Biblical Wisdom for Everyday Life: Discernment Reimagined

Pastor Fletcher teaches from Proverbs about Biblical wisdom. Discussion points: Proverbs teaches us generally a better way to live rather than being correct about every situation, the fear of the Lord is more like reverent awe of him, the key to wisdom is to live in a state of continual worship of the Lord.

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  Scripture Reader: [Proverbs 1:1-7] The Proverbs of Solomon son of David King of Israel. To know wisdom and instruction, to understand words of insight, to receive instruction in wise dealing, in righteousness, justice and equity, to give prudence to the simple, knowledge and discretion to the youth. Let the wise hear and increase in learning, and the one who understands obtain guidance. To understand a proverb and a saying, the words of the wise and the riddles. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, fools despise wisdom and instruction.

  This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

  Preacher: All right. Well, good morning. My name's Fletcher. It's a joy to have you all this morning. It's a joy to be here and to be able to be able to leave the church and, and to be with my family, which I consider all of you. over the past, I, I've been a pastor for almost 20 years now and over 12 years in the Boston area. And one of the things that I handle most often when people want to have a meeting with me is, is discernment. It happens all the time. with kind of the stage of life that many people are in, in our church and over the history of our church, Boston tends to be kind of a transitory place for a lot of different people. And so it tends to be a place where people come for school or they come for one of their first jobs or they're thinking about getting married. And so they're seeking counsel and discernment and so they might come and talk to their pastor about it. It's a very common task that I might have.

  And it's true that we all are faced with difficult decisions all the time. Difficult decisions. What career or job should I pursue? Which school should I go to? Who's going to turn off the car alarm? Oh, ok. It did. What person should I marry or asked to go on a date? What city should I live in? Difficult decisions all the time? Some of them are big. And if you're like me, even the small ones can be difficult. Like, where are we going to go out to eat? like I could spend an hour just like researching it and then, like surveying people and asking them where they've enjoyed going to eat.

  Wouldn't it be so much easier if you could just ask God these things and out of what we know is his infinite wisdom, he could just tell us the answers. Wouldn't life be so much easier if prayer worked, like a regular phone that you pick up and you call and you talk to God and he responds with what you should do, like talking to a very wise parent. And then that parent, you trust what they have to say and you do it wouldn't life be so much easier. That's both a yes and a no.

  Here's how most people make decisions. They, they don't go to the Lord in prayer, even if they, even if they did have this guarantee that he would give them an answer. I'm not sure that people would go to the Lord in prayer because I'm not sure that we would trust what he has to say. I think that most people make decisions in this way. What option gives me more money, more fame, more success. What is better for me? What helps me to better pursue my dream of the good life. This is what I call the American decision matrix. OK? The American Dream decision matrix, we're going to, we're gonna copyright it right now. Where's my copyright attorney? Well, Emanuel, he's around here somewhere, you know, get my trademark in the American Dream decision matrix.

  It's very simple. What gives me more money? What gives me more fame? What gives me more of what I want? And this is the way that most people make decisions. Now, even Christians have their own version of this and it's called the American Dream decision matrix with a little little prayer paprika sprinkled on top. OK. It's, it's I'm doing what makes me happiest. But you know, I'm gonna Sprinkle that in prayer. We're praying about it, but I'm gonna do what makes me happiest anyways.

  And then you look at the early church and what is happening in the early church is the farthest thing from the American dream decision matrix that you can find anywhere you see people selling their homes and giving the proceeds to the apostles laying it at their feet saying use it for the kingdom. It's not mine. I want God to have it all. You see people going from city to city and, and risking imprisonment because they have good news to share with people. You see people making drastic decisions with their lives.

  That would not make sense from a worldly. If you take a step back from an American Dream decision matrix, standpoint does not make sense to make the decisions that they are making in the early church, but yet something is motivating them to make different decisions than what we normally would make. Now some of you, you know, let's give you a little bit more than the, the, the prayer paprika, ok. Maybe you, you go a step beyond that.

  There's different ways to make decisions. How do Christians normally do this? There's the old I'm gonna open my Bible to the random page and point at it and see what I get from that. Has anybody ever tried that one. Ok. We've got a few hands. That's right. Sometimes it's a miracle. I would rather you do that than nothing because sometimes that actually works. And you're like, oh, you don't know what to do with it. It's like it actually worked. God did something. But usually for me, I turn to Ezekiel and read something that I still don't understand and then I don't know what to do with it. I'm just lost. You know, it, it's out of context, it doesn't make sense. It, that's not usually the best way to do it.

  And then other, I, I want you to imagine with me this, this is also a view that many of us hold a as Christians. When we make decisions, we imagine ourselves as we're walking through a dark and horrifying forest, we're walking through the forest on a narrow path. And if we take one step off that path or what we perceive to be one step off that path, all of a sudden, we're completely lost. And all we want to know is how do we get back on the path? How do we get back on the path? But this also is a bit outside of the way that the Bible talks about decisions because in the Bible, it seems like people have real choices and it's not just that God has a one singular path for you to go and you, if you get off for a second, you, you don't know where to go.

  It's, there's a lot of different things you can do with your life and he gives us real choices and yes, you can step away from God's will. And there's different ways of pursuing sin, obviously off the path. But sometimes there's just multiple paths and it's not like one is ordained specifically for you. You have real decisions that you have to make and how do we make those decisions? That is the question and that is where we are helped by the Proverbs.

  I think Proverbs is the book of all the books that teaches us how we find wisdom to make decisions in our lives. We're going through a series on the wisdom literature at the moment and the wisdom literature. When we talk about the wisdom of literature, we always are talking about Job Ecclesiastes and Proverbs. And then we're going to put a few of the Psalms in there, there's Wisdom Psalms and then no one's really sure what to do with Song of Solomon. So we're gonna put that in there also and we'll be covering the Song of Solomon in a couple of weeks. October 13th, you know, mark your calendar, that type of thing. Song of Solomon is about sex, by the way, in case you're wondering why you're marking your calendar for that one. Now, everybody just feels awkward including me.

  But as we go through the series on the wisdom literature, what we see is that the wisdom literature gives us this vision for Life with God. We're calling the series Life Reimagined and the wisdom literature teaches us about the good life and how do we get the good life. So let's jump into Proverbs and figure out what Proverbs is all about. We've already covered job and, and Ecclesiastes and as we go, I'm gonna show you how they all work together because really, you gotta look at the wisdom, literature as a whole. How do they work together?

  So, Proverbs chapter one, verse one, it's always a good place to start. When you're reading a book of the Bible. It starts with this, the Proverbs of Solomon son of David king of Israel. He here we learn the author of the of Proverbs is King Solomon. And we know from the history book. First Kings chapter three, the Solomon was given more wisdom by God than any man before or after him. So literally the wisest man who ever walked the face of the earth, he made a lot of mistakes, but yet he still was given a gift of wisdom, verse two, to know wisdom and instruction and to understand words of insight.

  This is the, this is the preamble to the entire book. So, so listen carefully to this. If you don't catch anything else, we gotta catch this. To know wisdom and instruction, to understand words of insight, to receive instruction. And wise dealing and righteousness, justice and equity, to give prudence to the simple knowledge and discretion to the youth. Let the wise hear an increase in learning and the one who understands obtain guidance, to understand a proverb and a saying, the words of the wise and their riddles. So what is he saying? He's saying, hey, this book is here for you to gain wisdom. This book is here for you to figure out how to live life. The best kind of way this book is here for you to learn the good life and how do you live the good life. It's all about this idea of wisdom.

  Now, when we think about wisdom, what we normally think about is increasing in knowledge. So in that case, Boston would have a, a cultural idol of wisdom. We are a, a place where the higher institutions reign. Supreme Harvard and MIT Boston College. Boston University Northeastern. I mean, all you know, 300 colleges, what however many there are 300,000 college students in the area. We feel it every September when the traffic resumes. But wisdom is this huge thing that we normally think about as knowledge. But wisdom is more than knowledge when you think about it from a biblical perspective, because he says to know wisdom and instruction, to understand words of insight, to receive instruction and wise dealing it, it, it seems like it's more than just understanding. It's more than just knowledge.

  In fact, the author of the, the Bible project, which is this great, like, kind of, they make YouTube videos and podcasts. He, and it's actually like really great scholarship. I would encourage you to watch the Bible project's videos on almost anything but the one on Proverbs, he explains it very well. Tim Mackey from, from Bible project, he tells us that the word for wisdom translated in Hebrew, it's translated from Hebrew. It's chokmah, OK. Chokmah. And if you wanna say it, you can say it with me, but you gotta get a little bit of the guttural with the ch. So chokmah, oh there, I heard a lot of guttural there. Thank you.

  Tim Mackey from the Bible project. He calls it chokmah. And he says this, what Proverbs teaches us about wisdom or chokmah is that there is an invisible creative force in the universe that can guide people in the way they should live. It's actually woven into the fabric of how the world works. So anytime someone makes a good decision, they're working with God and anytime someone makes a bad decision, they're working against God's wisdom. And so the way that this idea of chokmah works is that it's like a universal cause effect pattern. We see it all over the world. It's like a, a universal moral order that there is to the world. If you live rightly, if you live justly, you have chokmah and if you live against from that you're living in your own wisdom and you're, you're living foolishly on the other side.

  Chokmah has actually a much wider semantic range than that in the Hebrew. It can also just refer to someone who's like, really good at their craft. So you might say Lebron James has chokmah in basketball. All right. Or someone who's very good at wood carving would have chokmah in that skill. Now, there's probably ways that you can do it while you're cheating. If you cheat at your, at your skill, it doesn't mean that you have chokmah, you're living foolishly in that way. But it's, it's this wide word that basically is referring to the union universal cause and effect pattern that happens in the universe, the way that life normally works.

  And so what we see in the book of Proverbs, I just wanna give you an overview of it because I'm probably not gonna teach a sermon like this again in a long time where I'm just overview in the entire book. The first nine chapters of Proverbs is wisdom that you see passed from a father to a son. What a special relationship where he says here, my son and then he teaches him about wisdom and oftentimes wisdom is personified and as lady wisdom as it goes through there. And after the first nine chapters, what the author of Proverbs Solomon does is he takes this idea of wisdom that he's been teaching about for nine chapters and he just applies it to different situations with catchy little phrases.

  All right. So let me give you a few examples of some proverbs from the scriptures. Proverbs 20 verse five, the purpose in a man's heart is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out. That's, that's a great proverb, isn't it the purpose in a man's heart? You had these, you can't just like read it. You have to like really kind of think about it. The purpose in a man's heart is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out which means that we do things and we often don't even realize the purpose for which we do them. But it's deeply embedded in us in the well of who we are. And it takes a man or a person of understanding to draw out the purposes for which we do the things that we do. It's a very wise saying.

  Another one that we think about often in Proverbs 21:5, the plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance. But everyone who is hasty comes only to poverty, we know this to be generally true, right? Generally true. We know that those who are diligent lead to abundance and those who are hasty, they end up living in poverty. And that is like just kind of a truism that we know. But the problem with the Proverbs is when we take these things to say that this is how it always works every single time. Well, this might be a general truth. If you're not careful, you're going to start blaming people for their own poverty and that it doesn't work that way because there's always exceptions to the general rules of the way that the world works.

  And that's why we studied the wisdom literature altogether because while Proverbs teaches us the general moral order of the universe, what Ecclesiastes does is he says, wait a second, it doesn't always work that way. And in fact, when you look at it, you can do good things and bad things might happen to you or you could live a good life and have good things. But then it all just feels meaningless at the end of it. So you have to read Ecclesiastes as you read Proverbs and also you have to read Job because Job says you can do everything right and lose it all and it be no fault of your own. And what, what do you do in that situation? So what Job and Ecclesiastes do, what we've been doing for the past couple of weeks is looking at the exceptions to the rule. I think it's important for us these days to look at the exceptions because we need to have this nuance of how the world works.

  But now we're looking at just the general moral order of the world which is, if you live justly, if you live rightly good will happen for you. If you live selfishly, if you live foolishly, that will happen to you. And that is generally true. Not always but generally true. So what Proverbs does is teaches us to play Moneyball with our lives. Ok. Some of you are not familiar with Moneyball. There was a 2011 movie with Brad Pitt in it, called Moneyball. And it's, it was about a book that was written like in 2004. and Moneyball is this idea that you can take a sports team that is not as good, generally speaking as other sports teams, but you can still win even with a, a less, less money devoted to the team. So, for example, the movie is about the 2002 Oakland athletics, the Oakland A's and on the A's, they didn't have as much money as the Yankees. This is back when the Yankees were dominating baseball. Boo Yankees. Ok. we don't need to talk about them much more.

  But the Oakland A's wanted to compete, they were losing all of their best players and so they wanted to put together a team that still works. And so the general manager of the A's had this idea that if you don't look at the conventional, scouting material, normally scouts just look at home runs and hits and that sort of thing. But instead if you look at things like base percentage and slugging percentage and some of this goes over my head because I'm not really a baseball guy. then you can put together a team for far cheaper than what you could if you just went after all the stars. And so what they said is look, if you get these guys that have high slugging percentages, high on base percentages and put them on a team, no one's gonna think you're gonna be very good, but you're gonna win more games than you're not.

  And so what, what it's teaching us is this is how you win, you're not gonna win every game, but this is how you win most of the games. And that's kind of how Proverbs is. If you live by Proverbs, you're not gonna win every game, but you're gonna win some games. In fact, at the end of the movie, they say that the owner of the Boss Red Sox John Henry tried to recruit the general manager for the A's and the general manager said, no thanks. I'm not coming, but instead he just stole his method and found another general manager. And so they won the 2004 World Series and no one cares. Wow. Here we are in Somerville. You're supposed to be like World Series. No, no. Yeah. All right. People from everywhere, any Bostonians. Ok. A few, you gotta, you know, you gotta how about this? They mentioned Kevin Youkilis. You, there were a few, ok, when you say Youkilis, you go, you, ok, let's try it again. They, they mentioned Kevin Youkilis. Ok, that was bad. But, but we'll continue anyway, they mentioned him, they call him the Greek god of walks in the movie. So I thought that was good. He's a, he's a Boston legend. Anyway, similar to the Proverbs.

  Similarly, if you live by the Proverbs, it's like playing money ball with your life. It's not that everything goes perfectly for you. But in general, it's a better way to live. Not, it doesn't teach you how to win every game, but on average, you're gonna do better. So, the, the secret to living by the Proverbs is this though, I don't want you to miss this. This is when I normally read the Proverbs. This is what I wanna do. I read the Proverbs and I'm like, man, I just wanna memorize like all of these so I can just pull them out in the right situation and one, I'm gonna sound really cool because I'm gonna be able to say this. Proverb my friends can be like, wow, you're really wise. And it's like, no, it's actually the Bible. And then I, I look pretentious and wise, but that's not the secret to living by Proverbs.

  The secret to living by Proverbs is to find the thread that goes through all the Proverbs, it's not to memorize everyone, but it's to find the foundation that everyone is built upon. The. Proverbs are built upon a foundation and once you master the foundation, it's like master it all. Because if you get this thread, you get what's behind all the Proverbs and then you can live your life wisely. And what is the thread? What is the secret to it? They tell you right here in the next verse.

  Proverbs chapter one verse seven, right here in the beginning, it says this, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, fools, despise wisdom and instruction. So the thread is this idea of the fear of the Lord. Let's look at Proverbs chapter two and see it emphasized again there 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 wit 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.

  So if you want to learn the Proverbs, all you really have to learn is this idea of the fear of the Lord. Now, the fear of the Lord, although it might be the guiding principle of the Proverbs is not necessarily something that I am drawn to because I'm not the type of guy that likes being afraid. I don't, I'm not the scary movie guy. I'm the don't turn on your TV. In the month of October guy. I, one time I saw a pizza commercial that was Halloween themed, didn't sleep for a week. Ok. It just knocked me out. I'm not the type of guy that enjoys being afraid, but yet the scriptures talk about the fear of the Lord as this good thing. Isaiah chapter 11 verse three, it says, and his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not be, he shall not judge by what his eye see or decide disputes by what his ears hear.

  So how do you find wisdom? How do you judge what, what by what your eye? How do you find better wisdom than what your eyes can see or decide disputes better than what your ears can hear. But to delight in the Lord, the fear of the Lord to delight in the fear of the Lord fear in the, in the Bible. When it's talking about the fear of the Lord, we it's not like the scary kind of fear. It's more of this respect, ah reverent view of who got it. It's like that sacred ground. You ever walk into a situation? You just, you, you get the goose bumps or you, you just feel like oh what I'm stepping in is, is holy. That's the fear of the Lord and a secret to understanding the Proverbs and living wisely is to live in that always to live in this understanding of who God is and who you are in respect to Him.

  Charles Spurgeon, put it this way, the more we fear the Lord, the more we love Him until this becomes to us, the true fear of God, to love Him with all our heart and mind and soul and strength. The fear of the Lord is to have an accurate view of who he is with an understanding of who I am at the same time. And so as we fear, the Lord is to come close to the Lord and to drink deeply of his grace and truth for you. Basically, when we talk about fear of the Lord, what we're talking about is love for the Lord, but in an immense kind of way, not just a stereotypical surface level love, but it's like a, a deep respect and honor and trust in who the Lord is.

  The Proverbs teach us that this is the key to wisdom, to fear the Lord, to enjoy God, to follow after the Lord with all your heart. I don't want to move past this too hastily. I I actually send my sermons to Alexis our ministry associate every week to read over and she usually corrects my grammar and helps me not sound like a dad at certain times. But often has really thoughtful feedback. She was like hey, don't move past this too quick because in just a minute, I'm gonna get to like five ways to make better decisions in your life. And she and that everybody wants the five ways, you know, give me the five steps to make better decisions. I'll give that to you in just a minute. But this is really the key that unlocks all of them.

  Wisdom is not a temporary gift from the Lord. Wisdom is a lifestyle. Wisdom is not a decision. It is a trajectory that you live in your life. You walk in wisdom, you don't just turn it on. You know, in our modern society, we're used to running water. We walk over to the faucet, we turn on the faucet, there's water, that's not the way wisdom works. It's more like an ancient society where you have to live next to the stream. You have to live next to the well and draw regularly from the well. You can't just go to the faucet and turn it on when you want. You can't live the way you want to live running out in the wilderness and then show up and turn the running water on. That's not the way wisdom works to get wisdom is to walk with the Lord. The key to wisdom is to live in a state of continual worship of the Lord.

  Proverbs chapter three says this trust in the Lord with all of your heart and do not lean on your own understanding in all your ways, acknowledge him and he will make straight your paths. So how do you find wisdom? Well, you can't just go to him in your time of need, but you have to trust in the Lord with all of your heart, do not lean on your own understanding ever in all your ways, acknowledge him and then he will make straight your paths. It's like you have to walk in this thing. You can't just turn it on and turn it back off again. When you, when you're tired of it, there's a reason why this is it. It's, it's because to walk in a way that's not in the fear of the Lord is to be wise in your own eyes.

  And so that's what the Proverbs tell us over and over again. That the opposite of walking in the fear of the Lord is being wise in your own eyes, which is foolishness. Proverbs chapter three verse seven, be not wise in your own eyes, fear the Lord and turn away from evil. I had a great uncle who was wise in his own eyes. He told us that oil did not go bad. He was convinced that you did not have to change the oil in your car that it was all just a conspiracy from the oil manufacturers and you did not need to change it. After about three or four vehicles, he changed his mind. How many of us have friends who have made decisions that they thought were wise decisions, but they were wise only in their own eyes. We all know people like that, right? We all know people that have made foolish decisions. And the only person that is wise to is themselves, how many people have excused sin in their lives and lived. However they want to live ignoring the biblical commandments simply because they did not want to listen to the wisdom of God. They wanted to live wisely in their own eyes and they did not want to fear the Lord.

  All that to say, how do we make the decisions? Ok. Here's the five things, all right, five ways to honor the Lord with your decisions, to honor God with your decisions. And remember the key to all of this is the fear of the Lord. So if you get nothing else, it's like you gotta walk in and like reverent worship of the Lord at all times. That is like the key to making wise decisions is to be a wise person. The key to being a wise person is to like walk near the Lord. That's, that's where it's at. But here are five ways and things that we can do to facilitate that in our lives. The first is search the scripture, search the scripture. Oh, they gave them all to you. OK? Well, yeah, that's fine. Well, you got them. I'm trying slides OK. I've never used slides before. I'm using them. Now, I need to give more instructions when, when.

  So search the scripture. Many of our decisions have clear biblical commandments. And if you're trying to decide whether or not to leave your, leave your family and run off to Aruba with a coworker and have an affair that as clearly walking in the wisdom of your own eyes, that is not something that would be honoring to the Lord. Sometimes we have to be reminded that we just need to search the scriptures and find clear biblical prescription for what is right and wrong. That honestly is like 95% of this, the other 5% is where it takes like a little bit more skill to make the decisions with our lives.

  The second one, I think this one's great is to consider the kingdom to live wisely means that you're able to see outside of what's best for you alone and you're able to consider what's best for other people. So for example, in chapter one and verse three, it says to receive instruction and wise dealing and righteousness, justice, and equity. Now, is that talking about righteousness, justice, and equity for me or for others? So wisdom is to think about others, what's righteous and just and equitable for others. Think about the effects of the kingdom. Think about how this is going to affect those who are closest to me, not just me and my family. Although that is a good thing to consider also is your own family. Oftentimes we make decisions just for ourselves. But then how's this going to affect my church? How is this going to affect the Kingdom of God? Where can I live to make a pur to live with purpose and meaning where, where is all of that going to matter? So you consider the kingdom.

  And third, you seek counsel as, as Christian community. We believe that other people often have better perspective on our issues than we do. And sometimes we like to pick and choose our counselors based upon the advice we'd like to hear. You know, you do that. I do too. Proverbs chapter 11 verse 14, it says where there is no guidance of people falls, but in an abundance of counselors, there is safety. Where can we find an abundance of counselors for that fear. The Lord also, maybe our church family, our community groups, maybe you can just open up about something I'm gonna give you some secret words here. OK? These are things that you probably do need to write down because I've heard them so rarely. But they're like the right thing to say. If you are trying to make a decision with your life, you need to go to a friend and ask, what do you think I should do? Isn't that amazing? She's like, what do you think? Don't just tell them everything, tell them everything and then say, what do you think? Or here's another one. What do you see about my decision making that? I don't see, what do you see that? I don't see now those questions require humility and a lot it requires you to be vulnerable. But those are such good questions for us to truly seek counsel. We don't oftentimes we don't really truly want to seek counsel. We just want to feel affirmed in our decisions. But if you want to truly seek counsel, those are good questions for you.

  Four, so simple, pray and listen for the Lord. It should be a given. We're supposed to pray about our decisions. But a again, like I said, how often do we use the prayer paprika? You know, like I'm just gonna throw a little bit on that, say I prayed about it and then live my life as if I didn't, I cannot begin to tell you how many things that I have sat down to pray about and by the and not really having any clue what I should do. And just by the end of the prayer, it's not like I heard an audible voice, but I just feel really sure of a certain direction. Like I just feel very confident that I should do this. And it's usually those things that God gives us a choice on or it's like those things that like I just wouldn't have seen that if I had not taken it to the Lord and this happens all the time. This is like a weekly thing for me. I hope that it is for you also, it, it, it's a regular, a regular prayer, regular seeking of the Lord.

  And the last one I want you to consider is to potentially fast. Now, not many of us are experts at the practice of fasting, but fasting does appear to be the spiritual discipline in the scriptures given to people who are at a crossroads moment in their life. We often times think about fasting like a prayer strike like a like a hunger strike. But in prayer to God. So like God, I want this, I'm not going to eat until you give it to me. All right. So it's a hunger strike, but that's not fair at all. I love the way that Dallas Willard talks about fasting. And he says, fasting is an opportunity to let your body catch up with your soul. Fasting is an opportunity to let your body catch up with your soul. And so when your soul is hungry and looking for direction, maybe you turn to fasting and allow your body to catch up.

  Now. Fasting has other purposes in the scripture. You see people fasting when they're mourning. But really those are the two primary things is when they're at a crossroads moment or when they're in mourning. There's other reasons to fast. I I applaud fasting. It's a good thing. But this is really a time when you need to consider it when you're trying to find direction. And, you know, if you've never fasted before, I can give you some resources. I would love to do that as your pastor. but, you know, start small, might be a word of wisdom to you. Start with a meal, don't stay there, do that like a couple of times and then maybe do a whole day that that's usually doable by most people. We had an intern here one time who like decided to do a 20 day fast. And he was intense and I, but you know what happened during that time is like he met his wife during his fast. And after like eight days, I was like, bro, you've got to eat and he, he agreed. And, and he did.

  So when we're thinking about wisdom and we look at the New Testament, we find that wisdom is personified as Jesus Christ first Corinthians chapter one verse 30 says, and because of him, you are in Christ, Jesus who became to us, wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption. So Jesus is the true wisdom of God incarnate on earth. And when we see Jesus, we learn what it means to live your life, always in the fear of the Lord Jesus was wisdom. And so therefore, he would be the true and better Solomon who truly understood wisdom. But yet did not move into wisdom of his own eyes, but always live for others and justice and equity and righteousness.

  And he teaches us that he is the way the truth and the life and look, I know how cliche this is about to sound. Ok. And how trite and I tried to get away from it and I just can't, but it's just this, wherever you're at, whatever decisions you're facing. I do not know, but I do know that the mo - I feel like I'm 20 years older than I am with this. But what I do know this and this is true, there is no bigger decision and more important one than the decision to follow Jesus Christ as your Lord and say that is the decision that we all must make. And if you want to make wise decisions, that is the decision that you first have to do. You have first have to step into. If we follow him, he might take us to some crazy places. We might make some decisions that we don't make. That, that don't make sense to the rest of the world. And I see you doing that church, I see you doing that. I see you making decisions that would not make sense to the rest of the world. And it's inspiring and encouraging to me to live in a community like that.

  And I know that some of you are standing at a crossroads right now. And maybe you feel alone or confused but know thus, you don't have to face the law that Jesus wants to be near to you, that he offers you wisdom, hope and guidance. All you have to do is to go to him.

  And one of the ways that we go to him every week is we come to a sacred meal and we're reminded of what he has done for us. And so every week, we participate in a communion meal, a Eucharist meal, lords supper, whatever you wanna call it, where we celebrate the night that he was betrayed. When Jesus took a loaf of bread and he tore it. And he said, this is my body broken for you. And he took a cup and he said, this is my blood shed for you. Do this in remembrance of me.

  And as we remember that his body was broken and his blood was shed, we're, we're being reminded that we need to go to him, that we need him for every moment of every day and that he desi desires to be near to us. So if you're a Christian with us today, we encourage you over the next song to come and receive the communion meal with us. With that being said, would you stand as we prepare our hearts to receive this meal and to come to the Lord.

  Father as we, as we process our lives in light of your word, we pray that you would teach us the fear of the Lord. We pray that you would make yourself very tangibly present to us so that we might walk in wisdom in awe of who you are, that we might live our lives in the stream of wisdom that we don't just try to turn it on when we need something, but that we will diligently seek you with all of our being and know you and be near to you. Father, we pray for those who are at a crossroads moment that you would give them wisdom and discernment, help them to make good choices. But God also we just thank you for those who are living their lives in light of Christ and following him to crazy places. So Jesus, would you continue to guide us and unite us with those crazy decisions to follow you. In Christ's name, Amen.