Sometimes we tell ourselves lies long enough that we begin to believe them. Sometimes we lie to ourselves or other people or the world tells us things about ourselves, and we begin to believe those lies. We begin to believe that they're truths.
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When I was a young believer, I had a mentor in my life who challenged me and asked me, he said, Robbie, will you take 31 days and read a proverb a day? And he said, if you'll do that, I promise you it will change your life. So I accepted the challenge, and I read a proverb a day for 31 days. And I can honestly say, folks, that that time in the Proverbs of reading it, stopping, asking what God was saying to me, what did I need to change in my life, what was he revealing to me, what lies was I being told that the truths were revealing to me, it changed my life.
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Someone once said, we are products of wisdom, or we're products of the lack of wisdom. We're products of wisdom, or we're products of the lack of wisdom. Someone else has said, the lack of wisdom will eventually catch up with you. If you've lived any time at all, you know that to be true. The lack of wisdom will eventually catch up with you.
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This collection of writings that we call Proverbs offers practical wisdom and guidance for godly living. The general theme emphasizes the fear of the Lord as the foundation of wisdom and knowledge. The collection of Proverbs covers the themes such as wisdom, morality, discipline, justice, integrity, providing insight through short, memorable sayings. So, basically, everything we need to know about life is covered in the book of Proverbs.
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People traveled from the ends of the earth to go sit under the teaching of Solomon, and we have his teachings right here, the book of Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes, and some other. But we're talking about Proverbs. We need to spend time. And we don't have to travel across the world to sit under the teaching of Solomon. We have them right here in the Word of God.
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Knowledge is nothing more than accumulation of raw facts. Okay, I know a lot of people that know a lot of facts. And that doesn't make them wise. They know a lot about a lot, but they're not very wise. There's so many people that I know that know about so many more things than I do. But I look at them and I go, your life's a wreck. And it's because they're not wise.
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Wisdom is the ability to apply that knowledge to see people, events, and situations as God sees them. Wisdom is the application of knowledge.
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If I know that what God says about something and I apply it to my life, then the Bible says I'm wise. But the opposite is true. Right? To live a foolish life is to not apply the wisdom of God to our life. The Bible calls us fools.
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A biblical definition of a fool is knowing the truth and choosing not to apply it to our life. Then the Bible says we're a fool. Then God says we're a fool. When we know the truth and we don't apply it, then we're a fool. If we refuse to apply what we know.
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As we work through the Proverbs, there's some areas in your life, in my life, that we're believing some lies about. That we know God says, and we say, but, did he really? Well, I know God's word says this, but I've gotten away with it for a while. Well, it's coming. It's 120 years for Noah's day. It's coming. You may think you're getting away with that sin. You may think you're getting away with living that foolish lifestyle of not, of ignoring God's truths. But I promise you this, the day of reckoning is coming. So be not deceived. God is not mocked. Whatever you sow, you will reap.
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Proverbs 1 tells us that all the Proverbs are meant to educate both the unlearned and the learned. We're never, the Proverbs can help us no matter what our education level is, our life experience level is, and the Proverbs can help us no matter how many degrees we have behind our name. The Proverbs can help us. We're never too wise to learn from Proverbs and we're never too unlearned to learn from Proverbs.
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Here's part of the problem of why we make foolish decisions many times. Here's why: it's because we listen to the wrong things, it's because we read the wrong things, it's because we listen to the wrong advice, it's because we ignore godly wisdom in our life, it's because we listen to 99 other podcasts and maybe throw a spiritual one in there during the week, it's because our focus is so on a getting and attaining and being who the world says we should be instead of sitting back and saying, God, what do you want from me and how are you going to grow me in this life?
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We're believing the lies, we're believing that we don't have time or we don't have enough understanding or will it make that big a difference, or we spend us so much time gaining knowledge about things that don't really matter instead of knowledge applied from the word of God.
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To understand that the fear of the Lord begins the journey of knowledge is key to being wise. It's key to this whole series. To fear the Lord is the foundation of being who God wants us to be. To fear the Lord doesn't mean being afraid of him but rather having a reverence for God, aligning your actions with his will.
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We have a heavenly Father that we should fear letting him down more than pleasing other people. We have a heavenly Father that we should have a fear of, a reverential godly love, fear of our Father saying, God, whatever you want, Father, whatever you want me to do and who you want me to be and how you want me to live, that's what I will do because I want to please you before I please anybody else, including myself. That's the battle.
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If you say, well, I know what God's word says here and I'm not doing it, you don't fear the Lord properly. Well, I know what God's word says about this aspect of life and I don't think it's that bad and I don't really agree with it and it's not that I don't understand it, I'm just not doing it, then you don't have a proper fear of God.
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Here's the problem, parents: we want to tell our kids that they need to listen to us when we're not listening to our Father. We're not doing what the Father's saying, but we expect our kids to do what we say when the truth is they're just mimicking us. Their rebellion is our rebellion.
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Here Solomon warns against being lured by sinners into their destructive path of greed and violence. He portrays the dangerous allure of ungodly gain and the severe consequences that follow.
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Any way we try to get ahead, we try to cheat on God, we try to cheat other people, any way we try to abuse money, we try to hoard it for ourselves, God says you're a fool. See, we think we're being wise but not following God's teachings, but God says we're fools.
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Wisdom is calling every one of us wherever we are in life, whatever we think to be true or untrue. Wisdom is calling us to examine it through the book of Proverbs and seek wisdom this morning. Wisdom is calling us to make wise decisions. Wisdom protects us from harm.
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Many of the bad choices we make, it's because we ignore wisdom. We can blame it on other people, we can blame it on whatever we want, but the truth is we ignore what we know to be true. We ignore the teaching of parents, we ignore the teaching of the word of God, we ignore the teaching of good godly counsel.
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We are products of wisdom or we're products of the lack of wisdom. I wonder who we are today. Again, I want to encourage you to read a proverb a day next 31 days, seek wisdom and you'll find her.
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