Yes, all right. Won't you turn to the book of Proverbs. Proverbs. Any questions on the Proverbs or where we are up to chapter number two? Of course, this being the second, this is where we are. But if there's any particular question, maybe something about this morning's message or anything that you want to ask, share, lead into. We're looking at the idea of how important wisdom is for us. And we mentioned a couple passages this morning like James chapter number 3. We talked about the Psalm, Psalm 33 and 18 and 147 and 11 which help us with the fear of the Lord. And we always wanna remember, we talked about this, I know, quite a bit over the years, but the fear of the Lord is the, what I refer to, it just helps me remember this, and I think it's a beneficial tool for others to remember as well, that the fear of the Lord is the ABCs of the kingdom of God. What do I mean by the ABCs? Just like in our society, we have the, ABCs, the foundational level of our reading and writing and literature. Our education system is built on the very basics of our ABCs, our alphabet, that you can't do really anything within our society from a communication standpoint without tying in the ABCs. That's just the way it works. And in the kingdom of God, there's not one thing done for the glory of God in God's ways that is not mingled in on the foundation of the ABCs of the kingdom, which is the fear of God. That's why the Bible refers to, like in Proverbs 1, 7, for the beginning. Look at what it says here in verse 7. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. He also says in chapter nine, look over in chapter nine. Look in chapter nine in verse number 10. I think it is 9, 10. He says, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Now, in our revelation we looked at this morning in Job 28, at the close of Job's discourse on wisdom, he says, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. That is, it is wisdom. Why? It's the foundation. The fear of the Lord is the ABCs of the kingdom work in our life. And we refer to the fear of the Lord as being what? Giving place to God. Why do we give place to Him? Because we know. We know that He's the one who created all things. And the more we know Him, the more reverence we have for Him. It's like if I see somebody walking down the highways and byways of life and I have an appreciation for them as a being, as a human, I don't wanna hurt them, hinder them, get in the way of them. I don't necessarily want to know all that there is to know about a stranger. But once I may meet this person and I find out that this person has gone here, done this, has been part of this, has learned this, has won this, whatever it is, and the more I learn about some of the dedication and the diligence in their life, the more interesting they become. And even though I respected that person for being a person, now that the more I know about them, the more respect I have for them, things they've gone through, the things they've experienced, the things they've learned, the dedication that they've given to their wife or their children or to their society, whatever it is, my reverence or my respect and honor for them increases the more I know about them. Now you can't know something about God and not respect him, amen. You see, the more you understand him, and that's what he says, this understanding of him is to depart from evil. Why? Because when you understand a dynamic of who he is, you abandon that lie that you didn't know that wasn't of his and you come to him. That's that forsaking or coming out of something because you're learning something about the one who controls the uncontrollable. The one who commands the uncontrollable. The things we give place to and cannot change and alter, he's the one who controls it. And when we recognize that, what do we do? The more we learn about him, the more we give place to him. And that's the idea of the fear of the Lord, that we give place to God. And the greater knowledge we have of him, the greater understanding of his work, the greater work he's doing in my life, The more I give, the more I give to Him, the more I'm listening for Him, the more I wanna learn about Him because His riches and knowing Him are inexhaustible. You're never exhausted. You can't get to the bottom of it. It's beyond that. So it goes along with what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 16, 22. He said, if a man doesn't love the Lord Jesus Christ, that same man, is still condemned in their sins. They're still under condemnation because he used the word in there, not the word that is most often or we know of this godly love of agape type love. He used the word brotherly type love, an affection for, just to like him. If a man doesn't like Jesus, Paul says that man is dying in their sins. Because you can't know Jesus and not like Jesus. And the more you like Jesus, the more you wanna know, and the more you know, the more you love. It's just the way that it goes. So he's saying at the base level, if they don't have an affection, a brotherly affection to like Jesus, to wanna know more about him, it's impossible for that person to know anything about him, other than they've heard some things, but they don't know him, because remember, all that God does in Christ, which is His wisdom, which is His revelation to us. It all has a relational connection in that, that we connect to the Lord in faith to Him and abide in Him. The more we know Him, the more you love Him. It's just, you can't help it. And thank God for that, amen. And we didn't figure this out on our own. We love Him because He first loved us. loved us. We pursue Him because He first pursued us. We know Him because He first unveiled Himself unto us and it's in the message of the cross. It's in the message of Christ. It's the gospel where God manifests unto us His everlasting mercy and His love over us and that We belong to Him that we're His and what He's done for us when He shed His blood, gave His life to forgive us of our sins and reconcile us unto Himself, justify us to walk in fellowship with Him and then He renews and continually refreshes us as Christ lives in us to continue to walk with Him in this life. as these passages give us this insight toward the fact that the beginning of all kingdom work in God's work is always going to have the element of the fear of the Lord, of giving place to Him. There is no wisdom that a man is not giving proper place to the Lord. There is no knowledge. And when I say knowledge and when I say wisdom, we're making a distinction between information and knowledge that we have of this world, about this world, the functionality of this world, the functionality of people, and a skill how to operate within that functionality of what we know compared to knowing Him. knowing Him and knowing how to take the next step with Him. There's a difference in those knowledges and those understandings to be able to see Him and what He does and how He works. So we're not talking about just any kind of knowledge. We're talking about a specific type of knowledge that we know Him and that He knows us and that we like what we know and that we keep pursuing what we know of Him because we are in love with Him. Proverbs is one of these tools that continues to help us as Solomon writes this. If you look in chapter number one again, he tells us, remember that word, what we say the word proverb means like, it's like this, it's usually like this. It's a general statement that God's revelation has given to these wise men and women that have been given this insight to perceive patterns in men, principles by which people live by, and no intellect, no information, no insight can ever replace just that intimate fellowship with the Lord. And that's where we want to learn to abide and live. And I think that's one of the reasons why he connects and gives us the source as far as Solomon and David, this relationship between a father and a son. Then we see Solomon giving these words of wisdom to his son, we see it again and again, my son, my son keeps pulling out, that's that relational connection there. Verse two says to know, that word know is on an intimate level, to know personally, to know intimately, to know practically, just to know wisdom which is a skill, which is knowing what to do next, and the training, the rearing, what is being taught and trusted, the instruction to perceive, that is to discern or to see the sayings, the words of understanding. That's one thing about this relational connection when we are in intimacy with the Lord. God gives us wisdom to be able to recognize those who are wise and those who are not. we're able to recognize sayings that are in line with the Lord and those that are not in line with him. And that's one of the gifts that this wisdom is gonna give to us, this discernment that we find in the Lord is that these are gonna be a beneficial dynamic in our life that we can pick up the voice of God when people speak, or we can discern there is no voice of God in their communication. So we can discern that. That's one of the gifts. That's what he's saying. I'm giving you these things so that you can learn how to put together. You can know when people are gonna try to trick you because there's a lot of tricksters out there. And when you're operating in the discerning wisdom and understanding of God, you can figure out the tricks and the riddles and the ways people will try to trip you up. Very similar to Solomon. Remember when they tried to trip him up with the kids? And they tried to trip him up, and Solomon wasn't gonna, he had wisdom in that, and what did he tell them? Go ahead and cut the other one in half. And the real mama stood up real quick and said, no, no, why? You see, they were bringing something in that was gonna try to throw him off, but he had enough wisdom to be able to pull out what was real, what was gonna be the reality of that. And he drew that out very quickly. And see, God's gonna give us those things. And that kind of wisdom is going to help us on the job. That kind of wisdom and insight and understanding is going to help us with people. It's going to help us in every facet of our life, no matter what we do and where we go. God's going to give us these abilities to be prudent, to know how to put this wisdom to work. and know when people are doing things, knowing when to keep our mouth shut, knowing how to recognize, to take the right path in life. You know, he uses the word discretion. Discretion is knowing how to choose the right thing. That would be in my steps, in my actions, but also in what to say. When to say something, when not to say something. When, like Jesus, for an example, they would attempt to trap Jesus in some of the things, and sometimes he didn't say a word. And sometimes he would, what, turn it around with a question on them, because he knew they were trying to catch him. But he had discretion, he had understanding, he had supernatural wisdom, and he was able to discern those things. And we just give God the praise for that. And that's what he wants to do in us when Christ lives what? in us and then through us and out of us as well. But he starts out this letter, the Proverbs of Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel. Now why we know this is identifiers of who we're dealing with and the king of Israel. What was some of the instruction that God gave his king that would be a king in the future day before they ever had their first king, God gave some insight on what the king should do when he is upon the throne over the nation. He said he wanted them to do something. Now this is important because this is gonna apply to you and me. So let's go look over in Deuteronomy. Let's go look in Deuteronomy 18. Deuteronomy 18. The king, what did God tell the king? Actually, Deuteronomy 17, Deuteronomy 17, verse 18. Now, Solomon, is a great help to us in many aspects, but in one particular aspect is the fact that Solomon was extremely bright. He was extremely intelligent. He was extremely wise. But no matter how wise we are in life and in things, we can't ever operate in that wisdom we have without God, without that intimacy with Him. That just gets us in a place where we, though wise, act like a fool. And Solomon did those things. Matter of fact, just look in verse number 17 of chapter 17 of Deuteronomy. He says, this king, neither shall he multiply wise for himself for fear his heart turn away, nor shall he greatly multiply silver and gold for himself. Well, we know Solomon chose to push that aside, and God even got more specific and said he don't need to multiply these foreign wise for himself, but he didn't pay any attention. That's exactly what happened to him. Exactly what God said would is that it trapped him. And we see a pattern in this one who gives us so many great insights on patterns in life of the consequences of when we do that. But notice verse 18. It says, also, it shall be when he sits on the throne of his kingdom that he shall write for himself a copy of this law, of this word, of this message in a book. from the one before the priest, the Levite. So he should take a copy of the word of God that was with the Levite. Not everybody had a copy of the word in those days. The Levites had it and they were to guide and instruct and give wisdom unto God's people. They neglected to do that on many occasions. But the king himself was one of those that God made a specific requirement that the king had the book. that he had the book, that he wrote a copy for himself. He had a copy for himself. Y'all know people around the world, there's a lot of people don't have a copy of the revelation of God. While we support ministries that put Bibles together to put Bibles in people's hands, we believe this is the message of God. It is his revelation and God's specific redeeming revelation is found in Jesus, but this book is all about Jesus. And he says that he's to have this book, and then verse number 19 says, and it, the message, the book, shall be with him. With him, and he shall read it. And he shall read it all the days of his life. Why? What's the purpose, the reason? That he may what, learn to give place unto the Lord his God. And when he gives place unto the Lord his God, this giving place and the words that he reads will grip his heart that he will be careful to observe all the words of this law and these statutes. And remember, we can sum up this law and statutes with one word. What is that word? Love. The whole law is summed up in what? The word love. To teach us how to what? Love God with all our heart, with all our strength, with all our mind, all that we are, and love our neighbor. Everything about the word is about loving the Lord and being neighborly. Loving the Lord and being neighborly. Being righteous and being just toward our neighbor. Righteousness and justice are both a vertical relationship with God, righteousness, and then horizontal relationship with men, that's where justice, the righteousness of God, of being right with God is meted out in our just dealings with man. And he says that Solomon, or any king, David, all the way through, should have a copy of the word of God himself. and have it with him wherever he goes, as he told Joshua. Remember he told Joshua that this word should never leave your mouth. You should chew on it, meditate on it, that you can observe everything that's written in it, and when you do, then all your days are gonna be prosperous and successful. God'll give you the wisdom to know how to take the next step. Why, because you're operating where, in the fear? of the Lord. You're giving place over to God because you can't know what God's done and who God is and what He does and not give place to Him, right? And the only way to know what He's done, how He works, who He is, is in this revelation that He's given to us of Himself. of where his boundaries and his love is centered and praise be unto God. Notice that, he says, in verse 19, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God and be careful to observe all the words of this law and these statutes, verse 20, for this reason, that his heart may not be lifted. above his brethren. Oh, man, the message, the Word of God, walking with God, you know what it does? It puts us all on evil ground, on equal ground. We're all at His mercy, because why? Karen, the more we look in this message, and specifically the law, no man's justified by the law, that's obvious, that's why the scripture says Christ came. The law was to drive us to Christ, to tutor us, to get us to Christ. We can't keep the law, it's impossible to love God and love men the way God requires us to love God and love men. So somebody came in our place and loved God and loved men, perfectly, and when we trust Jesus, that righteousness of Him is accounted toward us. But see, God's gotta do something to our heart to love Him. He's gotta change us from within. So when God tells Solomon, or any king, as He says here, that they're to have a copy of this message, and they're to take it wherever they go, and they're to read it day and night, that they can observe to do what's in it, you know what that does? That drives them to seek God for his mercy. Why? Because they can't keep it. They're not gonna do it. So when you can't keep it, you look at your neighbor and you realize, hey, he's not keeping it either. So I'm not gonna dog him down and act like I'm much better than him because I'm on this throne and I'm his king and I'm gonna make him do what I want him to do. No, that man needs me to help him. God's put me in a position of leadership and accountability to give him insight and the wisdom and to pick him up so that we both can look unto the Lord and when we fall, we both plead for his mercy. He says that he will be humble. that he will not lift his heart above his brethren, that he may not turn aside from the commandment to the right hand or to the left, and that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he and his children, in the midst of Israel. So see, what he does with the message is not only gonna affect the people that he's leading, but it's also gonna have an effect on his children down the road. It's gonna have an effect on his longevity, it's going to have an effect on his livelihood, it's going to have a dynamic on every aspect of his life, it's going to be found within the word that God had given to him. It's life to us, as the scripture says. Deuteronomy even tells that, it said, don't take this lightly. The words I proclaim to you on this day, They are your life, they are your lifeline, just like with the manna. Remember when they was in the wilderness and God fed them manna for those 40 years? The manna wasn't what was important, though the manna sustained them. What was more important than the manna? What God said about the manna. Because if they didn't heed His word on what they said about the manna, the manna didn't profit them. And the same thing with life. Life is no benefit or profit to us in the end if it's not what God has said about life. taking him at his word. So why did Solomon or any king need this message? A couple things. One, it guarded him. Guarded his heart from elevating himself in pride. And when God guards our heart, what does he do? He grounds us. He grounded him upon a rock. It gripped him to be cautious and careful in what he was doing, not live any kind of way he wanted to live, it was to grip him and hold him, and it was to guide him to the mercies of the king, his king, the king's king. who would shepherd him through life. And boy, don't we all need to be grounded? I mean, we can get away from ourselves if we're not careful. If we let this world we live in dictate what we're gonna do and govern what we do, man, they gonna have us buying everything, going everywhere. You know, all these commercials out there, you see, they all, when they talk about their vehicles and they talk about their places, they do that to get you to buy their vehicles and to get you to go to their states for their vacation. Like you can't live a life unless you have this or you have that and you have this and you have that and they sell it to you on the places of you ain't really living unless you have this. And you see that's kind of how the enemy always works. You see, remember what God told Adam and Eve in the garden. He said, of all the trees of the garden, you have access to eat minus this one tree. The tree of what? Knowledge. The knowledge of good and evil. God gave them the abundance, restricted this down to just one. Now, they didn't have to experience the tree to operate in what God told them to do. You see, we live in a society that says you can't really learn something or you can't really know something unless you experience it. See, this is what the Proverbs is all about. This is a father telling the son, you don't have to go out there and do this to gain wisdom. If you'll listen to my instruction, you won't actually have to experience it to know it and to walk in it. You see, but Satan came to him, what did Satan say? No. You see, God says what? You listen to me, and when you listen to me, you can learn about life. Satan says you need to go learn about life. You need to go experience it first, and then you can learn about it. And that's exactly what he told them in the garden. He said, look, God knows that if you listen to me, If you take a hold of that, you'll be like him. You'll know like he knows. You experience things like he experiences things. And you see, that's been a tactic of the enemy from day one. We live in a society that if you watch much entertainment out there or anything like that, I tell you, the dumbest, stupidest people in the world right now are daddies. Anything, any show you watch, they're going to make the one who is the fool of the family is the daddy. Mama's going to have a little insight because she's always got to be correcting daddy, but the smartest ones in the whole group are the kids. You see, they flip it. That's what the enemy does. He flips it around. He always is flipping around. God always says, just like Proverbs is teaching us, we want to be skillful in hearing, listening. Because it's in listening and hearing where we actually listening to heed we listen into honor We entrust ourselves to the one teaching us and the one teaching us knows and he can explain and that's the thing about God you don't have to experience something to actually walk it out in the kingdom of God because God's instructions is enough and to give us what we need to not actually have to go out and sow our wild oats to know what will happen in that. You don't have to do that in God's kingdom. Matter of fact, go look in Genesis. Let's just look at Genesis chapter two and three. Yeah, Genesis. Let's see what he says. Look in chapter number, let's see. He says in chapter number two, looking about verse number 15, remember this takes us back to the whole foundation of wisdom to begin with. It wasn't good that man be alone, so God created a helpmate, a woman for him. And that woman is a human, a man with a womb. Everything we do, we can trace it back to these foundational principles found in our marriages are based on what happens here in Genesis. You get out of that, you get out of that context and the conditions there of what we find in Genesis, you don't find God involved in that. So he goes on to say in verse number 15 of chapter number 2, Then the Lord God took the man, and He put him in the garden of Eden to tend it and keep it. And the Lord commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden you may watch. freely eat, anything to eat, with the exception, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat, for on the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. You see, we listen to God. All he had to do was listen to him, Karen, that's it. Just listen to him. When you listen to the Lord, you learn from the Lord. When you learn from the Lord, you live rightly with the Lord. When you're living rightly with the Lord, you keep leaning in on what you heard from the Lord, and you continue to go back to just listen to the next message or the next instruction that he gives you for living. But Satan, on the other hand, says that you need to go live. And when you go live, you learn as you live. You learn as you live. Why? What did he say unto them? Look in chapter number three. Now the serpent was more cunning, crafty. more shrewd than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, as God indeed said, you shall not eat of every tree of the garden. See, always he's going to question the exactness of what God said. He's going to question the expectation of what God said. And the woman then turns and says, we may eat of the fruit of the trees or the garden, but of the fruit of the which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, you shall not eat it, you shall not experience it. Trust me on this, you shall not eat it. Now, God didn't say anything about touching it. See, she added that in there, which would imply, I imagine when Adam, because when Adam told her about it, In the conversation, there could have been a day where he says, look, God says we can't eat that tree, but it's so pretty, it's so nice. Can we touch it? No, don't touch it. You don't wanna touch it, don't touch it. So when Satan comes and ask her to question the authority of God and what God said, she then ties that in there that we can't even touch it, at least we die. Now watch what he does. Then the serpent, verse four, said to the woman, you shall surely not die. If you experience this, it's not gonna kill you. For God knows that in the day that you, what? Eat of it, your knowledge will increase. Your eyes, what you see will be open. You see, you gotta go out there and touch it and taste it and eat it and feel it and participate in it. The more you do that, the more your eyes will be open. And you, is what he's telling him, you'll be like God, knowing good and evil. He says, you'll learn as you eat it. You'll know more than he. Isn't that what a fool thinks? He knows more. Isn't that what Satan thinks? He knows more, he knows better. So what was the position that they were in? The position that he attempted to put him in was that you just need to experience life. You will learn as you experience. See, but God on the other hand says, listen to me, follow my lead. You don't have to experience to learn a thing. Because my insight, my wisdom, my understanding, imparted unto you will be sufficient for the thing. You don't actually have to go out and experience it. to know it. I know what you need to stay away from and what you need to walk in in the ways and you follow after my lead. And I say that we help our kids and young people and our grandchildren and those things just to help them. It'd be like if I took you back here in the back and somebody that hadn't been back down this road headed straight back here in the back to the Greg and them's hunting woods, and I put this blindfold that Brother Shannon has on him, and I blindfolded you and said, won't you come walk with me? and I took you down that road. You would take short steps and hesitant steps, but as long as I was holding your hand and I steered you around all the potholes and the stumps and all those things that you could walk through, I would guide you through it. You'd be blindfolded, couldn't see where you was actually headed, but I can see it. I know where you're going. I know what's out there. So I know what you're coming to, even if you were in the dark, I can lead you through it. Because I've been down it, I see it. And you see, that's from the perspective of our heavenly father, he could see it. He can see it, he knows it. He knows where the dangerous spots are. He knows where the holes are. He knows where the trouble's at. And in his wisdom, he's guiding us through life, how to avoid the potholes of life. Because if you go out on your own, you're gonna set up patterns, and when you set up patterns, there's always consequences and results to patterns. And that's where Proverbs is so beneficial. It's showing us the consequences of both positive and negative, good and bad patterns in life. That's why it says it's generally, it's usually just like this. That if a man does this, this is gonna be a product of his life. And if he does this, this will be the product that you'll see off his life. So now we can start recognizing these principles, these things at work and we can see God in it or we see God missing from it. And boy, what a blessing of just knowing that, hey, God says, hear me, listen to me, just listen to me. Go to Psalm 81, Psalm 81. So the king was to have a word, right? And he was to carry that word wherever he went and all that he did. Now, does that apply just to him or is that for me and you too? That's for us too, right? I think the book of Revelation tells us that Jesus has made us kings and priests, hadn't he? How did he do that? Through his blood. That he's made us a kingdom of kings and priests. So those principles that apply to these kings and priests also apply to us today in the sense that hey, we need, we need this revelation with us. Psalm 81. Listening, Psalm 81. Let's go to that. He says, look in about verse number eight. Verse number eight. The idea of hearing is hearing to honor, hearing to obey. So to hear God is not just to say, okay, I heard God because I read. No, it's putting myself in a submissive position because I'm waiting on his mercy and I need him to ground me and guide me. And he says, verse eight, hear, O my people, and I will admonish you. O Israel, if you were what? Hearken or listen to me. If you will listen, hear and listen to me, there shall be no foreign God among you, nor shall you worship any foreign God. Verse 10, I am the Lord your God. I'm the one who brought you out of the land of Egypt. Open your mouth wide and God will what? So we have the idea then if hearing and listening is to hearken and heed, it's the idea that we're feeding on something. God wants to feed us when we hear him. He wants us to eat on what he feeds. The pictures of a little bird in the nest who's got the mouth wide open right now in the springtime waiting for that mama bird to come in and feed them mouth to mouth. Remember, hearing in God's kingdom is seeing in God's kingdom. You gotta hear to see. And we need to see. What do we need to see? We need to see what He sees. So to see what He sees, He's gotta feed us. He feeds us. He goes on, verse 11, but my people would not, what? But my people would not heed my voice. They wouldn't listen. Unwise. And Israel would have none of me. Now the consequences of that would be, so I gave them over to their own stubborn heart. Whoa. God says, if you will let me feed you, you will walk in what I've given. You'll be careful to observe it. But if you don't, you gotta walk in what you know. And what you know is gonna end up in a pothole. You're headed to trouble. So I gave them over to their own stubborn heart. to walk or to live in their own counsels. Now we know the consequences of that. It gets ugly, we've seen that. Oh that my people, oh that my people would listen to me. That Israel would walk in my ways. So listening is listening to follow, to walk. What would God have done? Verse 14, I would soon subdue their enemies and turn my hand against their adversaries. For the haters of the Lord, they have a way of pretending submission to him, but their fate would endure forever. God would have fed them also with the finest of wheat and with honey from the rock. I would have satisfied you. God's saying, look, I had an abundance to give you of myself But because you didn't want any of me and you wanted to do it your way, you'll have to actually deal with the adversaries and the enemies your way without my help. And that's just not a good place. That's not a wise place to live. Amen? So this instruction that the king is to give in these Proverbs is to be things we give ourselves to. Like in our reading today, Proverbs 2. Didn't he say that when all these things begin to take place in your life, wisdom enters in, understanding becomes yours, discretion becomes yours. What does it do? It keeps us from the man who's left the way of the Lord. It keeps us from the immoral woman. It keeps us from, it guards us from those things. but then it opens up the door for us to walk in the path of righteousness for His glory, amen? So we see these things unfold. Let's look over one more time, go back a little bit, go to 1 Kings chapter three, 1 Kings chapter three. And y'all remind me before we close, we'll be wrapping up here shortly, but we're gonna look at Jeremiah nine. Don't let me leave here without talking about Jeroboam 9. 1 Kings chapter 3. Look what he says in, look in verse number 7. Verse number six, let's do that. Verse five, God said, ask, what shall I give you? Solomon's taken over the throne. His father has died. They put him in a position for leadership and God comes to him and he says, ask me, what shall I give you? The door's open. What shall I give you? And then Solomon said in verse 6, You have shown great mercy to your servant David, my father, because he walked before you in truth, in righteousness, in uprightness of heart. He walked with you and you continue, you have continued this great kindness for Him and you have given Him a son to sit on His throne as it is this day. That's a great way to start of just reminding God of who He is and what He's done and what God blesses and what He doesn't bless. Verse 7, Now, O LORD my God, you have made your servant king instead of my father David. And then he says these words, But I am a little child. I do not know how to come in or go out. You know what he just was saying? I don't know how to live. I don't know how to act. I don't know how to behave myself. Now Solomon wasn't a child. But he's saying, God, I don't know how to act right for you. I am like a little child. And therefore, I am trusting you can give me guidance. I don't know how to behave in this world. I don't know how to act. And that's one of the neat things about being wise is that I think the wiser we become, the more we realize just how unwise we are. And how needy we really are. For God to help us know how to live, how to behave, how to act for him. It's that grounded, humility that says, I don't know how to represent you. I need you. Think about that from day to day when we go out in this old world. We are ambassadors, right? We are representatives of God. And too often we enter into this world thinking we've got it all figured out, don't we? And we fail to ask God to give us what we need to adequately with grace and humility and meekness of spirit and wisdom to represent him well in this world that we live in. And he says these words, verse eight, and your servant is in the midst of your people whom you have chosen a great people too numerous to be numbered or counted. And he says, I'm supposed to lead these people and I don't even know how to act. I don't know how to live. Therefore, give to your servant an understanding heart to judge your people that I may discern between that which is good and evil for who is able to judge this great people of yours. And boy, the word pleased the Lord, didn't it? Oh, it blessed God. And he was sincere in it. We can't fool the Lord. We know he was sincere and he was humble in it. It pleased him, it delighted him, it delighted him. What did God do for him? Oh, did he give him wisdom? Oh, and much more than that. He said, because you didn't ask for power, you didn't ask for wealth, you didn't ask for riches, you didn't ask all that, I'm gonna give you what you asked for, wisdom, and I'm gonna give you understanding and knowledge, and I'm gonna give you all those other things too. I'm gonna give you those other things. There's no guarantee those things come with all that. This is just something we see God doing with this king and what he did with him. Go over to chapter four. Looking about verse number 29. What's this bring us back to? God is the one who gives. We the ones who open our mouth. so that he can give it, amen? That we can hear him and listen to him. Verse 29 says, and God gave Solomon a skill, not just any kind of skill, but he gave him wisdom and exceedingly great understanding and largeness of heart like the sand of the seashore. Wow. The capacity of Solomon's intellect, his insight, and his influence was measureless. Was measureless. A gift beyond what this world or our flesh can match or replicate. It just cannot happen. No education, no philosophy, nothing can replicate what God gave the man. Now you gotta keep in mind, what did Jesus say? Jesus said, a greater than Solomon is here. Amen? A greater than Solomon is here. People flocked to Solomon to learn from him, to glean from him, to see what he's put together, how his servants served him, they came to see. But Jesus said, a greater than Solomon is here. You see, all the fullness of the wisdom of God is found in Christ Jesus. That's saying we have what we need to represent God in this world. It's not that we can't do it, we can as we ask him to give us what we need from day to day to know how to behave, how to act, and how to live for his glory. So where did I say we was gonna look at before we left? Jeremiah, look in Jeremiah nine, Jeremiah nine, and we'll close with this. These are all just, since we're in the very beginning of the reading of Proverbs, I wanted to just give a few things for us to look at as we approach the Proverbs, as we walk through them and we think about these general the patterns and principles of men and the consequences of their life of saying, okay, I need God more than I ever needed him before. I need him right now to speak into me. I need to connect and abide in Jesus and to walk with him. Verse number 23, 923 says, for thus says the Lord, let not the wise man glory, or boast, or delight in his wisdom. Why did God tell the kings that they needed the law of the Lord? To keep them what? Grounded. Grounded. That they wouldn't have vault themselves above the brethren. He says, don't let the wise man glory in his wisdom. Let not the mighty man glory in his might, nor let the rich man glory what? and his riches. So we see philosophy from a standpoint, we see power, and we see purchasing power. All those things are what this world elevates at the peak. The smarter intellectual most educated the most brilliance of minds or the most common sense aspect of living to what might and power and strength and bruteness to be able to fight and to be able to be strong and take care of oneself see men prize that that's why all these Entertainment world and all these professional sports and all these things get so much attraction because that's what attracts men. That's what draws men. And then the wealth that comes out of that, the riches that come with it. Like what they pay these athletes these days and why these kids wanna be these athletes. Why they wanna get out of wherever they are so that they can be professional, be on TV. There's glory in all that. There's delight in all that. In this practical wisdom, in this philosophy of living, in this might and power and riches and wealth, all that is what a world pursues and they'll go to great lengths to get it. As we talked about in Job this morning, the things people will do to go after what they treasure. They'll do anything to go get what they treasure. They'll put themselves in some very difficult, dangerous, compromising positions to get what they treasure. And men treasure intellect, they treasure power, and they treasure wealth. That's what they elevate. Remember what Jesus said when they was talking about money in his days. And the Pharisees, they were lovers of money. These people loved money. And Jesus said, look, what man elevates, what man exalts, wisdom, might, and riches is an abomination unto God. What men prize, what they treasure and will do anything and all things to get their hands on is an abomination unto the Lord. This is why Jeremiah then says this, verse 24. But let him, let this man, whoever it is, let him delight and glory in this. If there's anything to delight in and glory in, let him glory in this, that he, number one, that he understands and knows me. And that I am the Lord, exercise in what? Loving kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth for these things I delight in, says the Lord. God says he delights in mercy, justice, or judgment, and right kind of living. said throw the riches, throw the might, and throw practical earthly wisdom, throw it out the window. That's not where my delight's at. My delight is in showing mercy, being just, and being right in the things that we do. If anything that you wanna delight in, You want to delight in a wisdom that helps you be humble and meek, teachable and transparent, that shows kindness, mercy to people. that will stand on the justice and the judgments that God has given, the verdicts that God has given. God is not mocked, right? God has already said what he's gonna do and what he won't do. So we stand on that. And then that helps us live rightly before this world. Now, when we read that, we have to then turn around and say, God, I can't love and do and delight in these things without you. at work in me, because my flesh is attracted to the wise, to the mighty, and to the wealthy. That's what still appeals, it appeals to me, has an appeal to me. The things that people achieve, the things that people, what they have done, oh, that's appealing to us, amen, we admit that, that's appealing to us, that's an appeal to us. That's the things we'll go read about. That's why we get magazines and why we read articles and those things of great heights that people have accomplished and done and we commend and we praise and we treasure and we want to do certain things that have an appeal to them from that perspective. But what Jeremiah does, what God does, He flips it around and says, look, if there's really anything worth delighting in is that we have a relationship, an intimate personal relationship and understand who God is and how God works and what He delights in upon this earth. And that is showing kindness. Showing mercy, that loving kindness of the word mercy, that's his steadfast love, his unfailing love. It's interchangeably used in so many different ways throughout the scripture. And then his judgment that God has already spoken on a thing. God has not mocked a man, shall reap what he... So we see that, we know that, so we know what God has said. And now, because we know Him and understand Him and have given place to Him, we can walk in His righteousness in the fear of the Lord. And then God's given us wisdom, not to elevate ourselves above those that are seeking all those other things, but that we stay humble and meek to try to help people see what really matters. Not only on this earth, but what matters when this life is over with. What endures, amen. Helping people recognize that. And I'm telling you, we're inadequate in doing those things. We're gonna stumble in these things, but this is where we wanna be growing so that we can be grounded and gripped by this in Christ. God, I wanna delight in the things you delight in. My flesh wants to carry me away to frivolous and fickle things. Riches come and they go. Might comes and it goes. Think about all the military and might of nations throughout the history that we've studied in world history and US history and the different companies that, Keith, have come and gone. Those that have rose to the pinnacle of great wealth and have disappeared over time, places and those things, all those things, all those things come to nothing. They don't last. The strongest are gonna die. They're gonna get weak. This whole body is gonna what? How many of y'all know it gets frail on you over time? How many of y'all can't do what you used to be able to do? I'm having trouble putting my jacket on these days. My old shoulders are getting to me. I mean, going back and trying to get an arm in is starting to bother me. I used to be able to throw a football 70 yards. I can't do it now. I mean, at the beginning of this year, I could throw a football 50 yards with no trouble. Me and Nate out here throwing. He'd say, Pawpaw, I can't believe you can throw it that far. Always been able to throw. The last visit he was here, I told him I can't even throw the ball with you, Nate, because my arm is, both of them have been bothering me. I don't know what it is, I don't know why the way it's been doing, but we're all frail, we're falling apart in certain ways, we really are. From physical to inside, you name it, it's happening. So no matter how strong you are, that strength is gonna wane. Doesn't matter how rich you are, You're not taking anything with you when you die. We entered in this world naked, we're gonna leave this world naked. And it doesn't matter how smart we are if we are not sensitive to the Spirit of God at work in our heart and our life in this day, or His truth at work in us. If we're not soft and sensitive to be moved by God, All that's going away. But what will last is what's done with kindness. What's done on the justice and judgments of God and what is right kind of living that God's involved in. The things that he delights in. Those things are like gold. It just stays. Have you ever thought about that? I mentioned it this morning. But you know that same gold that Solomon and David accumulated and all that, that gold's still around. Those $100 bills in Keith's pocket right now, them $100 bills are just gonna what? Burn up. They eventually gonna waste away. But see, that gold's still around. Thousands of years later, from the time that God made it, and allowed it to form and be what it is, it'll be here. It ain't going nowhere until all said is said and done. See, gold's refined in the fire to prove its purity. And the scripture says God puts his people into the fire as needed. Our faith is going to be tested, and faith that was in God's mercy and loving kindness, His unfailing love, His judgments upon this earth, what He said about a thing, His verdicts on a thing, and then His vision on how to live. Faith in those things, though tested by fire, will prove to be Give praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of the Lord. Amen. Oh, man. Help us, Lord. That's what we need. Help us, Lord. See things His way. And that's what Proverbs, I believe, will help us out as we go through it this month, to continually grow to see things His way. You know why? Because In the first few verses of 1 through 7 of Proverbs 1, when he gives the reason for writing it, he says it's to give prudence to the simple, to give insight to the young man. He said the man of understanding will increase in learning. You see, no matter how wise or understanding we ever become, we're always being stretched and growing. Always growing, always stretching, always growing in the wisdom of God. You'll never get to the ultimate place. That is right now and simply taking God at His word, trusting what He gives you, walking in it. That's the place that He wants us to live in. And then He just increases our wisdom as we keep walking with Him. but the safe place is under His mercy, giving place to Him who controls the uncontrollable and operating in the fear of the Lord. You're right where God wants you to be, amen? And then He just keeps adding on His wisdom in your life so that you can help add on wisdom in other people's lives to help them out, amen? Father, we thank you tonight. We bless you. We give you praise and glory for your kindness and your goodness and your great love toward us. We ask that you help us with these things. Lord, as we just read through some of these things tonight, it's just another reminder that we're not always where we think we are. And that's the great wonder of being able to wait upon your mercy. that we give place to you tonight and ask you to help us, that you lift our eyes toward the heavens, that we hear from you that our mouths are open so that we can consume and be fed mouth to mouth, that you would lead us and shepherd us and guide us and meet every need we have so that we can know how to behave, how to act, how to live. out of love in this world that delights you, that delights you and benefits others. So we praise you and thank you tonight in Jesus' name, amen. Love y'all, y'all have a good night.