Five Ways to Find Wisdom
00:00:00.000 | [music]
00:00:04.000 | Well, wisdom is so vital to our lives. As we saw on Monday, looking at stimulants like
00:00:09.000 | caffeine, sugar, nicotine, amphetamines, and cannabis, and THC, for some, it's a complex
00:00:15.000 | world, and it's getting more complex by the day, and it's a world that we have to navigate
00:00:20.000 | with wisdom. We have to. And for guidance, Psalm 19.7 is one of my favorite texts.
00:00:26.000 | Psalm 19.7, the psalmist tells us, "The teaching of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul.
00:00:33.000 | The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple." Making wise the simple.
00:00:43.000 | That's the frequent prayer of this simple man, "I need wisdom," which is to say, "I need the
00:00:48.000 | teachings and the testimonies of the Lord." And so Monday, we apply biblical wisdom when
00:00:53.000 | it comes to stimulants. And on this pursuit of wisdom recently arrived this clip from
00:00:59.000 | a listener who sent it in. It's from a 1981 sermon from Pastor John in Proverbs 4, verses
00:01:03.000 | 1-13, talking about where to find wisdom. I had not listened to this message, but I
00:01:09.000 | did recently. I love it, because Pastor John opens by talking about our pursuit of joy,
00:01:15.000 | which is what drives all of our lives and the substances that we consume. Pastor John
00:01:20.000 | said this, "I believe that all men have this in common, namely, that we all want to be
00:01:26.000 | happy." Now, not all of us agree on how to find that happiness or where it comes from,
00:01:34.000 | but we do agree that we want it. I think that's common ground for all humankind. And that's
00:01:42.000 | not a bad thing. That's a good thing. That's the way God made us. Evil is not wanting to
00:01:49.000 | be happy. Evil is seeking and finding that happiness in the wrong places. And goodness
00:01:56.000 | is seeking and finding that happiness in places that please and honor God. I can conceive
00:02:04.000 | of a world in which we might be called upon to sacrifice our happiness for God's glory.
00:02:13.000 | But that is not the kind of world in which we live. Amen. Evil is not wanting to be happy.
00:02:20.000 | Evil is seeking and finding that happiness in the wrong places. Such a great intro to
00:02:27.000 | this search for wisdom. Okay, so how do we find wisdom? Here's Pastor John later in that
00:02:32.000 | very same message. And now finally, I want to give you five brief instructions as to
00:02:42.000 | how to get this wisdom. These have been really helpful for me to think about again. And I
00:02:49.000 | think they all come from Scripture. I'll try to show that they do. Step number one, we
00:02:56.000 | must desire it, hunger for it, long for it. Proverbs 4, 8, "Prize her highly and she will
00:03:04.000 | exalt you. She will honor you for your embrace." Those are not cheap words. When you prize
00:03:12.000 | something and you embrace something, you love it intensely. And therefore, wisdom has to
00:03:17.000 | be valuable to us. We have to want it and crave it. Otherwise, we will not get it. Second,
00:03:25.000 | since wisdom is found in the word of God, we have to apply ourselves to meditate upon
00:03:30.000 | the word and study the word of God. And I want to add to that this, not only applying
00:03:38.000 | yourselves to the scriptures firsthand, but also giving yourself to read the finest wisdom
00:03:48.000 | of the best students of the word for the past 1900 years. Read great theological books,
00:03:56.000 | books that distill the wisdom of God down and help us gain a sense of the sweep of God's
00:04:03.000 | revelation and insight into the true meaning of Scripture. It would be folly for us all
00:04:09.000 | to start from scratch when there's so much help to be had in great books. And now I want
00:04:15.000 | to give you something really encouraging, because I know what goes through many of your
00:04:19.000 | minds when I say that. I don't have the time nor the ability to get anywhere with that
00:04:24.000 | kind of literature. If you're talking about great books of theology, I don't believe that's
00:04:31.000 | true. Great books are always great because they're readable, not because they're obscure.
00:04:37.000 | Obscure books are not great books. Now, here's the most encouraging thing I can think to
00:04:42.000 | say to you this morning. My pastor told me four years ago it changed my life. Here it
00:04:46.000 | is. Suppose that you can read about 250 words a minute. Now, that's not real fast. Most
00:04:53.000 | of us can do that. Two hundred fifty words a minute. OK, and suppose that you set aside
00:05:00.000 | 15 minutes a day to read a great book, a classic or some book that you've been longing to read
00:05:08.000 | that would help you grow in your wisdom, your understanding. Now, 15 minutes a day for 365
00:05:16.000 | days is five thousand four hundred and seventy five minutes a year. Now you multiply five
00:05:23.000 | thousand four hundred and seventy five times 250 and you get one million three hundred
00:05:27.000 | and sixty eight thousand seven hundred and fifty words that you could read in a year
00:05:32.000 | at 15 minutes a day. Now, an average book has about three hundred and fifty to four
00:05:37.000 | hundred words on a page. So we take three or three hundred to four. So we'll take three
00:05:41.000 | hundred and fifty, which is kind of in the middle and divide that into one million three
00:05:45.000 | hundred and sixty eight thousand seven hundred and fifty. And you know what you get? Three
00:05:50.000 | thousand nine hundred and ten, almost four thousand pages a year. An average book has
00:05:55.000 | about 200 pages. You see the implication of that? You could read 20 books by this time
00:06:05.000 | next year, setting aside 15 minutes a day. I tell you, when I heard that, I ran home.
00:06:14.000 | I sat down. I got out my calendar. I looked for that 15 minutes slot and I found it just
00:06:19.000 | before supper at five fifteen because I diddle away that that time every night and I set
00:06:26.000 | myself to do it. And I read Jonathan Edwards original sin, which is a fat book in two months
00:06:32.000 | at 15 minutes a day. And then I went on to see us, Lewis and George McDonald, lots of
00:06:37.000 | other things I've been wanting to read and read. God's all that reading that I said,
00:06:43.000 | there's no hope. I don't have time for it. I don't have any space to fit it in. Was now
00:06:49.000 | getting done because there was a 15 minute slot that I was using that had formerly been
00:06:55.000 | thrown away. There is hope. You people who think that there's no hope there is. You have
00:07:01.000 | 15 minutes. You have 15 minutes. Say the 15 minutes just before you go to bed at night.
00:07:06.000 | Go to bed. Pick out a great classic like John Calvin's Institutes or Martin Luther's bondage
00:07:13.000 | of the will or commentary on Galatians or John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress or Jonathan
00:07:19.000 | Edwards, religious affections or some great book you just been itching to read and say,
00:07:23.000 | oh, there's no way and read it at 15 minutes a day. A big tree can be chopped down with
00:07:30.000 | lots of little chops. That's a great incentive, I think, to get wisdom. And then third, we'll
00:07:40.000 | just briefly cover these last three. We must pray because wisdom comes from the Lord. And
00:07:50.000 | then for we must think of our death very often. Teach us to number our days that we might
00:08:02.000 | get a heart of wisdom. Nothing purges us of folly like thinking of our death. And then
00:08:09.000 | finally, we must come to Jesus. In him are found all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
00:08:24.000 | Solomon spoke wisdom. Jesus is the wisdom of God. Others had spoken truths. Jesus is
00:08:33.000 | the truth. Others had made promises in him. All the promises of God are yes. Others had
00:08:44.000 | offered forgiveness. Jesus bought it. Therefore, in him are hid all the treasures of wisdom
00:08:53.000 | and knowledge. A person who loves and trusts and follows Jesus has and owns the treasure
00:09:02.000 | of lasting and true happiness. And therefore, when the command comes to us, get wisdom,
00:09:10.000 | it means first and foremost, come to Jesus. Come to Jesus in whom are hid all the treasures
00:09:18.000 | of wisdom and knowledge. And now may the wise God fill you with his godly wisdom that you
00:09:26.000 | might enjoy now and forever the true and lasting happiness that is found in him. Amen.
00:09:33.000 | Amen. True and lasting happiness is found in Christ. This clip came from a podcast listener
00:09:38.000 | named Kyle in Geneva, Illinois. I came across this amazing message from Pastor John a few
00:09:43.000 | years ago while I was really trying to figure out what it means to be wise. Kyle writes,
00:09:47.000 | "There are so many good scripture passages and insights in it, but the part that really
00:09:51.000 | made an impact on me was the section where Pastor John goes over how many pages of reading
00:09:55.000 | a person can consume in a year by reading for 15 minutes a day." Kyle says he now sets
00:10:03.000 | out to read 20 books a year. Thank you for the clip. Taken from John Piper's sermon
00:10:08.000 | titled "Get Wisdom." Preached on May 24th, 1981. The whole message is online at DesiringGod.org.
00:10:16.000 | Well, to shift gears here, when it comes to the return of Christ, there are a lot of truths
00:10:22.000 | to be celebrated and anticipated. There's also a lot of misconceptions we must cut away
00:10:27.000 | from the topic, too. And Friday, Pastor John is back to walk us through five popular blunders
00:10:33.000 | about the return of Christ. That should be a lively one. I'm your host, Tony Reike.
00:10:39.000 | We're rejoined in studio with Pastor John on Friday. We'll see you then.
00:10:43.000 | [END]
00:10:45.000 | 1. What is the return of Christ? 2. What is the return of Christ? 3. What is the return