awesome. And if you don't haveone, there's gonna be a card
inside that you can fill out,and we'll get you a Bible at our
welcome desk. And so you cancome up and we'll give you a
Bible. That same Bible will handto you. And so that way you can
use it every single Sunday. Sothis is Proverbs, chapter one,
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verses one through seven. Andhere's what it says, for
learning about wisdom andinstruction, for understanding
words of insight, for gaininginstruction in wise dealing,
righteousness, justice andequity, to teach shrewdness to
the temp, to the simple,knowledge and prudence to the
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young, let the wise also hearand gain in learning. And the
discerning acquires skill tounderstand a proverb and a
figure, the words of the wiseand the riddles. Verse seven,
the fear of the Lord is thebeginning of knowledge. Fools
despise wisdom and instruction.
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Fear is the beginning ofknowledge. Let's talk about
wisdom. So this whole first partis an introduction to wisdom.
It's an introduction that goeson, understanding the words and
insight, gaining instruction inand wise dealing. See, wisdom
integrates knowledge, right? Italso integrates understanding,
moral insight. It integrates areverence for God. Is what
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wisdom does. And so what we'redoing, as you can see, is we're
taking the knowledge of God. Wecan say that we've learned these
things over our life. And effortto ask you about your knowledge
of God, you'd probably startwith what you've read in
Scripture. If you think aboutyour knowledge of God, and if
you think about how far thatknowledge goes, where did you
learn that knowledge from? Solet's just kind of break this
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down a little bit. So how manyof you believe you know God?
Raise your hand if you know God.
Everyone should raise their handright now. You're learning about
God. It's okay. This isn't atrick. Like, people like, Ah, I
don't know. You might bring meup, and then I'm gonna have to
talk about this. It's gonna be ano. And so how many of you know
God? How many of you know God?
Be strong about that. Okay,that's great. So we know God.
Okay, now I want you to thinkabout this. Where did you gain
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that knowledge from? Okay, wheredid you gain that knowledge
from? How many of you, by showof hands, gained that knowledge
from church? Okay, which meansyou gained it from a pastor? Can
I say that out loud, not from achurch, but from a pastor who
gained it, probably from aseminary, right? Who gained it
from other early authors, right?
You see, our knowledge isunfolding here, right? But then
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at that time, each one of thosepeople has life experience that
they apply to the knowledge ofScripture to make it wisdom for
you all, I bring in my lifeexperience into the scripture
when I'm teaching you from thefront about what wisdom is. So I
want you to think about if yougain that wisdom from church,
that's wonderful. That's oneplace. How many of you gained
wisdom from maybe a mentor, orsomeone in your life that was
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like a faith mentor? That'sgreat. Okay, so you have
knowledge of God from a mentor.
That's great. How many of yougained knowledge of God because
you went through a tough timeand you couldn't go through it
without knowing more about God,right? How many of you have done
that? Do you see how we start tomake our relationship to God
based on things that arehappening in our life? What
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begins to happen is churchhandles a relationship. Someone
in your life handles arelationship, an experience in
your life handles a relationshipto God, and we start to make God
an action based on somethingelse that we do, or someone else
that we know.
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Church is the first action, thesituation that happened, is the
first action. The person in ourlife is the first action. We
receive our knowledge from God,from other spaces outside of
God, first. So part of what Iwant to say is that if we're
looking at this, that wisdomintegrates knowledge. It's an
understanding, it's a moralinsight. The first thing I want
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to tell you is that if you wantto gain knowledge about
knowledge about God, this is adaily identity in your faith
with God. If you want to takethat knowledge and apply it, you
have to begin to walk with Godin that knowledge before
something happens that you needGod in that knowledge. So you
need to start in the Scripturesdaily. You need to start with
prayer daily. You need tointegrate this knowledge into
your relationship with God rightnow. So when something does
(19:43):
happen, you can access thatknowledge, not wait for it
afterwards. We don't want torespond to things in life. We
want to prepare with God forthings in life. And so you need
this knowledge to begin with,which means it leads me back in
to say, how do you gain inknowledge every. Single day with
God, and do you need the churchto do that? Do you need someone
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else to do that for you? Do youneed a situation to do that? Or
can you step into that dailyknowledge yourself? Can you
begin in that way? See what wehave here is an incredible way
where we're looking at, whatdoes it mean to have a fear of
the Lord as the beginning ofknowledge. But if we go back a
little bit, it did talk about inthe verse. In here, it said it
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was talking about what it meansto be simple. And I want to take
you forward just a tad, right?
So if you turn over to verse 22say in Proverbs, we're just
going to turn forward a littlebit into verse 22 and I want you
to hear this because it'sspeaking about, what is Wisdom
speaking to us? So theypersonify wisdom in this
character of a woman, andthey're talking about, she's
(20:46):
crying out in the street andshe's crying out to you. We need
to listen to wisdom. And thenverse 22 comes, and it says
this, How long, oh, simple ones,will you love being simple? How
long will scoffers delight intheir scoffing and fools hate
knowledge. How long? Oh, simpleones. Will you love being
(21:06):
simple? I think we land there alittle bit she said of being
simple in our faith, and here'swhy. Simple in our faith is
always concerned about ourself.
(21:30):
A simple faith is alwaysconcerned with yourself. The
fear of the Lord is thebeginning of knowledge. The fear
of the Lord is the beginning ofwisdom. Knowledge is the
beginning of wisdom. If we startby learning about God, then what
we are called to do is not justapply that to ourselves. That's
(21:52):
simple. What we're called to dois apply our knowledge and our
interactions with God to others.
You have to know God so well inyour life that it's no longer
for you, that it's for the sakeof others. That's the extent
that we need knowledge of Godwhere it extends beyond ourself.
(22:12):
Otherwise, we are in a simplefaith where I hear about God and
I just apply it to myself. Ihear about God and I just apply
it to myself. I'm too busylearning about God. I can't deal
with you right now. I just applyit to myself. That's a simple
faith. Well, we're talking aboutbeginning in knowledge of the
Lord and where wisdom begins.
It's knowledge that God hascalled us to take this and to
(22:33):
move it into other people'slives, that you have a calling
to reach in other people'slives, not just with the simple
faith anymore, but with the truewisdom of our nature, with God.
There's a whole narrative herewhere we need to take this
knowledge and move it now iswhat I want you to do. I want
(22:53):
you to turn over a little bitmore into verse nine, or sorry,
chapter nine, verse 10, and Iwant you to hear a little bit
more about this fear, because itwas something that stopped me in
the text This fear is thebeginning of our knowledge of
God. Fear is the beginning ofour knowledge with God. Am I?
Ooh, I don't know if I likethat. I don't necessarily want
to fear my relationship withGod. I want to look to my
(23:14):
relationship with God with joyand with hope and with a
promise. When you say fear, Ihave some questions. If I'm
going to fear my relationshipwith God, I mean, I fear a lot
of things that go on in life, soI don't need that in my
relationship with God. So Iwanted to understand more about
what it means that fear is thebeginning of knowledge. And
here's what it says in chapternine, verse 10, the fear of the
(23:35):
Lord is the beginning of wisdom,and the knowledge of the Holy
One is insight. The fear of theLord is the beginning of wisdom
and the knowledge of the HolyOne is insight. What it means is
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that fear is truly to be in aweof God. Fear is to be in awe of
God. But when you are in awe ofGod and the relationship that
you have with God, it also meansthat fear means that we know our
place in the kingdom, our callin the kingdom, if we are in a
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simple faith with our knowledgeof God, we raise up our place in
the kingdom to be just about us,that God only came for me, that
God is only here to watch overme, and God only calls me to
work with myself and myrelationship with God, we should
fear God in that moment. But ifwe have an understanding of the
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nature of God, the Creator ofthe heavens and the earth, who
sent His only Son to die for uson a cross, what ends up coming
about is that we know our placein the kingdom, which means that
we have a fear that says becauseof who God is and. Who God made
me. I know my place in thekingdom, and my place in the
kingdom is trusting God to sendme to those who need to
(25:06):
understand my experience of Godand what I've been through. The
fear of God is the beginning ofwisdom. The fear of God is the
beginning of taking yourknowledge and applying it to
your life so that you mayunderstand your place in the
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kingdom. So I want you to take alook back at your cards real
quick. There's a reason that Ihad you write down wisdom if you
have space in your cards, ifyou've written so much wisdom
that you can't have any morespace in your cards, raise your
hand, because that's awesome. Ifyou wrote one and you're like, I
can't think of anything else,that's okay. It was a surprise
test today, but you started withdaily life wisdom. You started
(25:53):
with wisdom from faith thatother people have given you.
Here's the third wisdom. Withyour knowledge of God, what
wisdom would you give to othersin faith, with your knowledge of
how God has been in your life,how would you guide others in
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faith? What would you tell them?
What is the wisdom? That youwould give them about who God
is? I want you to write thatdown. Take a second. This is a
moment where we're doing thisright now. What would you tell
them about your relationshipwith God? If you're finding this
hard, it's because we don't doit often enough. If you met with
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people every day, if you talkedwith people every day when they
hit your heart and you calledthem and you shared with them
what God's doing in your life,our pens should be flowing right
now. I had this conversationlast week. I had this
conversation the other week. Iwas talking about this one the
other in fact, other, in fact, Ihad a conversation yesterday
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with God gave me a revelation.
It was a wisdom. In the middleof a conversation, I was at the
men's breakfast, and I wastalking with one of the
presenters, Marty, and he wasover there, and he was talking
about his relationship to sheepdog and how he came. He was
talking about his life of faithand his testimony, and he was
talking about spiritualmaturity. And he said, Yeah, you
know, we need to get to a spaceof spiritual maturity. I said,
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Great. I said, How should wedefine spiritual maturity,
though? I said, That's so hardto define when you're
spiritually mature, right? Andhe goes, Yeah. He goes, it's
really stepping in and really,really thinking about the things
in your life and thinking aboutthem with God first in your
life. And I said, Yeah. I said,it's almost like we need to
discern before every decision,discern before decision, discern
(27:44):
before decision. And it just hitthis moment. I was like, That's
spiritual maturity. And I gotthat because I was talking about
someone and their experience andtestimony and their relationship
with God. That's where wisdomcomes from. In conversations
about God. So take that. Askyourself, What wisdom do you
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share? Because I know, and Ibelieve that God has been in
your life all along, and youhave wisdom from God to share,
and that is something we shouldnever keep for ourselves,
because that would be simple.
And all God's people said, Amen,let us pray, heavenly and
gracious Father, we come beforeyou today knowing that we have
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times have walked into a simplerelationship of faith. Simple
word is only concerned withself, not simple in its nature,
or simple because we don'tunderstand. Enough about you or
have enough knowledge of you,simple because it only concerns
ourself. It does not think ofour community. It does not think
of our community of faith. Itdoes not think of our our people
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around us who hurt and whostruggle.
Does not think of those who areostracized and marginalized. It
it just thinks of inside of mycomfort, and that's very simple,
Lord. So in that, Lord, we askfor forgiveness. We ask for
forgiveness that we have notshared wisdom that has come from
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you. But today, Lord, what myhope is that from these small
moments of hearing wisdom, thesesmall moments of hearing where
you have been in our life, thatit would not stay with inside
the walls of these church thattruly we would find ourselves in
conversations about ourtestimony, about our life with
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you, that that would be thefirst thing that we talk about,
And that, Lord, you would putpeople into our lives who need
to hear this wisdom, who areabout to come into something in
their life. Would could benefitfrom knowing how we've
experienced that with you in ourown so watch over us. Lord. Help
us gain knowledge in you. Helpus apply it to life with you.
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Help. Us to lead a life that isworthy of the calling that you
have given us. We pray thesethings in your holy and precious
name And all God's people said,Amen. You guys enjoying our
wisdom. Series start, so if youwant take.
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