Message: Real Wisdom Follows God’s Holy Spirit!
I am excited to talk with you today about something that I am totally unqualified to talk with you about. Wisdom; how to appreciate it, get it, how to harness it, and apply being wise in a wholesome and Godly way in our day to day lives. Those are my goals today, and let me identify to you as a novice from the get-go. In other words, I’m working on it!
Wisdom is a subject that has enticed, titillated, and outright enthralled the sophisticate elite, scholars, and intellectuals for centuries. All the above have searched for the sources and ways to be wise from the very beginning of humanity only to find at the end of the day, they still can’t form a cogent sentence or succeed from screwing up living their lives through bad decision making.
I guess the first question to ask is; why do we even want to chase after something that seems so elusive and even… sometimes… self-destructive. Just look at what a mess Solomon made of His life and God’s Kingdom of Israel! We’ll come back to Him in a minute.
Suffice to say, this wisdom thing seems to be like other things in life that are tools for our use. They need to be respected, and understood, as gifts from God.
The answer is out there. Perhaps beginning with the thought of how great would it be is we could live in harmony with all kinds of people who held real wisdom as a source for modest and whole-hearted service to God, by serving others.
Even better, if we could be wise people while remaining humble enough to not repel all those around us by acting wiser than thou. Learning to seek wisdom and understanding. That wisdom along with other gifts from God are a means to a better life, because we have placed our wisdom in a place where it is following God’s Holy Spirit as its source, and inspiration. Then we can discern!
And before you tune me out this morning for already using fancy words, titles, and mentioning elite scholars and sophisticated intellectuals, it’s you this message is intended for. For too long people like you and me have relegated all of that stuff to our betters (whatever that means), and look at the state of our world right now!
My thought is, and that’s all it is, my thought. You are tasked with the heavy burden of studying, praying and thinking with God for yourself. My thought, real wisdom begins when you… all of you… individually and together as God’s people, come to the Lord seeking His Holy Spirit to lead you to the true wisdom that originates in God.
It’s the Holy Spirit that will enable you to get fuller meaning from Solomons words about wisdom written in Proverbs so many years ago in antient times. Here is “Wisdom’s Call” Solomon’s poem that makes wisdom into a speaking person with words to describe herself. God must have thought it was important for you to understand what Solomon is writing to us because it’s in His Scripture. Please pray for discernment as I attempt to do God’s word justice… Reading from Proverbs 8: 1-4, 22-31;
8 Does not wisdom call out?
Does not understanding raise her voice?
2 At the highest point along the way,
where the paths meet, she takes her stand;
3 beside the gate leading into the city,
at the entrance, she cries aloud:
4 “To you, O people, I call out;
I raise my voice to all mankind…
…22 “The Lord brought me forth as the first of his works,
before his deeds of old;
23 I was formed long ages ago,
at the very beginning, when the world came to be.
24 When there were no watery depths, I was given birth,
when there were no springs overflowing with water;
25 before the mountains were settled in place,
before the hills, I was given birth,
26 before he made the world or its fields
or any of the dust of the earth.
27 I was there when he set the heavens in place,
when he marked out the horizon on the face of the deep,
28 when he established the clouds above
and fixed securely the fountains of the deep,
29 when he gave the sea its boundary
so the waters would not overstep his command,
and when he marked out the foundations of the earth.
30 Then I was constantly at his side.
I was filled with delight day after day,
rejoicing always in his presence,
31 rejoicing in his whole world
and delighting in mankind.
When God was making the Heavens and the Earth, Wisdom became one of the Lord’s creations. A creation of God, that delights in mankind. Notice God’s word doesn’t just identify the worldly, elite, sophisticated or scholarly, but mankind. You and me, when we try to understand and apply wisdom in Godly ways.
Through modestly living in the Spirit, by applying righteousness, loving mercy, and walking humbly with our Lord, God equips each of us a portion of wisdom in doses that we can handle. I believe that it is through wisdom that is gained through the Holy Spirit, that we can begin to understand and then apply to our hearts the beautiful psalm of David that speaks to our place in the creation. Reading today’s Call to Worship, Psalm 8;
1 Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory
in the heavens.
2 Through the praise of children and infants
you have established a stronghold against your enemies,
to silence the foe and the avenger.
*Side Note; To say that the enemies of God, are those who have decided to be in rebellion and are in a state of war with God. Do to their own free will and free choice. This Psalm will make no sense to those people by choice. Continuing at verse 3;
3 When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
4 what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
human beings that you care for them?
5 You have made them a little lower than the angels
and crowned them with glory and honor.
6 You made them rulers over the works of your hands;
you put everything under their feet:
7 all flocks and herds,
and the animals of the wild,
8 the birds in the sky,
and the fish in the sea,
all that swim the paths of the seas.
9 Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
When we consider all that the Lord has vested in the person sitting right next to you, we might be tempted to kneel down and worship that person, but wisdom, guided by God’s Holy Spirit, balances our exuberance and excitement into appreciating, proclaiming, and worshipping God the creator, and not our neighbor the created.
When we consider His creating the universe, and then placing us just below the Angels with so much of His creation below us… a feeling of great gratitude should follow us in our day to day lives. We must be driven to search out wisdom inspired by, guided, and tempered through His Holy Spirit in order to absorb all that God wrote through David for our edification and growth.
It appears what David’s son Solomon got wrong in life, was that he began to believe that wisdom was an end in and of itself. He fell victim to his own arrogance and wisdom without the Holy Spirit. (Which is like me driving a high-performance car at age 15. Which is why I was relegated to the family station wagon.) Both of us crashed and it wasn’t pretty, and plenty painful.
You see if I am relying on the world’s wisdom without God’s Spirit, I have severely limited my ability for insight and a way ahead. I am reminded of what Isaiah instructs us on the difference between worldly incite and God’s ways. Reading from Isaiah 55:7-9;
7 Let the wicked forsake their ways
and the unrighteous their thoughts.
Let them turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on them,
and to our God, for he will freely pardon.
8 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Once we begin to understand who God is and what we are not, and yet He still loves us in spite of us, everything begins to come into perspective. Now I begin to get a glimpse of why I need God’s anchor in my life, because its just overwhelming without Him. Just look at the world in its present stoper.
If I am really looking for real wisdom and clarity in my life, I need to have a better understanding of what God wants for me in my life. I need to understand God better. But how? By reading His word, working on my relationship in and with Him, and asking for His Spirit in our hearts. I am led read from Paul’s letter to the Church in Corinth, a place two thousand years ago struggling just like us to know and to serve God. Reading from 1 Corinthians 2:9-12;
9 However, as it is written:
“What no eye has seen,
what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived”
the things God has prepared for those who love him—
10 these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit.
The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. 11 For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 12 What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us.
We know that our Lord has given us this very same Spirit in order that we might live a good life in and with Him, and to understand God a little bit better as He chooses to grow us in Him.
We have been instructed about this Holy Spirit, the advocate by our Lord in the Gospel of John in today’s Message Reading. Reading again from John 16:7-15;
7 But very truly I tell you, it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. 8 When he comes, he will prove the world to be in the wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: 9 about sin, because people do not believe in me; 10 about righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; 11 and about judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned.
Side Note; To say that it seems like the Spirit is an important function of our free choice. With the Son’s overwhelming presence returned to the Father, the Spirit now serves to walk with and in each of us. Hence growing us, refining and maturing the wisdom in our walk in God.
12 “I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. 13 But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. 14 He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you. 15 All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will receive from me what he will make known to you.”
Today we have talked about;
- What real wisdom is.
It is led and inspired by God’s Holy Spirit
- Where wisdom might be found
Through the Holy Spirit and provided as God grows us
- Wisdom is not just something smart people have
- That wisdom without our Lord, is not real wisdom
- That wisdom like all gifts from God are there to be humbly used in our daily lives.
- They exist to serve us, not us worship them!
- What many philosophers beginning with Solomon might have missed!
It is my hope and prayer that all of you will dip liberally into the gifts of the Spirit, to include wisdom to aid you in your humble service to God by serving the people He places in your lives. This world is a dark place right now and lacking God’s wisdom in many of its activities. That’s why He has placed you in the here and now. God bless you,
Amen!
Benediction; 1 Corinthians 2:9-10 and Numbers 6:24-26
9 However, as it is written:
“What no eye has seen,
what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived”
the things God has prepared for those who love him—
10 these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit.
and
24 “‘“The Lord bless you
and keep you;
25 the Lord make his face shine on you
and be gracious to you;
26 the Lord turn his face toward you
and give you peace.”’