Start Living Wisely

Well good morning. Thank you. My name is Mark, one of the pastors. I want to welcome you all. So glad that you've joined us here on this New Year's weekend. If you're tuning in via Facebook live, welcome to you as well. Hope you had a very Merry Christmas and God blesses you in the coming year.

And as we turn the corner on this new year, we're gonna launch a brand new message series called Start. And speaking of starts, have you ever noticed that many big things actually start out quite small? For example, people start out very small. Rivers start out very small. Smaller than that, you know, just as a little trickle. Elephants start out kindest. That's the cutest elephant in the world right there. They start out kind of small.

But how about this one? Redwood trees. Have you ever held a redwood tree seed in your hand? It's about the size of a tomato seed, about the same weight. And yet it grows into this incredible, you know, biggest tree on earth. The point is that little starts often lead to huge outcomes. And in this new year, you may have some new starts. You might start a new job or a new habit, a new relationship. And there's all sorts of these little starts in our lives.

And the thing about it, you've probably learned this over the years, that, you know, some starts are good starts over the course of time. We're pleased that we started that start. But other starts, not so good. And we wish we had never started that particular thing in our life. So how do you know the difference? Because there's a reason for the saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, right? You've learned this to me, in fact. Let me just give you a couple examples of this.

It's all kind of under the heading, you know, what could possibly go wrong? Like for instance here, you know, let's just saw this board together. What could possibly go wrong with that? What is that? Is that a problem? How about this one? Hey, let's drive this tree home. You know, it fits in the trunk of the car. How about this? Let's move this fridge, shall we? I love the fact that the guy on the little milk cart there, he's bungee corded the fridge to him just, you know, for good measure. That's gonna end well, I'm sure.

How about this? Let's get this party started. And, you know, the party really hasn't started until you've run electricity to the swimming pool. I think that that's... How about let's go on a budge... Oh, let's use a flame gun to clear the snow on our wooden house, right? This is a real product. You could have got this for like 20 bucks and, you know, burned your house down in the process of clearing the snow and ice. And I had some junior high kids after the service asked me where they could get one of those because they felt deprived.

How about this one? Let's go on a budget safari. Yeah. Willy used the highest quality zip ties to keep that dog kennel together. I mean, those are the same things they use at Home Depot to like cordon off the Christmas trees. That's about how strong that whole thing is. And after we've gone on the safari, hey, let's go get ourselves a lawyer, shall we? You got to think about that one. What could possibly go wrong at the Murphy Law Firm? Except everything.

Well, you know, perhaps in not as a ridiculous fashion, you found yourself in a place where you never thought you would be. I mean, you never thought at the beginning of that particular conversation that it would blow up into this massive heated argument. And yet somehow did. Or you never thought when you just wanted everyone to have a wonderful Christmas that you would spend more money than you have and now you're dreading the arrival of the next credit card bill.

You know, how do you maximize the good starts in life and minimize or avoid the bad starts? And it really comes down to one word, wisdom. Wisdom. It's gonna be the focus of our series. And so to get 2018 off to the best possible start, today we're gonna see what it looks like to start living wisely.

Now, I'm sure many, maybe most of us are already doing this. You know, I'm in a room filled with sages here. It's like I'm speaking to Yoda and all his cousins. It's like, "Mm-hmm, wise we are." But I think we can all agree that becoming wiser would be a good thing. Eugene Peterson, he's a pastor and author. You might be familiar with some of his books or if you have the message paraphrase, he wrote that. He didn't write the Bible, but he wrote a rather nice paraphrase of it called "The Message." He has a great definition of wisdom.

He says this, "Wisdom is the art of living skillfully in whatever actual conditions we find ourselves." Wisdom is living skillfully. And in the Bible, skill is sometimes associated with wisdom. But it translates into a right, whatever situation you're in, knowing what to do or say in that given situation. And not only what, but how and why and when and even if. Because sometimes the wisest thing is not to do or say anything. You know what I'm talking about? And knowing the difference, again, comes down to wisdom.

Let me ask you something. Right now in your life, what's kind of at the top of your ambition list? And if you're having trouble, you know, knowing what you're really focusing on in life, what is it that gets your attention? Have you ever noticed if you're, you know, in the market for a new car, you suddenly start to notice every article, every commercial, every time that same car drives by on the road, you fixate on it. Because it's at the top of your list.

If you're trying to decide how to or what color to paint your house, suddenly, man, you're driving through a neighborhood, you're just looking at all the colors. You never cared about paint colors. And now it's like all you can think about. Why? Because you value that thing in that moment. So what's the thing or the ambition that's getting your attention right now? That's at the top of your list. For some of you, it might be, you know, getting a degree, getting that next diploma or getting that first job, getting married or getting a promotion or getting into the house of your dreams or getting into the next house, the bigger house, the better house, the bigger bank account, whatever it is, those are all fine and good.

But wisdom is far more precious than any of them. In fact, wisdom has the capacity to bless every single area of our lives. And so it would be quite foolish if we didn't make wisdom something that we highly prized and sought after in our life. And so to lay a foundation for the next several weeks, this morning, I just want to give you three foundational truths about wisdom, something that lays the groundwork for what's going to come in the weeks ahead.

And this morning, we're going to be in Proverbs chapter 4, so you can follow along on screen. The verses will be listed there as well as in your notes, or you can even open your Bible and follow along there if you were, well, wise enough to bring it this morning. But anyway, I digress. The first truth is this. Wisdom begins with humility. I want you to write that down. Wisdom begins with humility with the acknowledgment that I need wisdom.

Let's take a look at the first three verses of Hebrews 4. Follow along as I read, starting here, right at verse 1. "My children, listen when your father corrects you. Pay attention and learn good judgment. For I'm giving you good guidance. Do not turn away from my instructions. For I too was once my father's son, tenderly loved as my mother's only child." Now, can you picture the scene here? This father has gathered together his children, and perhaps they're gonna have a family devotional.

They're there at the kitchen table, and I imagine that scene being somewhat similar to what it was like for me and my siblings when my father tried to do the very same thing, and he said, "We're going to have a family devotional." He'd probably come from church, and we're told that would be a good idea as a dad, and so he tried it, and immediately my brother Paul, Pastor Paul, I might add, and if I'm being honest, I, along with him, did everything we could to sabotage the family devotional.

I was like, "Yeah, just come on, Dad. We'll just see." And so, you know, we would make inappropriate noises, and we would, you know, make faces at our sisters when they weren't, when my dad wasn't looking or pinched them under the table. Anything we had in our little arsenal that we could use to make that experience as miserable as possible for my dad so that he would give up on this endeavor, and we could get back to what we perceived to be far more important things like watching cartoons.

So, I, you know, kids have not changed over the various millennia, so I imagine this dad, his kids, they're, you know, they're wiggling, they're restless, they're staring at the ceiling, and what does he say to them? Notice the stresses here on the verbs. "Listen, you know, pay attention. Learn. Don't turn away. Sit up straight, guys. I've got some important stuff to tell you, but when you're kids, that doesn't... You're just like, "I don't need that."

The point is, no one is born wise. No one is born going, "This is gonna be my chief ambition. I am gonna become a wise person someday." No, we, we, we hit the road as an acorn, not an oak. You know what I'm saying? In fact, if you watched Friday's video devotional, which I happened to find quite riveting myself, oh wait, wait, I was the one that did it. Anyway, I took you to our backyard where I had a little acorn that I'd picked up from the tree that it fell from, and the, the point was that, you know, that tree started out the very same way.

In fact, when we moved into our place 18 years ago, that very same tree was about three feet tall. Now it's about 25 feet tall, so, you know, better course of two decades. You know, it's, it's, it's grown. It's not the most impressive oak you'll ever see by any stretch, but it's gone through a pretty radical transformation in just 20 some years. Now, whereas that's pretty much automatic when it comes to a lot of living things, wisdom is not something that we automatically grow in.

It is not a given that you will just, as you get older, you will become wiser. In fact, there are people, no shortage of people, who, you know, they may be highly successful, highly educated, highly talented, very powerful, and yet they lack wisdom. Reminds me of a story where this is a traditional legend out of India about a king who loved to play chess. He was quite good at it, and in fact he pretty much exhausted all of the potential competitors in his, the city where he lived, and so whenever a new person would come into that city, he would, you know, draw a beeline on towards them, and then he would invite them to play chess.

And one day this older gentleman enters, enters the city, and sure enough the king challenges him to a chess match, and the older guy, he's just really not all that interested, and so the king entices him and says, "If you play me a match of chess, if you win, I will give you whatever you ask." So the old man goes, "Okay," and turns out he's quite a bit of a sage, and within minutes he defeats the king at this chess match, not even, not even close, and so the king being an honorable man says, "Okay, I told you you could ask for whatever you wanted, what would you like?"

He's surprised because the older gentleman says, "Well, here's what I would like. I'd like you to take one grain of rice and just place it on the first square of the chessboard, and then on the second square just double it, put two, and then on the third double that put four, and on the fourth put eight, and you just keep going, and that's how you will pay me my reward once you get all the way across the board." The king's going, "Sweet, this is a, this is a great deal, right?" Wrong, because by the 21st square, he'd have to provide over a million grades of sand. By the 31st square, that number goes up to over a billion, and you're not even halfway across the chessboard.

Now, what are the takeaways? What's the moral of that story? Well, first of all, if you can ever make that bet, you really ought to do it, but the real moral of the story is that we can all be like that king, right? We can become smug. Not, not, we wouldn't think of it that way, but we become comfortable in wherever we are, like, you know, "I've got this, you know, I'm good." And yet Proverbs talks about people becoming wise in their own eyes. Wise in their own eyes, in fact, Proverbs 9:10 says, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." The fear of the Lord, that's, that's tied to humility.

That's where we, we, as we get a greater sense of who God is, we get a more, more accurate sense of who we aren't. You know, He's God, we're not. He's perfectly wise, holy, we're not. I mean, I'm a train wreck waiting to happen. Apart from God's intervention in my life, apart from His, His grace and His guidance, I'm hell-bent on destruction. That's just called human nature. And I'm not alone in that. And so wisdom begins with this sense of, of humility that says, "Lord, please give me the wisdom that I lack. I need it."

Now, I don't consider myself to be a particularly wise person, but I think I had a wise moment when I was 18 years old. I was on summer staff at a place called Hume Lake Christian Camps. Anyone heard of Hume Lake or been there? I was, I spent two summers on the summer staff. In my first year there, I heard a conversation between two other staff people. They didn't even know that I was eavesdropping on them, but I heard one of them say, "You know, Mark is really wise." Now, they weren't talking about me, to be clear, I knew that. They were talking about another guy on staff named Mark who was a little bit older than me.

But I remember in that moment thinking, "Wow, I wish someone would actually say that of me someday. I wish that I actually was wise." And I think it was the very first time in my life that I ever had a conscious desire to be wise. And so I made a decision that day that I would start to read a chapter of Proverbs every morning. And chapters, there's 31 chapters, so it makes a rather handy monthly reading plan. And so for the next several months, I would just go through. I'd go 1 through 31 over the course of a month and start over. You know, of course, you know, I fell away from doing that at times, especially when I was in college, but from my middle or probably early middle 20s, well into my 30s, it became pretty much a daily habit.

I proverb a day and then maybe I'd read something else, but if I read nothing else, I would go to the Proverbs and just work my way through that. Now again, I'm far from being wise, but I know this much is true. I am wiser than I would have been had I not spent that time, those years soaking in Proverbs. See, the bottom line is there's really two lanes that are available to us. You know, we can choose to go through life with this assumption that, "I've got this," or you know, just you just got to follow your heart. You've heard that before. You can do that, but Proverbs would say that's not such a great idea. You ought to be a little more humble than that.

Proverbs 12:15 says, "The way of fools seems right to them." Think about it. The fool doesn't wake up and say, "What kind of stupid thing can I do today? You know, how can I just wreck my life?" The fool goes through life thinking what they're doing is right. It makes sense to them, but the wise listen to advice. Now why would you be motivated to do that? You're motivated because you have some degree of humility that acknowledges, you know, you're not the end-all, be-all of all things that are good and wise. You seek wise guidance, and the motive behind that is humility. That is the beginning of humility, of wisdom in our lives, humility.

The second truth is this, wisdom grows little by little. Just like that acorn turns into an oak, little by little, that's how wisdom accrues and grows in our life. And let's go back to Proverbs 4 and the next couple verses here. It says, "My father taught me," so now the father's saying, "Okay, you know, hold still, but I want you to know my father taught me. Take my words to heart, follow my commands, and you will live. Get wisdom, develop good judgment, don't forget my words or turn away from them. Don't turn your back on wisdom, for she will protect you. Love her, and she will guard you. Getting wisdom is the wisest thing that you can do, and whatever else you do, develop good judgment."

Now you notice the change in emphasis. He's gone from, you know, sit up, listen, pay attention. Now he says, "Take, follow, get, develop, don't forget, don't turn back. Love her." He's talking about a long process about staying the course, about making incremental progress over the course of time, and this is huge because listen, we love the idea that we can make these giant leaps, you know, just like that in our life. Like, you know, overnight my life changed. I've got news for you, that rarely happens. Rarely, in fact, in the area of wisdom, I would go so far to say it never happens.

I mean, think about how many of you went to the Christmas concert this year? Yeah, well, if you were, if you're like me, I was just in awe of the skill of many of the musicians we had on stage, but if they didn't learn those skills, you know, in a week or a month or even a year, did they? It was just little by little by little. They grew incrementally in that area of their life. You see, it really comes down to just these little small wins in our life that stack up over the course of time.

I'll give you an example. I read a story this week about a police department in Richmond, Canada, and they got a new police chief, and when he arrives first day of the job, you know, he's greeted with the fact that things are not going well in the city of Richmond. In fact, the recidivism rate, where a person commits a crime, gets, you know, convicted, goes to prison, gets out, then does something else, the recidivism rate was 60% in Richmond, and there was an alarming number of young people that were being drawn into crime.

And so, you know, the basic talk around the town is, you know, we need to pass stricter laws and levy out longer prison sentences, and the police chief is like, you know, that's all fine and good, but I also want to put some focus on actually eliminating crime before it happens, especially with these young people, and so he comes up with a program he calls the Positive Ticketing Program.

And what he instructs his police officers to do is anytime they catch a young person doing something right, like they catch them riding their bike with their helmet on, or skateboarding in a designated area, or even getting to a school on time, they would write them a little positive ticket which would entitle them to free entrance into a movie, or a free round of bowling, or a slice of pizza, and over the years, these police officers, they issued thousands and thousands of these positive tickets.

So what happened? Ten years later, the recidivism rate in Richmond went from 60% to 8%. Dramatic difference, and it was because, again, those small wins, they were almost imperceptible, but they added up over time, and listen, it's the same thing, when you open your Bible and spend a few minutes absorbing Scripture that the Paul would tell Timothy in one of his epistles that the Holy Scriptures are able to make us wise under salvation, or maybe like me, you spend some time in the Proverbs, or you're part of a Bible study, it doesn't seem like your world just changed at the end of that Bible study, but it's a little win.

Or when you show up on the weekend, and again, you know, we do our best, but you're like, "Well, that was cool, you know, I feel blessed, I'm glad I was there," but it's not like you're a different person walking out the door, at least in your own mind, but it's a little win. If you go to a weekly recovery meeting, it's a little win. All of these things add up, and you would be amazed at the difference that it could make, and this is all taking place. Something else is happening. It's called life, right? And you're feeding your heart, you're feeding your mind, God's truth, God's wisdom, but inevitably you're also experiencing pain, loss, failure, but you know what? Those turn out to be actually some fine teachers.

They're not the teachers we would wish to learn from, but in that furnace, there's the combination of what we've learned and the truths that we've absorbed and the pain of our experience, and it forges in that crucible, and that's where godly character is formed in us. That's where wisdom emerges, and suddenly that acorn becomes more and more and more like an oak. You reach a stage in life where this third truth becomes true, because as those roots go down deep and as we grow, wisdom blooms with maturity.

It's like that tree has now spread out its branches, and it's become magnificent, and it's a blessing to all around it. Remember back in verse 3, the dad reminds his kids that, you know, I used to be a kid too, you know, I used to be a kid just like you, and then in some manuscripts he even goes on to tell them how he used to actually walk five miles through the snow just to get to the bus stop. That's not really in there, but he pulls their attention from where he used to be, where they are, and through that middle stage of just that daily plotting and incremental growth, and he says, you know, someday, you know, you're gonna be like your old man.

And he gives them a vision in these last two verses here, verses 8 and 9, where he says, "If you prize wisdom, she will make you great. Embrace her, and she will honor you. She will place a lovely wreath on your head. She will present you with a beautiful crown." Now, this is Hebrew poetry, so there's these parallels in these verses, and so the lovely wreath and the beautiful crown, it's just one and the same. It's two ways of saying the same thing, and you know, we might picture, you know, like a crown that a king or a queen might wear, and maybe that's what it's talking about because it signifies nobility and dignity, but I have a hunch that what the people who first read this or heard this, what they pictured in their mind with this lovely crown, are you ready for this? Gray hair.

Yeah, gray hair. Does that ruin it for you? Not some of you are like, "Yes, waiting for that." But listen, in our culture, we were so obsessed with youth and looking perpetually young and stuff like that. In the culture of Scripture, being advanced age, that was a blessing. You know, gray hair, you know, that was a badge of honor. That meant you might just know something. In fact, in Proverbs 16, it says, "Gray hair is a what?" Crown of splendor. Some of you are like going, "I got a crown on my head right now." Because if you know someone who is both mature in years and wisdom, and again, it's not automatic, but when it... someone has the age, maturity, and wisdom, there's a splendor about those people, isn't there? There's a radiance. There's an attractiveness. Something you want what they have, if you're wise.

One of the wisest human beings that I've ever had the privilege of knowing, had the privilege of sitting under his teaching, even able... the privilege of serving on the same staff was Pastor Roy Kraft, who was senior pastor here for 47 years. Incredibly wise man, and I can still remember it. It seems unreal to me, but I used to sit up there up in the balcony and look down, Pastor Kraft would be preaching right in this spot, and so to have the occasional privilege to stand in this place, it's just... talk about humbling.

But I'm reminded of when I was on staff here. I first started on staff, and in my first year as director at Camp Hammer, our largest client calls me on the phone, and they had a problem. This client was... they booked two prime weeks of summer, just them. That's how big they were. They took two weeks, but they had messed up on their end with their scheduling, and so they were asking me, rather forcefully, to move them from the two weeks they were in and put them in two other weeks.

And in order to do that, I would have to displace all of those other groups, smaller groups, individuals, would all have to be moved, and their schedules would be disrupted. And so you can appreciate the dilemma. On one hand, this is our biggest client. On the other hand, it just doesn't seem right to mess with all the other folks that would have to be moved, and so I'm somewhat agonizing over this decision, and I'm on my way up to Camp Hammer, but I stopped by the church office, and Pastor Kraft, he greets me, says hello, asks me how I'm doing, and then I'm like, "I'm only so happy to tell you about my problem."

And so I explain all this to him. Never forget what he said to me. He says, "You know, Mark, there will never be a shortage of people in this world who want to take the problem on their back and put it onto your back. You will need to decide when it is wise for you to do that and when it is not." And there was two sentences cut right to the heart. It didn't tell me what to do, just framed it in a wise way.

And so by the time I got up to the camp office, I called the client, and again, they were writing me to do what they asked. And I said, "You know, I'm very sympathetic to the problem that you have, but if I were to make this change, I would be taking your problem and putting it on the backs of all these other people. I just don't think that's the right thing to do." And you know what? They said, "Yeah, I guess you're right." And they found a way to make it work, and that was just one of the many times that I benefited from his wisdom.

And I'm not alone. There are many of you in this room. You know what I'm talking about, because here's the thing. When you reach that stage of the game and you have become truly wise, it's not just a blessing for you. It's a blessing to everyone around you. It's a blessing to your family, your friends, your church, coworkers, neighbors, your community, you name it. And even after you're gone, your wisdom continues to bless people through the legacy of your life, inspiring them and still instructing them in the ways of wisdom.

Some of you, again, you're there or you're well on your way, and praise the Lord for that. You know, realize that you are blessing more people than you could probably even imagine. But I have a hunch that some of you are thinking, "Well, you know, Mark, I've never really been all that wise. In fact, I've got a track record that proves it. I've got some real train wrecks in my past. I've got carnage. You know, I've got regrets. Maybe if I could do it all over again, I would take your words to heart, but you know, it's kind of out of time.

Well, look, let's just acknowledge something. It is true. You know, we've been talking about this tree analogy. The best time to plant a tree is 25 years ago, okay? We can all agree to that. But stick with me. The second best time is today. Today, you can humbly ask God for wisdom. Today, you can decide to, you know, take some small step, whether it's to, again, start reading your Bible or start in Proverbs. You can, you can decide, you know, I'm gonna be a part of this series because I think there will be things that God will bless me with. He will make me just a little bit wiser along the way. You can do that today. In fact, today, if you make those choices, you will be blessed.

But you know what? All of, all of the stuff, which is the Bible says wisdom is more precious than ruby, more precious than gold, but in the grand scheme of Scripture, there's something that the writers of Proverbs, you know, they didn't quite anticipate, you know, directly, but in the flow of God's salvation history, wisdom in itself is anticipating something even greater than wisdom. It anticipates the arrival of wisdom personified, and that's Jesus Christ. Wisdom is wonderful, but true wisdom is rooted in Jesus.

He is the source of all wisdom. He is wisdom embodied, and what's so wonderful about it is that He pursues us. He calls us, which means that today you can answer that call if you never have. Maybe today is the day where a light bulb has gone on you, and you realize that Jesus Christ, the wisdom of God, loves you and calls you to Himself. Just a moment we're going to observe communion. Well, we remember the body and the blood of Jesus that was sacrificed, given for us, for you. Every unwise, every unloving, every unholy thing that we have ever done, He took upon Himself.

That was God's wisdom to do that, and so today if you never have before, I want to give you an opportunity to do the wisest thing you could ever do, which is to open your heart to Jesus. Would you bow with me as we pray? Heavenly Father, we thank You for Your holy inspired scriptures that are able to make us wise unto salvation. And Lord, I pray that You would motivate us today, that we would apprise wisdom as we're called to do, and that we would seek it, and we would recognize of all the things we pursue in life, to be wise in the ways of God, is at the top of the list.

But Lord, I also pray for any person in this room or listening to my voice, tuning in online, however it reaches them, if they've never opened their heart to Jesus, perhaps in this moment they would do that. But before the communion is passed from person to person, they could take that step. It could be their first communion. This begins, and these words aren't magic, but this begins with the admission, the humble admission and acknowledgement that I need Jesus, that I'm a sinner, you know. I'm a fallen human being. I've rebelled against God. I have scorned His wisdom and His ways.

But it means I also believe that Jesus came in God's wisdom and God's amazing plan to live the life I could never live and die the death that I ultimately deserved and take upon Himself my sins. And not only that, but that He rose from the dead. He's alive, giving me hope and promise of life everlasting. Because of all that, it means saying, "Lord, I want to give myself back to You. I want to follow You, Jesus. I want to commit myself and trust myself to You." Again, the words aren't magic. It's the attitude of your heart, simply saying, "Yes, Jesus, count me in." I may not understand it all, but as much as I do, I want to receive You, asking You to be my Savior and my Lord.

Father, as we prepare to remember what Jesus Christ did for us on the cross, may these truths, these eternal truths, penetrate our hearts and our lives in a deeper and more meaningful way. For it is in the name of Jesus Christ that I pray these things. Amen.