New Sermon Series! Proverbs: The Wisdom of God

This Sunday, May 26^th, Redeemer will start a new sermon series in the book of Proverbs called The Wisdom of God. Each time I read the Proverbs I am struck by a particular passage from Proverbs 8:

“The Lord possessed me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth…when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him, like a master workman, and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the children of men” (Proverbs 8:22-23, 29-31).

These beautiful verses remind us that there is a certain DNA that forms the framework of the world: The wisdom of God.

We often hear (or say!) things like, “That’s just the way things work,” or, “It’s a dog eat dog world,” to highlight the seemingly random and pitiless nature of the world we inhabit. But the Proverbs would disagree. Yes, the world is broken. Yes, things don’t go to plan. But God has given us the Proverbs as a guide for blessed living in the world that he has made. When God created us in wisdom, he created us to live by his wisdom. To use an analogy; to get in step with the Proverbs is to ride the currents of God’s grace, but to neglect the Proverbs is to exhaust yourself trying to swim against a riptide.

Proverbs is particularly prescient to our contemporary society. We are easily influenced to abandon the old wisdom and allured by attempts to remake the world in our own image. Instead of seeking God’s wisdom and apprenticing ourselves to its rhythms, modern man tries to shape the world around himself and his desires. Certainly, wisdom is much more difficult to find than folly. It requires diligent search like you would for hidden treasure, a humble heart, the fear of God, and constant watchfulness over your heart and life. But it is surely worth it: “Whoever finds wisdom finds life, and obtains favor from the Lord, but he who fails to find wisdom injures himself; all who hate wisdom love death” (Proverbs 8:35). The path of discipleship is always difficult, but “later it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to all who have been trained by it” (Hebrews 12:11).

It is our hope that this summer will be a helpful time exploring God’s wisdom. We’ll examine big themes, like the Fear of God and the Fear of Man. We’ll also find in Proverbs God’s wisdom in the practical arenas of life: marriage, parenting, money, and self-control, to name a few. But all the while we will seek to grow to be men and women who are full faith in God, trusting all of his wisdom.

Ultimately, we will see that God’s wisdom points to Jesus. He is the logos, the One who was at God’s side from the beginning of things, the One through whom and by whom all things were made (John 1). And he is the perfect embodiment of the wisdom of God, “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3). Let's enjoy not just the pathway but, more importantly, the person of God’s wisdom this summer.

Join us on Sunday as we start this new sermon series!