Turn your Bibles today to Proverbs chapter 4. Our sermon is going to be on Proverbs chapter 4, verses 1 to 9. Let's hear the word of our Lord, Proverbs chapter four, beginning in verse one. 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 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. This is the word of our Lord. Let's pray together. Our Lord, we thank you that this word is the sword of the spirit. It is what the spirit uses to pierce our hearts to remove blindness. We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers. And we know that our enemy desires to keep your word from us, desires to keep us in sin and in lives of foolishness. We pray that your word would come with power, that your spirit would use your word to pierce the darkness in our hearts, to establish your kingdom for the gospel to come in truth and in power. We pray that you would do that during this time, and we ask it in the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ, amen. Well, you know that Oscars are given for best picture, best director, best actor. Emmys are given for the best TV shows. Tonys are given for the best stage plays or musicals. Grammys are given for the best song or the best album. You can get a Pulitzer Prize for photography, journalism, economics, science, even making peace. You can get a prize for that. You can win a gold medal for running faster than everyone else. You can win a bowl for being the best football team. You can win a cup for being the best hockey team. You can win magna cum laude and summa cum laude by having the best grades in the class. You can even win employee of the month at your McDonald's job. But Nobody gives out prizes for wisdom. Your employer will not give you a prize for being the wisest employee. Your coach, your team will not give you most wise player award. Our world appreciates wisdom. They like it when they see it, but it's not really something that our world values. Those in Washington, D.C. are not gonna prize you for wisdom. They won't give you a Purple Heart type of medal for that. Those in Hollywood are not gonna give you prizes for wisdom either. So what's the motivation? What's your incentive to be wise, to grow in wisdom? As a child, our hearts are already foolish. Proverbs says, folly is bound up in the heart of a child. Every one of us, from the first day on this earth, we are fools. So we don't think, you know what, I want to grow up to be wise. That's just not a natural inclination that we have. So we battle against our own desires if we want to seek wisdom. And we battle against the world, which is not going to give us any prizes. So why should you seek wisdom? Well, it's only if you believe what the Word of God says. It's only if you believe what God has to say. That God says to you that wisdom is the most valuable thing you can possess. Wisdom is the greatest prize that you can win. And so what you and I need to understand and truly believe and have it as something that is deeply seated in our hearts is that wisdom is the number one thing I need to pursue in my life. That's what this passage is trying to get us to see. These first nine verses are trying to convince you of wisdom being the most important prize you could ever win. The point of this passage is get wisdom. Whatever else you might get in life, whatever else you might accomplish, the most important acquisition you need to make is wisdom. Get wisdom. Let's begin looking at this passage and how it motivates us to acquire wisdom. We're going to look at the passage in three parts. The first part, called The Family Inheritance. Wisdom is the family's inheritance. Let's read the first four verses again. He says, hear, O sons, a father's instruction. 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 my words. Keep my commandments and live. In our day, in more rural areas usually or with farmers, there are family farms. And the family farm is called that because it belongs to the family and usually it is passed down within the family. The father passes it down to his son, who then passes it down to his son. It's an estate, a piece of property, land that can be passed down as the inheritance from generation to generation. In our day, I read lots of stories about how millennials complain that they can't buy houses. They find it too hard to save up for down payment with student debts and inflation and not enough good housing available and all these things. And they say they can't find any houses to buy. Well, what if you could just be handed down a house, a house with property, a house with acres of land? Assuming that you would want to live there, assuming you want to live in that rural area, It would be amazing to inherit such an estate, such a family farm. You could use all that money where you're scraping up to save for a down payment and you could pay off all your loans. You could buy that Toyota Sienna that you really want. You could save up for retirement. You could do all these things with this extra money because a house and a property has just been passed down to you. Well, Solomon is writing these Proverbs. He is the king. And he gets the throne passed down to him from his father. But that's not the inheritance that he talks about in this passage. In this passage, he brings up the fact that his father passes down a tradition of wisdom, the word of God. The law of God, the teachings of God get passed down from generation to generation. You see here that Solomon in the first three chapters has been talking himself to his son. He says, hear my son. And now here in chapter four, he is talking and he brings in something that his own father taught him. You see in verse three, when I was a son with my father, he taught me. So verses four to nine that we're gonna be focusing on are not really Solomon's teachings, but Grandpa David. David has passed it down to Solomon. And Solomon sees that he needs to pass down this inheritance to his own son. And so when it says up in verse one, here, O sons, and it's in the plural, He's going to go back in verse 10 to singular, my son, but verse one is in the plural. And it seems to be saying that Solomon is saying that he's not just talking to his one son, or even the plural of sons are not the three sons that might be sitting in front of him across the table, but probably he's talking to the sons across generations. Hear, O sons. And what he means is listen, son, because this is for my grandson and for my great grandson. This is for your son, son. So you need to listen up. Listen to what my father taught me, and I'm now telling you, my son, so that you will then tell your son. This is teaching that is meant to be passed down from generation to generation. So, he says, hear, O sons, a father's instruction. A father's task is to instruct. And this word here, translated instruct, is the same word that was used in chapter three, verse 11, when it says, do not despise the Lord's discipline, or the Lord's instruction. And so instruction here is not just generic teaching, but it's correction, discipline, reproof. It's correction with words. And so parents and fathers especially, we need to instruct and correct our children, reprove our children when they sin and when they go astray. Your kids, if you just let them be free spirits, they will be free spirits that go off and sin. If you just let them find themselves, they will find themselves doing a lot of sin. And so the role of a parent is not to let a child discover himself, but the role of a parent is to mold and to chisel off and to file away at all of this sin that is encrusted upon of our children, so that our children will be molded into godly men and women. And that's the role of parents through correction, through teaching. Children, that means you are to listen to teaching. and correction. And as he says in verse one, be attentive. Pay attention when your parents are trying to correct you. Solomon is talking probably to a teenage son. Our culture has all these stereotypes of teenagers. And you can imagine that a modern day teenager would receive instruction, correction from a parent and roll their eyes. roll their eyes at their parents. You just don't understand. Or they'll say, whatever mom, whatever dad, that's a modern day teenager. And verse one is saying that is not how a teenager should respond to parental correction. Now you all hear I hope you don't roll your eyes at your parents. I hope you don't say whatevs to your parents. But hopefully, there's also even within your hearts, not that attitude. That attitude, my parents, they're lame, they don't understand, they don't know anything. But that when your parents correct you, you are to pay attention. You are to receive their instruction. So the father has correction. And then in verse two, he says, I give you good precepts. I give you good precepts. Do not forsake my teaching. Children need not only correction, they need teaching or education. Or some would translate this as good doctrine. They need to be taught good doctrine. They need correction and they need catechism. They need moral formation and moral behavior and they need to know truth about God and the world. So, we are called to give our children good doctrine, education, precepts, teaching. Before our children grow up to write AP philosophy papers, they need to learn ABCs. Before our children go off to be physicists, they need to learn addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. But parents, how are you going to form your children to be spiritually mature? Well, it's through the ABCs of catechism, of good doctrine. They need to learn things like creeds, catechisms. They need to memorize scripture. These are all foundational blocks that you can put into their minds so that when they grow up, then they build upon these things to know God, know God truly. So we give good precepts. Children are to learn the teaching from their parents. And then he goes to what David spoke to him. Verses three and four. He goes back to when he was a son with his father and how he was tender and the only one in the sight of his mother in verse three. Now, what does Solomon mean here when he says, I was the son of my father? That's like, okay, thank you. Solomon, we got that. We did not think that you were the son of your uncle. We know you're the son of your father. So why are you saying this to us, Solomon? Solomon is saying that I had this relationship with my father. My father really loved me. My father treated me like a son that he loved. And I was tender before him. I was young and he cared about me and my mother loved me. And because my father loved me, he sat me down. And he looked me in the eyes and he said, listen, my son, this is what you need to know. This is what's important for your life. This is how you're going to succeed. And what does he say? Does he say, son, don't get too crazy with the women? Does he say, son, make sure you go to school and you work hard? No, he says, son, here's the most important advice that I have for you. This is what you need to know. Hold fast my words, keep my commandments, and you'll live. Here's a life, here's life, here's the good life, here's a successful life, is to grab onto my words, grab onto the commandments of God that I am teaching you, and get wisdom, and that will bring you a good life. The father cares for his son, and he loves him, and he will do what is best for him and teach him what is most important. In Israel's times, it was likely that they would wean a child after three years. And we see that with Samuel, that when Samuel is weaned, Hannah takes him to the temple and entrusts Samuel to Eli. So Eli becomes a preschool teacher. Eli's job now is with four-year-old Samuel to train him, to mold him. And so that's probably what's happening here in verses three and four. David sees Solomon. Solomon is four years old. He says, you're not a baby anymore. You're a little man now. You're a little boy now. You're a boy. And so you need to start acting like someone who's going to grow up to be a man. And so we're going to start training now. Now, now we get to work. Now we need to mold you. Now we need to teach you. Now you need to hold fast to these commandments of God. So he starts the teaching probably at four years old. So you see the hearts that David has for his son. You see the love in those words. You see his seriousness in those words. This is a matter of life and death. You need to listen. Augustine, in his autobiography, Confessions, talks about his father. And his father was not a believer. His mother was a believer. He says that his father went to great lengths to send Augustine to the best school and get the best education. His father was very proud of Augustine for his education. And unbelievers praised his father. Wow, what a good father for doing so much that even other people, unbelievers, recognize that this man would sacrifice so much for his son's education. But Augustine says, yet this same father did not trouble himself how I grew towards God. so long as I was skillful in speaking, however barren I was to your tilling, O God." The father was a good father, we might say, but cared nothing for Augustine's spiritual state. Augustine had a problem with promiscuity, and his mom would would warn him about it and tell him to stop. And he says, I took it as womanish counsels, womanish counsels. And so sons especially need to hear from fathers what the word of God says, the commandments of God, that they might not hear their mom's advice that they would call nagging and say womanish counsels. But instead they have a father who cares and teaches them commandments of God. This is the family heritage. Some of you maybe are like Solomon and you had fathers who passed down the teachings of God to you. It's our call then to pass it down to others. Some of you did not have that. You did not have Christian parents. Well, yes, you are now the one who has to scrape everything up to buy the farm, to buy the home that will maybe get passed down. And spiritually, you will have to be the one who gathers up all the teaching and commandments and wisdom. But you now can pass that down to sons and their sons and their sons. And this is what you need to see. This is what we, especially fathers, need to see about our lives. Our lives are not just go to work, be a good church member, watch some interesting TV shows, and then eventually I die. That's not life. Your life is that God is using you to impact generations to come. The wisdom that you accumulate is to be passed down from generation to generation. So get wisdom. Our sons will eventually be the fathers, and they will be the fathers who will then be teaching their sons. So how are you going to teach those future fathers? I wonder what you would say is the roots of the decline of Christianity in our day. Is it that we don't share the gospel enough? Is it that church isn't involved enough in political issues or is too involved in political issues? Well, in the 1600s, there were some people who thought Christianity was declining. And a group of Baptist pastors came out with a confession in 1677, the Second London Confession. And they said this was the cause of decline in religion. They say, it is the neglect of the worship of God in families by those to whom the charge is committed. They say, may not the gross ignorance and instability of many and the profaneness of others be justly charged upon their parents who have not trained them up in the way wherein they ought to walk when they were young, but instead they have neglected those frequent and solemn commands which the Lord has laid upon them to catechize and instruct them that in their tender years they might be seasoned with knowledge of the truth of God as revealed in the scriptures. and also because of our own omission of prayer and other duties of religion in our families and our bad example of loose lifestyle have led these children to neglect and then contempt of all piety and religion. We know, they say, this will not excuse the blindness or wickedness of any children. They die in their sins, but will not their blood be required of those under whose care they were? who permitted them to go on without warning and led them into the path of destruction. They understood the decline of Christianity comes when fathers especially neglect to teach their children the word of God. So this is the inheritance to pass down. Now let's get to the content of what David says to his son to be passed down. We come now to the most valuable resource in verses five and six. He says, 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. So what is the main teaching here that David is teaching Solomon, that Solomon is now teaching his son? He says, get wisdom. You see the word get is here five times, twice in chapter five, sorry, verse five, three times in verse seven. That's the main point, get wisdom. This idea of getting wisdom here that he's talking about is the word to acquire, to purchase, to buy. Make sure you buy wisdom. He's also portraying wisdom here as a lady. Notice in verse six, do not forsake her and she will keep you, love her and she will guard you. Love her, love this woman. Don't forsake her, be faithful to this woman and she will be with you, she will guard you. So he's portraying her as a lady. This young man is about to go off into the world and he is gonna wanna get married. And his father doesn't necessarily give him advice about human marriage, but he says, son, there's a more important lady that you need to be thinking about. You need to prepare yourself for marriage with this lady. It's lady wisdom. She's the one you need to acquire. Don't think so much about acquiring a wife. humanly speaking, but acquire lady wisdom. And he's using the image that was in Israel of the dowry, the bride price. If you wanna marry somebody in ancient Israel, you gotta pay up. You're in love with a woman, then you go to her dad, you say, I wanna marry your daughter, and he says, how much can you give me? what you got, and you give the dowry, the bride price, to essentially acquire your wife. It is a way to provide for the family when the daughter is leaving, so you pay the dowry. This is what he's saying. Young man, you wanna grow up and you wanna get married and you wanna find this wife, young man, you need to acquire lady wisdom. You need to marry her. So what is wisdom? I've said it before, I'll say it again, I'll say it many times. Wisdom is a skill of living in God's world. It's the skill of living in God's world the way that God made the world. And so there are many aspects of wisdom. It's the way that you speak. If you curse the king in your bedroom, that message is gonna get to the king. It's gonna travel around. So be careful what you say. You need to acquire a skill of learning to not talk, because your words get around. You know, acquire the skill of hard work because lazy people end up struggling financially. So if you're going to be lazy, then things aren't going to go well for you. That's just how the world works. You need to learn that as a young person. You need to learn that in the abundance of counselors, there is safety. If you want to make good decisions, wise decisions, then you need advice from a lot of other people because that's just the way the world works. That's how God has made the world so that you don't know everything. You don't see every angle, so you need outside advice. You need to listen to that advice if you want to be successful, if you want to be wise. So these are all different types of skills that we have to learn to help us live a wise life. But Proverbs says that really wisdom comes down to the fear of the Lord. Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. It's knowledge of the Lord that will make you wise. Because without the Lord, you don't understand eternity. You don't understand how the world really works. And so to be a wise person, you need to live as if God is the most important reality in the universe. You need to live as if God is watching everything you do. You need to live as if you want to please God with everything in your life. That's what it means to walk in wisdom. And so as Christians, we would just say that means following Christ, living for Christ. Get wisdom means know the Lord. through Jesus Christ and follow him. If you love her, if you love wisdom, if you seek after Christ, she will guard you. If you are faithful to Christ, Christ will keep you. The Lord will watch over you. The Lord will be with you. You are called to be faithful and follow him. So this is his main command, get wisdom. And now in the last few verses, he tells us about how wisdom is, or what is the foundational source of wisdom. The foundational source of wisdom. And he says this in verse seven. The beginning of wisdom is this, get wisdom. And whatever you get, get insight. So what does he mean when he says the beginning of wisdom is to get wisdom? It seems pretty redundant, circular. What he means here is beginning is the foundational thing or the principle thing. The principle, the start of it all, the start of acquiring wisdom, which he just told you in verse five, you need to get. How do you start getting it? He says, get it. You start getting it by getting it. So here's his point. All that is required to get wisdom is your determination to get wisdom. Your decision. that you want to acquire this and not all these other things in life. To win the Super Bowl, you must be fast or you must be able to throw a ball. To win an Oscar, you must have some sort of talent or get a good role. But to win this prize, he says, you don't need brains, you don't need brawn, you don't need special talents, all you need is to determine to get wisdom. Wisdom cries aloud in the streets. Wisdom has built her house and she invites you to enter into her house and come and eat with her and get to know her. Wisdom is publicly available. Wisdom is available to anyone and everyone, but you must decide to listen. You must decide that the most important thing you want to accomplish in your life is to become a wise man or woman. So do you want it? You can have wisdom, but you have to want it. You have to forsake everything. You have to say, this is the thing that I will pursue. And that's what he tells him next. Whatever you get, get insight. Whatever. Young man, the most important thing you need is not a good job. It is not to find a spouse. The most important thing you need is not to have children. It is not fame, notoriety, and money. The most important thing you need to acquire in life is wisdom and insight. This is the diamond, the most precious diamond. that you need to discover, search for, find. It is the most valuable possession that you could ever own. Whatever you get, Be obsessed, be driven, be determined that no matter what happens to you in life, nothing will stop you. You know how athletes talk when they win a gold medal or whatever, they always brag about themselves. Oh, I faced so much adversity, I got this injury, this happened to me, but I wasn't gonna let anything stop me. It's because they're idolaters. They idolize sports. They idolize money and fame. They will do anything to get this goal. What about us? Here's the most valuable possession, much more valuable than any of these other prizes. Will you pursue this at all costs? Prize her, he goes on to say in verse 8. Prize her highly. Cherish her is what prize means. Just as you would cherish a wife. A wife is worth far above rubies. A good wife is worth far above rubies. And so you cherish that you found a good wife, that you found a prize. He says, just like you want to find a good human wife, you want to find wisdom. and prize her, cherish the fact that you know wisdom. Embrace her. Verse eight, she will honor you if you embrace her. Again, we have these images of a relationship, of love. And if you do these things, she will exalt you. She will honor you. You will be really successful in life. So you all are listening to all of this. You most likely agree in your head that you should get wisdom. Wisdom is good. Wisdom is important. But are you going to prize her? Are you going to embrace her? Are you going to cherish this? Are you going to seek after this? Whatever you get, is this going to be what you live for? If you do, you will get the crown, verse nine says. She will place on your head a graceful garland and bestow on you a beautiful crown. A picture of success and blessing. So if wisdom is the fear of the Lord, as I said before, wisdom can only come through Jesus Christ. And that's really what this passage is about. It's about knowing Jesus Christ. Jesus said, what does it profit to gain the whole world and lose your soul? And that's what verse seven is saying. Whatever you get, if you were to gain the whole world, it doesn't matter if you lose your own soul. because you don't have the wisdom that comes through knowing the Lord through Jesus Christ. Jesus told a parable that the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls who came upon this one pearl of great price. And so he went and he sold everything that he had to go and buy that one pearl. Why would you sell everything? Why would you give up everything for one pearl, only if it was of far greater value? And that's also, again, what verse seven is saying. Whatever you get, sell everything you have if you have to. Forsake everything else if you find this one thing. He says, this is what the kingdom of heaven is like. This one pearl is Jesus Christ. Christ is what you need if you have nothing else. Christ is the only way to God by his life, his death on the cross, to pay for sinners, and then his resurrection from the dead to give us new life. Christ is the only way that we can live for eternity. And so if we have everything in the world, we will lose our souls if we don't have Christ. We will not have the fear of the Lord, we will not have wisdom if we do not have Christ. And yet we see, like wisdom, Christ is preached. People know about Christ, people have heard the gospel, and yet people walk by. People ignore. People put it off. The pearl of great price is not exactly hard to find around here. The pearl of great price is sitting on a sidewalk and millions of people just walk by it trying to find something they think is valuable. You are listening. You hear the message of the gospel. Are you treasuring it, treasuring Christ as the pearl of great price? Or will you say, another sermon, another Sunday, another day I'm sitting here, maybe some of you, because my parents are making me sit through. This is the prize. This is what you need to seek after. It's here. It's here today. Today, all you have to do to get Christ is to get Christ. To give your life to following Him. Trust Him. with your salvation, the forgiveness of your sins, repent and turn away from living life for yourself and living life in your own sin, and decide that you want to follow Christ. Call upon God to save you, to forgive you. Tell him that you want to give your life to live for him. And he will bestow upon you that crown of life. Whatever you get today, Get wisdom. Let's pray. Our God, we praise you that you have revealed to us how we might find wisdom and how we might have a relationship with you and fear you and be saved from eternal judgment and from misery even in this life, from continuing in the path of sin. We thank you, Lord, that you have revealed it to us and that it has been taught to us through your word. We pray that we would see past the vanity of the world and all its desires which are passing away and see Christ as the pearl of great price. We pray, Lord, that you would open our eyes to see him in his glory. May we, by the power of your Holy Spirit, by your grace, may we be determined, whatever else we might get in this life, to find you, to know you, to know Jesus Christ. We pray in his name, amen.