March 2, 2025 | Attentive Longing | Proverbs Part 3
Attentive Longing | Proverbs Part 3
Proverbs 2
My son, if you receive my words
and treasure up my commandments with you,
making your ear attentive to wisdom
and inclining your heart to understanding;
yes, if you call out for insight
and raise your voice for understanding,
if you seek it like silver
and search for it as for hidden treasures,
then you will understand the fear of the LORD
and find the knowledge of God.
For the LORD gives wisdom;
from his mouth come knowledge and understanding;
he stores up sound wisdom for the upright;
he is a shield to those who walk in integrity,
guarding the paths of justice
and watching over the way of his saints.
Then you will understand righteousness and justice
and equity, every good path;
for wisdom will come into your heart,
and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul;
discretion will watch over you,
understanding will guard you,
delivering you from the way of evil,
from men of perverted speech,
who forsake the paths of uprightness
to walk in the ways of darkness,
who rejoice in doing evil
and delight in the perverseness of evil,
men whose paths are crooked,
and who are devious in their ways.
So you will be delivered from the forbidden woman,
from the adulteress with her smooth words,
who forsakes the companion of her youth
and forgets the covenant of her God;
for her house sinks down to death,
and her paths to the departed;
none who go to her come back,
nor do they regain the paths of life.
So you will walk in the way of the good
and keep to the paths of the righteous.
For the upright will inhabit the land,
and those with integrity will remain in it,
but the wicked will be cut off from the land,
and the treacherous will be rooted out of it. (ESV)
In Proverbs 2, wisdom is not something passively acquired but something pursued with an attentive longing. Jed Gillis unpacks this passage, urging believers to adopt a posture of focused receiving—one that desperately desires God’s wisdom in word and action. The text calls for humility and teachability, emphasizing that wisdom starts with paying attention.
The passage begins with eight commands, highlighting the necessity of receiving God’s words, treasuring His commandments, and inclining both ear and heart toward understanding. This is more than casual listening; it’s an active pursuit, like searching for hidden treasure. Wisdom isn’t just about knowing information but about aligning the heart with God’s truth.
Gillis contrasts worldly attention-seeking with God’s call to pay attention. In a culture flooded with information and opinions, true wisdom comes not from having the loudest voice but from seeking God’s voice above all others. This wisdom doesn’t come automatically—it requires longing, crying out, and searching as if for silver.
The results? Those who attentively seek wisdom will understand the fear of the Lord, know God Himself, and walk in the right paths. Wisdom acts as a guard, protecting from deception, immorality, and destructive choices. The end goal isn’t just knowledge but a life that remains firm in God’s blessing.
The foundation of wisdom is not found in life experience, intellect, or status, but in the simple yet profound act of attentively longing for God’s truth. This is something anyone—young or old, weak or strong—can do. And in doing so, they will not only know the right path but also the God who walks with them.
Transcript of Attentive Longing | Proverbs Part 3
Jed Gillis: As we return to our series on Proverbs, I want to take a moment to set the table again for this series. The overall focus comes from Proverbs chapter 3, where it says, In all your ways, acknowledge Him, or we could translate it, in all your ways, know God, and He will direct your paths. If we know God in all of our ways, in every choice we make, in every path we take, if we know and love and worship God, you will find wisdom.
Engaging with Proverbs
Jed Gillis: That’s what the book of Proverbs is all about. So, to get the most out of this series, I want to encourage you, I said this a few weeks ago, I’ll say it again, I want to encourage you to do three things. First, pray. Pray for me and other speakers as we look at these texts, as we seek to communicate what God says in Proverbs.
Pray for us. Pray for yourself. Pray that God will work through Proverbs, through His Word, to build you up. And pray for others, for those around you. Pray that God will work not only in people who sit in this room, but in others who might hear sermons online. However God uses the truth of His Word. Pray, as we just sang, Lord speak to me and speak until your church is built. So pray that God will do that over and over and over through Proverbs. So pray. Second, read.
If you read Proverbs one chapter a day, you’ll get through it in about a month. Thirty one chapters, thirty one days. If you say, I want to read faster, you might say, I want to see if I can read it in a week and get a bigger picture. Or maybe faster than that if you want to read it in one sitting. That might be a little long. But you could. Or slower. Really, I don’t care. The point is that you’ll get more out of a series going through Proverbs if you personally engage with the book of Proverbs outside of a few minutes on a Sunday morning.
And if you think, I’d like to know another book I could read on Proverbs, you can come ask me. I’ll show you some that I think would be good, depending on who you are and, and your age and what you’re interested in reading. There’s other ways. You can engage with the book of Proverbs. I hope that you will. I hope it’ll be more than just a few minutes on a Sunday morning for you.
And then, the third thing is, ask questions. First, just talking with one another, ask one another, talk about what you see and say, What stood out to you from this section of Proverbs? Or, if someone else is reading Proverbs, what has God done in your life?
We benefited this morning from hearing how God worked in Dan’s life through his study of Isaiah 53. That’s available all around you in God working in the lives of people. So ask and, and speak with others about it. Also, you can, if there are questions that come up through the sermon or through your reading, you can send us questions.
We do a Q and A podcast, we’ll do it about every month or so, going through the book of Proverbs. The point is so that the sermon, the opportunity to think through this section of scripture doesn’t just go out and stop but that the truth of God’s Word bounces around in the life of the body There will be questions that come up. There’ll be opportunities then for you to say I have this question and you might even think of the answer But if you have the question somebody else in the body probably has the same question So, if you send us questions, we’ll do the best we can to talk about that question, to engage with it, and give an opportunity for the Word of God to dwell richly in the body of Berean by bouncing around and thinking about these truths as we continue.
Proverbs Chapter 2: Paying Attention to the Right Thing
Jed Gillis: So with the introduction to Proverbs series as a whole, let’s look at Proverbs chapter 2.
We live in a modern world with a ton of information. Right? None of us have a problem finding more information. It’s available in a way that it hasn’t been for most of history. We also live in a world where it’s hard to sort out which version of that information is true. Because we have some things now that weren’t always available like Photoshop or artificial intelligence. And we can go find 40 different versions of the same story. It’s hard to know what’s real.
But we’re bombarded with information and, and worse, we’re expected to have an opinion about all of it. Don’t believe me? Go, if you’re on social media, go scroll down your social media feed and see how many things are basically people having competing opinions about something that happened, that a hundred years ago, they would still not even know it had happened. We have so much information. And we’re told we’re supposed to have an opinion, and in our social media modern world, the most important thing is how do you get attention?
God’s message is the opposite. Because having a million sources of information and having an opinion about all of it and getting all the attention doesn’t mean you have wisdom. And really, instead of saying, get attention, God begins Proverbs 2 by saying, Pay attention. Give attention to the right thing.
So let’s read. I’ll read the first four verses of Proverbs chapter 2. My son, if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you, making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding. Yes, if you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding, if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God.
A Posture to Receive Wisdom
Jed Gillis: He begins by describing this posture of the way you receive wisdom. If we were going to say it in one word, one phrase, you’d say, you need attentive longing for wisdom. As this teacher instructs, Probably teenage princes in Israel. This teacher says, look, here’s what you need to know. You need to attentively long for wisdom. And we’ll take each of these phrases and say, well, what does it mean to pay attention? What is the posture I’m supposed to have when I find God’s wisdom?
Receive My Words
Jed Gillis: He gives you eight different statements in four verses. First, he says, if you receive my words.
Now when this was originally written or spoken, it was a teacher, a person, saying, I’m going to help you learn. The teacher had wisdom, and the teacher cared for the, we’ll call him, student. And the teacher says, you need to receive my words.
Now, if the young man said, I don’t want to pay any attention to the words, but I really like the teacher. We would say, you, you kind of missed the point. In the same way that in our world, every once in a while, you’ll have people who say, I don’t really care what God said, but I really love God. We’d say, you, you missed the point.
He starts my son. If you receive my words. In order to get wisdom, he needed a relationship with the teacher that said, when you speak, I want to hear and receive it.
The same is true for us with God’s words. Of course, you could hear the sentences. I read five verses. You could hear the sentences, and they might not have any transformative effect on your life, just because those sounds hit you. But what matters is God is the one who spoke his word. God is the one who promised to work through his word.
So when you come to this book, your posture should not be, well, I’m going to see if I like it. But to say, God Almighty spoke these words and I need to receive his words. The first part of an attentive posture is to say, I don’t want to resist, but to receive his words.
Have you, has anyone ever said something to you, and before they even said it, you were already inclined to resist it? There’s a lot of reasons for that. Maybe you’ve heard their advice before, and it wasn’t very good. Maybe they’ve hurt you in some way. Maybe you know they disagree with you in some area. Whatever it might be. You say, I know they disagree with me over here, so I’m not really interested. I’m, I’m suspicious.
The posture is one that says I’m not receiving words, but resisting words. He starts here to say the way you need to receive wisdom is to start by receiving your posture is one. I want to receive his words.
Treasure God’s Commandments
Jed Gillis: Notice the second part of that verse and treasure my commandments with you.
Now, I don’t have to tell you that we as humans don’t like to be told what to do. But think about how he worded that. He didn’t say, obey my commandments. Because we as teachers, trainers, parents, we know that what we really want is not just for the student or the child or the trainee to just obey the list of things I told them to do. We want them to recognize that what we’re telling them to do is valuable. Not just remember His commands, not just obey His commands, but treasure His commands.
Sometimes I’ll hear people, maybe a little tongue in cheek, and I’ll feel this way too sometimes, say, I know I need to obey God, but I don’t like it. I’d rather you obey God even if you don’t like it, okay? But that’s not all the way to where we need to be. That’s not the posture that receives wisdom. The posture that receives wisdom says, when God tells me, you need to forgive your enemies, you say, that command is a treasure.
You receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you. Even the commands that I feel like, I don’t want to follow those. I don’t want to humble myself. You say, no, that command is a treasure. God’s grace is trying to relieve you of the burden of your pride. So his command that says humble yourself is a treasure. So receive, don’t resist.
Focus Your Ears
Jed Gillis: Second thing in verse two, we have two phrases here, which give us the same idea of focus. Focus your ears or incline your heart are the two things that are said here.
Imagine. Having a conversation in a, a noisy restaurant. You guys have been there? You got the, the music’s kind of loud in the background. And there’s the, the person at the table next to you is talking way too loud. And there’s the people arguing about politics at the table on the other side. And you’re like, I can barely hear what’s going on. And then the person across from you, who you’re actually there with, they start to say something important.
And what do you do? Lean forward. Stare at their lips to try to see what they’re saying. You focus. You focus your ears. You incline yourself to say, This is important. I want to hear it. To the best of your ability, you tune out all the other noises.
Maybe you’ve been a little distracted. And you know, we all know those moments when the conversation just changed to something serious. Maybe you’re married and, and you go out for a date night and you’re talking and you’re just kind of chatting about what happened. And we know there’s that point like, oh, I need to pay attention right now. Conversation just shifted. What do we do? We focus our ears. I’m going to try not to listen to these things and listen to this. And we incline our heart. I want to hear, I want to care. Our heart is, is tilted towards hearing, understanding and following with them.
Is that your posture towards God’s wisdom? That’s our question as we go through these, do I want to receive his words, not resist it? Am I focused on God’s wisdom? Or is it like, well, God might say some things, but really I need to hear from this and this and I need to figure this situation out. We can be so distracted. We can have our heart inclined the wrong way.
Incline Your Heart
Jed Gillis: What’s your posture towards God’s wisdom? He describes it a different way in verse three. If you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding. These two words are used mostly synonymously. They’re a little bit different in Proverbs. Insight is like knowing what to notice. You notice the little differences.
For example, if you go to a skin doctor, and he looks at something on your body, and he says, oh, that one’s a problem. We need to get that checked out. Now, if you come to me and show me that, I’m like, it kind of looks like this freckle over here. I don’t see the difference. Why? Because I do not in that area have any insight. I don’t have the ability to notice the small differences that let him know what to do. That’s insight.
When you have different situations coming up in your life and you say, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do in this relationship. Well, you need the insight to know what are the details of this relationship that are important. What’s important about what they just said? What is like the skin problem and what’s just normal? You need that. So he says, this is part of your posture. You call out for insight.
Understanding is the idea of knowing how things really work. Related to insight, but if a mechanic looks under the hood of my car, one, they’re going to notice some things that I don’t. They’ll have insight. Two, they have an understanding of how these pieces all work together that I don’t.
So here, our posture is not just to say, I’m going to try to work through these things in my life and I hope God hits me over the head with wisdom in the process. It’s not to say, I’m self sufficient, I don’t really need God’s wisdom, but if he happens to want to give it to me, I mean, great.
No, the posture is to say, God, I need to notice what you want me to notice. I need to understand what you want me to understand. And so you cry out, God, please give me insight and understanding.
This word for cry out or call out or raise your voice, it’s urgent. It’s desperate. I think when life gets really hard, we understand that. I think it’s one reason that God providentially allows difficulties is because it breaks us out of our complacency and says, God, I need your wisdom.
You know, you need God’s wisdom this afternoon, no matter what your afternoon looks like. You might think I’m, I’m going home and it’s an easy afternoon and I, maybe it is, but you need God’s wisdom. You’re always making choices about what you do with your time. You’re always making choices about your life. It might be big choices or little choices, but you’re always making choices. You need wisdom. So is your posture. I’m going to cry out for his insight and his understanding.
Search For Wisdom as for Hidden Treasures
Jed Gillis: Verse four. If you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures, so we’re going to receive God’s words. We’re going to focus our attention, our ears on God’s words. We’re going to cry out for the insight and understanding only he can give. And we seek that as treasure.
It’s not passive. It’s active. Somebody told you there were 2 million buried in your backyard. You would go look for it. You wouldn’t say like, oh good, it’s there if I ever need it. No, 100%. You’re going home and getting a shovel.
If you know that Almighty God has given wisdom, we don’t go, well, it’s there if I need it. It’s active. I want to go. I want to dig for it. I want to look for it. It is not just paying attention. But attentively seeking and longing for wisdom.
A Posture of Attentive Longing for God’s Wisdom
Jed Gillis: This is the posture. This is the beginning of the book. It’s the foundation of this whole chapter. If this is your posture towards wisdom, you need to have attentive longing for God’s wisdom.
I’m going to read this sentence this way. It’s a posture of focused receiving. That desperately desires God’s wisdom in word and action. That’s what he says. If you have that, I’ll read it again. You have a posture towards God and his wisdom. A focused receiving that desperately desires God’s wisdom in word and action.
I think a lot of times we might have an attentive longing to know how it all works together. Like, I want to know all the answers for the rest of my life. How all these things are going to work out. We might have an attentive longing for that. That’s not what God calls you to. God calls you to have an attentive longing to His wisdom for the steps that are in front of you right now.
We might have an attentive longing to be right. Like, I want wisdom so that I’m right about everything. That’s not the point either. The point is, do you really attentively long To have whatever wisdom God is going to give you for the steps right in front of you.
As I thought about this chapter, I’m so glad he starts there. Can you imagine if he started with, if you really want to have wisdom, clean up your life, do it all right, and then you’ll have wisdom. I’m out.
What if he started with, if you really want wisdom, go read all the bestsellers for the last 40 years. Find yourself a couple of great mentors who are going to shape your life. These can be good things, okay? But if that’s the foundation, it’s so hard to get there. What if he said, if you want wisdom for your life now, you need to know the results of all your choices in 30 years. I’m out. It would be hopeless.
But what he does is he starts with, if you want wisdom. Pay attention. Everybody can do that. He starts with something that’s not just what intellectually brilliant people could do. He starts by saying, if you want God’s wisdom, you need to be humble and teachable and attentively long for it. That’s something we can all pursue.
The Results of an Attentive Posture
Jed Gillis: So if that’s the posture, what’s the results? Verse five. You will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. If I could put it colloquially, you want to know the path of wisdom, you need to pay attention to God’s truth, and then you’ll know who walks the path with you.
Because that’s what gives you peace when you walk the path of life. I don’t have peace because I have it all figured out, I have peace because I know who walks with me. I don’t have peace because I know how it will all work out in the long run, I have peace because I know God knows how it will all work out in the long run. If you know that He walks the path with you, then you can have peace and joy.
There’s three reasons for that. He goes on, verse six, For the Lord gives wisdom. From his mouth come knowledge and understanding. If you attentively treasure God’s wisdom, you’re going to know God. Why? Because God’s wisdom only comes from Him.
It’s like saying, if you’re in a classroom, and you attentively long for the, what the teacher is going to give you, you’re going to learn about that teacher, because the teacher is the one who gives it. So, if you want to know God, what do you do? You turn your attention to His truth, His Word. You call out for it, you seek it as for treasure, you say, I want your wisdom because you’ve said this is how I can know you.
Not only does he give wisdom, the second reason is verse seven. He stores up sound wisdom for the upright. He is a shield to those who walk in integrity.
He has a storehouse. I don’t know about you, but plenty of times I feel like my wisdom will fit in the tiniest box in the corner of my attic. God has a treasure hoard of it. You think fantasy world of the dragon with its treasure all around? Except that instead of hoarding the treasure, He’s inviting you to come find it. He stores up sound wisdom where you feel like, I don’t have enough wisdom for this. God has way more wisdom than you could ever need for it, and He stores it up.
Notice, The way this passage is put together is important because here he says, he stores up sound wisdom for the upright. He’s a shield to those who walk in integrity. If he started there and said, if you are upright and walk in integrity, then you might find wisdom. I would find that to be discouraging, but he doesn’t start there.
The beginning of the chapter is look here and pay attention to my wisdom. Long for it. God says, I know you don’t have it, that’s why you have to long for it. So long for it. How is it that someone becomes one who is upright and has integrity? It’s because they look to God with attention and they long for him. And he works to shape them. God uses your attentive longing for him to shape you so that you have integrity, so that you walk in uprightness.
And then he guards the way of his saints, that’s verse eight, guarding the paths of justice and watching over the way of his saints. If you want God’s protection, one of the things he says is you have to long for his wisdom.
You might think, if I don’t know how it all works out, how do I know I’m going to be safe? That’s what we feel like, right? Like, I have to know how this is all going to work out if I make this decision. And we could think to different points in our lives. You could think, if I choose this job, I have to know how it’ll all work out or it could be harmful to me.
Well, there’s two examples that I think demonstrate that God protects us because if you follow his wisdom, it’s his reputation that’s on the line. One’s a modern example. One’s from scripture.
The modern example is when you follow your GPS. I don’t know about you, I use a GPS to get pretty much anywhere, even if I’ve been there a whole lot of times. When you follow your GPS, do you know every turn before you start off? Not usually. You just go and you say, well the GPS said turn here, so I guess I should turn here.
Now we know every once in a while the GPS leads you to some weird places, right? But imagine if the GPS was wrong 50 percent of the time. Pretty soon, you’re like, look, Google, I’m not listening to you anymore. You’re wrong too much, right? Their reputation is on the line. If it’s 20 percent of the time, you probably wouldn’t follow them or 10. Because when you follow their directions without knowing the outcome, their reputation is on the line.
Same thing’s true when you follow God’s directions without knowing how it will all work out. His reputation’s on the line. To give an example from Proverbs, a verse many of you could quote once I started it, says, a soft answer turns away wrath.
Well, you know what? Sometimes I don’t feel like that’s true. Sometimes I really want to give a loud answer in response.
Now, at that moment, am I going to say, I long for God’s wisdom. I want to receive his word, so I’m going to respond with a soft answer knowing he promises here he’s going to guard the paths of justice and watch over the way of the Saints. If I do that, I don’t know how it will all work out, but it’s God’s reputation that’s on the line. He said this wisdom is good, so I’m going to take that step now.
If your posture towards God’s wisdom is attentive longing. You’re going to know who walks the path with you, and He protects you.
Understanding Every Good Path
Jed Gillis: That’s one of the results of attentive longing. The second one’s in verse 9. Then you will understand righteousness and justice and equity, every good path.
Doesn’t that sound like something you would want to know? Every good path to take in life. The right way to walk in a good relationship with God, righteousness. Justice. Sometimes it’s hard to know what’s really just. Equity or fairness. What’s really fair? How should I act? He says, if you have a tent of longing to God’s wisdom, you’re going to know God and you’re going to know the paths you should take.
Of course we can say, well, I’ve tried that and I didn’t know all the paths to take. But usually that just means I didn’t know how it was all going to work out. As I seek his wisdom, he shows you the next step. Your GPS will guide you. God will give wisdom for that next step.
Wisdom Will Come Into Your Heart
Jed Gillis: Well, how does he do that? Like, that sounds really good, but does the writer of Proverbs give us any idea how he actually does it? Yeah, he continues. Verse 10, for wisdom will come into your heart and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul. So to use a soft answer turns away wrath. How is it that God shows you the right path?
Well, you say, I’m attentively looking. He said a soft answer turns. I want to follow him and that becomes pleasant to you. And you realize that was so much better than riding out in combat against this person. His wisdom becomes pleasant to your soul. That’s one way you know the paths.
Wisdom Guards You
Jed Gillis: Another, verse 11, discretion will watch over you, understanding will guard you. Wisdom’s going to guard you. Using that example. Saying a soft answer turns away wrath guards my soul against a whole lot of problems. Now he gives you some specific things here from evil ways. Verse 12, from, to paraphrase, men who twist the truth, men who forsake the right paths of life, men who rejoice in evil. Wisdom is going to guard you from all of those things, but then it goes on and says in verse 16, you’ll be delivered from the forbidden woman, from the adulteress with her smooth words.
Now that may sound weird to us to talk about, like, why do you say forbidden woman instead of forbidden men? All this. Remember, he’s giving character education to young teenage boys. He could have said an immoral man in a different context, but he’s saying to immoral women because of who he’s talking to.
In other words, this whole section, if we were to broaden it out a little bit, he’s telling you this wisdom will guard you from twisting truth and deception in order to get power. That’s verse 12 through 15. And wisdom will guard you from the evil that is so appealing. From the forbidden woman.
Wisdom is going to protect you from each of those things. This is how God guards you. I want you to notice, he said at the beginning of this section. He said that God guards the paths of justice. And watches the way of his saints. Here he says wisdom guards you. Wait, which one is it?
Well, both. God guards you and the normal means of protection God gives you is by giving you his wisdom. He protects you in a million other ways too, some of which you never know about. But if you don’t have a posture that says, I really want to receive and cry out for God’s wisdom, what you’re doing is saying, God, I don’t want that way that you protect me. Wisdom is part of God’s means of protecting you.
The Purpose of Wisdom
Jed Gillis: So what’s the purpose of all of this? You get to verse twenty, So you will walk in the way of the good and keep to the paths of the righteous. For the upright will inhabit the land and those with integrity will remain in it. But the wicked will be cut off from the land and the treacherous will be rooted out of it.
Here’s the reason, the purpose. If you want to walk a good path in your life, do you want to leave a legacy? We’ll use language like that sometimes. Do you want your impact to remain? Do you want to see God’s goodness? You want to not waste your life? That’s the end purpose, so let’s walk it backwards. The purpose is, I want to walk and remain, to have God’s blessing on my life and to leave a legacy.
Okay, back that up. How am I going to do that? Well I need to know the God who walks with me, and I need to know the path to walk. Okay, how am I going to do that? The first four verses. By attentively, humbly longing for his wisdom.
I hope, as you look at Proverbs 2, that you hear that as incredible grace. God could have done it a million different ways.
We see religious teachings all around the world that go the other direction. Don’t waste your life, live in all these good ways, so that you can know God, so that you can know the path to walk. God doesn’t do it that way. God says, attentively long for something, then you’ll know me, you’ll know the path, and you will find blessing and legacy.
God does it that way because everybody can pay attention. Children do this. Sometimes better than others. But children do this. Have you ever seen a child who’s fascinated by something? You can’t distract them. They’re locked in. Children can do this. You can be 99 and you can still pay attention. Weak people can attentively look at something. Strong people can attentively look at something. Smart people can do this. Less smart people can do this.
The beginning of this path of wisdom is something that everyone here can do. Why does God do it that way? Partly, so everyone’s included, but partly because attention honors the person. Think about when a child pays attention to a parent. Why do they do that? Because they love them. It’s an honor. Think about when a parent pays attention to a toddler. Why do they do that? Because they love them, and to show honor to them. Think about when a couple is engaged, and they’re sitting down and they’re talking. They pay attention to each other. Why? Because it’s an honor, and if they don’t, you might want to break that up. Right? Attention honors the person you’re paying attention to.
When we attentively long to hear and know and relate to someone, it’s an honor to them. That’s why God sets it up so that that’s the foundation because the only way to find wisdom starts with honor to God. And it’s something that graciously is available to all of us.
Do You Have a Posture of Attentive Longing for God’s Wisdom?
Jed Gillis: So I want to ask you, we could put it in four parts of a posture towards God’s wisdom.
I want to ask you, is this your posture? And whether or not you say it is, what are you going to do to shape your posture this way? We could say, receive God’s words and His commands.
Some ways it’s simple. You have God’s word. Do you receive it? Are you eager to hear it and have it change you, or do you resist it? “I know that might be good, but I’ve got all these other more important things to do.” Or do you say, I want whatever’s here. Do you receive it? Do you incline your ears and your hearts towards God’s wisdom?
Sometimes I think we, we can be tempted to come to God’s word, read a few minutes. Check a box that we did some spiritual things and now I’ve got to go find everybody else’s advice about everything else in my life. It’s not focusing my ears. That’s not inclining my heart.
That might mean that you need to spend less time chasing down other influences so that you can focus on the one that matters.
Is that your posture? So we receive His words and commands, we incline our ears and our hearts, we cry out for insight and understanding.
I want to encourage you, not just when it’s hard, but every day, to cry out, to call out to God, give me insight, give me understanding. That’s our posture.
And then we hunt for treasure. Seek for it like silver and gold. When you spend time in God’s Word, there’s treasure here. There’s wisdom treasure to be found. Do you actively go, I want to know it? Do you talk with others who can help you find it? Do you, maybe it’s listen to podcasts, listen to books, listen to whatever it is. How can I seek more of this wisdom? Is that your posture? God calls us to attentive longing, for him ultimately, but this text points us that it’s not just for him. It’s for the wisdom that he gives us in his word.
If you’re like me. You could look at those and say, sometimes I feel like I do that. Sometimes I struggle to do that. And I want to encourage you. There is grace that says not I checked off all the boxes. Now God’s going to give me this great blessing.
Remember, this was written to a probably 12, 13 year old boy, I guarantee you he didn’t do this perfectly. And yet the teacher said, come back to this humbly, teachably, pay attention, and long to know God and what he’s told you, and you will know the God who walks with you, so you’ll have peace. You’ll know the paths to take, even if you don’t know how they all work out. And the end result is that you will walk in the good path. You will find that you remain and have strength to continue, and you won’t waste your life.
Let’s take a moment and just bow in response to God. I’d ask you just to take a few minutes and talk to Him. Whatever His Spirit has pointed out in your life, however He has worked through His Word, continue that conversation with Him and then we’ll sing together.