In the sermon titled 'The Pursuit of Wisdom,' Peter Allison delves into Proverbs Chapter 2, emphasizing the singular sentence structure in Hebrew to stress the completeness of God's message. He outlines the pursuit of wisdom as a series of steps: receiving God's words, treasuring His commands, inclining one's ear to wisdom, and applying one's heart to understanding. Allison uses the analogy of prepared soil to describe the readiness to receive God's word, contrasting it with hard, unyielding ground. The sermon underscores the necessity of actively seeking wisdom, likening it to a prospector's quest for hidden treasures. Allison critiques human reliance on senses and reason alone, advocating for the divine source of wisdom that comes from God's mouth. He argues that true wisdom and understanding of righteousness and justice are accessible only through God's Word. The sermon concludes with a warning against the folly of relying on human reasoning, urging believers to trust in God's wisdom for guidance and protection.

Our scripture reading this morning is Proverbs chapter 2. I'd like to read this whole chapter even though we'll be looking at just the first half of it because in the Hebrew it's actually one sentence. So since it's never good to break the reading of the Word of God mid-sentence, we will read chapter 2. Hear God's Word, My Son, if you receive My words and treasure My commands within you, so that you incline your ear to wisdom, and apply your heart to understanding. Yes, if you cry out for discernment and lift your voice for understanding.

If you seek her as silver and search for her as hidden treasures, Then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. For the Lord gives wisdom. From His mouth come knowledge and understanding. He stores up sound wisdom for the upright. He is a shield to those who walk uprightly.

He guards the paths of justice and preserves the way of his saints. Then you will understand righteousness and justice, equity and every good path. When wisdom enters your heart and knowledge is pleasant to your soul, discretion will preserve you and understanding will keep you to deliver you from the way of evil, from the man who speaks perverse things, from those who leave the paths of righteousness to walk in the ways of darkness, who rejoice in doing evil and delight in the perversity of the wicked, whose ways are crooked and who delight in devious paths. To deliver you from the immoral woman, from the seductress who flatters with her words, who forsakes the companion of her youth and forgets the covenant of God, for her house leads down to death and her paths to the dead. None who go to her return, nor do they regain the paths of life.

So you may walk in the ways of goodness and keep to the paths of righteousness. For the upright will dwell in the land and the blameless will remain in it. But the wicked will be cut off from the earth and the unfaithful will be uprooted from it. Thus far the reading of God's Word may he be praised at its reading and hearing. Almighty Father in heaven, We ask that you might teach us this morning that we may be wise, for wisdom is in you alone.

We come this morning to hear your voice. We ask that you would enable us to do so. In Jesus' name, Amen. Last week we looked at the call of wisdom, a call that was personified, lady wisdom. She called aloud.

She raised her voice in the open square. She called to us to turn at her rebuke and promised to those who do that they would dwell in safety and be secure without fear of evil. In this chapter we see Solomon continuing his prologue. Remember, these first nine chapters are all a prologue. A purpose of a prologue is to draw us in to what the preacher is going to say.

It's to prepare our hearts, to tell us why we need to hear, and what the benefit is of hearing, and what the judgment is on those who don't. It's to bring us to see the importance of the message that is to follow. So these chapters are all this prologue about wisdom. Why do we need to pay attention, to heed the call of wisdom. How do we pursue wisdom?

Why should we pursue wisdom? Why do we need to pursue wisdom? What is our latter end if we do pursue wisdom? Do pursue wisdom. Solomon gives four steps here in the pursuit of wisdom, four actions, four activities that those who pursue wisdom follow.

They are, in a sense, listed in steps of increasing activity, of increasing exertion on our part. The very first step that Solomon lists for those who would pursue wisdom is that we receive His words. We receive His words. To receive His words is to recognize that we lack wisdom on our own, That we need the Word of God. It is to recognize that these words are good for us.

It is to have an openness to them as they are brought through whomever God sees fit to bring them to us. It could be our parents. It could be a fellow brother and sister in the Lord bringing to us the Word of God. It could be elders in the church bringing the Word of God to us. To receive His words is to accept, to take them on board, to be open to them.

The parable of the sower that Jesus told gives us a very good example of this idea of receiving God's word. Remember, Jesus told about a sower who went out to sow, and he scatters his seed, which Jesus told his disciples later, you remember is the Word of God. God's words. And some of that seed fell on hard ground, the path. You know the path is ground that's been tramped down.

It's hard. I've seen ground so hard you could swing a pickaxe on it and it barely makes a dent. Barely makes a dent. It's almost as hard as iron. Jesus said, summon the seed that's thrown, falls on ground like that.

And it just bounces off, boing, boing, boing. And you can imagine round seed, just like millet seed, just kind of rolling and rolling off. And it just sits there. And the birds of the air can come and pick it up. And there's other, but there's other kinds of soil that's been prepared, that's plowed, that's been harrowed.

And it's been broken down. The clods have been broken down and it's soft and you can go out and you can put your hand into it and your hand sinks all the way down up to your wrist and You just reach down and you can pull it up and it feels good and it smells good. If you've ever been in a plowed field, you know what I'm talking about. And when you scatter seed on that kind of soil, the soil just soaks it up. The seed just falls into the ground and it can sprout and bring forth fruit.

That's receiving the words of God. When we are like that plowed ground to the Word of God as it is brought to us, then we are receiving God's words. And that's the first step in the pursuit of wisdom and openness, and openness to the Word of God. By whatever means, God sees fit to bring it to us. It might be our reading of it.

It might be somebody else bringing it to a memory. To receive my words is to acknowledge these words to be what they claim to be, the supreme authority of our life, the infallible truth. They are the words of life. And when other words contradict these words, then we believe these words are the true words. And we consider everything else that contradicts it wrong.

We don't have to prove it to ourselves. If it contradicts the Word of God, it is wrong. And when we receive God's words, then this is how we act. The second action of those who pursue wisdom is to hide God's commandments within ourselves. David said in Psalm 119, thy word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against you.

That's the same word he uses there as treasure. If your text says treasure, it's the same word as Psalm 119 where David says, I word have I hid in my heart. Hide my commandments within you, treasure my commandments. It's a sense of building up a storehouse. If you are a gem collector or an insect collector or a collector of snow globes or of whatever else people decide to collect, what do you do?

Well, you know about those sorts of things. You know what's a good one and what isn't, and you gather them to yourself. You have a room filled with these things, depending on how seriously you treasure them up. And some people can have quite a storehouse of things. Remember that story of the guy who took a paperclip and traded into a house?

At one point in this process, he came across somebody who had a room of just thousands of little snow globe things. This guy treasured them up and he hid them in his house. And he knew all about them and he knew ones he wanted and he was willing to sacrifice a great deal to get one that he didn't have. That guy was treasuring up snow globes. Those who are pursuing wisdom are going to treasure up in that same way the commandments of God.

That means we know them. We have them hidden in our heart and we know how to apply them, use them, and we are continually seeking to better understand and learn more about the commandments of God. Now there's a little construction in the Hebrew here at the start of verse 2, that little so that or by. In Hebrew, that construct is what we call an apodosis. It's if you say, if you do this, then this will happen.

That second clause is what we call an apodosis. And the construct in the Hebrew is such that verse 2 is the apodosis of verse 1. It's the conclusion of a conditional sentence. Remember verse 1 opened up with, if you receive my words. Well here's this conclusion then.

If you receive my words and treasure my commands, how do you do that? You do it by inclining your ear to wisdom and applying your heart to understanding. To incline your ear to wisdom is active listening. It's the opposite of overhearing something. Kind of comes in one ear while your attention is elsewhere.

Inclining your ear is to turn your face toward the one who is speaking. It's to give your full attention to the one who is speaking. It's to put other thoughts out of your mind and other activities, other mental exercises, other concerns, put them out of your mind, put them aside for a minute and to give your full attention, your full focus to the one who is speaking. That's what it means to incline your ear. To apply your heart to understanding is to prepare to receive understanding.

It's like a receiver on a football team. It's his job to apply his heart to receiving the football. He has to run a pattern to get open. He might have to shake off a few people that are on his tail trying to stop him. But he also then has to look for the ball.

And he has to position himself in such a way that he can catch it when it comes to him. See, that receiver is applying his heart to receive the ball. And if he did all that work and positioned himself but then never looked for the ball, starts looking away, wouldn't do him any good, the ball would go right by. Those who are pursuing wisdom, we have to apply our heart to understanding. We have to prepare ourselves to receive understanding.

We have to prepare our bodies. Just like that receiver has to prepare his feet and position his body and look for the ball, we have to do the same. If we're going to prepare ourselves, apply our hearts to understanding, then we're going to get enough sleep on Saturday night and not stay out so late that our bodies are weary and we aren't able to give our full attention to the Word of God as it is presented. That we aren't able to give our whole heart and soul to the praise of God as we worship. Of course, that's just one little example of what it means to apply our hearts to understanding.

We turn to our parents when they speak to us. If it's necessary, we stop what we're doing. We put our eyes upon them and their face and their lips as they talk to us so that our body is prepared to receive the counsel and the wisdom that they are giving. We readily turn and look at something when it's familiar. Did you ever hear a piece playing on the radio or a music playing and if you know it, you notice it.

You turn, you say, oh, who's playing that? You recognize something. You incline your ear to it. That's the way we need to be with the Word of God, with wisdom. We need to be familiar with it.

So that we recognize it when it's being spoken to us. You notice it then. The third thing that those who seek wisdom pursue wisdom do, the third activity. Notice here now we're stepping up the intensity, the exertion. Those who seek wisdom cry out for discernment.

They cry after knowledge. They lift up their voice for understanding. You see, we have to do more than simply prepare our mind and body to receive it. We have to do more than simply passively listen, but we must, Solomon says, cry out for it. Lift up our voice.

We need to ask for wisdom. We need to ask. How often we don't have because we haven't asked for it. We haven't cried out for it. Help!

Give me wisdom. Teach me. This isn't just a ho-hum cry. This is a passionate cry. A passionate cry.

If you cry out for discernment, lift up your voice for understanding. Not mumbled in a low tone that nobody can hear. In earnest, in passion, cry for wisdom to ask. This is like when Jesus was in Tire and Sight on the Venetian woman came to him and asked him to heal her daughter. And Jesus told her, well, it's not fit to give the food meant for the children to the dogs.

And she didn't just go, okay, walk away. Oh, you put me down. I'm offended. No, she turned back to him and said, Yes Lord, but even the dogs get the crumbs that fall from the table, from the children's table. That's a crying out for the Lord to help her, a crying out for the Lord to heal her daughter.

That's the kind of crying out we need to have for wisdom. We need to go to those who have it. You want to learn about something, you go to those who know about that field, and you ask them about it. But if you ask them half-heartedly, you probably won't get their attention. You probably won't get much of an answer.

If you want to get somebody's knowledge, you have to cry out for it. You have to show them that you're serious about it. Show them that you are in earnest about your desire to acquire the wisdom and knowledge that they have. That's what Solomon is saying here about how we cry out to the Lord for wisdom. This is then a prayer for wisdom.

We have to ask for wisdom. If we don't ask, we won't have it. The Lord promises though to give it to all who ask. Fourthly, Those who would pursue wisdom are those who seek for it as silver and search for it like hidden treasure. It like hidden treasure.

This is a yet further increase in the exertion that we must put forward if we are going to pursue wisdom, If we're going to acquire wisdom. Just being ready to hear it is important. It's necessary. But that's not enough. It's not just enough that we ask for it.

Solomon says we have to seek it like a prospector seeks after silver and gold, hidden treasures. How do prospectors seek after hidden treasures? What are they like? That's where they were said to be. Seek for it as silver, search for it as hidden treasure.

Well, if you studied anything of American history, you know a little bit about these prospectors who came to California for gold or to Nevada or Arizona. These are people who left their home, who traveled thousands of miles across unfamiliar and mostly in some ways, dangerous territory. Why? Because they had a zeal to acquire gold. And they lived in very difficult conditions, sleeping out on their, staking out their claim, sometimes sleeping out there in order to preserve it from other people seeking that claim.

Living a very hard life without any of the things that we consider necessities like electricity, you know, a house and so on. They lived out in the open in many cases as they're in their desire to pursue and find gold. Do you have a zeal for knowledge, for wisdom, for the words of God that can match the zeal of a gold miner, of a gold prospector? Our senses are trained from practice to discern right from wrong. Our senses are trained by practice to discern right from wrong.

That's what Paul told the Hebrews. It's not enough that we just hear things. It's not enough that we just have an internal understanding. If we want to have the fear of the Lord, a carefulness not to do unrighteousness, a carefulness to walk in the paths of truth, to follow the Lord, then We have to do things. We have to do, practice these things.

And it's as we practice them, as we do them, that the Lord brings this discernment, this wisdom. If you seek for her as silver and search for her as hidden treasures, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. Then you will have these things. If you receive God's words, if you hide His commandments, you treasure them, you store them up, you incline your ear to wisdom, you cry out for it, you lift up your voice for understanding, You seek for this as one seeks for hidden silver. Then, then you will understand the fear of the Lord.

Then your senses will be trained to discern right from wrong what is good from what is best. It's from practice. Now what is the source of wisdom? Where do you find wisdom? This is a very, very important question, and this is a question that many men have wrestled with, and many have offered ideas about.

What is the source of wisdom? Where do you get wisdom? William Stig, who's a children's book, a children's author, wrote a little book about two men, Mr. Pink and Mr. Yellow.

And these, maybe you have read this book, these two men, they're like stick figures, and the book begins, they wake up, they have a consciousness about them, And they begin to wonder how they got there, why they have black buttons, and why one of them is pink and one is yellow, and why their legs are divided the way their legs are divided, and why they have these appendages called arms. And they postulate all sorts of different theories about how things could have happened. Mr. Pink thinks this, Mr. Yellow is skeptical.

And about when they've sort of played out their imaginations. Out of the house walks this scruffy bearded gruff man who walks down looks at him says dry enough picks him up put some under his arms walks back into the house. We're like Mr. Pink and Yellow. We find we have a consciousness, and we can ask questions about ourselves, But we're really just as hopelessly ignorant as those two stick figures.

You see some people say that we get wisdom, we get knowledge, we learn things by our senses. Knowledge comes through our senses. We experience things and that's how we gain knowledge. We can see, we can observe and from all these observations then we can learn the truth. This is the idea behind the promotion of the scientific method as the basis of truth.

The problem is we're just like pink and yellow. You might look at, maybe you're learning math, or you did at one time, And you learned that two apples and four apples make six apples. And whoever was teaching you got four pieces of LEGO and six pieces of Lego and said, now count them. And you could count them. And you could say, ah, yes, I see.

Two of these things and four of these things, I can add them together and I get six. And so you learned by experience. And the scientific method says that's how we learn. We learn by observation, experience, senses, empirically. But how did you learn that 1, 347, 689 plus 8, 321, 671 added together is some number?

Did you ever gather a million things and a million rocks over here and count them all? And so if you have an experience then how do you know? How do you know that? Well Other people have said that well knowledge comes by not by our senses has nothing to do with our senses. They say that knowledge comes by our reason.

And we can know these huge sums because we're able to reason. This is what Socrates and Plato believed. They were of the opinion that we don't grasp truth by our senses. We don't grasp reality by our senses. In fact, our bodies, our senses, Plato believed, are useless in the process of acquiring knowledge.

In fact, that our bodies actually deceive our soul when it tries to learn the truth. And so the further away from the body and the senses you get, the closer you will get to the truth. Socrates said, Plato quoting him, then he will do this most perfectly. He approaches the objects with thoughts alone without associating any sight with his thought or dragging any sense perception with his reasoning. But he who using pure thought alone tries to track down each reality pure and by itself, freeing himself as far as possible from eyes and ears and in a word from the whole body because the body confuses the soul and does not allow it to acquire truth and wisdom.

And people think that the scientific method comes from these. No, these people, these men said The senses have nothing to do with learning wisdom. In fact, they just confuse you when you try and learn what's true. That truth comes by your reasoning ability. There are people who say that today too.

A mathematician defined math this way. He said, math is a game in which the players set up their own rules and play with no other purpose than to play according to the rules. And any player may at any time change any rule, provided this change doesn't lead to contradictory rules. Moreover, since mathematics may be played by a single individual, the player does not even need to consent the consent of one or more partners to change a rule. He says this definition of math will come as a shock to all, but the mathematical expert.

Here's somebody who's saying that truth comes surely by our reason, our reason alone. In fact, our own reason. We can just Make up math rules as long as we don't contradict any prior rules. And therein we arrive at truth. That's what Socrates thought.

He hasn't really gone any farther. But you see, those who reject the Lord have a lot of problems with both of these approaches. They don't work. Who's experienced these large and large sums? And if you want to look about reason as being the source of knowledge, a mathematician of the last century wrote in a book called Mathematics, the Loss of Certainty.

He says, it behooves us to learn why despite its uncertain foundations and despite the conflicting theories of mathematicians. Did you know that actually mathematicians have a lot of conflicting theories about why 2 and 2 is 4? They do. They don't know why it's true. They can't figure it out.

And they haven't been able to figure it out since Plato. He says, it would behoove us to learn why math is so effective and so incredibly effective. What does he mean by that? What he means is that I can do math operations on the board and add large sums together. And the answer works in the real world.

When I do on my board, 2 plus 2 is 4. And I go look in the real world, two apples and two apples, make four apples. He's saying, it would behoove us to learn, figure out why there's this symmetry between the world out here and these things that are going on in our head. He said, finally, a study of mathematics and its contribution to the sciences exposes a deep question. Math is man-made, so he thinks.

The concepts, the broad ideas, the logical standards, the method of reasoning were fashioned by human beings. Yet with this product of a fallible mind, man has surveyed spaces too vast for his imagination to encompass. He has predicted and shown how to control radio waves which none of our senses can perceive. And he has discovered particles too small to be seen by the most powerful microscopes. Cold symbols and formulas completely at the disposition of man have enabled him to get a portentous grip on the universe.

Whereas we can shoot a rocket spaceship out and it'll hit the moon. We can shoot one out and it'll hit Mars because of mathematics and calculations that we do on a board. We didn't have to experience flying to Mars to be able to shoot a rocket ship to Mars. We did manipulations on a blackboard and lo and behold when we shot the rocket ship to Mars in accordance with those manipulations it got there. Why?

Why? If math is just a man-made game in our head why does it work in the world? Some explanation, he goes on to say, of this marvelous power is called for. Another physicist, a British physicist, expresses similar sentiments about the ability of mathematics to accurately prescribe and predict the physical world. He says, why does math predict?

We return at once to the question which we cannot avoid. The final answer that I must give is that I do not know, that nobody knows, and that nobody ever will know, probably. And that's a man with a PhD. God's Word says otherwise. God's Word says, Wisdom comes from the mouth of God.

For the Lord gives wisdom. From His mouth come knowledge and understanding. He stores up sound wisdom for the upright. Where does wisdom come from? Does it come from a game we play in our head?

No. Does it come from our ability to experience and see objects in front of us? No. Wisdom comes from comes from the mouth of God. All wisdom comes from the Word of God?

That's what God says. You know Isaiah, Chapter 28. If you want to turn with me there. That's exactly what God says. The wisdom to know how to do something as simple as planting seed and harvesting it comes from God.

Isaiah says in verse 23, Give ear and hear my voice, listen and hear my speech. Does the plowman keep plowing all day to sow? Does he keep turning his soil and breaking the clods? When he has leveled its surface, does he not sow the black cumin and scatter the cumin? Plant the wheat in rows, the barley in its appointed place, and the spelt in its place?" In other words, a farmer knows that you plow a certain amount, and then you stop plowing.

And he knows when to stop plowing. And then he knows after you've done plowing, you plant the seed. And he knows at what time, at what amount of plowing is the right amount of plowing and when the right time to plant the seed is. Why does he know this? Because he instructs him in right judgment.

His God teaches him. For the black cumin is not thrust with a threshing sledge nor a cartwheel rolled over the cumin but the black cumin is beaten out with the stick and the cumin with the rod. Bread flour must be ground. Where did you learn that? Why do you not try and make bread with unground wheat berries?

Because God has given you the wisdom to know how to grind grain into flour. Bread flour must be ground, therefore he doesn't thresh it forever, break it with his cart wheel or crush it with his horseman. This also comes from the Lord of Hosts who is wonderful in counsel and excellent in guidance. If you're a good cook, where'd you learn? God taught you.

Out of His mouth has come the wisdom to enable you to grind the flour and make it into beautiful delicious pastry. David said that it was God who taught him how to fight. It was God who taught his fingers to make war. Wisdom comes from the mouth of God and the mouth of God only. All wisdom comes from the mouth of God.

What about our study of creation? The guy who puts a planet, a star in his telescope and observes, The guy who puts a cell under his microscope and studies it. We call that general revelation. But where did that come from? Where did that star come from?

Where did that cell come from? Where did all things come from? The mouth of God. God spoke and it came into being. This world around us is came into being by the power of God's Word.

The Word of His power. He spoke and it came into being. What we're looking at here is just the fruit of God's voice, his words. All the wisdom that's hidden in that DNA cell, and it is an incredible amount of wisdom. When they sequenced the human genome, they thought they were somewhere.

Then they realized that they're above the human genome. There's this whole other thing they weren't aware of, called the epigenome, apparently. So it's a rather new discovery. And I'm sure there will be many others as long as we continue to live, that we will continue to be discovering more and more that we didn't know. But where did it all come from?

The mouth of God. He spoke and it came into being. Where'd logic come from? Logic is our study of how God thinks. It's thinking his thoughts after him.

Now, don't non-Christians have wisdom? Now, don't non-Christians have wisdom? Don't they have some knowledge? Well, yes, they do. But they have it because in some way they are receiving God's words.

They are applying, they're treasuring His commands and applying their heart in some way to study God's words, to study the creation around him. And those who do so diligently, even if they may not be a Christian, they do acquire some knowledge. But think about it really. What do most, do they really have knowledge? What do most unbelieving scientists think about where we came into being, how we came into existence?

Well, they really don't know. They really don't know. They will say that we exploded out of a black hole and that we were created by stars exploding, and that's where matter came from. But where did whatever it was that was at this point, this singularity, where did whatever was in there come from to start this whole process? Well, when one of the prominent spokesmen of this folly was cornered.

He said, well, maybe it came in all seriousness. He said, well, maybe it came from aliens or another universe, which just begs the question, where did the other universe come from? And so you have people walking around a day with PhDs in scientific fields who think that their head came out of chaos and evolved from chance. Is there any greater folly than to think that the human brain happened by chance? That's the height of stupidity.

They really don't have any wisdom if you think something that's silly. It's laughable. Any four-year-old probably understands that today. It's laughable and yet this is what is presented by the most learned men of our day, is folly. They don't have wisdom.

What about medicine? We have a multi-billion dollar drug industry today. But people are realizing there's a lot of money there, but there's not a lot of healing. In fact, the Doctors are paid today to decide whether a drug is healthful or not to you. And you would think that the doctors that are going to be making these decisions, sitting on these government panels, would at least be not getting paid by the people that are making the drugs they're going to be deciding about.

That would make common sense, wouldn't it? They're going to be the judge of whether this drug does any good or not. They shouldn't be paid by the people who made the drug and stand to profit from it. So what do you expect? It's against the law to have that kind of conflict of interest.

Problem is they don't have anybody who doesn't have that conflict of interest. And so if you ever listen to a tape recording of these approval boards, They'll stand up there at the beginning, and they'll read off, well, the following people have conflicts of interest. Dr. So-and-so received $25, 000 from the manufacturer of this drug that we're going to be reviewing, and Dr. So-and-so received this million dollar grant from This company that we're going to be reviewing, but we don't believe that these pose a problem.

And so they'll be allowed to sit on the board. This is folly. This is sheer stupidity. We All we've done with our modern medicine is give ourselves a whole host of diseases that didn't exist before, or at least in the numbers that, in the levels that we have today. We had a road bond in our county.

If you live in another county, you probably have these things from time to time. We had some people who were saying, we really need to borrow millions and hundreds of millions of dollars to build better roads. The Bible says that debt is slavery. And so we should really be careful about going into slavery. Yes, there is a place that you need it.

If you're living in England and you need to get over to the free world, because that's where you have more opportunity, then yes, you might sell yourself into slavery to get a ride on a boat you can otherwise afford to get over to this country and then you work to get yourself out of debt. There's a place for it, but it is bondage. And so, who are you going to believe? You're going to believe these people who do not accept the word of God, which is the source of wisdom, who don't listen when it says, the Bible says debt is slavery, and we really need nice beautiful roads. Who do you listen to?

Man, like Plato who thinks all knowledge comes from reason or experience we've experienced nice roads We know that they're good. We know nice roads, you know, you can drive faster and get places faster and therefore we need lots of debt to get these good roads or the Bible which says debt is bondage. Who do you believe? It's the Word of God brothers and sisters. It's the Word of God that alone is the source of all wisdom, all wisdom.

There is no wisdom apart from the Word of God. And what we are learning today is that that's true. Because those who track such things are finding that our SAT scores continue to go down and down and down. And when I was teaching in the university level a little over 20 years ago, the SAT board re-normed the test to cover the fact that the scores were going down and down. In fact, I was there at a very interesting time because that was right about 20 years after Roe vs.

Wade decision. And So you have now people getting to the generation, getting to college, where for the first time, it was legal, not lawful, but it was legal, to kill unborn children. And would you know there was a dearth of, there's a step dearth of students in colleges. Why? Well, because we started killing off a million students every year.

And that bump got up to university level, and there was a big shortage of students. And the school I was at started redesigning their courses. And they would take their physics program, and they'd say, Well, the students can't understand that concept, so we'll take that out of the course, and we'll take that out of the course, and that out of the course, and we'll just teach them this smaller set of knowledge. I was there, I saw it happen. This is the result of a nation that has turned its face away from the Lord and denied that wisdom comes from the mouth of God and said, no, wisdom comes from machinations going on in our head.

It comes from our senses. And as a result, now companies talk about the dearth of engineers in this land. Where they're all over in India and China. Why? Because we've said wisdom comes out of our head instead of the mouth of God.

And we've believed a lie. We've believed what our senses have told us and denied what the Word of God has told us. For the Lord gives wisdom From His mouth come knowledge and understanding. He stores up sound wisdom for the upright. He is a shield to those who walk uprightly.

What I've experienced is that when you obey the Word of God, when you treasure His commands and you believe what the Bible says instead of what your senses are telling you, then the Lord is a shield to you. And you'll learn later on what He has protected you from. You'll learn later on. After you've, senses are trained by obedience, you'll understand wisdom and you'll understand and you will give thanks that the Lord led you in that path and didn't allow you down this other path that at the time looked alluring. He is a shield to those who walk uprightly.

He guards the path of justice and preserves the way of his saints. We don't know what we don't know. We live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God and we need to believe the Word of God Instead of the reasonings in our head or the sight in front of our eyes. In whatever field we are endeavoring, whether it's training our children or studying mathematics or taking care of our bodies, the field of medicine or any other field. We need to believe the Word of God because therein is wisdom and when we follow that wisdom the Lord does guard our path.

He preserves our way in ways that we could never understand or comprehend. Then you will understand righteousness and justice, equity and every good path. We could spend the rest of this day just talking about where this world contradicts what the Word of God says. But you know what? When we're done, the answer every time will be God's Word is right.

Wisdom comes from the mouth of God and apart from the mouth of God there is no wisdom. There is none. Let us pray. Almighty Father in Heaven, we acknowledge that so often professing to be wise, We have been foolish. Thinking ourselves to know, thinking that truth can come from our own deductions and reason, apart from your word, or from our senses, apart from them being governed by your word.

We have been foolish. We ask that you would teach us to apply our hearts to wisdom. To begin with your word. To treasure your commands in our heart. And to interpret and to Understand everything that we see and hear and touch and taste by the standard of your word.

For therein is truth and life and liberty. You are a wise God. You are all wise. We bless your name through Jesus Christ. Amen.