True wisdom

https://odb.org/2025/01/26/true-fear

Proverbs 2:1–11 (ESV): 1 My son, if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you, 2 making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding; 3 yes, if you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding, 4 if you seek it like silver
and search for it as for hidden treasures,
5 then you will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God.

When I was a young believer, I couldn’t understand why anyone would struggle to choose wisdom over riches as, ultimately, with wisdom, you will get riches. It’s a no-brainer. It’s as easy as ABC. In other words, you don’t really need the wisest man in the world then, Solomon, to tell you this.

But wisdom is not just intelligence and being wise. True wisdom encompasses more than just the intellect. In the working world, we know that smart is not just academic ability but also street smartness, and that includes the ability to read situations, trends, body language, and people’s unwritten and unspoken preferences and aspirations. IQ, as well as EQ, and making the best of our own personality traits.

But the wisdom in the Bible that Solomon advocates is actually simpler than all that. From Proverbs to Ecclesiastes, in the end, Solomon concludes that true wisdom is the ability to choose God over everything else. In Proverbs 2:4-5, Solomon teaches that if you seek it like silver and search for it like hidden treasures, then you will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God.

It is simple, yet God chose Solomon to teach it. Why God wanted the richest and smartest and wisest man then and possibly ever to teach it? Because the natural tendency for man (English caselaw uses the phrase “the man on the Clapham omnibus’) is to go the other way. We will seek riches first, instead of God, as we may somehow believe that in seeking God first, we will never be rich, or we could never be as rich as we could be. Perhaps we are of the view that money could solve anything and everything, and thus, having money is the key to a good and happy life. While there is some truth to it, people who have gone down this path always advise that things that can not be solved with money are the toughest of all things. Meaning to say that money can not solve all things.

Jesus taught it brilliantly in Matthew 6:33 – “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.” It is the same wisdom taught centuries before by Solomon during ancient times. Choose God, and everything else will come into place. Jesus went on to say in Matthew 16:26 for what profits a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul? In Matthew 13:44, Jesus taught the following:

44 “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.

In other words, our soul and our eternal life are worth everything we have and more! In fact, if everything we have is the whole world, it is worth more than that!

It is OK if we are not Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk or Bill Gates or Warren Buffet, or even that family down the road. We live by and in accordance with what we have and what God has blessed us with, knowing and always appreciating that the real blessing from God is His gift of salvation for us and our loved ones. That’s what matters most. Always choose God and put Him first in all things! That’s the wisdom taught by the Word of God.

Have a good Sunday service today! May we all see Him face to face in the spirit in worship!