I invite you now to turn to Proverbs chapter four. I'm going to read verses one through nine, which we'll focus on this afternoon. Proverbs chapter four, verses one through nine. This is the word of God. Hear, O sons, a father's instruction, and be attentive that you may gain insight, for I give you good precepts. Do not forsake my teaching. When I was a son with my father, tender, the only one in the sight of my mother, he taught me and said to me, let your heart hold fast to my words, keep my commandments, and live. Get wisdom. Get insight. Do not forget and do not turn away from the words of my mouth. Do not forsake her and she will keep you. Love her and she will guard you. The beginning of wisdom is this, get wisdom. and whatever you get, get insight. Prize her highly and she will exalt you. She will honor you if you embrace her. She will place on your head a graceful garland. She will bestow on you a beautiful crown. Praise God for his wisdom. Let's pray. Lord God, as we spend some time reflecting on your goodness to us this year, but even more so what you have for us in the year to come, We ask that you would help us to get wisdom, and not just to get it, but to see how valuable it is so that we would want it. In Jesus' name, amen. So in Proverbs 4, there's actually about three sections to Proverbs 4. We have King Solomon sharing wisdom to his sons. And essentially, Proverbs 4, he says, to get her, get wisdom. Then he says to guard her or guard wisdom. And lastly, he instructs us to go on a walk with wisdom. This afternoon, we're just gonna look at the first nine verses, which is to get her, to get wisdom. And as we hear Solomon's voice, we also want to remember is this is the inspired Word of God. This is the preaching of the Word. This is also Christ's voice, Christ our prophet speaking to us. And Jesus, through Solomon, instructs us to acquire wisdom no matter what the price. We'll explain the passage and then we will apply the passage. So once more in verses one through four, I'm not going to read all four verses, I'm just going to highlight a few things, but we read these words. Here, O sons, a father's instruction. When I was a son with my father, tender, the only one in the sight of my mother, he taught me. And so we're getting a picture here of King Solomon gathering his sons around him in order to give them a talk and to speak words of wisdom to them. This is the covenantal model that we see in Deuteronomy chapter six where Israel is commanded to share what they have learned, share the mighty acts of God and salvation and to speak of these things as they go by the way and to share this with future generations. This is what Solomon is doing here. And it's worth noting that this is the same model for us. This is also what we're called to do. So kids, when your father especially, but also your mother, when your father calls you around and it's time for another talk, settle in. Get comfortable. This is biblical. You may not believe it at the time, but this is God's blessing to you. And also other fathers and mothers in the faith and the congregation are also called to communicate wisdom to you, not just children, but to all who are younger and to pull us aside and speak with us. So this is the biblical model. of how wisdom is transmitted, and this is what we have occurring here. And Solomon, as we know, is uniquely qualified to share the wisdom of the Lord. It was handed down to him by his father David, who was a man after God's own heart, who intimately knew of God's mercy and grace. And if you remember, in 1 Kings chapter 3, the Lord was very pleased with Solomon when he said, Solomon, ask me for whatever you want. And you remember what Solomon asked for. Anyone remember? You just look at me, I'll know you remember. You can guess because it's kind of the theme of our passage, wisdom. Solomon asked for wisdom. He said, give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people that I may discern between good and evil. And the Lord was pleased with this request and in 1 Kings 4 we read this, and God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding beyond measure and breadth of mind like the sand on the seashore so that Solomon's wisdom surpassed the wisdom of all the people of the east and all the wisdom of Egypt. And the people of all nations came to hear the wisdom of Solomon and from all the kings of the earth who had heard of his wisdom. And so now this is who we have in this proverb, an older Solomon, a wiser Solomon with his sons gathered around them. And he essentially says to them, listen to me, listen to my instruction, pay close attention so that you may have knowledge. The things I'm going to tell you are for your blessing. Therefore, your benefit. Do not set them aside. Listen to your father as I tell you the things that my father, David, taught me when I was about your age. And he wants his sons to take this to heart, to guard what he says. to remember it because he wants good things for them, because he wants to see them live a life of blessing, a life of flourishing. He wants them to live a life of obedience that's pleasing to the Lord, a life of righteousness, and a life of peace. And this makes sense to us, because not only is that what we want, but all of us who have children or young people in our lives, that's what we want for them. We want them to listen, receive, and hear wisdom. and be blessed by it. So Solomon, he's got our attention here because we want to hear what is this wisdom that David told him. Again, we are reminded also that Christ as our prophet is speaking to us through Solomon. And so we're not just gathering around to hear Solomon's wisdom, it's David's wisdom. This is a wisdom of the Holy Spirit as Christ is our prophet and it's important instruction. And he gives us a command. And I'll read verses five and seven. Listen to the commands here. It's pretty clear where you're supposed to start and what you're supposed to do. He says, get wisdom. Get insight. Do not forget. Do not turn away from the words of my mouth. The beginning of wisdom is this. Get wisdom and whatever you get, get insight. Now, after that buildup, we may have been expecting something a bit more profound and within these two simple words, you know, get wisdom. And Solomon essentially says it four times in different ways. Get wisdom, get insight. Again, get wisdom, get insight. So the idea here, the concept what Solomon is communicating is you're to acquire wisdom. He's speaking in the terms of the marketplace, to purchase wisdom. Whatever resources that you have at your disposal, use them to do everything that you can to acquire wisdom and insight. There's also some marriage language here. With the Old Testament, there was a bride price, and there was a price to acquire the bride. Do whatever you need to. Pay any price to get this lady wisdom to be your wife. See, wisdom is that important, because biblical wisdom and living according to it is the difference between joy and pain, between blessing and cursing, between flourishing and floundering and between eternal life and death. To explain just how important wisdom is and to explain just how far you should be willing to go to get it, he paints a picture of acquiring a wife and speaks of romantic love and getting her as he He talks about the many benefits of a loving relationship with Lady Wisdom. In verse six, he says, do not forsake her, and she will keep you. Love her, and she will guard you. So he says, essentially, do whatever it takes to acquire Lady Wisdom, to be your companion, your bride, and hold on to her, love her, cherish her, and if you do, she will keep your soul safe from evil. In verses 8 and 9, he continues to describe the benefits of getting and loving lady wisdom. He says, prize her highly and she will exalt you. She will honor you if you embrace her. She will place on your head a graceful garland. She will bestow on you a beautiful crown. So this is love language here is to prize her, to embrace her. Solomon wants us to value her above everything else and to hold onto her and keep her and cherish her and because she's so important not to let her go. And by using this love language, speaking of Lady Wisdom, he's describing what it looks like then to walk in the way of wisdom. And if we do that, if we walk in the way of wisdom, wisdom will see us exalted, we'll be thought of well by others, we'll be blessed. And it's not that we want to be thought of well by others. And that's our goal in life, and so we want to be wise. It's that as we live according to the owner's manual, according to God's wisdom, and our life in many ways is blessed, even in trials, they see the mercy and grace of God in this. And God is reflected, and his glory is reflected as we walk according to the way of wisdom. So you will be honored, but really God will be honored. We'll enjoy the blessings of this life, but more importantly, the life to come. as Lady Wisdom will decorate us and will place upon us, says it, graceful garland, a beautiful crown upon our head. Now, the garland and the crown, two things. We have a wedding crown and we have a crown of victory. To love and hold wisdom is to have close fellowship with God as we are the bride of Christ. And it is also to have victory over the world, our own flesh, and the devil as we live a life pleasing to the Lord. A wedding crown, a wedding garland, and a crown of victory. So the harder we work to get wisdom and the more that we love and cherish wisdom, then the more our life will look like God intends it to be. And the more we will walk in service and in love. Solomon tells us to get wisdom at any price. And in the rest of Proverbs 4, then he'll talk about guarding wisdom and walking with wisdom. And we'll get to guarding and walking another time. But for now, what we want to do with the time we have left is reflect on what it means at the beginning of wisdom is to just get it. What does that mean? Just get it. What's Solomon asking us to do, especially as New Testament Christians? So where do we get it? How do we get it? Now there's certainly a decent amount of wisdom out there in the world because of common grace that's available to everyone, whether they're a believer or not. But we're after something even better. We're after the best kind of wisdom. We're after the fullness of wisdom. And in order to get wisdom, we have to get Christ. That's what we have to get. Getting wisdom means getting Christ. Christ is the very Word of God, the very wisdom of God, and in order to obtain it, we first must obtain, or rather, be obtained by our Lord Jesus. So, do you want to flourish? Of course we do. Do we want goodness in our life? Yes. Do you want a happy life with blessings and righteousness and good things? We do. Everyone wants those things. Well, that life is only found in Christ. Proverbs also says, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Again, thinking of how we get wisdom, what does that mean? How do we get Christ? Well, the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. The fear of the Lord is a humble reverence for God, as we've seen His mighty acts of salvation worked out for us in history. through the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We must first fear the Lord. This is how we get wisdom. This is how we get Christ. Fearing the Lord means sitting in awe and reverence of his power and his holiness. It means loving and trusting the God who has saved us because now we've been reconciled to God and we're called God's friends. It means turning from evil and hating it because God has saved us. We were slaves to sin, but now we are servants of righteousness and he has given us the Holy Spirit of power to work this in our hearts. It means living a life of grateful obedience according to the law of God. We don't obey the law of God so God will love us. We obey the law of God because he loves us and has proved it through the work of Jesus Christ. Living in the fear and knowledge of the Lord means admitting that we are not God and submitting our whole lives unto Him. So if Jesus is your Lord and Savior, then you have the prerequisites needed to go and acquire true wisdom. You have what you need if you have Christ. So now where do you find it? In Colossians 2 we read, Christ in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. So we ask, all right, well where do we find Christ? We find Him here. And I mean here in this place, in this meeting of God's people with His bride. We find Him in the church. Christ has given us godly parents, not only our godly just mom and dad, but godly parents in the faith, here at church, here at home. And so children, young and old, hey, there's only one of us here that would be probably, and we won't try to figure out who the oldest father and mother in the faith is here, but we're all, in some respects, their children as we listen to them. So we're thinking, children, which is all of us, do I want to be wise? I do, because sometimes I feel like an idiot. and like I can't get anything right, and I don't think right, and even though I know the right doctrine and the right theology, I can't get it out in my heart and in my actions. So yeah, I crave wisdom, and I know that you do too. So what do we do? We listen to our Father's instruction, we listen to our mother, we listen to our father and mother in the faith, and that means others in the congregation that the Lord has given life wisdom to. We need that wisdom, we want it, and we want you to share it with us. And I know sometimes we don't ask for that wisdom and it's just offered unsolicited. And our first reaction when it comes to correction is to be defensive or to justify our own actions or to take it as a personal offense. But when someone's sharing wisdom with us, especially a mother and father in the faith, this is a gift to us and we should view it like that. The Lord himself only disciplines those whom he loves. Our parents correct us and give us discipline. Our spiritual parents as well, no matter how old we are, let us listen to their wisdom. So wisdom, one place wisdom is found then is in the community of faith. as we all come together with different experiences, having lived through various trials and situations, and the Lord has caused us to do this, so then we can gather together and share wisdom with one another. The Lord gives us each other as a gift in various places in life to help impart wisdom to us. So Solomon commands us to get wisdom. Well, you can get much wisdom by having in-person meetings where you're face-to-face with people, sticking around and having real conversations, having those conversations over a period of time. In order to get wisdom, you need to hang around with wise people. So find those wise fathers and mothers in the faith and talk to them. not just about the weather or how your week was, but ask them life questions. My kid's doing this, how did you guys handle that? Or how do you wish that you handled that? This is happening at work. That ever happen to you? Like start asking questions of each other. This means we come together, we stay, we talk, we have people in our homes. It means we go to Bible studies in small groups. It means we come to afternoon service after the fellowship meal. So this is one of the preaching to the choirs, right? It's in these ways that we must seek out and be willing to do the hard work of getting wisdom. Building close friendships and relationships in the community of faith is one way that we acquire wisdom. We also get wisdom through the preaching and teaching ministries of the church. It's through the preaching of the word every week. And as far as it lines up with what scripture teaches, that's Christ's preaching to us. Christ our prophet trains us up in the faith. He strengthens us when we are weak. He comforts us when we're scared. And he corrects us when we are in error. So to get wisdom, to get as much as we can, we need to hear all the sermons that we can, attend all the Sunday schools that we can, attend all the Bible studies that we can. Now Sundays are a must, those other things sometimes we can't go to midweek studies and whatnot, and we understand that. But we should take advantage of every opportunity that we have to get more wisdom. when we get to hear the preaching and teaching of the Word of God. I'm not so much speaking of myself here because I don't think that much of myself, and that's fine. You don't need to build me up later. You won't be able to. But Thinking of who fills this pulpit over the years, from Pastor Hollister to, and Pastor Minninger fills this pulpit, I know he has. Okay, let's stop bothering him, Jim. But Dr. Strange, Dr. Venema, Dr. Beach, I mean, there is rich pulpit supply here. There is much wisdom here. So let's come as often as we can to hear it. We also can get wisdom by reading the Word of God on our own, by reading good books, especially books by, I would say, by the dead guys that have stood the test of time. There's much wisdom in church history for us. There's going to be a twice a month, Wednesday night, Pilgrim's Progress study. There's lots of wisdom in Pilgrim's Progress from John Bunyan. All of these sources share something in common and that's that wisdom. It's not just the transferring of information. The things that we just talked about except for personal Bible reading and reading a book on your own, all those other things that we talked about happen in the context of community and relationship. And this is what happens when we gather. Wisdom, Colossians 3.16, I used to have this on the bulletin when I was a church planner in Yuma for our worship service, reminding us, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. If you want to get wisdom, You want to be wiser, you want to live a life more pleasing to God and more full of His blessings. The ministries of the church with the people of God, this is the place to get it. This is where the Lord freely offers it all the time, every week and throughout the week. It's here together where we learn how to become wise and we learn how to walk with Lady Wisdom. Acquiring wisdom is not individual. It's a community activity. This is why in Hebrews 10, 24 and 25, we read, and let us consider how to stir one another up to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near. It's a pretty simple theme this afternoon. Solomon tells us to get wisdom. Well, let me ask you, does your heart want wisdom? Do you want to increasingly think God's thoughts after Him? Do you want to know Him more? Do you want to have healthier relationships? Do you want to make choices that glorify God and that produce happiness at the same time? We want those things. How do we get them? We get wisdom. Through Solomon, Christ tells us to do whatever's necessary to get wisdom. We should ask ourselves, I say I want those things, how bad do I really want them? Do I want them bad enough to do whatever it takes to put Jesus Christ first in my life? Bad enough to make my church life more important than my work, school, or leisure life, my hobby life? How bad do you want to be able to resist temptation? Do you really want to be able to resist more temptation? Do you really want those healthier relationships and to be a peacemaker and to apply those things we're learning in Sunday school? Do you really want to experience blessings and joy? Do you really desire to be a source of blessing and encouragement to other people? Do you really want to serve the Lord? Do you really want to be like Christ? then we need to get as much wisdom as we can. These are good questions for us, priorities in the upcoming year. Because if I asked you, do you want these things? I know you want these things. We want those things because the Spirit of God has worked in us and we want good things. But how much do we want those things? And what can we do in the next year to get more wisdom? So I would encourage you, Just to reflect, because I know we want more wisdom, just reflect on your life. Reflect on what it is that's in the way of keeping you from getting more wisdom, especially in the context of community. Is it, you know, some of us, it might just be laziness. Some of us, we fill our lives with too many things and we're too busy. Some of our hearts just don't really want it. Sometimes we really like those hobbies or that entertainment. We'd rather do that than get more wisdom. Or we'd rather spend some more time with our favorite sin. Whatever it is, let's ask the Lord to expose our hearts to help us see what that thing is that's getting in the way of us acquiring more wisdom, and let's get rid of it and get more wisdom. Get more wisdom because it'll mean more love for God, more love for one another, and more service and more glory for our God. Let's pray. Lord, we do read, ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened. For everyone who asks, receives, and the one who seeks, finds, and to the one who knocks, it will be opened. And we also know that the Apostle James tells us, if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given to him. Lord, this is what we want. We want more love for Christ, we want more of Christ, we want more love for each other, and we want more wisdom, so that we might think your thoughts after you, and seek to obey You and please You in all that we do. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.