May 11, 2025 | The Blueprints of Creation | Proverbs Part 11

The Blueprints of Creation | Proverbs Part 11

Proverbs 8

In The Blueprints of Creation, Jed Gillis explores Proverbs 8 to show that wisdom is not only accessible but deeply woven into the very structure of creation. Rather than being hidden or reserved for a select few, wisdom stands in public places like crossroads and city gates, calling out to everyone, including those who are simple or foolish. Gillis emphasizes that wisdom is more than practical advice. It reflects the relational, moral, and spiritual patterns that God has designed into the world. To live wisely means to align your life with those patterns in areas such as relationships, time, work, and speech.

Wisdom is not limited to those who already have their lives together. Instead, it extends a gracious invitation to anyone who will listen and learn. Gillis highlights how wisdom relates closely to knowledge, discernment, and values. Knowing how things work, noticing how things are, and holding to what matters most are all part of learning to walk in wisdom. But wisdom goes beyond these. It flows from the character of God himself.

He also shows that wisdom existed before creation. It was present when God laid the foundations of the world, like a master craftsman. This means wisdom is not a human invention or temporary tool. It is part of how the world was made and how it continues to function. The patterns we see, whether in nature, relationships, or daily decisions, are meant to reflect God’s wisdom. When we live in step with that, our lives flourish.

At its core, God's wisdom is not dry or mechanical. Gillis draws attention to the delight and joy found in Proverbs 8. Wisdom was with God, rejoicing in his creation and in the people he made. The foundation of reality is not conflict, chaos, or cold reason. It is joy. Gillis encourages us to respond to this call of wisdom by listening, trusting, and choosing to walk in it. For parents, and especially for mothers, he offers a reminder that teaching children how to live with discernment and joy is a sacred task that connects directly to God’s design for human flourishing.

Proverbs 8 is not just a call to live better. It is a call to see the world as God made it, full of meaning, beauty, and joy, and to walk in step with the wisdom that holds it all together.

Transcript of The Blueprints of Creation | Proverbs Part 11

We're going to continue in Proverbs chapter eight. I'm continually amazed at how God plans out texts when we start into a book, and I did not look ahead and figure out, well, what's going to be on Mother's Day? And yet we go through chapters that probably wouldn't have fit so well on Mother's Day from our perspective. And we get to Proverbs chapter eight, where wisdom is praised over and over. And I know that when I look back at my mom, one of the things that I remember is she loved me and she wanted me to know wisdom. That's probably one of the deepest desires that any moms in this room have.

You probably don't want your kids to be exactly like you. You know enough of your own weaknesses that you think I'd like them to be a little better, actually. But you want your children to have joy in wisdom, and that's what we get to when we come to Proverbs chapter eight.

Is Wisdom Even Possible?

As we've walked through this ch this book, though maybe the last few weeks, if you've heard our teachings there, maybe it's left you a little discouraged or possibly fearful, because we've come back to the idea that walking the wise path is difficult.

It's hard because evil isn't always ugly. Evil can seem understandable. And sometimes evil looks like love. It's flattering.

So maybe as you think, well, the nature of foolishness makes it hard to actually walk the wise path. Maybe you quietly wonder, even if you didn't verbalize it, is wisdom even. Possible or, or maybe more pointedly, not just is wisdom somewhere possible, but is wisdom possible for me? Can I walk in wisdom?

Yes, Wisdom is Possible Because of the Nature of Wisdom and Creation

And that's where we arrive in chapter eight, and we get the hope that says, yes, wisdom is possible because of the nature of wisdom and the nature of creation. Really this chapter is going to tell you that that wisdom here is personified, and it is the, the foundational fabric of all of creation is God's wisdom. The, the interwoven patterns of reality that God has put there, they really exist.

And we know the importance of this. If you think about, if you like a certain movie series. And if it's, especially if it's not set in like a normal, modern world, but a fantasy movie series or a science fiction series. Well, in order to understand what's going on, you need to know the rules, like the patterns of what happens.

If you like Star Wars and you have no idea what the force is, you're gonna have a hard time understanding. Because you need the patterns, right? If, if you play video games, you learn, well, what's the world that this video game exists in? You may know everything there is to know about driving a real car, and yet you get on some video games that's not really gonna help you.

You're trying to drive, but you go, well, my car will not jump off of a ramp like it does in this video game. So you have to learn the patterns, the rules in that made up world so that you can understand and so that you can function in that world the right way. The same thing is true in in God's world.

As we go through this text, we'll see creation is not randomly piled together. The universe is not randomly thrown together, and then we'll see what comes out. It's patterns. It's realities. We use this example of, of patterns in creation.

Earlier in our series we talked about aerodynamics. If you're gonna fly, it's important that there is such a thing as lift, drag, airspeed, weight, all these different elements. And I can't name remotely all of them. Some of you probably could. But there's a pattern that lets us do pretty amazing things. Have you ever watched like a 7 67 takeoff? And you think, how on earth does that work? That thing's giant. Or maybe you watched SpaceX catch the booster as it comes down. It's like there's a mini skyscraper falling out of the sky and they caught it. That's incredible. It's only possible because there are predictable patterns of physics and aerodynamics. So that you can fly, you can catch the booster coming down.

But I wanna go a step beyond just what humans do to fly, and think about an eagle soaring. He's not calculating. I've never seen an eagle with a scratch pad to figure out how hard do I flap my wings? What do I do? No, he just flies. They respond to the patterns of the wind currents. God's made them with bones in their wings that are designed so they're strong, but light so that they can fly. There are patterns like that in God's world, and when we see an eagle soaring, we think, wow, that's incredible.

Well, what Proverbs tells you is just like there's aerodynamic patterns. There are relational patterns. There's patterns about how to help your relationships soar. There's patterns about how you spend your time and your work and your money and your words, and all of these things. There are patterns in God's world and in Proverbs, God is not just inviting you to make a couple better choices in your life and find some better results.

He's after something much bigger than that. He's inviting you into the fabric of his creation into an entirely different way of viewing the world, actually, where you can see his patterns and respond to his patterns and and soar. Where your life can flourish the way God wants it to.

Opening Prayer

So as we dive into Proverbs eight, let's take a moment. Let's pray again. Ask God for his help. God, you know our struggles, you know the areas of our lives where we feel like it may be going well, and you know, the areas where we feel like it crashes over and over and over again. Thank you for your goodness that you invite us. Not just to come up with some good ideas for the next step in our lives, but you invite us to know you and you invite us to know your world in such a way that you want us to flourish.

You are a good father, and you want what is best for your children. So help us to trust that. Give us a hunger to know you better and to know the patterns in your world better, and we'll thank you for it. In Jesus' name, amen.

Wisdom is Calling

Let's begin by reading the first five verses of Proverbs eight.

Does not wisdom call? Does not understanding raise her voice on the heights beside the way? At the crossroads, she takes her stand. Beside the gates in front of the town, at the entrance of the portal, she cries aloud. To you, oh men, I call, and my cry is to the children of man. Oh, simple ones, learn prudence. Oh, fools, learn sense.

And we'll pause there and take a minute to think about wisdom as as a guide, as an available guide. This has been over and over in Proverbs. We see wisdom calling out. That's wonderful because it means wisdom isn't reserved for the person who makes the long mountain trek and gets to the guru and finally earns it.

Wisdom is calling out to you. Notice the way it's described poetically. Where is wisdom calling? This is God's grace to you. That wisdom is available. It says first on the heights. On the heights, the place with the maximum visibility. If you were walking in a context where you didn't have bullhorns and you didn't have microphones, and you want to get your voice as far as possible, one of the things you can do is get high where they can see you, and raise your voice. Proverbs is portraying that. Wisdom is doing that. It's like wisdom is standing up on the hill going like this, yelling, "Notice! Listen!" God doesn't hide his wisdom away from you. His wisdom is calling out on the heights.

The second part of verse two at the crossroads, that's where you make decisions. That's where we feel the need for wisdom, isn't it? When life kind of rolls and you say, it's just the pattern, it's just what I normally do, it's just the next step. Maybe it doesn't feel so much like I need wisdom, but when you have a decision, something that's off the map a little bit, and you say, it doesn't seem like right or wrong, I just have two choices and I don't know which one to do. We feel the need for wisdom at the crossroads. That's exactly where wisdom calls. At the crossroads, she takes her stand. Beside the gates in front of the town.

Now there's, I think there's two pictures about the town here. One is that when they used to do important business in a town, they would do it at the gates. Anything like loans or exchanging contractual agreements between people, that was important. They conducted business like that at the gates, so at that point, that's where wisdom is calling out when the big important decisions happen, as well as the crossroads that don't seem as important.

Wisdom is calling out to you in all of these things, but also remember the previous chapter. The way the writer used our imagination to engage us in battle against evil. The writer says, think about this simple, naive, uncommitted person in that picture. What's he doing? He's walking through the streets of the town where the danger is, where there's a predator, a tempter, prowling to get him. That's inside the town.

Now, where's wisdom here in this picture? In front of the town. Before he gets there, God doesn't let you go through life. Get to the most dangerous part, and then say, well, I guess here's some wisdom now. He says It's available before that, before you get to the danger, before the tempter shocks you and overwhelms your discernment and you don't know what to do. Seek the wisdom of God 'cause he's calling out, offering it to you.

So that's where wisdom is.

Who is Wisdom Calling To?

Well, whose wisdom calling to? In verse four, to the Children of Man to Humanity. The invitation is broad. God says, here's wisdom, it's available. And specifically, and I love that this is included, the next verse, verse five says, the simple one, come learn. The fool, come learn.

So the uncommitted, impulsive, naive person come learn God's wisdom. The fool who we could say, if somebody goes out, finds a tall building and says, you know, I'm just gonna try jumping off it and see if I can fly. It's not gonna end well. Why? Because there's a pattern of creation, right? My bones are not made to fly like an eagle's. Gravity works.

The fool goes against that pattern and finds destruction, but wisdom even for that person, wisdom doesn't say, well, I guess they're gonna do what they're gonna do. Forget it. We'll just watch 'em. See what happens. No, it calls out to that person, come learn.

The Wise and the Foolish are Not Always Distince Categories

I think one of the things we need to remember in Proverbs, he gives us categories wise, foolish, simple, scoffer. He gives us these categories and it can be easy for us to make them like hard and fast categories like we make grades in school.

If you're in third grade, you're not in fourth grade. It's how it works. I realize if you're homeschooled, that may work differently for you. But generally you say if you're in this grade, you're not in that one. Well, as we go through the book of Proverbs, if you follow the context, the teacher is talking to a son. My son do these things. And if you see what, how he describes the son, the son is already on the wise path, and yet he says, fools learn sense.

In other words, you can be walking a wise path and still be foolish in another area that you need to learn and grow. They're not separate categories. If you read this and hear, well, I don't think I'm wise, so I guess I'm a fool. Don't be wise in your own eyes. We struggle with foolishness in a lot of areas, but he's not labeling you as here, you're stuck in this category. He's saying, if you are a fool, if you are acting in a foolish way in this area, come learn wisdom.

Wisdom is calling to the son who's on the path walking the wise path. As you're doing that, there are things you are naively uncommitted in. There are things you are foolish in. There's hope.

Nobody here can say, Proverbs sounds good, but I've been so foolish. I don't think I can fit that wise category. Nobody can say that. I don't care how foolish you've been. I don't care how simple you've been. No matter where you are, no matter how much you say, I've failed in this, over and over and over, the wisdom of Proverbs is calling out to you saying, learn. Learn from whatever step you are along the path.

Jesus Calls To You Like Wisdom Does in Proverbs

And I'm encouraged to think that not only does wisdom call you like that. Wisdom's personified here, but the New Testament tells us Jesus is made to us, our wisdom, and he calls you in the same way. Jesus does not call you to fix your foolishness and then come learn from him.

He calls out to you and says, wherever you are, come and learn. Remember how Jesus treated the children who came to see him, they probably weren't perfectly mature humans. And he says, don't take them away from me. Bring them. That's God's invitation to you.

The Distinction Between Knowledge, Wisdom, and Prudence

In the next section from verse six, down through really nine, it's gonna book in. They'll be the same ideas at the end of the chapter as are there. So we're gonna come back to them at the end of the chapter and we'll skip ahead to get down to verse 10. He says, take my instruction instead of silver and knowledge rather than choice. Gold for wisdom is better than jewels and all that you may desire cannot compare with her. I wisdom dwell with prudence and I find knowledge and discretion.

In this section, he starts by telling you there's wisdom to walk in this world. He's gonna tell you, Kings use this wisdom. It's available, and he connects it with three different ideas. Wisdom's not exactly the same as these, but notice the language in verse 12. I wisdom dwell with prudence. Wisdom lives with these things. It lives next door. It's not quite the same thing, but it's related.

Knowledge

First, I'll call it knowledge. It's really in the second half there. I find knowledge and discretion. We could say that's how things work. If you are going to repair a car, you need to know a little bit about how the system works. You don't, the first step isn't knowing what's wrong, right?

The first step is you have to know a little bit about how the car actually functions so that you say, oh, now I know how to fix it. There's knowledge. You need to know that that's not the same thing as wisdom. You can know how something works, without really walking according to wisdom, but they're close to each other because you can't really walk in wisdom without some knowledge of how it works.

Prudence

So that's the first one. The second one here is translated by the word prudence. That probably doesn't mean to us what it really meant to them. We could say discernment. If you think about not how things work, but how things are like you notice certain things. I know a few things about how a car works, but then if I look under the hood and I say, well, something in this area doesn't seem to be working right, but I don't know what it is.

On the other hand, if I, I get a mechanic to look under there and they go, oh, it's that, well, why are they able to do that? Because they notice something that I don't know to even notice. They see how things are.

If you go to a doctor, a doctor has to have knowledge. How does an x-ray work roughly? They have to be able to say, here's how you perform a biopsy. But in many cases, if you show me an x-ray, I don't know what to notice. Obviously, if it's bad enough, I might, but a lot of cases you say, I don't really know what that is.

I remember when we went in for an ultrasound when my wife was pregnant and you know, the ultrasound tech saying, oh, there's this, there's this. I'm like, I don't see any of that. I see like static. That's all I've got. But they knew what to notice.

We could say they had what this word is, prudence. They could see how things are and sometimes they'd see things and say, that doesn't look great. Let's compare it with this. Oh, it's okay. You see, they have the ability to work with it because they not only know how it works and what it's supposed to look like, but they also know how things actually are and they can notice this doesn't seem quite right, this is fine.

See that's another piece that's not the same as wisdom. It's close. It lives right next door. It dwells with, but it's not exactly the same thing.

We see this like if someone gives you advice on finances, they said, here's what I did and it worked for me. And you go do exactly the same thing and it doesn't work. Why not? Well, 'cause there's small differences that maybe you didn't notice.

Relationships. Have you ever gone home to your spouse and said, I'm gonna do the same thing I did the other day, and that seemed to be really good, worked well, and then you come home and you missed it. Why? Because little things changed and you didn't notice the difference in how things are.

You had a principle for how it worked, but how things are right now, you didn't pick that up. Probably guys more than our wives who don't pick up.

Values

So we have knowledge how things work. We have prudence, how things are noticing the right things, and then we call it values. It's really implied, not used. There's not a word that directly connects to it, but in verse 10 and 11, notice he's saying, this is better than that. Take my instruction instead of silver. Take knowledge rather than choice gold. Wisdom is better than jewels. And all that you desire can't compare with wisdom.

So he puts these three things together and says, these are not the same as wisdom, but they're really close. How things work? Notice the little things about how things are, and then having the right system of values, what's really important.

You see if you know here's how a car works, and you look under the hood and you say, now I see exactly, I notice what's wrong. And you say, well, this is gonna be really dangerous. But you conclude it's not important to be safe. I'm just gonna keep going. That's not wisdom. You know all the thing about how it works. You know what to notice, but your values aren't right. So you act in a foolish way.

Wisdom is Living in the Patterns of Creation

That's how he's painting together. Wisdom is not knowing how things work or what to notice or values, but it lives right next door. Instead, wisdom is the fabric of creation, the, the patterns of reality rooted in God that he's put in this world.

And when we walk according to those patterns, we flourish, we soar. And when we don't, we find we keep crashing. So he continues. The fear of the Lord is hatred of evil, pride and arrogance in the way of evil and perverted speech. I hate, again, to connecting to values. I, I hate the right things, the things I should hate, and I love the things I should love.

Wisdom keeps speaking in verse 14, I have counsel and sound wisdom. I have insight. I have strength by me, King's reign and rulers decree what is just by me Prince's rule and nobles all who govern justly. Wisdom. What he's talking about is wonderful. It's beautiful, it's powerful so that kings like Solomon, who wrote this book, can live according to wisdom and that is what they need.

It's just, it's beautiful. It's wonderful. When God tells you to pursue wisdom, he's not telling you to pursue something that is pointless. He's telling you to pursue the thing that kings need to rule in the right way. But in contrast to the previous chapter, wisdom is not going to flatter you.

We saw that immorality flatters. We saw that pride flatters. Wisdom doesn't flatter. Notice as we continue in verse 17. I love those who love me and those who seek me diligently find me. Riches in honor are with me enduring wealth and righteousness. My fruit is better than gold, even fine gold, and my yield then choice silver. I walk in the way of righteousness in the paths of justice, granting an inheritance to those who love me and filling their treasuries.

Wisdom doesn't flatter, it fills you. Don't see any language from wisdom coming and saying, well, you are such a wonderfully special person, and I've just prepared all this just for you because you're the best. Wisdom says No, actually, wisdom is wonderful. The fruit of wisdom is good. It says, come and enjoy, but it won't flatter.

Wisdom is never going to deceitfully tell you how special and wonderful you are while leading you to destruction. That's what we saw in chapter seven. Instead, wisdom is going to say, here's how great your God is, and here's all the goodness that comes from that.

So in that section, he tells you the wisdom that you walk by is the same wisdom that the kings walk by. The wisdom that you walk by doesn't leave you empty. It leaves you full. That's because. The wisdom that you walk by is the same wisdom by which the world exists, and that's what he goes to next.

Wisdom Predates Creation

The Lord Yahweh possessed me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old. This is wisdom speaking. Ages ago, I was set up at the first, before the beginning of the earth when there were no depths. I was brought forth when there were no springs abounding with water. Before the mountains had been shaped before the hills, I was brought forth before he had made the earth with its fields or the first of the dust of the world. When he established the heavens, I was there. When he drew a circle on the face of the deep, when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, when he assigned to the sea its limit so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him like a master workman.

He says, take all of creation that you find, like the foundational realities underneath all that. Before all that, there's wisdom. The fabric, the patterns that God put into his creation. They came from who he is. God didn't learn wisdom. God doesn't learn anything. He knew it from the beginning. God didn't learn wisdom.

He didn't go to school. He didn't experiment. He didn't go, well, we'll try this for this creature that didn't really work. Let's try again. He didn't say, well, I'm gonna build the mountains this way, and then they all crumbled and then let guess that didn't work. Let's try again.

It's like a little bit like the difference if you ever do a a do it yourself project at home. And if you start into the project and you, you don't have plans, you're just saying, okay, I think this is the plan, but I haven't really thought through every piece. You know, you get part of it done and then you realize, oh, rats, that board doesn't connect to that one. Now what am I gonna do? And if you're handy, you, you can figure it out. Most of the time. Might have to redo something, but maybe not. But that's different from here's the plan laid out from the beginning. I know all the pieces work together, I'm just putting everything in place.

God didn't make the world like a do it yourself project with no plans. The pattern for all the amazing things in creation that let us fly 767s, that give us a water cycle that keeps things alive, that give us carbon dioxide and oxygen, and trees that help us with that issue, all of that stuff and everything else you could think of, it's there not because God figured it out as he went, but because from the very beginning, before the beginning in God's existence, he knew how it all worked together. Wisdom unifies creation because all the patterns we see, they're just God's patterns. They're rooted in who he is.

The Radically Different Worldview of God's Wisdom in Creation

Now, I wanna take a minute and try to appreciate how radically different that is. If you go back to ancient creation stories, any society you want to, if we have written records, we probably have an origin story. Here's what it came from. Here's where everything started. If you go back to other ancient creation stories, you'll see very common themes.

One would be that the universe came from a power struggle. Think Greek polytheism, lots of gods that fought against each other. Now if that's what the universe is, there's no reason to expect coherent patterns. Parents, if you've ever had, you know your kids fighting in their room, you probably don't expect to walk in and find perfect order. Power struggles don't usually bring consistent, coherent patterns.

Or it's an ancient view, also a modern one. The universe came from some form of chaos. There was this like preexistence soup swirling around and something brought order to it. Again, we would expect some organization, but we wouldn't expect them to be profoundly deep like in all of creation. In a secular evolutionary mindset, we're told that there's one set of patterns that brought about the world. Time, chaos, mutations, survival of the fittest, but we're not told to live that way. We're told tolerance and love is the right thing. In other words, that whole worldview teaches that here's the foundation of reality, and now you live in a very different way.

But in biblical creation, the wisdom by which the world was made is exactly the wisdom by which you are to walk. It is consistent. These patterns, what we could call wisdom, the patterns rooted in God that are in his world are more foundational than, and I listed it long form. Here's the short form. More foundational than the oceans, the springs, the mountains, the hills, the earth, the dust, the heavens, the globe, the coasts, or the core.

I know many of you felt an earthquake yesterday. When you felt it, you think the whole like foundation of what I'm standing on is shaking, and underneath and before all that, God's wisdom was never shaking.

That's what this picture drives us to. Wisdom is patterns in God that he has put throughout his creation. And now we want to walk in wisdom, so we need to have the things I listed earlier, knowledge, how things work, how things are, notice the right things, and then the right values so that we can walk according to the patterns, so that our lives can flourish. That's what Proverbs is putting before you.

The Foundation of Creation is Delight

But I wanna take this a step further. Not only is God's wisdom consistent, unlike ancient creation stories, but it's better. Notice where I stopped reading verse 30, wisdom was beside God 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 man. And now our sons listen to me. Blessed or happy or delighted are those who keep my ways.

From a Christian perspective, the essence of all creation and reality is not nature read in tooth and claw to use that phrase. It's not violence and survival of the fittest and randomness. It's not oppressor and oppressed. The foundational nature of reality for the Christian is deep, profound delight.

If you get all the way to the core of what reality is, you find God delighting in himself and delighting in the Son who is his wisdom by which he made everything. It's delight. Yes, our world is fallen. Yes, our creation groans.

In fact, think of the fall for a minute. What does God pronounce? He says, Eve, you'll face pain in childbirth. You'll find difficulty. He says, Adam, you'll find difficulty in producing food from creation. In other words, fall in creation after the curse will include an element of sorrow, but that doesn't mean the foundational joy in creation is removed.

We instinctively know that from those pictures. When Eve experiences pain in childbirth, we don't say, well, she doesn't have any joy in childbirth. We say, no. That was designed for joy. That's part of what God did. But now in the fall, there's sorrow added to it. Adam was supposed to enjoy the fruit of the garden, but now in the fall there's sorrow added to it.

Creation is fallen, so it groans. But even in a fallen creation, if you get to the core of what it is, as God designed it, in his wisdom, you find joy. God made this universe for his joy and your joy. John Calvin said, there's not one little blade of grass. There is no color in this world that is not intended to make humans rejoice.

GK Chesterton talked like this too. He said, we as fallen humans get bored of repeating the same thing over and over and over. See, we see patterns of creation, but we lose our joy and our sense of wonder in them. You know this, you see a sunrise sometimes and you think, well, I've seen that before. But if you stop and really look at it like it's the first time you've seen it, you say there is joy in every color. Every little hue that's out there. Chester Chesterton said, think of children when they want to play a simple game, something that delights them and they say, do it again. Do it again. And as parents, we all go, oh, and we do it again until we can barely stand it, do it again.

But he said, what if God is more like a child? What if God enjoys the repetition of the patterns of wisdom in creation so that the water cycle happens because God loves it and says, do it again. Do it again, and the sun rises in all its beautiful colors because God says, do it again. That at the foundation, at the core of creation is joy.

What if tulips bloom like tulips because God says, do it again and do it again, and do it again, and he delights in it.

This is the core of the world that God has put us in. So since this world is full of deep. Patterns intended for joy, for God's joy, and for ours. We know it's ours because of the verse of read in 32. Yes, wisdom rejoices. Yes, God rejoices, but 32 now. Oh, sons, listen to me. Blessed are those who keep my ways.

He says, come have that joy. Walk according to these patterns and enjoy them. He doesn't just call you to make wise choices, so life works better. He calls you to view the world the way it truly is so that you flourish and have the joy God intended.

What is Our Response to the Wisdom and Joy of Creation?

So what's our response? And we'll take from earlier in the chapter as well as the end.

Hear

It's simple, but it's hard. First thing we see in verse six, hear, for I will speak noble things or verse 33, hear instruction and do not neglect it. Blessed is the one who listens. Hear. Direct your attention to the patterns that God has put in his world for joy.

There are patterns about relationships that's not just so you can survive. That's because God wants you to see the pattern and have the joy that he wants to flow through it. Hear. Listen. Pay attention to God's patterns.

Trust

Next, if we look at verse seven and eight, wisdom is going to speak trustworthy things. My mouth will utter truth. Wickedness is an abomination to my lips. All the words of my mouth are righteous. There's nothing twisted or crooked in them.

Go to verse 35. Whoever finds wisdom finds life and obtains favor from the Lord. But he who fails to find me injures himself, all who hate me, love death.

If I put it in one word. Trust. Trust that when God says, this is what is wise that leads you to life. And when God says, this is what is foolish, that leads you to death. Wisdom doesn't deceive you.

So you respond by paying attention and by trusting, we could go back to chapter three, trust in the Lord with all your heart, and don't lean on your own understanding in all your ways, in every pattern, in every area of life, acknowledge him. Know him, love him, and he'll guide your paths. So here, trust.

Choose Wisdom

And the last one. Take or choose. Verse 10 says, take my instruction instead of silver. Verse 34 says, the one who listens to me is watching daily at my gates, waiting beside my doors. Wisdom calls you to engage your will.

If we can connect a few of the things throughout this morning. Wisdom calls you to pursue the knowledge of how things work, the discernment of how things actually are, what to notice, and the right values. Wisdom calls you to pursue that in a way that fits with God's patterns throughout creation because they're rooted in God and they lead you to joy.

Wisdom says, choose it. Don't just sit there and say, well, maybe I'll do it. I don't know. Engage the will that says, whatever this path of wisdom is, I want it. However it is, God says to flourish. I wanna choose to follow that. That's the call for everyone here.

If you think you failed, you've done lots of foolish things. He says, come learn. He's not presenting a hopeless category. I'm a fool, so there's no hope for me. He's calling for you wherever you are, to find the deepest joy in the universe, which is found in him and revealed in his wisdom.

A Special Address to Moms

So I want to call you, especially moms, dads get to do some of this too. Friends get to do this, grandparents, cousins, but moms, God has given you an amazing stewardship over humans made in the image of God. He's given you, at least at the early part of their lives, the most influential role, probably, in shaping the way they think about knowledge and discernment and values so that they can walk in wisdom and have joy.

Your motherhood, it is not just about surviving, although it feels like it sometimes. From the earliest stages, and I know many of you, this is exactly what you do from the earliest stages. You're teaching them how things work. You're teaching them what to notice and how things are, you're teaching them. This is better than that. Kindness is better than selfishness. You're doing all of those things. Why? Because God wants to use every one of those things in their lives to connect them with this fabric of wisdom, of joy, so that they can soar.

You have an incredible opportunity. Don't ever let anyone tell you it's not important.

We could do testimony of after testimony around this room of how your mom impacted you, of how you learn joy and wisdom through things your mom did. And I know some moms that may not be your testimony, but many of us could look back and see that experience with our mothers.

So I want to encourage you, moms, what you do, the little things you train them to know and think has a deep, profound impact for them to know God and experience his joy.

A Look Ahead: Discovering God's Patterns of Wisdom in Proverbs

These patterns are all around us, and really as we finish this chapter and get to the end of the extended introduction in Proverbs. The question we're going to ask is, well, what are the patterns of relationships? Honesty, work, pride, hope, endurance counsel, money, instruction words, take your pick. Just keep going. What are the patterns that exist in God's creation so that we can walk according to those patterns and flourish and have the deep, profound joy that God wants to be all throughout creation.

This book gives you two alternatives. You can scoff at God's patterns, you can ignore them. You can say you're going to be uncommitted. I'll see. Maybe I'll follow God's patterns. Maybe I won't.

Or you can hear, you can trust, and you can choose to follow after God's wisdom everywhere He reveals it.

As we continue in the book. Ask yourself, am I ready to hear? Am I ready to choose? Am I ready to truly listen to God's patterns? Do I trust him that those patterns are full of the deepest joy?

I'll invite you to think about that. If you'll take just a moment. Let's respond to God in prayer.