What is Wisdom (Part 1 of 2)

Think a five week series here. Yeah, I don't remember the timeline exactly. I think that's what Lynn said it was about five weeks.

I'm calling this practical wisdom from Proverbs. The idea of this is going to be to take different categories of information, proverbs kind of compile them together and say, this is what the Bible says about this. So for instance, I know that doesn't make any sense, but for instance, how we speak and take Proverbs and talk about what Proverbs says about speech, put it together in a lesson.

Say, here's wisdom about how we need to speak or for moral situations. Here's wisdom on how to make decisions or moral situations and do a few weeks of that. One of the reasons I'm doing this is because my goal has been to read Proverbs every night before I go to bed, read the Proverb.

I call the Proverb of the day the Proverb chapter that matches the date. And I've been doing that since September of last year. Not 100% every night, but probably about 98% of the time.

So I'm doing pretty good on that. I'm just becoming more and more familiar with Proverbs. It's been helpful and so I want to do that.

But before we get into what Proverbs says about what's wise about speech or what's wise about other situations in life, I thought we maybe should discuss what is wisdom and just have an understanding of what it means to be wise, what it means to have wisdom. Where does wisdom come from? How do we get wisdom? So that's where I'm going to be today. Nathan asked, how long am I going to teach? It depends on a number of things.

If we're most of the way through the lesson, it's 12:00 and I have a little bit left to go. I'm going to go a little long if it's 12:00 and I'm hardly through the lesson, which is a possibility. And then I'll stop at twelve and we'll pick it up next week.

One other thing that's happened this morning is I felt pretty good this morning, but I got up to start singing and halfway through the first song I didn't have any volume left on my voice. So I feel fine talking. The singing didn't work out very good.

So there is the possibility I get to 1130, my voice is shot and at that point if I can't talk anymore, we'll go ahead and stop. So I don't know how long we're going to be. How's that for an answer? Let's go ahead and pray and then we'll dig into this.

Heavenly Father, we do praise you, Lord. We thank you for the encouragement today of how your servant who suffered and died for us was resurrected, was ascended, was exalted, was crowned the King, and given that position, Lord. And that even as we recognize Jesus as our Savior, we recognize Jesus as our interceder, and we recognize Jesus as the one who's going to come again and glorify us and bring us to be with you for all eternity.

I want to thank you for this lesson this morning as we study about wisdom. Lord, help give us clarity as we study, help us to see what Your word says and just come to the truth that you want us to know this morning. Lord, we thank you for this time together.

We just ask that you bless it now in Your Son's name. Amen. Okay, so what is wisdom? I don't know if I have the most logical way to come at this.

This is the way I developed it. So this is the way we're going to talk about this morning. The first thing I thought of is that we use the terms wisdom and knowledge a lot, right? So what is the difference between wisdom and knowledge? So my first point here is wisdom versus knowledge.

By the way, I didn't get to a PowerPoint made, so I don't have any blanks in here. So I'm just going to ask you to follow along and pay attention. Wisdom versus knowledge.

Well, I think first of all, when we look at Scripture, we see that there is a connection between wisdom and knowledge. They aren't different things so much as they're compatible things. The first place I saw this was when I was reading through some things on wisdom is that Solomon asked for wisdom.

We all know that, right? We know the story. God comes to Solomon, he asks for wisdom. But when you look at it closely, he asked for both wisdom and for knowledge or for understanding.

It wasn't just wisdom that he asked for. Second Chronicles and I'm going to ask some people again, just because of my voice, I'm going to ask some people to read some verses. But you're going to have to read really loud because we're in this big auditorium, you're not Mike.

So I want people that can be loud readers. But Second Chronicles, one seven through ten. Nathan, I know you're a loud reader.

Go ahead. God appeared to Solomon, said to him, ask, what shall I give you? And Solomon said to God, you have shown great mercy to David my Father, and have made me king in his place. Now, O Lord God, let Your promise to David my Father be established, for you have made me king over people.

Now give me wisdom and knowledge that I may go out and come in before this people. For who can judge this great people? So here he asks for wisdom and knowledge. So there's a connection that why wouldn't he just ask for wisdom? I just need wisdom.

God give me wisdom. But he asked for wisdom and knowledge. We see in one Kings 429, we read, And God gave Solomon wisdom and exceedingly great understanding.

So this term understanding is used also enlarges of heart, like the sand on the seashore. So what God gave Solomon was not just wisdom, and a lot of times we teach it that way. Solomon asked for wisdom, but he actually asked for wisdom and knowledge or wisdom and understanding.

And I think that's an important point. Wisdom and knowledge .2 here are wisdom and knowledge or understanding are linked together quite often in the Scripture a lot in Proverbs, but in other places, too.

So I'll have somebody read Proverbs one, one and two. Matthew, go ahead. So no wisdom instructions.

Perceive the words of understanding. So again, wisdom and understanding being linked here in this passage. Proverbs two, one through two.

Another reader, Olivia. Thank you. I can't even remember my old kids’ names.

So the next chapter, it talks about applying your ear to wisdom and applying your heart to understanding and being the Hebrew. A lot of times when you see similar concepts repeated, it's a way of saying the same thing in a different way. And I think that's what it's doing here that is connecting wisdom and understanding.

Proverbs 313. Another reader. Eric, go ahead.

So again, finding wisdom and gaining understanding. Two similar concepts here linked together. Just to give you a New Testament passage, Colossians two, three.

Another reader, please. Ted, go ahead. So here wisdom and knowledge being linked together.

Now, in case you don't believe me that this happens a lot, I put other references and you can see there's quite a number of them there that you can feel free to look up on your own and see where wisdom and knowledge or wisdom and understanding are connected in Scripture. So what does this mean? What are wisdom? What is knowledge? What is understanding? Well, I'm going to try to give a definition here and I'm going to borrow some thoughts from some lexicons, which are lexicons are basically dictionaries of foreign languages. So looking at some things in both the Hebrew and the Greek, first of all, we see knowledge.

I define this in the poor way because my English teachers told me never do this using the word in its definition. But knowledge is the idea of knowing. This is knowing something.

If we're going to think in a biblical term, it would be knowing the truth, knowing what is right and wrong, knowing what is truth and lie. It's the idea of knowing. In the Scripture, knowledge is connected to truth most often.

And then the low need a dick. Lexicon here says to possess more or less definite information about possibly with a degree of thoroughness or competence. So the idea of knowing something for instance, I know some really obscure geographical facts because I'm a geographer and I know that the Caspian Sea is the largest lake in the world.

Yes, I did say the Caspian Sea is the largest lake. It's named a sea, but it's really a lake. I know that's the largest.

Now, does that help me in my spiritual life? Absolutely not. But it's something I know I have facts about it I've never been to the Caspian Sea, I've never experienced the Caspian Sea, but I know because I've read about it. So that's knowledge, it's knowing something, understanding.

The idea of understanding is to discern here from the theological word book of the Old Testament. The verb refers to knowledge, which is superior to the mere gathering of data is necessary to know how to use knowledge one possesses. So now this would be something like, I know about cars.

I know that cars have steering wheels. I know cars have the gas pedal, brake pedal. Some cars have a clutch depending on if they're manual or automatic.

I know they have seats, I know they have windshields. I know about cars. Understanding would be I know how to get in a car and make it go.

There's a difference between that. My eight year old knows about cars, but I'm not going to put him in the driver's seat and say, go take off with the car. He doesn't know, doesn't have a practical understanding of how to drive a car.

So there's understanding and then there's wisdom. Wisdom considers the use of knowledge. And this is first of all from theological word book of the Old Testament, represents a manner of thinking and attitude concerning life's experience, including matters of general interest and basic morality.

These concerns relate to prudence in secular affairs, skill in the arts, moral sensitivity, and experience in the way of the Lord. So the idea here is that you can take the knowledge and you can do something with it. And you are doing something with it.

The Lo Nita lexicon says a capacity to understand and as a result, to act wisely. So it's more than just knowing, it's more than just having understanding. There's also action involved in it.

The Freiburg lexicon, which is a Greek lexicon, generally the ability to use knowledge for correct behavior. So it's putting the knowledge into practice. I thought of what would be a good illustration of this.

Well, let's go back to driving again. How many of you here have a driver's license? How many of you regularly drive a car? Okay, if I asked you in the United States, which side of the road do you drive on? Who could answer that? Lynn, you can answer that. What is it? Okay, you drive on the right side of the United States.

I had to say in the United States because there's other parts of the world they don't drive on the right side. Strange that way. So Lynn has a knowledge of what side of the road to drive upon.

We've established that that's knowledge. Now he comes to an intersection where he's coming up the road and he comes to a divided highway. Y'all know what a divided highway is? There's two lanes that go one way and two lanes that go the other way.

And they're disconnected by usually a grassy meeting or something. He comes up to a divided highway and he sees here and he wants to turn left at this divided highway. Which lane are you going to turn into, Lynn? The what? Are you going to turn left into the first one, or are you going to go left to the second one? Okay, around to the second side.

Right? So we now know he has an understanding of how to drive on the road, which side to drive on, because he can come to a situation in life and go, okay, there's a divided highway here. I need to make sure I'm on the right side and on the left side. If I turn the left, I'm going to be turning into oncoming traffic.

He understands that now, Lynn has a knowledge. Lynn has an understanding. Let's say Lynn comes to this intersection and says, you know what? I don't want to go all the way across the traffic and turn left.

I want to turn in the first set of road here because I just want to do that. I think that's better. What do you call that? That is foolishness because he knows that he has to be over on the other side.

He knows that's how it works. He knows that you drive on the right hand side, but he says, I'm going to ignore that and drive on the left hand side of the road. I don't care what the consequences are.

That's what we call foolishness, right? So when we apply this to what God wants us to do, we can have a knowledge of God and a knowledge of what's right and what's wrong, what's truth and what's a lie. We can even know how to apply that knowledge. We can say, you know, I come in this situation.

This is what God wants me to do. But then we have a choice whether we follow through on that. And that's where wisdom comes in.

If we know what's right and we know what's the right decision to make, but we do the wrong thing, that's foolishness.