Proverbs 28:26
The one who trusts himself is a fool, but one who walks in wisdom will be safe.
Introduction
We have a little bit of time these next few weeks to slow down a bit, at least so it seems! VBS is now behind us, and the waning days of summer are happening. I know that this time of the year, I usually am trying to get caught up with my reading and trying to make good memories with the kids before they go back to school. One of the things that I have been doing is re-reading the Proverbs. Of course, many of you know that Proverbs is part of the wisdom literature that comes from the Bible, but it also gives us many of our sayings that people who do not go to church actually know as well. Things like Proverbs 3:5, which is “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.” Or Proverbs 27:17, which is “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” Or, one of my favorite because of how exactly Jewish it is, Proverbs 17:22, which says “A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.” Proverbs are wonderful sayings that were collected over the generations. As one Bible commentary put it, “It is reasonable to assume that such sayings originated and circulated among the ordinary people.”
Think about some of the sayings we know as colloquialisms in Southern society. Things like “that dog’ll hunt.” Or “that person’s wetter than a wet hen!” Or the ever wonderful “bless your heart”, which of course does not mean bless your heart in most cases! These are the sayings that we know from over the generations. And they almost always have a teaching moment attached to them in some way or fashion. I will say that we are only going to touch on one today, and then one more next week, but we will occasionally come back to the Proverbs. You can mine the meanings from these Proverbs your entire life, and always come up with something that will help you in whatever situation you have in your life!
This week, we focus in on a Proverb that gives a couplet that describes perfectly the state of mankind. When we think we know what we are doing on our own, and we rely on our own wisdom and understanding without stating that it’s from the Lord first and foremost, we are a foolish person! But there’s more to this verse that I’d like to share with you today.
The Folly of Trusting One’s Own Heart
Have you ever had a friend who told you “just trust me!” Now, you may be thinking of one of two kinds of people. The first one is the one that you can completely trust without a shadow of a doubt that they will not lead you astray. They are trustworthy, they are dependable, and when they say ‘trust me’, you know that they are to be trusted! But then there’s the other one who says “just trust me!” I had a friend growing up, in fact he is the one that my Joshua is named after. Now, growing up, Josh Reeves would be one of the latter more often than not. He would say ‘trust me!’ And then we would inevitably get into lots of trouble. Memorable trouble, but trouble nonetheless! Now, this is not to say that he was foolish, at least when we both grew up quite a bit. When he would say ‘trust me’ later in life, I most certainly did! But in our early lives, we often try to lean on our own understanding to try to lead the way. I know that I’ve said this before in my sermons, but before I completely dedicated myself to Jesus Christ, I tried to outrun my calling. This is a prime example of how it is complete folly to trust your own heart instead of trusting in what God has for you.
Let me give you another example. When my kids have a birthday coming up, they will always ask for a million things. They are not thinking of the big picture, wanting just small little piddly things rather than what is in store for them when they have their actual birthday. Usually we get them something that they have really wanted and really will use over the entire year. But that’s how we are, isn’t it? When we try to do everything on our own instead of trusting God, and trusting in His plan for us, we are just following our own emotions and thoughts without care or worry as to what God wants us to be doing. Our heart, without following the will of God in our lives, will lead us astray. Why is that? Because our heart is polluted with sin, and because of that, we will always try to choose what is best for us, even though it usually isn’t. When we are in sin, or have backslided into a sinful nature, we will always choose what is the worst for ourselves.
The Folly of Missing God’s Wisdom
Let’s look at this another way. Look at the verse one more time. It talks about the one who trust himself is a fool, but one who walks in wisdom will be safe. Now, what is wisdom? Wisdom is defined as having experience, knowledge, and good judgement. We know that the book of Proverbs is a book of wisdom. It shows the knowledge, experience, and good judgement of the people of Israel and of God himself. And that’s the real answer here. True wisdom comes from God, and from God alone. We can learn on our own, gaining experience. We can attain knowledge. Anyone can do that. But good judgement? How do we attain that? It comes from asking the Lord for it.
We have two very clear examples of asking for wisdom in the Bible. The first that I will touch on comes from 1 Kings 3. I won’t quote the entire first 15 verses of this chapter, but make a note of it and go read it for yourself this week and see what you make of it. To set the scene, Solomon had just been made king, had made peace with Egypt by marrying Pharaoh’s daughter, and he made a thousand offerings on the altar of the Lord. The Lord appeared to Solomon during a dream, and he told Solomon that he could ask anything that he wanted of the Lord. Solomon acknowledged that it was God that had placed his father, David, and then himself on the throne, and that he lacked a knowledge for ruling his people. As he stated in verse 7, “I am only a little child and do not know how to carry out my duties.” He then asks the Lord for discerning heart to govern God’s people and to distinguish right and wrong. God was so pleased with Solomon that he not only granted him that wisdom to govern his people, he granted him long life and riches even though he had not asked for it. What Solomon did after this, I think, is just as important to the story. Solomon continued to walk in wisdom with the Lord. He had gone to Gibeon to offer sacrifices, but when he returned to Jerusalem, he stood before the ark of the covenant and sacrificed offering and fellowship offerings to show that he was still humble before the Lord. He was not missing out on God’s wisdom because he had not only asked for that wisdom, but he continued to humble himself before the Lord! And we still know Solomon as the wisest ruler of all time. In 1 Kings 4:34, it reads “from all nations people came to listen to Solomon’s wisdom, sent by the kings of the world, who had heard of his wisdom.”
We have a second time that we are to ask for wisdom, and it comes from James 1:5-6. James was likely the apostle James, the half brother of Jesus himself. In these verses, James wrote “if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind.” Now, to fully understand this statement made by James, we have to understand just a little bit about Roman and Greek culture of the time. Long story short, they believed that wisdom was ethical, scientific, or philosophical knowledge that was accumulated through human reason. There was no way that it could be learned from a supernatural force such as God himself. In fact, they believed that there as no way that wisdom could be transferred to humanity but through reason itself. But this stands in contrast to what we know from the Bible, and especially what we know about the Holy Spirit. As one commentator put it, “James considers wisdom to be a supreme and direct gift from God to the Christian and uses it naturally as an example of what men should pray for.” But there is one caveat to this, and it applies directly to what this point is that I am trying to make. The only thing that we cannot have in our hearts when we ask for wisdom is doubt that God will give it. When Solomon asked for wisdom to rule his people, he asked for it knowing that God would fulfill that promise to him, and showed his resolution towards that knowledge by continuing to offer his sacrifices to God and to humble himself before the Lord Most High. And that is the same as what James is stating here. When we ask for wisdom from God, we ask for it fully, and without doubt in our lives. If we do ask with doubt, or if we attempt to find wisdom on our own through reasoning, we are bound to fail. That is why God shows us how we can have wisdom through Him, and not through our own experiences, or knowledge, or even through our own judgement.
The Folly of Missing God’s Deliverance
And judgement. We have a judgement on our lives when we sin, unless we are saved through the blood of the perfect sacrifice. When we trust ourselves, we are foolish. There are so many in the world that will say “Oh, there’s lots of ways to get to heaven.” Well, Jesus himself said in John 14:6 that “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Now, I’ve said this to people before when encountering this type of logic, when they say that there are many ways to heaven and I counter with this verse. I say that either Jesus was a lunatic for saying this, or either he was completely and utterly truthful, and was saying that there is only one way to get to Heaven. And I also talk about what Jesus has done for me in my life, and what he has delivered me from, and how he has proved to me how he is the only way, and the only truth that matters, and the only life that we can live, for without that life, we are condemned to death.
We touched a little on the truth part of that verse last week, didn’t we? But we could easily substitute the word “wisdom” for truth and it means the same thing. Our verse from Proverbs says that one who walks in wisdom will be safe. We know that there are many verses that tell us to walk with the Spirit. 2 Corinthians 5:7, “For we walk by faith, not by sight.” Galatians 5:16, “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” Even in the Old Testament, Isaiah 40:31, “But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.” On and on and on in the Bible, when we walk in the faith, we walk with God. When we walk in wisdom, we will be safe! But those who do not walk in wisdom, who do not walk with the Lord, who do not walk in the Spirit are damned to Hell if they do not start walking on the straight and narrow path. Who will tell them? Who? And when? Is it just the preacher’s job to do it? Well, it’s part of his job, but it’s the job of the people who make up the body of Christ, too! It’s OUR task daily, to take up the cross and follow Christ. It is to take up the hard things, and to walk with Christ to a place where our old selves have died, and we are hungry to tell others about what Jesus Christ has done for us! If we don’t walk in wisdom, we walk in a folly of missing God’s deliverance for our lives. And when we don’t share that with others, we have the follow of having others around us miss God’s deliverance as well.
Conclusion
Wisdom can only come from the Lord. And what we can learn from this particular proverb, from so long ago, is that we cannot trust ourselves to provide that wisdom. Only God can provide it to us. I want to share two short passages that I came across this week that impacted my thinking greatly on this.
The first is a quote from Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was not known as a great church-goer, even during his days in the White House. But every single day, Lincoln would start his day by taking his Bible in his hands, reading it for quite a while, and praying. He is quoted as having said “I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My wisdom, and that of all about me, seemed insufficient for the day.” The great emancipator, perhaps the greatest, or second greatest president in our country’s history, felt that his personal wisdom was lacking, and could only find the perfect wisdom from on High.
The second story comes from Edmund P. Clowney, who was a theologian-in-residence at a large Presbyterian church in California, as well as being an assistant professor for many years in one of the Presbyterian colleges in that state. He stated this in Christianity today in 1995, stating:
“God's wisdom is not first counsel on how to practice family values or to use common sense. It is the wisdom of His plan of grace, the wisdom of the Cross. That wisdom is foolishness to the calculations of prudence. Wise living is sacrificial living, giving up what it cannot keep to gain what it cannot lose [to quote Jim Elliot]. It is a thank-offering of praise, enabled by the mercy of God that has united us to Christ in His death and resurrection.”
In other words, what Clowney was stating was that wisdom from the Lord is not something that we can earn, just like our salvation. It is freely given to us, just like when we are saved from our sin. But all it takes it to ask of it from the Lord, and to ask humbly. And to ask for it without worry and without doubt. Won’t you ask for it today? Let’s pray.
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