Message Description

Dr. Kurt Bjorklund looks through the book of Proverbs to start the new year in a new series about living a better life through Jesus and three angles we can view wisdom.

Message Notes & Study Guide

Message Transcript

Good morning. Happy New Year. It's great to be together.

Just before we jump into the teaching today, I want to say a special thank you to all of you who served over Christmas at any of our campuses; Butler, Strip District, Wexford. There were 15 Christmas Eve services in Wexford, two in Butler, one in the Strip District, plus Sunday morning services. In the middle of that, I think, 23 total services in about five days... not about five days... in five days. And so many of you volunteered.

I think here in Wexford it takes about 75 to 100 volunteers per service to help make those services happen. And I just want to say thank you to those of you who made that part of your Christmas, just saying, "I'm going to serve and be here." And so many others of you invited people, brought people, and it was really a great time for us as a church, as over those five days, about 16,000, a little over 16,000, people came to one of our three campuses and had an experience of church, of Christmas, hopefully an encounter with Jesus Christ. And so, I just want to say thank you.

And I also want to say if you're returning, if Christmas was one of your first times in church... first times back in church... and you decided to try church again together, our hope is that we experience God together, week after week as we worship together, as we look at the Bible together, and often get in groups together and discuss and learn and grow what it means to have a relationship with the God of the universe.

Also, I just want to take one moment and say this, and that is, if you've been around for a while, you know that we've been talking about refurbishing the auditorium here in Wexford. And the latest I have heard is that maybe... And I stress the word maybe... April 1 might be the start date, and so we'll keep you posted as we head toward, hopefully, that project.

Let's take a moment and pray together. Father, we thank you just for each person who's gathered in each location, in the chapel in Butler, in the Strip District, in Wexford. Lord, I pray that you would just speak to each of us. God, as I often pray, I pray that my words would reflect Your word in content and in tone and in emphasis. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

There are some choices in life that are relatively easy. Would you rather eat at McDonald's or a well-cooked meal that somebody has made for you? That's not a hard choice. Would you rather eat McDonald's or a stale granola bar that's been sitting in your car for a week? So, it's a fairly easy choice. But there are choices that are much more challenging than that. In fact, most of the significant choices in life are not easy. If they were easy, they wouldn't probably be hard to make. And a lot of times those choices are not choices that are right or wrong, although those can certainly fall into that category or something that's clear from knowledge, they're choices that require wisdom.

In other words, what am I going to do in this difficult situation? Do I take this job? Do I move my family? Who am I going to marry? Should I stay in this marriage? What's happening in this dynamic, in this relationship, that gives me an uneasy feeling? Is this person a problem in my family, in the organization that I'm a part of? How do I confront that person? Those are choices that make and break a lot of how our lives live. And those are the choices that we find in the realm of wisdom.

Today, we're going to begin a new series that we're calling Better, and we're going to look at the Book of Proverbs for about the next eight weeks. And this will be a little different than our normal series in that we won't go verse by verse through a section of the Bible. But instead, we're going to look at the whole of the Book of Proverbs and talk about the themes that come from it. And the overarching theme that we're going to use is one that I'm just going to simply say is Better. And the reason for this is, throughout the Book of Proverbs, often the word better is used. Sometimes it's implied to say one thing is better than another. And here's just a couple of examples.

This is Proverbs, Verse 11 of Chapter 8. It says, "For wisdom is more precious than rubies and nothing you desire can compare with her." There, the word better isn't used, but it's implied. Wisdom is more precious than wealth. In other words, it would be better for you, for me, to have wisdom in life than it would be to have more stuff or more resources.

This is Proverbs, Chapter 15, Verse 17. It says this: "Better is a small serving of vegetables with love than a fattened calf with hatred." Now, this is not a exhortation to get on the Paleo Diet. This is saying that it is actually better to not have a lot of stuff, but be in a place where there's love than to eat luxurious meals, and yet be in a place where there's a lot of acrimony in relationships.

And then Proverbs 25, Verse 7, says this. It says, "It's better for him to say to you, "Come up here," than for him to humiliate you before nobles." Again, the use of the word better, saying that it's better for you to wait to be asked to something big than to try to promote yourself and then be humiliated. Fairly simple statement again. But what that's indicating is that there is a better path than maybe the path that we might choose otherwise.

And what we hope to do in these weeks is take some of the principles, some of the themes, that exist in the Book of Proverbs, and as we work our way through these themes, come to understand what is this better choice.

Now, just a couple of words about Proverbs first. Proverbs, the way it begins is the Proverbs of Solomon. And the word proverbs means a pithy statement. And if you read through the Book of Proverbs, what you find is that there are a lot of statements. And what I would say is, they are generally or usually true, meaning you can probably find exceptions to the things that exist in Proverbs. So, when the Proverb says, "You know, if you follow my wisdom, you'll have a long life." Well, some people will follow wisdom and will still die young, but it doesn't mean that the Proverb isn't true. It just means that it has a broader application, not that it's an absolute guarantee in every instance to work that way. In other words, it's generally or usually true, not necessarily a guarantee. And that we have to also compare Proverbs with Proverbs because... and other scripture... because sometimes Proverbs will say two things that appear to be almost contradictory.

For example, in Proverbs 26, we're told, "Reprove not a fool or he will hate you for it." And then the very next verse says, "Reprove a fool or they'll go on basically in their folly." Well, which is it? Well, the point of that is to say you have to use discernment to decide whether or not saying something or not saying something is the wisest approach. And if you just fixate on one, you may miss the overall teaching.

Now, when we say better, my hope is that who of us doesn't say, "I want a better life." But I'm concerned about one thing with that title. And as I gave the series that title, I wrestled with this a little bit. And that is, the overall teaching of Christianity, the message of Christianity is not be better, be a better version of yourself. The overall message of Christianity is Jesus has done for us what we can't do. And so, the message of the series isn't be better so God accepts you. You're accepted if you come to Jesus Christ acknowledging your sin and saying, "I need what You've done for me on my behalf to be true for me because of my sin." But that doesn't negate the exhortations in the Bible to say there is a better way, and that the more that we follow God's precepts, the more we understand them, the more we apply them, the better our life will be. And what Proverbs does is it says, "There can be a better life for you if you will understand and apply and live in the principles and the precepts of God."

And so, what I'd like to do today is talk about wisdom being better than foolishness, because that's probably the most dominant theme in Proverbs, that wisdom is better than folly. But here's my guess. Just when I say that, that many of us, our immediate kind of reaction is, "Oh, this is going to be a yawner of a talk." And here's why I say that, because many of us, our first reaction is, "Well, okay. You know this might be good for somebody else, but I'm pretty shrewd. I'm pretty wise. I don't need a lot of wisdom because I already have it." That's how most people in our culture think. Now, there are probably some of us here who say, "No, I need wisdom. I need all the wisdom I can get." But most of us, if we're really honest, don't see ourselves as needing a lot in this area. We think, "You know, I'm balanced. If I had to choose, I would tip the scale more to wise than to foolish."

There's an old children's story that indicates how blinded we can be with our own wisdom. It's called The Emperor's New Clothes... not The Emperor's New Groove. That's a different children's story... The Emperor's New Clothes. And in the story, the emperor commissions two swindlers, they're called, to make him new clothes. And what they had told him was that they could make clothes so beautiful that they would astound everyone who saw them, but these clothes would have special qualities. And that is, if you did not deserve the ability to see them, if you were foolish or stupid or unworthy of your position, you wouldn't be able to see the clothes.

And so, they took a bunch of money from the emperor. They started to weave the clothes, and he sent in a couple of tenants to go see how the clothes look. They went in, they didn't see any clothes. They didn't see them working on anything, but they didn't want to be the unworthy, stupid or foolish people. So what they did is they came back to the emperor and said, "They're beautiful."

Finally, the day came for the emperor to wear his new clothes. He goes in. Everyone around is saying how beautiful they are. He doesn't want to admit that he doesn't see anything. And so, he gets dressed in full Adam garb, to use a biblical term, and he goes out on a parade with the people. And finally, a little child says, "He doesn't have any clothes on," and everybody realizes that they've all been just perpetuating foolishness.

And here's why I just mentioned that story. It's possible to think ourselves wise and not be that different from the emperor going about confirming our beliefs, our actions, and then ending up in tough spaces.

I've been a pastor for, as my son would say, a minute. It's been about 30 years. And I've had a chance to spend time with people in a lot of different spaces. And here are just some things I've seen. I've seen people walk out on their spouses for people who are just from kind of a casual view, nothing like their spouse, and give up half their wealth, and then lived to regret it. I've seen people marry people who are destructive and become a destructive force in their life. I've seen people have great career success only to see it come to nothing because of their inability to get along with people or their inability to check ego. I've seen siblings stop talking, and they can't even remember why. I've seen long-term friendships broken due to stubbornness. I've seen people move across the country for what they thought was a great opportunity and give up way more in the process than whatever they gained. I've seen people earn a lot of money and lose it on foolish investments or sloppy habits. I've seen people fail to get control of addictive impulses and lose everything that mattered most to them. And I've seen people work too much, and then look back on their lives with piles of regret and wonder why they spent so much of their life so consumed with their career.

Now the reason I just take a moment to say all of that is because these are all people who said, "Yeah, I'm pretty wise. I've got it down." And yet made decisions that, when they look back on their life, they say, "That probably wasn't the wisest thing."

And so, here's what I'd like to do just for our time together today. I'd like to look at wisdom from three angles, from the Book of Proverbs, and try to help us understand that not just what it is, but how it can be more common in our lives.

And so, the first angle is this, and that is the benefits of wisdom. And by the benefits of wisdom, what I'm referring to here is this idea of what are the positive things that happen when wisdom is present in our lives?

If we look at the very beginning of Proverbs, we see the word wisdom here, Verse 2, it says, "For the gaining of wisdom," and wisdom is the Hebrew word, chokmah, which means a moral kind of wisdom. But it means more than that. It means knowing what to do when knowing what to do isn't clear. In other words, it's those decisions that aren't clearly defined by right or wrong or by a best choice necessarily, but where it feels gray.

And then we're told this: "It's for instruction and for understanding words of insight. And instruction means training with accountability. Insight is a word that means an ability to see distinctions." And so, what wisdom is, in many ways, is the capacity to make great decisions over and over and over again in little things and in big things, day after day, throughout our lives.

Derek Kidner, who wrote a great commentary on Proverbs, put it this way. He said, "Wisdom is being competent with regard to the realities of life." In other words, wisdom will help you or me make great choices. But it doesn't just do that. It also brings success. Chapter 3 says this, beginning in Verse 1. It says, "My son, do not forget my teaching, but keep my commands in your heart, for they will prolong your life many years and will bring you peace and prosperity."

And again, not a blanket guarantee, but what that's saying is the more you understand wisdom, the more peace and prosperity, the longer your life will be, the better, the more successful your life will be.

One of the things that can sometimes happen when we emphasize grace, which is a great emphasis, is that then we say, "Well, then there's no point to doing anything right." But what Proverb says is that the more you understand God's ways, the more you prioritize it in your life, the more success you will have. And it doesn't mean you'll have unbridled success. It doesn't mean you won't have failures. But what it means is, relative to what your life would have been without that, there would be more success, not just in your career, but in your relationships, in your families, and all the things that matter to you.

And then we see this in Proverbs 3, Verse 35, and that is, "There's honor and good reputation for those with wisdom." So as the wise inherit honor, but fools get only shame.

I saw an article earlier this year. It was about a plane that took off in London last year. It was a British Airways flight. And it was supposed to go to Germany and ended up going to Scotland which, if you know your European geography, is the exact opposite direction. And evidently they had filed the wrong flight plan. And so everyone got on this plane thinking they were going to Germany. They land in Scotland, and everyone said, "Why are we in Scotland?" And the wrong flight plan had made everyone unaware that they were going the wrong direction. They just went to Scotland. And everybody of course, in this day and age, tweets about it and says, "I can't believe what just happened."

But here's what happens without wisdom, and that is sometimes we're going in the wrong direction and we don't realize it. So, there's benefits to wisdom, good choices, success, honor.

But there's also something we need to understand, and that is what does wisdom really look like? In other words, what's the description of wisdom? And in Proverbs, Chapter 1, Verse 22, there are some words used that describe the opposite of wisdom. Here's what we see. It says, "How long will you who are simple love your simple ways? How long will mockers delight in mockery and fools hate knowledge?"

And in the Book of Proverbs, there are three different Hebrew words that are translated into English for the word fool. And you can't see it in English unless you look at a Greek underlying concordance. There's the word, kesil, which is a word that means someone who lacks judgment. And this is the most common word. So most often when you read fool in Proverbs, that's what's being used.

And then, there's a separate Hebrew word for simple. It's translated often simple or naive in English. And this has a similar idea. This is somebody who doesn't understand, necessarily, what's going on.

Then there's the word, [foreign 00:18:03], which is a word that means stubborn, and probably is less common, just translated as fool. And then, the other English or Hebrew word translated as mocker I think is similar. And then, there's nabal, which is a word that means a godless fool.

And here's the point of me just laying this out. There are different kinds of foolishness in our lives, but the predominant idea here is it's one who lacks judgment or who is stubborn in life. And if you were to take time and just read through the Book of Proverbs and make a list of people who are wise and what that looks like, and people who are foolish and what that looks like, you could come up with 30, 40 things easily.

Let me just give you a sample of a few. In Proverbs 1, Verse 7, we see that a wise person seeks God, but an unwise person or a foolish person disregards the ways of God.

In Proverbs, Chapter 17, Verse 10, we see that a wise person heeds rebuke. In other words, when somebody comes to them and says, "Here's something that you need to hear," they'll listen, whereas a foolish person will say, "I don't want to hear what you have to say."

In Proverbs 29, Verse 8, we see that a wise person calms anger... This is especially the anger of others... whereas a foolish person will stir up agitation. So this is the... You know, somebody comes and says, "Can you believe that they did this?" Or, "that this happened?" The wise person will find a way to diffuse it, whereas a foolish person will throw a log on the fire, so to speak.

In Proverbs, Chapter 12, Verse 4 and Verses 5... or Chapter 5, Verses 15 through 17, we see that a wise person will prize marriage, will prioritize marriage, and a foolish person will chase sexual encounters beyond their marriage.

And in Proverbs 18, Verses 6 and 7, we see that a wise person avoids arguments, and a foolish person is combative, flippant with their words.

Now again, I could probably list 30, 40 of those kinds of things just from Proverbs. That's just to give you an idea. And the reason I do this is to say what's significant here is to understand that wisdom shows itself in the way that our lives are lived. I was reminded by a friend recently of something that... It was in a book that I think I had shared years ago. But it about a boat and how you can tell the path of a boat by its wake. I think I have a picture here just to show this, and what this one author said is that the wake on either side of the boat represents the relational world that we have and the professional or competent world that we have, whatever we do kind of as our task throughout life. And that if you look behind our lives, you see a wake, a relational wake, and a performance wake, and it is unmistakable in time. Meaning your relationships are either strong and healthy and good or they're not, and the wake tells the story. And your successes or the things that you do are either good or not, and the wake shows the story.

Now, certainly, there will be some blips in any wake. Somebody else's wake will cross our wake and create an issue. But if you look at your life and say, "It's been one relational train wreck after another, after another," at some point, instead of saying it's always somebody else's fault, what wisdom does is it says, "Maybe there's something with me." If every time you get a job you work for somebody who's incompetent or difficult or hard or unpleasant to work with, maybe at some point it isn't that every boss that you've had happened to be the world's worst boss. Maybe... Maybe, just maybe, the wake behind your boat is telling you something.

But you see, what foolishness does, what simplicity does, what hardheartedness, mockery does, is it always says there's always a problem somewhere else.

Henry Cloud writes about this in his book, Necessary Endings. He has a chapter in that book that talks about Proverbs, and he talks about three kinds of people in Proverbs. And then he says, I think here... Maybe I heard him say this somewhere... that he doesn't like three kinds of people because all of us are all of these at different times. "But," he said, "we all have a predominant thing." He says, "There's wise, there's fools, and there's evil people in Proverbs."

And his distinction is this. He says, "What a wise person does in the Book of Proverbs is when reality is shown to them, they adjust to reality. When they get light, they receive the light. What a fool does in Proverbs," he says, "is when reality is shown to them, they say, I don't want reality and they resist reality. They resist the light, and they either mock it or just don't hear it."

And here's why I mentioned this at this point, and that is that what wisdom really is, in many ways, is being open to reality. Now, sometimes people will give us their reality, and it isn't reality. So, wisdom doesn't mean you hear everything that everybody ever says. It means that you can again discern, but there are times when somebody in your life will say something that you need to hear. And if you don't hear it, then what that means is that, at least in part, if it's accurate feedback, if it's reality, that then you are not being wise.

Now, you can also be foolish by taking anything that anybody says. Again, the need for wisdom. And then Henry Cloud has this category for evil, and he basically says this, he says, "With a wise person, what you do is you give them resources, you help them, you give them feedback. With a foolish person," he says, "you basically give them limits and consequences because they won't receive light from you." And then he says there's evil people, some people who are bent on destruction. And I think Proverbs 23:10 might be a reference for that. But what he says is, "For these people, you do all you can not to deal with them." And his line is, "When you're dealing with an evil person, bring lawyers, guns, and money, because that's how you need to approach that."

Now, again, the point here is just to say it's easy to think we're wise, especially if we've had some success, but if our success causes us not to respond to the wisdom and the reality that's presented to us, that success can actually work against us.

So, we have the benefits of wisdom, we have the description of wisdom. Then I just want to talk for a few moments about the pathway to wisdom.

Proverbs, Chapter 2 begins this way. It says, "My son, if you accept my words and store up my commands within you, turning your ear to wisdom and applying your heart to understanding. Indeed, if you call out for insight and cry aloud for understanding, and if you look for it as for silver and search for it as hidden treasure, then you will understand and fear the Lord and find knowledge, the knowledge of God." In other words, wisdom is available if you'll prioritize it, if you'll seek it, if you'll ask for it.

Derek Kidner, again, put it this way. He said, "A, fool is not one by fate but by fault." In other words, we aren't born just with a foolish gene. We're foolish because we haven't sought wisdom. And Proverbs has a lot to say on this. Let me, again, just give you a couple of things.

The first thing that I would say about cultivating wisdom is this, and that is, it's important to be suspicious of our feelings. Here's why I say this. Proverbs, Chapter 9, Verse 17 and 18, says this: "Stolen water is sweet; food eaten in secret is delicious! But little do they know that the dead are in there and that her guests are deep in the realm of the dead."

Now that's a Proverb that you don't expect. It says when you eat something stolen, it's actually fun. That's basically what that says, and you're like, "Okay, that's in the Bible?" Well, here's what that's saying, and that is that when you go and say, "I'm doing something that's against the precepts of God," that there will be a moment, maybe even a fairly long moment where you say, "This is good. This is the best choice I could make, and it feels right. In other words, you start to say, "This is working for me." But then, the next verse says what? It'll turn to bitterness, the debtor in it. In other words, be suspicious of your feelings because your feelings can be wrong.

And what many of us do, especially in our day and age, especially in a culture that is increasingly less interested in what the Bible says about our lives... Well, what we tend to do is we tend to say, "Okay. If I have a gut reaction to something, my gut must be right. My feelings must be right. The way that I perceive it must be right. My way of thinking is right." And what we end up doing is we end up trusting our feelings and disregarding real wisdom. And real wisdom, what we see here, I believe, is in knowing and obeying the precepts and the word of God.

In Psalm 119 we see the same principle again referred to. This is Verse 98, and following, it says, "Your commands," speaking to God, "are always with me. They make me wiser than my enemies. I have more insight than all my teachers, for I meditate on your statutes. I'm more understanding than the elders, for I obey your precepts." In other words, knowing and obeying the very words of God will make you wiser than people who should be wiser than you. That's what that says, because of their life experience, because of their years. In other words, once we learn to suspect our feelings and then say, "I'm going to know and prioritize the word of God and obey it in my life," what will happen is you will become wiser and wiser the longer that you live, and the more that you take that in.

In fact, I'd love to suggest something just for these weeks. Proverbs is a really easy book to read and to digest, and I'd love to just encourage you to read a Proverb every day. There's 31 Proverbs. It's really easy to just read one each day of the month. And if you did that, just during the series... Maybe if you have other Bible reading plans, just supplement it. Maybe if you don't have any Bible reading plan, just say, "That'll be my simple five minutes every day to read these Proverbs," I think you'd be amazed at how many times you see the wisdom of God speaking directly into your life in something that's going on. Because, as you read the Proverbs, you begin to say, "God has something for me in this." But not only that. I think it's important that we augment our lives with wise people. Proverbs 13:20 says that those who associate with the wise become wiser still, but those who associate with fools become foolish.

So, one of the things that we can do to gain wisdom is to look at people who are beyond us in some way, and say, "I would love to gain wisdom from that person." And if you're wise about it, rarely will you find like one person who is your Yoda who has every single thing that you need. But what you'll do is you'll find, "Maybe there's somebody who can help me in marriage, maybe there's somebody who can help me in parenting, maybe there's somebody who can help me with finances, maybe there's somebody that can help me with a career decision, maybe there's somebody who can help me with..." And you'll have these people who can help you.

But there's a tendency... And again, this is where we tend to think ourselves wise, to relegate some people as irrelevant. There's a phrase that's become popular in recent days, which I find kind of comical, and yet troubling in one sense. The phrase is, "Okay, boomer." Maybe you've heard this? This is from millennials who say to people who are baby boomers, "Like hey, you got nothing for me. Okay, boomer. Like leave me alone." By the way, I'm a gen X, so I'm not a boomer or a millennial, so I can speak to both of you in this moment.

So, let me first just say something to the millennials, who might say, "Okay, boomer. Like stay on your lane, buddy," you know, kind of a thing. Some of those people know a whole lot that you don't know, and could offer you a lot in life.

Now, let me say something to boomers. Boomers are really offended by this. Do you know that there are millennials who have a lot to offer you in life, and that if your attitude is creating people who say, "Okay, I got nothing. I want to hear nothing from you," that maybe stopping and listening to somebody else would be helpful for you as well.

You see, what wisdom does is it lets other people pay our dumb tax. In other words, we go through life and we say, "I can learn from what somebody else has already experienced if I let them tell it to me."

One of the best things that's happened to my wife and I in this church is being in relationship with some people that are 10, 15, 20 years beyond us. Because what we have learned is we have seen them parent, we've asked them questions, they've helped us think about issues that are important.

And then, one of the things that's been important is being in relationship with people that are 10, 15, 20, 25 years younger than us because it brings an enthusiasm and a perspective and an idealism that we still need in our lives.

In other words, being in a place where you say, "I can encompass wisdom from other people, not just purely from the word of God and obeying it, but from wise, especially people of faith, it will help us."

And then, I would just add one other thing, and that is we need to augment it with learning from missteps, from mistakes, along the way. One of the Proverbs says that as a dog returns to its vomit, a fool returns to its folly.

And what that is implying is that if we don't learn from our mistakes, from our missteps, that we're really not being wise. And it isn't experience that makes us wise. It's reflecting on the experiences that we have that makes us wise. Meaning the way that we really gain wisdom in our lives is to sit and look at something and say, "What is it that went wrong or right? Why is that wake not the wake that I want? Why did that relationship go belly up? Why did that project not succeed? And was there a part that I played or am I just simply going to take the easy route and blame other people, blame the situation, and say it was somebody else that caused this problem?"

See, wisdom will look at reality and adjust to reality. And just one last thing, and that is if we simply reduce wisdom to a bunch of principles and precepts, rules of thumb, we'll miss what the Bible's ultimate teaching about wisdom is. Because in the book of Proverbs, wisdom, if you read through Proverbs, you'll see this. It's odd almost, because it refers to wisdom as a person. And you keep reading it, and you go, "Well, why is it a person?" And here's why I think it is, because I think it's foreshadowing Jesus as the ultimate wisdom. And it's saying that real wisdom isn't learning a bunch of principles and learning how to apply them. It's knowing the person of Jesus Christ, knowing his heart, his character, and reflecting it in life.

And here's what wisdom does, and that is every time that we're not wise, it reminds us of the beauty of the one who is ultimately all-wise, all-knowing, and the grace that He offers to those of us who stumble. Meaning every time that I'm foolish, every time I have regret from saying, "Why did I do that? Why did I act that way?" It reminds us of what the Gospel message really is. Jesus is enough. Now I get it right, and I ascend a ladder, and then I'm like, "God, as much as I want to get things right and do things as well as I can, but that my real standing, my real status, is not based on how well and how wise I am, but on what Jesus has done."

And real wisdom adjusts to that reality and says, "I can't be wise enough. There's times when I'm foolish, when I'm sinful, and I need a savior because of that." And if you and I don't start with that as our place of wisdom, then we'll just learn a bunch of rules of thumb, and we'll do okay, maybe, applying these things. In fact, you can apply the principles of God without really knowing God and have the fruit of a lot of good things. But knowing God, personally, knowing Jesus and his wisdom is what will ultimately help you, help me, come to a point where we say the wisdom that God talks about, the better life, is something that I can have, and it comes when I suspect my feelings, when I prioritize knowing and following the word of God in my life above just doing what feels right.

Father, we thank You just for each person who's gathered today. And Lord, I ask that You would help me, help each person who is part of Orchard Hill here this January, to grow in wisdom, to see the places where maybe we're foolish and to turn towards You. But, God, even more than that, to see that ultimately we need the one who is ultimately wise in every circumstance because we're not.

Father, I pray that even just in these moments that for any of us who have seen, maybe for the first time, that our wisdom isn't sufficient, that we would be able to, even in this moment, say, "God, I need Your wisdom. But more than that, I need You who was perfect on my behalf in Jesus Christ as a savior."

And we pray this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Thanks for being here today. Have a great week.