Since the title of the series is called Wisdom for Dummies, we’re gonna start with a pop quiz for everybody.

Some of you haven’t had a pop quiz in decades, and so I’m sure you are excited. I’m gonna put up a picture and just simply answer the question, what type of salad is that? Salad right there. Yell it out. That’s a Caesar salad. That wasn’t the quiz. So good job knowing what a salad looks like. Here’s the actual quiz, is what is the origin of this Caesar salad? What location in the world does this Caesar salad come from? Just go ahead and yell it out right now.

Yeah, if you said Rome or Italy or anything connected to that, you are wrong.

Origin of the Caesar salad, 1924 came all the way from Mexico. There was a restaurant owner in Mexico, and the reason it’s called the Caesar salad is because his first name was Caesar.

Except we actually pronounce the Caesar salad’s name wrong, because in Spanish, Caesar is Cesar. I had a good friend, his name was Cesar. We tend to pronounce it Caesar salad because of this guy right. Here that we think of the Roman Caesars, except that’s not how they pronounced Caesar either. The Romans didn’t say Caesar, Caesar is a Latin name, that they would’ve actually pronounced it Kaiser. So everything about the Caesar salad for you and I where we think it comes from what we think it’s called, it’s all wrong. Like everything is wrong and it doesn’t really matter because languages change over time.

But the truth is, if you peel back layers and layers and layers of different things that we think that we know is true, there’s a lot of assumptions that we have about stuff. Like probably nobody sat down with you and said, Hey, this is a Caesar salad brought to you by Caesar Augustus back in the day when he was conquering Rome. Like no one said that. You just made the logical leap because when you think of Caesar, that’s who you think of. Now, do you know that there are a lot of assumptions that you and I have about life? Some of those assumptions are true, but some of those assumptions are false. They’re wrong. Some are flat out lies.

And here’s a question that I want you to ask yourself. I have been wrestling with this week. Is what lies do I believe about the world? What lies do you believe about the world, about God and about myself being wrong about a Caesar salad is not that big of a deal, but there are other things in life that if I’m wrong about those things, it is a really big deal. There are lies that people believe about themselves that wreck their future, that there are lies, maybe that you were told as a kid growing up, that that turned into insecurities.

I would bet that if you are an adult, that your biggest insecurities in life came from something that someone said to you or pointed out to you when you were either in junior high or elementary school. For some of us decades ago, there was some phrase, some statement that somebody said, some lie that somebody said to you, to me, that we just embraced. It became a part of our identity, it became a part of who we are, and we are still struggling with the ramifications of that decades later. You see, if we take lies and believe them as truth in our life, it has consequences. The Book of Proverbs is about wisdom. It’s about us understanding the way that God created the world around us. John Calvin has this beautiful quote, one of his most famous quotes. It’s about wisdom where he says that nearly all the wisdom that we possess, that is to say true.

And sound wisdom consists of two parts, the knowledge of God and of ourselves. So if we really want to be wise, there are two things that we’ve got to understand. We’ve gotta understand who God is. We’ve gotta understand his wisdom. We’ve gotta understand how he wired the world around us, but we also have to understand ourselves. We have to understand how that applies, how we fit into this whole thing. Now, what I found in the book of Proverbs that most of my life, when I thought of the book book of Proverbs what comes to mind is those, those witty sayings, just, just a single kinda one-liner or, or like a line of poetry. So here are a few, like, here’s Psalm 17, 28. It says, even a fool who keeps silent is considered wise. When he closes his lips, he is deemed intelligent. Or if you were here last week, Harvey simply put it by saying, shut up <laugh>.

Like when I think of proverb, I think of things like that, that if I’m quiet, that I will be thought wise and I shouldn’t just jump out and start talking without first thinking about what I’m going to say. Or Psalm 17, excuse me, 26, 11 says, like a dog that returns to his vomit is a fool who repeats his folly. That one’s kind of a graphic proverb, but, but man, it’s profound. It’s talking about addiction and it’s talking about things that we have in our life, sins that we have in our life where we say, okay, I’m gonna turn away from that. I don’t wanna do that anymore. And then we leave it only to days later or weeks later, or sometimes years later, we turn back and we say, oh, man. Now it’s all of a sudden really appetizing author of Proverbs is saying, it’s like a dog.

That, that there is something they ate that is unhealthy for their body, and their body rejects it and says, Nope, that’s not good. And if you have a dog, they eat all kinds of stuff they shouldn’t eat, and their body rejects it, and it comes out, and then that dog walks away. But being a dog, eventually they return over to it, they start smelling. They say, maybe second time’s a charm. Here we go again. When, when we return to sin that we’ve repented of, it’s like that same thing when an alcoholic who has an addiction, who, who turns away from says, I’m never gonna drink again and runs away from it. But then when they get tempted and they turn back, that’s what that proverb is talking about. Now, some of the proverbs are a little bit more challenging to understand like, here’s a great one.

It, it’s one that, that you kind of have to think about partly because it, it’s in a different cultural context than ours. Proverb 14 four says, where there are no oxen, the manger is clean, but abundant crops come by the strength of the ox. And now you gotta understand that for most of human history, the priority in people’s lives was simply food. And this was true until, until roughly a hundred years ago that most humans, for all time, they spent the vast majority of their energy, time, and effort just trying to, to feed themselves so that they didn’t starve to death. We don’t tend to have that problem when we think of food. We go to fast food, we go to grocery stores. We, we can app use an app, and someone will bring food right to us. So it’s not the same type of challenge, but at the time that this was written, food was a really big deal.

And then he gives this compare contrast. He says, if you don’t have an oxen, guess what? Your major is clean. You’re not cleaning up after the oxen. I like, there’s nothing to scoop. There’s nothing to wash, he says, but if you don’t have an oxen, it’s gonna be really challenging to have an abundant harvest. And so it’s this wisdom that if you want to provide an abundant life of food, he’s saying that there’s gonna be some work, some dirty work that some dirt work that you don’t necessarily want to do, that go hand and hand with that. And so when I think of the book of Proverbs, that’s what I tend to think of these witty sayings. And is that a part of Proverbs? Yes, but it’s more than that. That if you look up the definition of wisdom just in the Oxford dictionary, it, it’s pretty straightforward.

It says the ability to use knowledge and experience to make good decisions and judgments. And when we think of Proverbs, that that is true, okay? It’s applying knowledge into action. But in the book of Proverbs, if I simply look at the book and think of it as, well, it’s witty saints that I should try to apply to my life, that that would add a lot of value, but it wouldn’t add the totality of what the book is offering. The, the book has so much more to offer than just that. It’s a practical book. If you’re in this room and you’re, you’re an atheist, you don’t believe anything about God, I can promise you that if you apply the principles of Proverbs to your life, there is great value that would come from it. But if you are a Christian, there’s this deeper understanding of wisdom that’s, that’s deeper than the English understanding of wisdom that God wants us to know, to experience the depth of the book, to understand that we gotta understand the Hebrew word. Homa, everybody said Homa. Now, I’m not good at, at Hebrew, partly ’cause I can’t do the guttural noises very well. So the has to be more like, so try it one more time, but, but make it a homa. Ready, 1, 2, 3, Homa. There you go. Now you can apologize to the people you just spit on around you. So, so Homa is something much deeper than just applying knowledge. Homa ha has these other depths. When we look at scripture the first is this, that homa that wisdom is a practical skill, not just an abstract insight. We, we see this a few places in the Old Testament that in Exodus chapter 31 verse th three,

That you have these craftsmen that are building the tabernacle, and it describes them with wisdom. And now, that’s not how we would use that wisdom today.You wouldn’t look at an expert carpenter who, who just makes this beautiful piece of furniture, and you say, that’s a masterpiece. You wouldn’t say, oh, wow, they’re so wise. You would say they’re, they’re so skilled, or they’re so gifted, or they’re talented. But when we think of that word, homa in the Old Testament, it’s not just applied knowledge. There’s also this skill involved when someone possesses a skill and is using it to benefit others. That is Homa that in the Old Testament, we see sailors, we see musicians, we see leaders, we see warriors. We, we see people who have skills and using those skills in a task we see them described with Homa in Proverbs, this means that wisdom is lived skillfully. It’s like an artist shaping a masterpiece.

Secondly, wisdom is morally grounded. What does that mean? It means that, that sometimes in our culture, someone can be wise and evil, like they can make wise choices, and yet do it in a way that is, we would say wrong. That doesn’t exist in the Book of Proverbs. So, so English wisdom can be amoral or manipulative. We talk about people having sweet street smarts. But in the Book of Proverbs, wisdom is always moral. You cannot be wise and evil at the same time. Those things do not go together at all.

So when we think of wisdom in the Old Testament, wisdom is always moral. Number three, the wisdom is interwoven with creation. Now, this was an idea that I didn’t quite get until I was studying this book of Proverbs.

That the way that God creates the world around us has Wisdom interwoven into it. We, we see this in Proverbs chapter Eight, that wisdom Homa is portrayed as the blueprint through which God made the world that God in creation is using Homa. It’s this idea that to live wisely. If, if we are to use wisdom in our life,it means that we are going with the Grain of Creation. It means that these,these proverbs,

This wisdom in this book, that most people, if they apply it to their life, they will see those type of results.That if you are someone who works hard Gary talked a couple weeks ago about working hard. If you’re someone who works hard, there are rewards that come from working hard. Now, last week, Harvey talked about our words, that, that if we are cautious with our words, that there’s a lot of value that goes with us. So this, this wisdom, this is just how the world is designed to be. And then the fourth thing, and this is the most important thing to understand with the whole Book of Proverbs, is that wisdom is rooted in the fear of the Lord. We, we see, yes, that there’s, there’s earthly wisdom that that comes as a result of following these proverbs.But if we really want to understand wisdom and we wanna understand how God created the universe around us, created For us to live, it starts with this willing submission to God,a fear, a reverence, an honor to God that the wise person is in aligned with God’s Creation and his moral design. And not just working pragmatically, but instead I’m aligning myself underneath that fear of who God is and what

He’s done. If you’ve got a Bible, turn with me to Proverbs chapter three. We’re

Gonna start in verse one. Proverbs chapter three, Bronson three weeks ago hit on verse one and two. Then we’re gonna keep going all the way down to verse seven. Proverbs chapter three, son, verse one. It says this,

My son, do not forget my teaching, but let your heart keep my commandments for length of days and years of life. And peace will add to you that that’s where Bronson stopped and camped out because it’s this beautiful what feels like a promise. Hey, you follow these things. If you live wise, the result of that will be that you’ll have length of days and years added to your life, that you’ll have peace in this life. Verse Three says, let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you. Bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart. And then verse four feels like another promise. So you will find favor and good success in the sight of God and man. And now if you pause right there, it almost sounds like the prosperity gospel, doesn’t it? It almost sounds like, okay, if I live wise and do the right things, then I will be healthy and have a long life, and then I’ll be blessed both by God and by man. And, and He, here’s the challenge with the book of Proverbs is that they sound like promises, but He, here’s a big caveat that we all gotta be on the same page about. Proverbs comes from our wisdom literature. Now, there’s three different books that exist in wisdom literature.

The first book is the, the Book of Proverbs. It has all these wise sayings that if we live, it’s saying, Hey, here in general, this Is the way that God created the universe to be. And so in general, these things are going to be true. And, and practically you’ve seen that practically. You know, I know that people who work hard in general find success for that. People who treat other people with high character, high integrity, those people tend to do well. People who watch their tongue tend to have better relationships. These are all true things. And yet, here’s in the back of our mind, here’s the challenge, is that always guaranteed? No. You and I both know people that were good people, amazing people, godly people, and they did not have a long life. Their life was cut short tragically, you and I both know people that were moral had high character and integrity. They did business the right way, and then something happened where they met destruction. They were financially ruined because of somebody else’s evil.

And and so what do we do wrestling with Proverbs? When we look at situations like that, well, we, we don’t look at the book in isolation by itself. We look at it in the totality of scripture. And, and this is a really important book in wisdom literature, but there’s two other books. One is the book of Ecclesiastes, and what does Ecclesiastes tell us? It’s the same author Solomon who, who writes most of Proverbs and also Ecclesiastes. And he says that there are times in life where evil people prosper, where evil people don’t have harm that comes to them. They never reap what they sow. They never end up with the consequence. And he says, likewise, sometimes there are people that are really good people that do all the right things that end up having terrible things happen to him. And he’s kind of pulling his hair out and says, says, why?

And then you’ve got the third book of wisdom literature. You know what it is? It’s the Book of Job. What was the Book of Job? Tell us that suffering is a part of this life. And so we have to look at all three things together that yes, God created this world in such a way that if you took a thousand people and all thousand people followed the truth of Proverbs in their everyday life, that the majority of them would experience the blessings and benefits from it. But it, it’s not a promise, it’s not a guarantee. Tim Mackey who is the lead biblical scholar for the Bible project, they have a great podcast on the book of Proverbs. And he says this, he says, this is after all the book of Proverbs, not the book of promises. So we have to be careful not to think.

Well, it’s an if in if I do this, then I will always reap this. Generally that is true because that’s how God architect the world around us. But it’s not always guaranteed. What’s neat though, is if we keep going down in verse five, it helps us understand exactly that. In the book of Proverbs, what happens when I don’t find this favor? Verse five, it says, trust in the Lord with all your heart, that ultimately, in, in making wise decisions, it still hinges on me trusting God with every step. Now, probably the, the two most famous verses in the entire book of Proverbs are these two verses five and six, proverb three, five, and six. Maybe you’ve got it on a wall, on a, on a coffee mug, on a t-shirt. I’ve seen it on a bumper sticker. And I, I think the challenge with this verse is we can become so comfortable with it.

We’ve seen it so many thing, so many times that we can miss the depth of what this verse has for you and for me, it says, trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding and all your ways acknowledge him and he will make straight your paths. It’s a profound message that that’s towards the very beginning of the book of Proverbs. Proverbs is an interesting book ’cause it gets broken up into these three different sections that we think of Proverbs as just a whole bunch of kind of these one-liners of wisdom. But the first nine chapters are actually Solomon talking to his kids, and he’s taking on this role of a father that’s imparting wisdom. He’s saying it’s like these, these monologues or these narratives where we’re saying, if you’ll do these things, here’s what I have for you.

Then starting in chapter 10, going through chapter 29, you have these, these witty phrases and these witty sayings. And then in chapter 30 and 31, you have this conclusion kinda looking back, but to understand the witty sayings in the middle, we have to really understand what they’re unpacking at the very beginning. And at the heart of that is this idea of trusting in God. But, but he kind of creates this pendulum. He says, trust in God. And in order to do that, what do we have to do? Not lean on our own understanding that if I’m trying to lean on my own understanding, guess what that means, that means I’m not fully trusting in God, that, that in order to fully trust in God, I am saying instead of trusting and leaning on my own understanding, I’m going to trust and lean into God. And if I do that, then he’s going to make my path straight.

Look what it goes on to say in verse seven. It says, be not wise in your own eyes. Fear the Lord and turn away from evil. Be not wise in our own eyes. You see a similar proverb in Proverbs 16 verse two. It says, all the ways of a man are pure in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the spirit. So often that’s that, that’s true in our life. So often when you see people, everything on my perspective, my side is right, and everything on the other person’s perspective is wrong. You see two kids having to fight with each other most of the time, both of them, if you say, whose fault is it point to the other person we see in sports and a referee makes a call, one team believes the call is one way. The other whole team in fan base believes the opposite. Why? Because our tendency is to

See truth in our own eyes and our own perspective. And that is a real danger that we can have. And the author is saying, instead of doing that we need to trust not on our own ways, but instead to lean into trust into God. That’s hard sometimes though. Why?

Because sometimes the way that we think things are supposed to go don’t actually

Go that way, right? We’ve talked a lot up here about the difference between our expectations when we have high expectations and then reality that if my expectations are up here, and the reality is down here, there’s all of this disappointment. When I do premarital counseling, one of the whole

Talks is about expectations and right sizing expectations, because we go into marriage oftentimes with the wrong expectations. And it’s because of media, it’s

Because of movies. It’s because of so many different narratives around marriage that are just not accurate. Like when you watch a movie and, and they are waking up in the morning when you have a couple, it’s always the same thing. Like there’s always, it’s always a very white bed with white sheets andnd those sheets are very strategically intertwined around them. And they’re always like right next to each other. Like, like she is like on his chest, like, like leaning in and they’re cuddling as if they’ve been cuddling all night. And then, and then there’s this moment where they like, they’re face to face, like their faces are this close where they’re

Like, she’s looking up and he’s looking down and they’re having this morning conversation with each other and she looks immaculate, like hair’s great and still has makeup on, and he’s looking jacked and buffed, and it’s really romantic. And one of the problems with marriage is that we go into marriage thinking that that’s what marriage is supposed to be. And if you’ve been married for more than a week in this room, that ain’t it. It doesn’t look that way. Like, like you don’t cuddle. Like not, not, you’d be so hot and sweaty, like you’re not cuddling all night. Not, not only that, you don’t even like touching each other in the middle of the night. Like, like if, if the leg comes over and hits you, you’re like, get on your side of the bed and then in the morning when you do wake up, you’re not talking to each other face to face. Cause You both have morning breath <Laugh>, like, like you are talking around each other. You’re talking up and to the left and to the right, doing some of this and, and you both look bad. I mean, you, the worst you will look all day is when you wake up in the morning a hundred percent every time. There is nothing romantic about that moment at all. So marriage sometimes creates false expectations.

And not just in how we wake up in the morning, but just all around marriage. And what does that lead to? Disappointment. We think, oh, it’s gonna be sunshine and roses and wonderful all the time. And then when it’s not, we struggle with that. And the same thing happens in life. We read the Book of Wisdom and we say, okay, these things are supposed to be this way when those things don’t happen, what do I do? We trust, we trust in the Lord with all our heart and lean not on our own understanding, and all our ways acknowledge him and he will make our paths straight. But in order to do that, I have to recognize and understand that there are blinders that exist on my life that that I will see circumstances. Now I will see truth the way that I want to see truth. And, and so for me to understand how do I rightsize that? We saw it in verse six, but we see it in chapter one. He sets the whole book up by saying this, that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction, the fear of the Lord.And so, so when I’m in these spots where I recognize my tendency to see truth the way that I wanna see truth, how do I combat that? I combat that with the fear of the Lord. It beg this question, what does fear of the Lord mean as a kid? You hear that you’re supposed to fear the Lord. And what do you think you, you think of you’re, you’re supposed to be terrified. It kinda gives this impression that God is like throwing lightning bolts from heaven. And I’m like, oh, I’m scared.

God, I’m Sorry. I’m not gonna do the wrong thing, please.

But, But that’s not the Hebrew Word for fear at all. It’s an awe, it’s a reverence, it’s a respect for God that what the, the author of the book of Proverbs is trying to get us to understand is that if we’re gonna trust in God and lean not on our own understanding, if we’re gonna really follow his path, it requires us to not lean on our own understanding, not, not just see things the way that I wanna see things, but instead to trust in him. And the mechanism by which I do that is by fearing the Lord. Now, I fear him. What does it mean to fear God? It’s about rightly orienting my life underneath God’s authority. So to put it differently, to fear the Lord is to acknowledge God’s rightful place as creator, as king, and as judge,

And to live accordingly. It’s my humility, it’s my submission to say, God, you are gonna be the priority and my life, not my ways,

But your ways that you think of most of the Book of Proverbs. It’s really great wisdom and wise sayings, but they’re all contingent for me to understand and experience in my life. The fullness that the book of Proverbs has, it’s contingent. The starting place is me having a posture of humility saying, I’m going to fear the Lord. He’s gonna become the priority in my life.

There was a professor,

A seminary professor for a long time. His name was Dr. Robert Clinton. Dr. Robert Clinton was famous for coming up with a thing called the Seven Stages of Leadership Development. I wanna unpack really quickly what His seven stages are. What he did is he interviewed thousands of, of spiritually mature Christians. Some were church leaders, some were were just people that attended a church but were serving inside their church. And he came up with what happens spiritually over the life of a Christian as they’re using their giftedness for the kingdom of God. Here are those things. The first is he talks about sovereign foundations. These are your early years that most Christians grew up in a Christian home that probably for the majority of the people in the room, your testimony is that your parents were Christian, you grew up in a Christian home, and as a result of that, you became a Christian. But even if that’s not your testimony, that the, the hope of the gospel is that whatever your early years are, God will use that in your spiritual formation for the rest of your life. So you have those early years of your spiritual life, then you have this inner life growth.

This is the moment you become a Christian. And then those, those early days that some of you are are in that stage right now, that you’ve become a, a Christian recently and, and just now you’re figuring out how to read your Bible and how to pray. And in addition to that, there’s, there’s this learning of obedience. How do I live a life that is obeying God and falling after God and living according to his ways? Then once we move past that, it comes through this ministry maturing stage. This is your initial ministry experiences. And he describes this stage as having a lot of struggle. And and I can attest to that when, when I was early on in ministry, when I was, when I was teaching for the first time, I can tell you I was not very good. I I, I mean, it was a struggle.

I I I was trying, there were a lot of things that, that I maybe even taught that weren’t even completely correct, that there were these struggles and there was this early phase of working through those challenges. And then once you move beyond that, there is this life maturing stage. This is where Malcolm Gladwell would say, you get your 10,000 hours. So this is where you’re really putting the time, the energy and the effort. All of a sudden, the Bible, if you’re someone who’s studying scripture and you’ve gotten to this stage, this is that stage where it starts to really start to click and starts to make sense, and you start to find your spiritual giftedness and use your spiritual giftedness in the world around you and in your community, in the church. And that ultimately leads to step five. This is convergence. This is when that moment in your life, when you are being maximized spiritual, God is using you to the fullest extent of your potential, then you’ve got this moment of afterglow. This is towards the end of your life where you’re now trying to hand on wisdom to that next generation, and that ultimately ends with this life review where you’re looking back.

Now, here’s the reason I bring that up, is because every one of us is in one of those stages right now. And if you really wanna understand, if I really wanna understand, hey, how do I progress to get to that stage, that God wants us all at that convergence stage where, where God is using my skills and my giftedness and my hearts and my passion to maximize the kingdom of God. This is that moment where you’re walking in such a way that your, your family life is vibrant and your marriage is unbelievable, and you, you are just living

The life that God has called you to live, living in the spirit in a way that the world would take note and say, man, there’s just something different about that person. There’s something about the joy that they have,even when they’re going through trials and difficulties, there’s something about that joy that they have that they are experiencing that, man, I want that. How do we get there? We get there through the wisdom that God has readily available for us, that if we take the book of Proverbs and we really apply it to our life, it helps us to achieve in this life all that God has created us to be. But it starts with the foundational, peace is the fear of the Lord. It’s a submission to say, Hey, God, not my ways, but your ways, God, I I’m gonna lean not on my own understanding. We live in a world where it’s all about my own understanding. It’s all about my perspective and my truth and my this, and I’m saying, instead of going with the cultural narrative, however, they’re gonna go, instead, God, I’m gonna trust in you. I’m gonna fear you with an attitude, not not being afraid of God, but with an attitude of reverence and respect that who I am and how I live, how I orchestrate my life is according to his ways that if we could do that, what, what would it look like if we as a community of believers really did apply that? What would your life, what would my like life look like if the truth in this book was expressed every single day

In our thoughts and our attitudes and our words and our actions?

Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, we are grateful God, that you are a God, that that desires and wants dor us to have a life that that is being lived according to the way that you’ve prayed the world around us. God, that we would take the practical parts of Proverbs that the hard work and the humility, speaking kindly not being foolish, being wise, wise in relationships wise in finances, wise in decision making, God that, that wisdom. But we wanna be a people that applies it to our life, but help us first and foremost to understand that the foundational piece, the starting points,is reverence for you. That rhe beginning of all wisdom is fear of the Lord. We pray all this and that mighty name of Jesus, amen.