In the sermon 'Profitably Reading the Scriptures' by Peter Allison, the speaker emphasizes the importance of reading and understanding the Word of God through Proverbs 22:17-24:32. He outlines several principles for engaging with Scripture effectively: preparing the body and mind by inclining one's ear and having a teachable and humble spirit; concentrating and actively listening to the Word; applying the teachings to one's life by examining how they relate to personal situations; meditating on Scripture to allow it to dwell in the heart and mind; retaining the knowledge and insights gained to ensure they are not forgotten; and speaking and teaching the truths learned to reinforce understanding. The speaker highlights the blessings and pleasantness that come with keeping God's Word, such as wisdom, safety, and divine guidance. The sermon concludes with a call to treasure Scripture, seek its wisdom diligently, and let it transform one's life.

Please turn in your scriptures to Proverbs 22 as we come back to Proverbs after several months in Luke. In Luke, I'd like to read Proverbs 22, beginning at verse 17. Incline your ear and hear the words of the wise, and apply your heart to my knowledge, for it is a pleasant thing if you keep them within you. Let them all be fixed upon your lips, so that Your trust may be in the Lord. I have instructed you today, even you.

Have I not written to you excellent things of counsels and knowledge, that I may make you know the certainty of the words of truth, that you may answer words of truth to those who send you. May the Lord revive our hearts according to his loving kindness. Gracious Father in heaven, I ask that you would now sanctify and cleanse my sinful lips to proclaim what is good and holy. I ask Lord that you would open our hearts and minds and that your word may come to us in power and in much assurance by the Holy Spirit that it might accomplish the purpose for which it is sent and not return void to you. In Jesus' name, amen.

In Jesus' name, Amen. This is sometimes called the second introduction to the book of Proverbs. There are a lot of parallels in this passage, these verses, but this is a major division in the book, a major section break in the overall structure of Proverbs. You remember the first ten chapters were a lengthy introduction, a prologue that laid the foundation for what was to come. They told us about the importance, the importance of the wisdom of God, the urgency with which we should seek it, the benefits of doing so.

And so this was a very lengthy introduction, the first ten chapters, and then in beginning, or first nine chapters, and then beginning in chapter ten, we have the part two of Proverbs, the Proverbs of Solomon. And so for the next 12 chapters, from chapter 10 through 22 verse 16, we have for the most part short proverbs. We saw many different literary structures in them as they, and we saw how they were tied together in various ways, oftentimes in multiple ways at the same time. There's a lot of literary devices that we saw as we went through those twelve chapters. But they were the Proverbs of Solomon.

Short, pithy, witty sayings. They were not simply unrelated, but each one did stand on itself, but also we saw needed to be understood in the light of the context around it. But now we come to the end of these Proverbs and so this is starting another part of the book of Proverbs and so there's another introduction here very much like the Introduction that opened the book and and there's section that this is beginning is 30 sayings 30 wise sayings that go through chapter 24 verse 32 30 wise sayings you can count them They start in verse 22 and there's 30 of them. And then in chapter 24, then there's four more, or there's another part, and there's some more further sayings of The wise these things also belong to the wise And then start this back to 25 we start again the Proverbs of Solomon which the men of Hezekiah of king of Judah copied. And so it goes back to Proverbs but they're not as often as short and some are but some are a little bit longer.

There's a mix in that section. But we want to look this morning then at this second introduction in the book of Proverbs, that is in chapter 22 beginning at verse 17. And I've given us this morning a simple list of 15 or 16 things that pertain from this section that pertain to principles for profitably reading the Word of God. Principles for profitably reading the Word of God. Principles for profitably reading the Word of God.

So it's a very simple message this morning, one that I hope everybody, whether you're just learning to read or maybe not even yet quite reading, to the very oldest among us will be able to grasp and use right away Principles for the profitable reading of the Word of God. The first one we see is, incline your ear is a preparation of the body. Preparation of the body, inclining our ear, just removing the need to remove distractions, the need to prepare ourselves to profit from the reading of the scriptures. If we are otherwise distracted or unprepared, I should say if we are unprepared we will, we can more easily be distracted when we come to the Word of God. Now the ear is as you know and hearing is not just a physical exercise.

It's not just mechanical bones and membranes that are set in vibration by sound energy, but rather our mind is also involved in hearing. Those sound vibrations get converted into into nerve impulses and go into our brain and so we really hear with our with our mind as well and So there needs to be a preparation then of our mind. To incline our ear means we also need to prepare our mind to adhere. We need to have a teachable frame of mind. One of the most important things in a teachable frame of mind is to have humility.

It's to recognize that we need to be instructed. You know, if we come to this with thinking that we don't really need to be instructed, that we don't really need to learn, we won't. And so there needs to be a humility, a conscious preparation of our mind, conscious humility, a coming with recognition of our need, our need to learn, and then a willingness to learn. We have to come with a reverence for this word, a respect for it. We're not going to learn from it if We don't have a reverence for the Word of God if we regard it as uninteresting or boring.

If we come to a chapter and we just think, well, this is going to be boring, we're going to have a hard time learning anything. We're going to have a hard time profiting from it. You know, all of the Word of God is profitable for doctrine, for correction, for reproof, for instruction, training in righteousness that we might be complete. And so we have to have this reverence for the Word of God. This is God's Word.

It's not any ordinary book. It's not just an ordinary book. But it is the living Word of God. So In inclining our ear, we need to be preparing our mind, preparing our heart, preparing our heart to hear and to read the Word of God. We should ask the Lord for a desire to know his word, for a hunger and thirst for his word.

This is part of our preparation of inclining our ear in preparing our minds, our hearts to profitably hear and read the Word of God. Now, the next principle, the third principle, comes from here. We're to incline our ear, we're to prepare ourselves, body and heart, and then we're to hear. To hear means that there's a concentration, there's a focus, there's an active listening, There's a focusing of our mind upon what we are reading. You know, it is so easy to read the Word of God and then to realize, my mind was somewhere else.

Does that ever happen to you? I know it happens to me. It happens too often. A focus of our mind, bringing our mind back to what we are reading. So we go back and we read it again.

And we ask the Lord to give us a listening ear, one that can hear, one that the words aren't just going in and thoughtlessly going out again. There is also here, I think, implied a discrimination. We are to hear the words of the wise. There is to be discrimination in what we hear. We are to test the spirits.

Not everyone is from God. We are to hear the words of the wise. Wisdom begins and ends with the word of God. Then there has to be, If we are to profitably read the Word of God, there has to be application. Apply.

Apply your heart. We have to be asking ourselves, how does the Word of God apply to us in our situation? The Word of God was not written to us. In many cases, the letter of Corinthians was a letter written to the Corinth Church, but it applies to us. It is written to us in the sense that we are also God's people.

And the Old Testament was written for our example and for our benefit. So we have to be asking, how does this apply to us? This is A story, here's a historical record. How does that apply to us? What did these people do in this situation?

How did they respond to it? Did the Lord bless that response? Was it a response that God approved of, or was it a response that was wrong and one we need to learn not to do? When it condemns sins, We should see it, we should apply it to us as condemning our sin and see how we have sinned in similar ways. When it presses duties, we should recognize that this is God intending for these duties to be our duty.

We should be asking, how does this change what I do? Or how does it encourage me to continue doing what I'm already doing? Maybe with more zeal, maybe with more insight, or maybe with more diligence. This word, as we apply it to our heart, it should change our heart. We should be sanctified by it.

It should change our way of thinking as we put off the feudal way of thinking of this world, of the Gentiles. And as our mind becomes more conformed to the image of Christ, as our thinking becomes more of thinking God's thoughts after Him, Applying it to our heart means how does our thinking need to change? Where is our thinking contrary to the Word of God? In so many ways, our language can be contrary to what the scriptures teach of us. Hearing the Word of God with prophet, reading the Word of God with prophet means that we are seeking to apply it to us, to our speech.

What we are saying is our speech, is our language, is our thoughts in alignment according to the scriptures. According to the scriptures. Maybe if our prayers are cold, or God seems distant, or the scriptures seem boring and uninteresting, or our profession is unfruitful, Our work seems to be unfruitful. Maybe it's because we are not properly applying the scriptures to our life. We see these things and we should be looking to apply the scriptures to those areas in our life.

Apply your heart, it says. The heart is where we think. The issues of life spring from the heart. So to apply God's word to our heart is speaking of meditation, of dwelling upon the word of God. It's reflecting on the word of God.

So it's different than reading and hearing. It's even a little different than studying. To meditate on the word of God is to allow the word to dwell in our mind, to hold it in our thinking, to hold it in our thinking, to hold it in our thinking, to begin asking questions of the word as it is in our mind. Am I doing, if there is a duty am I doing it? If there is a comfort, am I receiving it?

If there is a promise, do I believe it? If there is a warning, Do I tremble at it? What are the implications of this? Do I understand what this is saying? Sometimes we have a first impression, but as we think about it, as we meditate on it, we might realize that we had an incorrect impression, that there is something else being said there.

Or maybe we understand more of what's being said there. The Lord adds connections in our mind And the Lord brings through that a love of his word a love of himself The thankfulness for what he's done for us. If we're reading about what the Lord has done, as we meditate on that, the Lord may bring to mind the things that He's done for us that we hadn't remembered that we'd forgotten about. And so he adds then through that meditation greater thankfulness for what he's done. We meditate on the Word of God as we apply it to our heart, he may bring a conviction of sin where we were ignorant.

The next principle for profitably reading the word is that of retention. Retention. We're to keep it within us. Keep it within us. We have to remember what we have read especially the application and the ideas and the Thoughts that the Holy Spirit brings to our mind as we meditate on that You know, it's all that's all wonderful to do but if we then don't retain that, it then didn't help us much.

James talks about that person who hears the Word of God and may receive it, but then they go away and maybe they even meditate on it and think about it, but then they go away, they don't retain it. So they don't do. The benefit of the meditation is lost. They don't do what they have heard. The things that the Holy Spirit brought to their mind, they forget.

And so we lose the benefit, the blessing. And James says, that's like a person that looks at themselves in a mirror and then forgets what they look like Forgets what they saw There was no point in the activity. This is where notes can be a very helpful tool to remember, to retain within us the things that we have heard, the things we have learned and read. That's why writing down goals is very, very significant. To write, To actually write them out helps to retain.

We may have, through the meditation on the Word, said, I need to do this, or I should do this, I need to do more of this. The focus of my life in this area needs to change to this. And so writing those goals out, writing down what we should do, I know I need to do more of that, but the times that I have done that have been very fruitful. It can be a rewarding and fruitful thing to look back at maybe goals that you wrote 20 years ago and to see what has been achieved and what hasn't been achieved, the things that you've written down, that you've purposed in your heart to do. Well next principle here is really an encouragement.

It says that it is a pleasant thing, it is a pleasant thing to do this. Pleasant. Something that is appealing. Something that is desirable. It doesn't list all of the pleasant things or all the things that make this pleasant right here, but if we look back at that first introduction, there are a number of blessings that are connected with retaining and hearing and reading the Word of God.

We're told that it gives discretion in Proverbs 1-4. It gives discretion, The ability to discern what to say and what not to say what to do and what not to do What's appropriate and what's not appropriate? It gives understanding of difficult matters in verse 6. It, the Spirit of the Lord is poured on us. Verse 23, we're said to dwell in safety.

It's a pleasant thing to, if you keep this word within you, the promise of being able to dwell in safety. In verse 33, we won't fear evil. That's a little bit different than dwelling in safety. They're very closely related, but they're a little bit different. People can have, people can be dwelling in perfect safety and yet have a great fear of not being safe.

You can be perfectly safe and yet be afraid of not being safe. Afraid of that somebody will come and destroy your peace or your health. And so there's a fear. And the part of the pleasantness or the blessing of the words of knowledge is not only dwelling in safety, but not dwelling in fear, being delivered from fear of evil. Being delivered from evil, chapter 2 verse 12.

Verse 2 verse 16, chapter 2 verse 16 is part of the pleasantness is described as being delivered from toxic or improper relationships. Toxic and improper relationships. And on the counterpart in verse 21, having relationships with good people. Friendships and relationships that edify, that encourage us, you know, that people that we enjoy being with because they they're a blessing to be with. That's a blessed relationship.

It's one of the pleasant things that are promised. A full and a peaceful life. A full and a peaceful life. Favor with God and man. Jesus was said in the Gospels to grow in favor with God and man as a child.

There's nothing better than the favor of God, to have God's favor. That also brings a good reputation, favor with God and with man. And also promised in Proverbs 3, 6 is that he will direct our paths. That's an amazing promise. You know the rich pay a lot of money for advice.

Advice on what they should do. Lawyers to give them legal advice. Doctors to give them medical advice. Investment counselors to give them financial advice. Newsletters.

People pay a lot of money to get financial newsletters to give them money, monetary advice, personal trainers to give them training advice, and so on. Goes on and on. But the promise here, One of the pleasantnesses of keeping and retaining the Word of God is that God Himself will direct our path. God's promise to those who retain his wisdom is that he will direct our steps. And he's infinitely wiser than the smartest lawyer or advisor or doctor.

I remember in the Leaper case, that was a landmark case in the state of Texas that once and for all cleared the decks and gave homeschooling or gave families the freedom to homeschool without harassment. The lawsuit, there's a class action lawsuit that ended the persecution and imprisonment of parents for teaching their children at home. And it wasn't just in the state of Texas, but it had an effect across the entire region because it became a recorded decision of the Texas Supreme Court. And in that case, that case was brought by a Christian lawyer. His name was Shelby Sharp, lives up in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

And if I remember this story correctly, he didn't have a lot of experience in this type of law. This wasn't his area. But these were homeschooling families. They were going to jail and they needed help. And he, in faith, stepped out and helped them.

He of all the lawyers at that time, when many people were advising, many national groups and other lawyers were advising, we need to change the legislation, We need new legislation. He looked at the law through the lens of God's Word with believing eyes. And he said, no, we don't need a new law. We just need the existing law that we have to be enforced. And it was a very wise decision.

And he stepped out, even though he wasn't an expert in this area, brought a class action lawsuit. And in the course of the lawsuit and I don't the story is an amazing story of God's providence and I recommend it to you especially if you homeschool because your ability to homeschool in the state of Texas comes from the Lord but he brought it through this victory where one man who wasn't even practicing in his specialty defeated the entire Texas Department of Education and defeated them three times, Defeated them in the district court, in the appellate court, and at the supreme court. And won through that a permanent injunction stopping all prosecution of homeschooling and also won all their legal fees. And in this, but in the course of this case as it's going through he And I'm telling you this because this is an amazing example of God directing someone steps who who had retained the knowledge of God. In the course of this class-action lawsuit at some point, one of the lawyers on the other side informed him of a deficiency in his own lawsuit.

Can you imagine the opposing lawyer informing the other side of a deficiency in their lawsuit? And in God's providence after that happened, God provided a way for that deficiency to be remedied when ordinarily there wouldn't have been an opportunity to do that. Now that was God directing his steps and he used the opposing attorney to do it. Wouldn't you rather have God directing your steps than all of the wisdom, the wisest lawyers and doctors and advisors? That is one of the providences, one of the pleasant things that is given to those who retain the knowledge and words of wisdom, the knowledge of God.

It's also said to be health to our flesh and strength to our bones. Now I need to give a word of caution Because I could easily see and I've seen many people write this. That's why I say that not anybody here, but I've seen many people write things like, well, you know, I tried all these things. I did all these things. And I didn't get health to my bones.

I didn't, Lord didn't direct my way. I didn't have a full and peaceful life, I don't have good relationships. And so they throw out the Word of God. They cast it away and say, well That must not be true. I would answer to that.

What is the desire of your heart? Did you desire these things for what they can do for you? Or were you seeking the Lord and his kingdom first? See, the exact same things can happen to two different people and it can be received in two totally different ways. David had a lot of tough things happen in his life.

His own country tried to kill him because what had he done? He'd defeated Goliath for them. He'd defeated the Philistines. He was a successful warrior and yet his own country tried to kill him. His own father-in-law threw a spear at him, sent an army after him.

David had to live in the wilderness. He couldn't go home and live with his family. He had to run for his life. An army was chasing him for many years. He knew great tragedy in his life.

He had his own children killing each other. He had his own son trying to stage a coup, two of them, stage a coup against him. And yet he could write that the lines have fallen to me in pleasant places. The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places." See, he had all these, he had these blessings. He, he could sit down and pray to the Lord and just be amazed at the grace of the Lord in his life, that the Lord had shown favor to him.

What is my house? He would say that you would make me the king and that you would establish my line after me. So a lot of this is what the Lord does in us, what he does in us, to enable us to see with different eyes what he is doing around us. When I was growing up I mentioned in an email this week, the pastor, when I was in for all of my between 10 and 17 years of age and his wife died just a couple years ago in her upper 90s And there were over 200 lineal descendants in their family. And she was asked by one of her grandchildren in an interview shortly before she died if she had any regrets about her life.

And she had no easier life than any of us. But she could say without any hesitation, I had no regrets. No regrets. Why? Because she had retained this knowledge of God within her.

And the Lord had worked in her so that she could see through the scriptures what the Lord was doing around her and how he was working and accomplishing his good purposes in her life. And so she had no regrets, none whatsoever. Another principle then, if we move on in these principles for profitable reading and hearing the Word of God, is that we speak. Let them be fixed upon your lips. We learn better those things that we speak.

Did you ever think you understood something and then you tried to explain it to somebody else and then you realize I didn't really understand that very well. Or I didn't understand that as well as I thought. And so speaking, speaking what we've learned helps us to learn it better. Speaking the truth out loud also commits us to it in a way that just having it inside of us doesn't. It also, when we speak what we have learned, we also glorify God because we're speaking in praise of Him and others who are around us can be blessed and benefit from the things that we have learned.

It glorifies God when we speak of what He had, when we speak and praise him for what he has done or what he has taught us. A wholesome tongue is as a tree of life. As we speak these words of truth, we become a tree of life. We are able to teach the things that we have learned and implemented. Speaking also in verse 19 brings confidence in God.

Speaking where It says, it is pleasant if you keep them within you. Let them be fixed on your lips so that your trust may be in the Lord. It better enables us to believe. Believing God's word means that we are willing to stake our life upon it. This word is on our lips.

It enables us to have trust in God. God is a refuge. That word is literally a refuge, a trust in. Refuge from doubt, refuge from persecution, refuge from depression, affliction, loneliness. So that you may trust the Lord.

Let it be on your lips so that you may trust the Lord. Let it be on your lips so that you may trust the Lord. The next principle is moving through these is in verse 19, just that we study the Word. If we're going to read the word profitably, we must study it. Have I, I have instructed you, instructed.

Study is a little different than meditation. Study is as we develop a system of truth from the Word of God. We study the, the, the scriptures to understand them as they relate one to another. It's also, we also need to be readers. Have I not written to you excellent things?

Confidence in knowledge comes from reading. Confidence in knowledge comes from reading. Reading the Word of God and reading other works of wisdom. You can know something if you hear it, but you don't have the same confidence in it until you have read it and studied it. The confidence that you have or the knowledge that you have from just hearing something is often not as adequate to teach it.

Even Paul was concerned to read and he asked in one place that the parchments, that his parchments be brought to him. Why? Because Paul was reading. He was a reader. The next principle is that it becomes the basis of decisions.

Have I not written to you of counsels and of knowledge? It's the basis on which we decide things. Hebrews 5 speaks of having our senses trained for good and evil through use. It's as we make decisions, as we use the Word of God to make decisions, that Hebrews says our senses are trained through practice to discern good and evil. Are we practicing here?

What we have learned? Are we practicing? Are we making decisions in all of our life with the Word of God? Is that what we go to first? It is, have I not written to you of councils and knowledge?

And so that's another principle here is that this Word of God must be the foundation of knowledge. Foundation, it's that by which we make decisions. Is that what we seek when we want to make decisions? We seek the counsel of the Word of God, but it's also the foundation of knowledge. And what does that mean?

Well, it's the lens through which we interpret all of knowledge. And many times science advances in Christian in the context of a strong faith in God because it's what gives the foundation for knowledge. For example, there were some spaceships sent out in the 70s, Or I think they were launched in the 70s and got to or late 70s and got to the planets They went by all the planets and they made measurements of the magnetic fields in each of those planets And there was a man a Christian scientist who taking his assumptions and hypotheses from the Word of God came up with a completely different model for what causes the magnetic field in planets, including the Earth. He developed it for the Earth, but then when this incident came up, he thought he would apply it to the planets as well. See, if I develop it on the Earth, then I can always develop any model to match some data.

But what's powerful is when I develop a model and then make predictions about what measurements in another planet ought to be And that's what he did He took some some things that the Word of God said as a basis for starting his scientific endeavor. And he developed a model for the Earth's magnetic field. And then he applied that model to these planets. And then he said, well, if this model is right, then this is what the magnetic field of each of these planets should be. And he was right.

He was orders of magnitude more correct than the guesses that were made using the currently accepted model for the magnetic field. That's an example of a proper use of the scriptures as a foundation for knowledge. In verse 21, there is a confidence in the truth. If we're going to profit from the scriptures, we need a confidence to believe that they are true in everything they say. In whatever field they speak, that they are true.

We need the attitude, the confidence that can say, let God be true even if that makes every man a liar. That's what gives confidence. That confidence in the Word of God is what enables the apostles to stand up against Rome and the Jews. It's what enabled Polycarp to stand up to the persecution and the people that wanted to burn him. Having outwritten you of counsels and knowledge, that I may make you know the certainty of the words of truth.

And lastly is that of teaching. We need to make application to ourselves and we need to teach them what we have learned. That's the pattern that we see in life. We learn and then we teach. God gives children to young people for them to teach because it's in teaching that we learn.

And that's this pattern. We learn and then we do it ourselves and then we teach. The promise here is that you may know the certainty, the principle here is that you know the certainty of the words of truth, that you may answer words of truth to those who send to you. Able to teach, able to answer words of truth. It's when we teach that we often learn the best.

It's as we teach our children, as the Lord gives them to us, that we learn these principles. It's as we teach our grandchildren that we learn these principles of the Word of God, that the Word of God grows and brings forth fruit. And so I trust that these principles will be a blessing to you as you apply them in your reading and hearing of the scriptures. Almighty Heavenly Father, we thank you for your Word. We thank you for the instruction that you give to us out of it.

Your word is truth. Sanctify us Lord by that word. And enable us to prize it, to seek it diligently, to cry after it, to cry out for it. Give to us a hunger and a thirst for righteousness. May we want to know you.

We ask, Lord, that you would show yourself to us. That as we read your word, may you speak to us. And may we hear your voice. In Jesus name, amen.