In 'God's Investment Letter', Peter Allison discusses the value of wisdom over material wealth, drawing from Proverbs 16. He emphasizes that obtaining wisdom and understanding is more important than acquiring gold and silver. The sermon highlights that true wisdom begins with the fear of the Lord and is found in a relationship with Christ. Wisdom is portrayed as a heavenly treasure that cannot be destroyed, unlike earthly riches. Allison stresses the necessity of humility in seeking wisdom, noting that pride is a major obstacle. The sermon outlines practical steps for seeking wisdom, such as treasuring God's commands, inclining one's ear to wisdom, and seeking Christ's face. Ultimately, it encourages believers to prioritize spiritual investments over material ones, trusting in the Lord and departing from evil.

Our scripture this morning is our text is Proverbs chapter 16. We will begin at verse 16. I'd like to read through verse 30. It's the section dealing with speech. But we will be just looking at the first three or four verses this morning.

Hear God's word. How much better to get wisdom than gold, And to get understanding is to be chosen rather than silver. The highway of the upright is to depart from evil. He who keeps his way preserves his soul. Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.

Better to be of a humble spirit with the lowly than to divide the spoil with the proud. He who heeds the word wisely will find good, and whoever trusts in the Lord happy is he. The wise in heart will be called prudent, and sweetness of the lips increases learning. Understanding is a wellspring of life to him who has it, but the correction of fools is folly. The heart of the wise teaches his mouth and adds learning to his lips.

Pleasant words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the bones. There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death. The person who labors labors for himself, for his hungry mouth drives him on. An ungodly man digs up evil, and It is on his lips like a burning fire. A perverse man sows strife, and a whisperer separates the best of friends.

A violent man entices his neighbor and leads him in a way that is not good. He winks His eye to devise perverse things, and purses his lips, and brings about evil. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Heavenly Father, we know that Your Word is true, that it is life. And we ask that you would open it now to us.

That you would open our hearts and our minds and our eyes. That we might behold wonderful things out of your Word. Things out of your Word. May we be once again amazed in wonder at the truth of Your Word that we have heard before. May You renew its truth to us this morning.

One of the difficulties that comes with wealth is knowing where to invest it. What do you do with it? It becomes a problem. For some, it becomes an all-consuming problem. And they worry as much about where to invest their wealth and how to preserve it.

They worry more about that than they did when they didn't have it. At least if It's not to invest it to grow it, it's at least to preserve it. Where do you invest it? There are hundreds and thousands of people out there that will offer you their advice. They often want to sell you their investment letter that they write with all of their advice about what's better, this or that.

Where ought you to invest your wealth? Well, we may not have money like that, that we're looking to invest. But if you're alive today, and I think everybody out here is alive, see. If you're alive today, you've been given resources. You've been given talents that you need to invest.

You have time, you have some abilities, some gifts, some skills, you have a working mind, how do you use all of these things? How do you invest them? What do you do with them? There are many voices that want to answer that question for us as well. They want to tell us, well that's a waste of time, You won't be fulfilled over there, but now if you do this over here, that is truly something that's worth doing.

Have you ever stood out at an abortion clinic, maybe with a sign, maybe praying, maybe talking to somebody, and somebody drives by and shouts at you, get a life, get a life. They're telling you, You're wasting your time. You're making a bad investment. You could be doing better things with your life, better things with your ability, better things with this mind. You're not investing in the right place.

That's what they're saying. Now we have to choose. It's unavoidable. We have to do something. If we simply do nothing, if we don't make any choice, then our time and our energy will be spent doing something.

It is unavoidable. We will spend our time doing something. The question is, is what we are spending our time doing, is it profitable? Is it a good investment? Is it a wise use of our time?

Is it a good way to spend our life? Well God has given to us in this text an investment letter. He's given to us here in this text His counsel, His word on how we ought to invest our life. He says that wisdom is better than gold. Wisdom, God says, is better than gold.

Now, he's not saying that gold isn't good. Actually, gold is good. Gold is very good. In fact, it's one of the things that God promises to bless His people with. In Deuteronomy, a little beyond what we read this morning in chronology, as the children of Israel are preparing to enter into the land of Canaan, Moses tells them, after recounting their history, he says, remember, after you've grown wealthy, after the Lord has richly blessed you with gold and an abundance in this land that you're going to, because it's a good land, and the Lord does desire to bless.

And He has promised to bless even with wealth. But He says, remember that it is the power of the Lord that you get wealth. It's by God's power. Don't be tempted to think that all of these things you've gotten by your own hand. Remember, it's the Lord that gives you power to get wealth.

So wealth is not a bad thing at all. Wealth is a very good thing when rightly used. It is a blessing of God. There were many men of God who have had great wealth and who have used it wisely. There have even been stories I've heard of wealthy men who at the end of their life have thought that they ought to give all their wealth away and have set out to do that, Only to come back a year later and realize that the faster they gave it away, the faster the Lord gave it to them.

And they, after trying to give their wealth away, had more than when they started trying to give their wealth away. Wealth is not a bad thing, but God says that wisdom is better than gold. And to get understanding is to be chosen more than silver. And we believe that because God's Word says it, and we know that God's Word is true. This isn't like the investment letter that comes in the mail where they write 53% of the time, or maybe they write 63% of the time.

No, God's Word is right 100% of the time. And we can depend upon this statement in making an investment with our life. That wisdom, It's better to get wisdom than it is to get gold and silver. Our Heavenly Father does indeed know best. And He in His wisdom, that His Father knows best wisdom, has said, wisdom, getting wisdom is better than getting gold and silver.

God doesn't have to prove that to us. He's not The One who needs to prove Himself. He is the Sovereign One. And He declares to us today in His Word that wisdom, getting wisdom, is better than the wealth of this world. Where do we find this wisdom?

How do we make an investment in getting wisdom? Proverbs tells us several things that I will pull together, some of which, all of which we have looked at before. So if you weren't here before, to refresh our memories if you were, where do we get wisdom? Well, the first thing Proverbs tells us about wisdom and where it comes from is that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Psalm 111 and Proverbs 9.

Both tell us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. That is the foundation of wisdom. That is what wisdom is built upon. That's the starting block. That's what you have to begin with.

The fear of the Lord. To have wisdom fundamentally then is to fear the Lord. If we're not fearing the Lord, we're not getting wisdom. Proverbs 8.35 tells us another point about wisdom. It tells us that to have wisdom is to have life.

Proverbs 8 is that section, that chapter, that beautiful discourse on wisdom. And all of the things that are said about wisdom in that chapter are said about Christ. Proverbs 8.35 says that to have wisdom is to have life. Well, Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. And there is no life outside of Christ.

He is the vine and we are the branches, and if we are not in Christ, we don't have any life. We can't bear any fruit, but we die. Christ alone is the way, the truth, and the life. We can only have life when we are in Christ. So we need to have the fear of the Lord, and we need to be in Christ.

We need to be grafted into Him as divine, if we are to have life. We can't live apart from that vital union with Christ, being in Him. The Bible also tells us one more thing about wisdom. It says that all wisdom and all knowledge is hid in Christ. All wisdom is hid in Christ.

Not hid from us, but hid for us in Jesus Christ. And so if we are to have wisdom, if we are to make this wise investment, getting wisdom, we must have Christ. We must have Christ. To have the wisdom that is better than silver and gold is to have Christ, Jesus Christ as our teacher. It's to have Jesus Christ as our teacher.

It's to have Jesus Christ as our Lord and Master. It's to have Jesus Christ as our shepherd. It's to be in vital union with Jesus Christ, United to Him. To have Christ as our teacher is to have His Word, the Scriptures, living in us. This Word that Paul said was able to make us wise unto salvation.

I told that to Timothy. That word that dwelt in his mother, faith that dwelt in his mother and his grandmother, also dwelt in Him and was able to make Him wise unto salvation. So to have wisdom is then to have, that Proverbs is speaking of here, is to have the treasure of heaven. Now The treasure of heaven can't be destroyed, it can't be stolen away, because God is guarding it. And who can breach His security?

The moth and the rust can't get in to corrode it and eat it away. To have this wisdom is to have heavenly treasure. And our heart is going to be where our greatest treasure is. Our heart will be where our treasure is. We will guard our greatest investment.

When our treasure is in heaven, that's where our heart will be. When our heart is set on heaven, it is that much easier to leave this earth. It is that much easier to count all this earth but rubble for the sake of Christ. And that's why getting wisdom is better than getting gold and silver. Because you can't say any of those things about having gold and silver.

Yes, they are nice. Yes, they are a blessing. But they don't give us treasure in heaven. They don't give us life like our union with Christ does. And all of the blessings that flow from our union with Jesus Christ.

Peace of conscience, joy in the Holy Ghost, these are things that flow out of our being united to Jesus Christ. Our graces are increased, Because as we are in the vine, in Jesus Christ, as we are receiving nourishment through Him, then we are growing and increasing. And all the graces that he has given to us are increasing as well. Do we really believe though that it is better to get wisdom than gold and silver. It's easy to say, yes, of course, I believe that that's what God's Word says.

But if we really want to know if we truly believe that it's better to get wisdom than gold and silver? Just have to look at how we act. How do we act? Do we act consistent with this truth that we say we believe? Are we more concerned to get wisdom than we are to get gold and silver?

Are we more concerned to prioritize getting understanding above getting money. Are we more concerned to seek Christ, in whom is hid this wisdom, in whom is life. Proverbs 2 describes this process of getting wisdom. Proverbs chapter 2, we've looked at it before, but let's look at it again. My Son, verse 1, if you receive my words and treasure my commands within you, see that you incline your ear to wisdom and apply your heart to understanding.

So there's the process. Receive my words, treasure my commands, listen, incline your ear to wisdom, and apply your heart to getting it. Yes, if you cry out for discernment and lift up your voice for understanding, if you seek her as silver and search for her as hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. For the Lord gives wisdom, and from His mouth come knowledge and understanding." He stores up wisdom for the upright. The Lord gives wisdom.

Where does it come from? From His mouth come knowledge and understanding. You see, Getting wisdom means seeking the face of Christ. Because wisdom comes from His mouth. Wisdom comes from His mouth.

And if we want to seek wisdom, We want to seek and get wisdom. We need to seek the face of Jesus Christ. And the Scriptures speak of this in several places. Psalm 24 says, Who will ascend into the hill of the Lord or stand in His holy place? He that has clean hands and a pure heart, who has not lifted up his soul to vanity, nor sworn deceitfully, He shall receive the blessing from the Lord and righteousness from the God of His salvation." Who is this person that was just described?

This is the generation of them that seek Him, that seek your face, O Jacob, Sila. Psalm 105, glory you, you glory in His holy name. Let the heart of them that rejoice then seek the Lord, seek the Lord and His strength, seek His face evermore." Daniel did the same thing in Daniel 9. He said his face to the Lord to seek by prayer and supplication. David cries out in Psalm 27, O Lord, when I cry with my voice, have mercy on me and answer me.

And when you said, seek you my face, my heart said unto you, your face, Lord, I will seek. If we are going to have wisdom, then we need to seek Christ's face. You see, the face is a window into a person. Remember that what's in the heart is reflected in the countenance? When you see somebody's face, you begin to know something about them.

You don't just know about them, but you know, you know them. You know their person. You begin to see into this window into their soul you begin to see what they delight in what they like and what they don't like, what pleases them and what makes them angry. It's the same way as we look onto the face, as we seek the face of Jesus Christ. Jesus says that He calls us His friends and He talks with us and tells us of His plans.

So to seek the face of Christ is to seek to know not just about Him, what we can read, what somebody can tell us about Him, but is to seek to know Him. Is to seek to know Him for no other reason than to know Him. It's to know what pleases Jesus. It's to know what grieves Him. To know what angers him.

It's to care about what angers him, and what pleases him, and what grieves him. It's to know what loves him, what he loves and what he hates. It is also to experience his beauty, his majestic holiness. To experience His love and His kindness toward us, to hear His voice as He speaks to us, to know what His thoughts are of us. Have you ever asked somebody, maybe your spouse, what their thoughts are of you, what they're thinking about?

That's a very private question that Maybe husbands and wives like to ask each other. God has thoughts of us. Christ has thoughts of us. And He tells us about those thoughts for us. David thinks about those thoughts that God has for him, how many they are.

Jeremiah says, For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you an expected end. Then you will call upon me and you will go and pray to me and I will listen to you and you will seek me and you will find me." To seek the face of Christ is to desire to hear His voice as He speaks to us through His word. See Proverbs 2 said that from His mouth come understanding and knowledge. So seeking Christ is to call upon Him, to seek Him, to desire Him, to desire to know Him. And this is what getting wisdom then requires.

Getting wisdom requires seeking Christ's face, but it also requires us to turn to depart from evil. Because see, Proverbs 16.6 says that we looked at earlier a few weeks ago, by the Fear of the Lord one departs from evil. Wisdom, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, it is the foundation of wisdom. But the other side of that fear of the Lord is to depart from evil. To fear the Lord then is to be careful to obey and to follow the Lord.

You see these things are mutually exclusive. We cannot be seeking Christ and seeking His face and getting wisdom if we aren't also at the same time departing from evil. We can't be going in two different directions at once. You just can't. So if we are not departing from evil, then we are not seeking the face of Christ.

If we are not setting our face to seek Christ and to call upon Him, then we are not on the highway of the upright, as verse 17 speaks about. The highway of the upright is to depart from evil and he who keeps his way preserves his soul. Chronicles tells us that King Rehoboam, Solomon's own son, the son of the man who wrote these Proverbs, did evil because he did not set his heart on seeking the Lord. He did evil because he did not set His heart on seeking the Lord. God sees it as evil when we are not seeking Him.

When we are not setting our face to depart from evil. To depart from evil. The main obstacle in getting wisdom is the next section of our text. The main obstacle to getting wisdom is our pride. Pride is self-sufficiency.

It's saying that we don't need help, that we're just fine on our own, that We don't need the Lord. And when we have that attitude, we of course cannot seek the Lord. We're not going to find wisdom. In fact, God is opposed to the proud. Psalm 10 says, In the pride of His face, The wicked does not seek Him.

All His thoughts are, there is no God. The pride of His face, the wicked doesn't seek God. In our pride, we don't seek the Lord. Ahadi's spirit goes before destruction. Ahadi, that word is just somebody whose eyes are always looking up.

And we just know from a practical standpoint that if you're walking around looking up into the air all the time, what's going to happen? You're going to stumble and fall. We have to be looking where we're going. The proud is looking up. They're looking around.

And so the pride are brought low God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble and if God is opposing someone Who can stand? Before Someone whom God is opposing Who can stand when God is opposing them? The Egyptian army thought they could oppose God and go after the children of Israel. And they found that they couldn't. God opposed them.

And this helpless people who had no weapons, who had flocks and herds, who had no military training, who would have been easy prey for the Egyptian army, the strongest army in the world, found that God was opposed to them and he pulled the wheels off their chariots. They realized too late to their own destruction that God was opposed to them. Humility is absolutely necessary to seeking Christ's face. As we described in the evening sacrifice, rising from fasting with his clothes torn, falling upon his knees and spreading out his hands to God saying, Oh my God, I am ashamed and blushed to lift up my face to you, O God, for our iniquities have been higher than our head, and our guilt has mounted to the heavens." Humility is necessary if we are willing, if we are going to seek Christ's face, if we are going to get wisdom. And that's why it is better to be humble, even if it means being poor, than it is to be wildly successful, but be among the proud.

Better to be of a humble spirit with the lowly, than to divide the spoil with the proud. Dividing the spoil is a successful endeavor, a successful investment. It has reaped a big return. It's better to be far away from those people when they are proud. It's better to be with those who are lonely and have humility.

Those who seek God, God promises that they will find Him. Jeremiah went on to say, "'You will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart and I will be found of you says the Lord and I will turn away your captivity and gather you from the nations and from all the places where I've driven you and I will bring you again to the place where I caused you to be carried away captive. God said, God promised them, if you seek me, you will find me. Chronicles that very well known verse says, if my people which are called by my name shall humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways there's the two things turning turning away from evil and seeking the Lord then I will hear from heaven and I will forgive their sin and I will heal their land." Moses assured the people as well in Deuteronomy 4 he said, If you seek the Lord your God, you will find Him. If you seek Him with all of your heart and with all of your soul.

He who heeds the word wisely will find good. And whoever trusts in the Lord, happy is he. Whoever heeds the word, whoever considers wisely, will find good. That's the blessing of getting wisdom. Whoever trusts in the Lord, that's the opposite of pride.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him. That's the opposite of pride. That's humility. To trust in the Lord and not in our own sufficiency, to lean not on our own understanding but to acknowledge the Lord.

That's trusting in the Lord. That's the result. That's the fruit of humility. That flows from humility. And so this week, this week, every hour of every day, we're going to be called on to make investment decisions.

How are we going to use our time? How are we going to use our time? How are we going to use the gifts and abilities that God has given to us? Let us remember this wisdom, this command, that it is better, it's better to get wisdom than to get gold. Let's pray.

Our gracious Father in Heaven, we thank you for your word and ask that you would give us a heart of faith to believe it, to practice it in our life. That we might be doers of Your Word and not hearers only, thereby deceiving ourselves. We ask, Lord, that You would equip us this week, that Your Holy Spirit would fill us, that we may seek You with all of our heart and soul and mind and strength. That our times in your Word and in prayer might be guarded zealously, prioritized above all the other things that so easily press in upon us. We ask that you would guide our decisions this week in the investments that we make with the things, the resources, the graces, the gifts you have given to us.

That we might offer them before you, and to your service. For Father, we yield ourselves to you this morning. And all of our hopes and our plans and our reputations and all of our gifts and all of our abilities, we yield to you. And ask that you would take them, that you would use them for your kingdom, that you would direct our steps, that you would fill us with your Spirit, and that we might be fruitful servants in your Kingdom until the day that you call us home. In Jesus' name we beg this of you.

Amen.