Ep 156: Fourth Instruction: Work hard in God’s word (Prov 2:2).

Ep 156: Fourth Instruction: Work hard in God’s word (Prov 2:2).

Prayer. Reading: Prov 2:2. Meditation. One of the things about mining is that it takes hard work. Sometimes you’ve got to bend your back into it and work. And it’s the same with wisdom. We must work hard in God’s Word to get wisdom. Pay attention to that statement: “incline your heart to understanding.” This word incline means to stretch out, to strain. It’s like a runner at the end of the race stretching out to reach the finish line. We are to stretch out our hearts to understand. In other words, we must work hard. We must strain and strive. We must do everything in our power to understand God’s Word. Again, wisdom won’t just come to you. By nature, you’ll have to work hard to get it. You’ll have to work hard in God’s Word. So let me ask you: How’s your Bible work ethic going? Are you a Bible study sluggard, or a biblical study workhorse? Are you at it, working and straining yourself to understand? Or are you happy to sit back and turn up once a week on Sunday? Be ye doers of the word… To gain wisdom, we must be constant, continuous, and diligent in our effort to understand God’s Word. We must always be straining to grasp it more deeply. As an Olympic athlete dedicates themselves and strains for physical excellence, so too we must strain for spiritual excellence as we seek to understand the Word of God. Prayer of Confession & Consecration. Get full access to Old things New. at rcbhpastor.substack.com/subscribe [https://rcbhpastor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Ep 155: Third Instruction - Focus your attention on God's Word (Prov 2:2).

Prayer. Reading: Prov 2:2. Meditation. How do you spend your week? Where are the places that you go? What are the things you do? Pause and think about that for a moment, perhaps write down your answers. Now ask yourself this question: Where are you focusing your attention? What are the things that occupy your mind? Where is it that your eyes are looking most of the time? As we consider and answer these questions for ourselves in our own lives, we start to get an idea of whether or not we are focusing our attention on God’s Word. How much time do you spend reading the Word? And, having read it, how much of the time does it occupy your mind? How often during the regular business of life does the Word of God come to mind and effect your life? If you can answer those questions with clarity, then you can say with certainty how well you are doing when it comes to focusing your attention on the Word of God. If we would have wisdom, if we would avoid the life of foolishness, then we simply must make our ear attentive to wisdom. We must make the word of God the centre of our attention. We must be focused and alert constantly to the Word of God. We must train our ears to be attentive. Be ye doers of the word... One of the key skills needed on the cricket field is attention, because you need to be ready to catch the ball if it comes to you. Let me tell you a little bit about slip fielding in cricket. The fielding captain in a Test Match often puts about 4-5 men just behind the batsman in various positions. He does that so that if the ball deflects of the edge of the bat, one of those men might have a chance to catch it and get the batsman out. Now here’s the thing about a good slip fielder: they are constantly vigilant. They are constantly watching in case the ball comes to them, so that when the chance comes, their hands are ready. Now here’s the point: we need to listen to the word of God with the attention of a first-class slip fielder. We need to be ready to catch what is said. Listening in church, or in family worship, or in personal devotion is not a passive activity, we need to listen attentively. This is especially important if you’re young, because it can be easier for our minds to wander at that stage in life. Here is the application: listen carefully to God’s Word. God doesn’t want us to be distracted, but to be self-consciously attentive to his Word. Especially, he would have us listen carefully to the reading and preaching of his Word. So then, hold your attention on God’s Word. Hide it in your heart and memorise it so that it is ready at hand in busy parts of the day. If it is in your heart, then you can bring it to your attention at any time. SDG. Prayer of Confession & Consecration. Get full access to Old things New. at rcbhpastor.substack.com/subscribe [https://rcbhpastor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Ep 154. Second Instruction: Treasure God’s Commandments (Prov 2:1b).

Prayer. Reading: Prov 2:1. Meditation. What do you do with treasure? As I write these words, I’m visiting a regional Australian city called Ballarat, staying in a mansion-come-resort previously owned by a gold-prospector who struck it rich. Around the back of the property is a solid blue-stone store house where he used to keep his gold (at least I think it’s bluestone). Anyway, it’s sold, thick stone! The point is, no one was going to be easily breaking in to that store-house, because that’s what you do with treasure. You lay it up as securely as you can. As Solomon instructs his son to receive his words, he uses this imagery of a treasury to describe how he should be treating the commandments that he receives. He ought to treasure them up, not in a blue-stone store-house, but in the bank-vault of his heart. Imagine if you had a famous painting on the wall in your home, perhaps a Monet, a da Vinci – choose your favourite artist! If art isn’t your thing, try a very large diamond worth millions of dollars, or the treasure of your choice! Question: What would you do with it? That’s right, you’d make sure it was secure. You would take great pains to make sure it wasn’t lost to you. You would treasure it, marvel over it, and you would stare at it and study its every detail. You would check it often to make sure it’s still there. This is how we must treat God’s word if we would gain wisdom. We must treasure it up in the storehouse of our hearts. Don’t just leave the word lying around to be read every few weeks when the fancy takes you. Don’t just pull it out on a Sunday and forget about it the rest of the week. We must not be careless with the word of God, for it is a treasure beyond treasures. Treasuring God’s Word is an essential step toward gaining wisdom and making the leap into spiritual maturity. Be ye doers of the word... What do you treasure in your life? What are the things you spend your time enjoying? Do you treasure God’ word? To have wisdom, you must treasure the word up, store it up. Buy it and sell it not. In Ps 119:11 the psalmist says: “I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.” If we do not treasure God’s word, sin will increase in our hearts. As far as application here is concerned, a line has been drawn in the sand. Do you treat God’s word like a million-dollar diamond? Or like yesterday’s newspaper? Which side of the line are you standing on? Again – the good news is that if you’re on the wrong side, you can turn to God, ask for mercy, and step on over. But we do need more instruction on this, because how do we actually do this well? How do we treasure up God’s word in our heart? How does this work? We will learn more next time as we open up verse two. For now, ask the Lord to truly change the attitude of your heart towards his word, that you might treasure it, and begin to invest the best of your time and energy into the word. SDG. Get full access to Old things New. at rcbhpastor.substack.com/subscribe [https://rcbhpastor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Ep 153: First Instruction: Receive God’s Words (Prov 2:1a).

Prayer. Reading: Prov 2:1a. Meditation. When someone has been sick, one of the things they need to focus on as they recover is building up their strength again. You can’t build up your strength without food. Our bodies need food to survive. Without nutritious food, our bodies waste away and eventually we die. There’s a spiritual parallel of survival as well when it comes to wisdom, and we see it here in Proverbs 2:1a: “My son, if you receive my words”. It’s as simple as this: God gives wisdom through his word. Like food for the body, we need God’s word for our souls. “Man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD” (Deut 8:3). Without the word of God, there is no wisdom. You can’t get it, you can’t find it, and you won’t have it. What this practically means is that – if you would gain wisdom – you must receive God’s Word. There will be no wisdom without the Word of God. Be ye doers of the word... Here’s the main application flowing out of this insight: don’t neglect the word of God. As we considered in the previous meditation, there’s nothing particularly mysterious about how God gives wisdom. It’s very simple. You need to receive God’s Word. Here’s a very objective and obvious test to tell if you’re wise or not: your maturity in wisdom will bear a direct correlation to the way you treat God’s Word. If you neglect God’s Word, you are neglecting wisdom, and – at best – you will be, to use the language of Proverbs, “simple” and in desperate need of leveling up. At worst, you will be at some level of regression on the path of fools. Either way, as time goes by, unless you get wisdom, you will end up walking down that path of fools. This is where Solomon’s exhortation comes in: “My son, if you receive my words”. You cannot have wisdom unless you receive God’s words. Receiving God’s words means that you welcome them, you bring them into your heart like a beloved guest into your home. We’re going to see a few different angles and insights on receiving God’s words as we continue in these studies, but the bottom line is this: Have you been leaving the Word of God cold on the doorstep of your heart? If the answer is yes, then you are categorically on the pathway of the fool. The good news is that it doesn’t have to stay this way. Take up and read every day. Get stuck in. The fact that you’re reading this book is a good indicator that there’s spiritual life in you. Here’s a second follow up application: give, and prepare to give, God’s word to your sons and daughters, or to encourage other believers. The Book of Proverbs is especially directed to children and young people, and particularly to the boys and girls who will need to grow up, become men and women of God, and whose families will be the backbone of their communities. As fathers and mothers, or even as potential future fathers and mothers, your number one priority is to give God’s Word to your children so that they might receive wisdom. The principle extends to Grandparents, but also to all of us in the church as we nurture our covenant children in community together. Do you invest in the children in your church? We must give God’s word to our children, and they need to receive it like their life depends on it. Pray and work to this end in your own soul, in the lives of your children and the children of the church, and the lives of all God’s children. SDG. Prayer of Confession & Consecration Get full access to Old things New. at rcbhpastor.substack.com/subscribe [https://rcbhpastor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Ep 152: How to get wisdom (Prov 2:1-5).

Prayer. Reading: Prov 2:1-5. Meditation. The climax of the first chapter of Proverbs is a clear and open call from Lady Wisdom, an open invitation to everyone to come and get wisdom for themselves: “Wisdom cries aloud in the street, in the markets she raises her voice; at the head of the noisy streets she cries out; at the entrance of the city gates she speaks” (Pr 1:20-21). Everything we saw in our first series of studies in Proverbs 1 brought us up to that point. Here’s a brief overview of the flow of thought in chapter one: verses one through six told us that gaining wisdom was the aim of the book; verse seven showed us that the foundation of wisdom is the fear of the Lord; verses eight and nine told us that we would need to listen with an open heart; verses ten through nineteen warned us of the dangers of being tempted away from the path of wisdom and into the path of sinners; and verses twenty through thirty-three then gave us this call from Lady Wisdom herself. With this in mind, the call of Lady Wisdom to come and get wisdom leaves us with a very immediate and obvious question: How do we get wisdom? In Chapter 2:1-5, that is exactly the question that Solomon answers. As we launch our expedition into this chapter, we’ll see that getting wisdom is not some mysterious, mystical transaction. What we’ll find here is clear instruction on how to actually do this. To get wisdom, and become the man or woman of God that your were made to be, there are certain things that God says that you must do. To use the metaphor of 2:4, I want you to think of gaining wisdom as being like mining. If you want wisdom, you’re going to have dig, work hard, and gather the wealth of wisdom. Now if wisdom is like mining, then we can think of chapter one as getting equipped with the tools. If you’re going to mine, you need a pick-axe, a helmet with a light on it, and all sorts of other pieces of gear. We need a warning about what dangers to avoid, but we also need to learn how to use the tools. We need on-the-ground training, and that’s exactly what we find in chapter two. Be ye doers of the word... I love the simplicity of wood-chopping. You get a block-buster, you get a whole bunch of sawn-off chunks of tree, and you get to work. You split every single one of those things – especially the stubborn ones. Then there’s step two. You stack the wood. It takes work, but you know exactly what you need to do. I sometimes wish I had such a clear grasp of everything else in life! As we take a tour of Proverbs 2:1-5, we’re going to see that getting wisdom is, in a sense, as clear and simple as chopping wood. You don’t have to be a genius to get this. There’s actually a skill to gathering wisdom, and 2hapter 2:1-5 is a lesson designed to equip you with the skill you need to become wise. Mining involves certain skills – as does every profession. Mining for wisdom also involves certain skills. Again – getting wisdom is not a mysterious process, it doesn’t come to you on the top of a mountain by divine revelation. There’s a real cause and effect relationship between seeking wisdom and having wisdom. In other words, if you don’t do these things that we’re going to be talking about in Part 1 of this book, the things laid out for us in Proverbs 2:1-5, then you won’t get wisdom any more than if you tried to get diamonds by having a picnic outside the entrance to a mine. In a sense, it’s as simple as that. Now think about this – it’s actually huge! You will not get wisdom by accident. You weren’t born with it. You’re not going to be a great, wise person by default. But the good news is that you can actually get it, and nothing you can desire can compare to wisdom. This is so, so important. In the next few chapters, we’re going to lay out a series of very practical instructions on what God calls us to do so that we might get wisdom and become mature men and of God. So here’s the application: pay close attention to the next few chapters and be prepared to put them in to action. And for now? Here’s your challenge: Read Proverbs 2:1-5 ten times, and write down in your own words the actual things that you’re being told to do. And come armed to the next chapter ready to get equipped, and get stuck in. SDG. Prayer of Confession & Consecration. Get full access to Old things New. at rcbhpastor.substack.com/subscribe [https://rcbhpastor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]