Wisdom for the Battle Plan of Life

Take your copy of God's Word and turn with me to Proverbs chapter 4. Proverbs chapter 4, a message we are calling Wisdom for the Battle Plan of Life. Proverbs chapter 4.

It reads, My son, be attempted to my words. Incline your ear to my sayings. Let them not escape from your sight. Keep them within your heart, for they are life to those who found them and healing to all their flesh. Keep your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the spring of life. Put away from you crooked speech and put devious talk far from you. Let your eyes look directly forward and your gaze be straight before you. Punder the path of your feet, then all your ways will be sure.

Do not swerve to the right or to the left. Turn your foot away from evil. How important those words are, words of wisdom for us. Sufficing to say that the entire wisdom literature contains wisdom for us, and particularly that is true of the book of Proverbs.

How do we know that this is the case? Well, consider these few facts about the word wisdom. Wisdom, first of all, it comes from an easy word. Well, many different words translate wisdom, but the most common of these words occur 151 times in the Old Testament.

Isn't that interesting? 151 times the most common word for wisdom occurs. This same word occurs 97 times in the poetic books, which would be Job through Song of Solomon. And of those 97 times, 90 times this same word occurs in what we call the wisdom literature, which would be Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes.

So we go from 151, 97, and then 90 times. How then about the book of Proverbs? In the book of Proverbs, it occurs a total of 90 times, sorry, 45 times this same word occurs in the book of Proverbs. So then it is quite obvious that wisdom is important. God has given us wisdom by which we should live. Wisdom then, as we see from Proverbs, it teaches us how to live godly lives in this world and how one can be assured of the rewards that will come in the life to come.

Godly lives and the rewards to come. What then is wisdom? How do we define wisdom? Well, then in a general sense, wisdom is the ability to discern or to judge what is true, what is right, or just to have common sense about something and the way we live. Human wisdom more specifically is, quote, soundness of an action or decision with regard to the application of experience, the application of knowledge, and just good judgment as a whole.

How is this different? How is this similar, perhaps, to godly wisdom? Well, divine wisdom is given by God that enables humans to lead a good, true, right, and satisfying life. So we might talk about just having a common sense about some things, and if you notice about life, it seems like many around us don't really have common sense in every area these days. We wonder about the common sense that might be displayed.

It might not be as common as we may think it would be or should be. But primary to us, particularly as believers and those of us who are concerned about the word of God, divine wisdom, we understand, comes from God, directly from God, and it enables us to lead a good, a true, a right, and a satisfying life. Have we received that wisdom?

Where do we find that wisdom if it comes directly from God? And how is this wisdom helpful to us in what I call the battle plan of life? If you're here next week, Lord willing, I'm going to talk about how to fight the battle plan for family, and that's very important for us as well. But we are all in some sort of a battle. We all should have a plan through which we approach life. But how are you fighting? What is your plan?

What is your strategy for this plan? Where do you get wisdom? Do you turn to the world?

Do you turn to your unsaved friends? Do you turn elsewhere than in the word of God? Do we not understand, as Proverbs 9-10 reminds us, that God himself is the very source of wisdom? The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Wisdom is important for life's battles. And so today I want to provide for us a strategy that should include five important components all about wisdom in our battle plan.

So maybe you're constructing one, maybe you're not so sure how you're going to live tomorrow, maybe you're concerned about your decisions that you have made in the past, maybe you have some huge decisions coming up. My prayer is that as we look in the word of God today, that you will find wisdom that will aid you in your battle plan for life. So five things. First of all, guard wisdom.

Verse 20 through 22. My son, be attentive to my words. Incline your ear to my sayings. Let them not escape from your sight. Keep them within your heart.

Why? For they are life to those who find them and healing to all their flesh. Guard wisdom. We cannot guard wisdom unless we receive wisdom. So a prerequisite to guarding wisdom is first of all to receive wisdom.

And that's the point here is to be attentive to my words. Listen carefully. Receive it.

Digest it. Allow it to come into your heart, into your very soul, and allow it to permeate your life so then it oozes from your very pores because you are not just receiving passively, you are receiving with the idea of doing, putting into practice God's word. Wisdom then, we must receive divine wisdom. We must also love divine wisdom. The idea here we see in the second phrase of verse 20, we are to incline our ears to the sayings, the wisdom that's provided from a father to a son, but ultimately from God to us.

The idea of inclining our ears there is to lean forward, is to lean into, is to lean onto, right? We are embracing something that we know is good for us and we cannot help but leaning into this thing wisdom. We have something or someone we love. We move forward to that thing.

We move forward to that person. We lean into that person. We see young couples around and I'm still in that category just in case you wonder. You see young couples around and they kind of lean onto each other. You go, man, and some of us have been married for a little while, and man, they've got something, don't they? I was sitting in church one day and someone looked over and saw a young couple and they said, uh-huh, they've only been married a year or so.

You give them time. They were leaning into each other, right, so that we would incline our ears, incline our hearts to the word of God, the wisdom that is there, that we would lean into it. It took some time to look up the Hebrew word there for inclining our ears, and interestingly every time the word incline occurs, it's always inclining our ears or inclining our hearts. So then we are to draw near. We're to lean into the Lord and listen to his word, and our heart also we must lean forward to him.

How do we do that? We do that by pursuing him, verse 21. Let this not escape from your sight. Let not wisdom escape from you. You're pursuing it. It's a constant thing that you and I are doing and should be doing. As we pursue it then, we must also cherish wisdom.

The idea here is to keep them within your heart. You have some sort of an heirloom that's passed down from some family member, grandmother or a mother or someone. You cherish it. You think about it. Perhaps you pick it up. You look at it frequently.

You're cherishing that. You keep it within your heart. If we so keep wisdom, if we so guard wisdom, then what we will find is that the Word of God, the wisdom, the Word of God will assist us in our battle in life. So we must consider then what I call a two-four rational for guarding wisdom. Verse 22, for or because we could say they are life to those who find them and healing to their flesh.

That's what I call the two-fold rational for guarding wisdom. It provides life. We obtain life. It is to be noted here that the the plural form here of this word that performs provides a life in this context. It has to do with the nuance of this special special quality of life that we have. A life that is a special gift from God.

We know salvation we get as a gift from God. But this life that it provides then also includes the quality of life. The idea here is we put into practice biblical wisdom. It does impact the quality of life that we live here. As believers, as Christians, we should live differently than others in the world.

We should live a far different life. And then again it provides healing to the flesh. Godly wisdom would be healing to our flesh, to our lives, and it will bring this calming and curing effect to us. But that's only if we act upon it. If we don't act upon it, well then we don't get to read the benefits thereof. And so then instead of life, well then one's life could be cut short.

Instead of quality of life, then we stumble around in all kind of our hurt and pain because we have not internalized, we've not lived this out. I think of the tsunami, huge tsunami that hit Asia back in 2004. Some of you might recall it. Perhaps some of you lived there or lived in those areas that were impacted. And in some areas we learn later on after the tsunami that the elephants, most of them if not all in a particular area, had migrated to the mountain areas. They had sought high ground quite some time before the tsunami actually hit.

There was something there was something researchers began to look to see what did they hear, what did they know, and how did they act upon it to save their own lives as against some of the humans who didn't see the signs, who could not have felt what the elephants supposedly felt with their with their their hooves. And they acted upon the information that they received from the experience they have and they went to higher ground thereby saving their lives. If you and I open the book the word of God and we spend a few minutes there and we don't put into practice, well then we're not acting on the wisdom that is there. We're not even receiving the wisdom that is there. So first of all we guard wisdom. Secondly we must guard our hearts. Guard our hearts.

Verse 23. This is very important isn't it? The heart is very important. God places great significance on the heart. Here we are to keep your heart with all vigilance. We're to watch over our hearts as it were.

Why? For from it flows the springs of life. Guard wisdom. Guard our hearts. We're to keep close watch over our hearts. I think the description here is someone having some valuable property. Maybe it's some gold, maybe you know it's just a huge home and and you have these various security systems in place to protect what you have.

Some may go even a step further to hire security officers to protect the things they have and if it has even greater value you go another step further by hiring arms, armed security officers to protect what you have and you expect them to be vigilant in watching over what's been entrusted into their care. And so if we understand the importance of the heart, if we value the heart even just a percentage as God values it and certainly as he wants us to value it, we also will guard our hearts. We must be diligent. We must be persistent in guarding our hearts.

It's not enough to say that I did it yesterday or I did it last week. We must consistently guard our hearts. The writer here calls us to doing so with great diligence which again tells us that there is something important here that we need to why we need to watch over it.

A part of our battle plan must include vigilance over our own hearts. When we know the heart again we're told it's not what enters the man that defiles him but is what proceeds out of him that defiles him. But also as Pastor Tim mentioned earlier if our hearts are right before the Lord, well then everything else falls into place.

I think of the psalmist in Psalm 37-4. Delight yourself in the Lord and he'll give you the desires of your heart. Notice the priority, delight yourself first in the Lord and then the desires of your heart will be provided.

But if we delight ourselves in the Lord then we have biblical desires or desires then take greater priority over the things concerning Christ than other stuff. The heart is the object. God is interested in the heart but you know who else is fighting for hearts? The devil is fighting for hearts.

All right. But then if we seek him first with all of our hearts and if we lean not on our own understanding in all our ways if we acknowledge him what does he promise he'll do? He will direct our path. He'll direct our hearts as it were and so therefore the rest of our bodies will go. Matthew tells us in Matthew 6 verse 21 that our heart again that whatever we treasure our hearts naturally follow after that. So if we treasure wisdom if we regard wisdom if we regard spiritual things if we make that our priority if our eyes go after that then our hearts naturally follow as also the rest of our bodies. I've got 10 reasons as to why the heart is so important and God places us critical such time and attention on our hearts.

Let me mention these just quickly. First of all it is because our heart is the center or the very core of our being so it needs to be guarded. It's from the heart that we love him so it needs to be guarded. It's from the heart that we seek him so then it must be guarded.

It's from the heart that is the center of our faith and our belief in God so yes it must be guarded. It's from the heart then that we obey him and we demonstrate that obedience so again it must be guarded. It's from the heart that we follow him. It's through our heart that we praise him. It's through our hearts that we worship him that we trust him. The heart is very very important and again the devil is after our hearts.

Let's not forget he roams around Peter. First Peter 5 8 tells us like this roaring lion seeking who he must or he will devour. We're also told about his threefold ministry in John 10 10 to steal to kill and to destroy. He is after your heart and after my heart. What protects us in our daily lives in our service in our walk with Christ in our living in general is God in the hearts.

Who can forget as the prophet went to anoint the new king the second king of Israel he went to Jesse's house and the first son passed by him. He was kind of like you know tall strong and handsome kind of like me and as he went by the prophet thought to himself that must be the man and he was ready to anoint him and the Lord says no you're focused on the external the outward appearance but I am more concerned with the heart. Yes my brothers and sisters God is concerned with our hearts the devil is concerned with our hearts the devil is concerned with our hearts the devil is after our hearts and we must guard our hearts and not just to guard our hearts but we must guard our hearts with all diligence do so diligently.

I remember going to a particular place which I leave unmentioned we turn up late at night and there was a security guard there and he was supposed to be guarding. We got in and parked the car and we were unloading and that's when he woke up and we thought I'm not sure if they're getting their money's worth out of this one. He's not quite diligent but it tells us that sometimes even we ourselves might fall asleep at the wheel but brothers and sisters understand we must be persistent in guarding our hearts.

Why? Because from it flows the springs of life. Do you want your life tomorrow to matter? Do you want when someone looks at you tomorrow engage in a conversation with you tomorrow or later on today they can say yes yes your conversation it encourages me well only if we're guarding our hearts. There has to be then a distinction between life and death again here from it flows the springs of life the idea here is that it is the source not only of a border between life and death but it's also the source that helps us to escape death spiritually more importantly we see through God's word through relationship with Christ but also physically. How many times you're looking at the news maybe you're watching a video and you see a dumb decision taken by a young man or young woman that leads to a path of ruin perhaps even physical death maybe even an accident dismemberment we see that around us don't we but if we follow the path of wisdom as seen in the word of God it is different. Look at a few earlier verses in Proverbs chapter four I read from verse one here oh son a father's instruction and be attentive that you may what gain insight for I give you good precepts do not forsake my teaching when I was a son with my father tender the only one in the sight of my mother he taught me and said to me let your heart hold fast my words keep my commandments and what live get wisdom get insight do not forget and do not turn away from the words of my mouth do not forsake her that is wisdom and she will what keep you love her and she will what guard you again the beginning the beginning of wisdom is with God guard wisdom guard your heart but also guard your speech verse 24 put away from you crooked speech and put devious talk far from you not just to put it away from you but put it far from you so again if we're going to incorporate this wisdom from the word of God that will help us in our better plans of life we must put away crooked speech away from us as believers we are not to be known as a liars as gossips you know as those who use their words to tear down others do we not understand proverbs 18 21 tells us and I know some people take this out of context but it tells us that there's power in the tongue right and so with the tongue we can bless with the tongue we can curse we must be careful we must guard our speech put away from us put far from us the idea here is to put significant in um distance between us and crooked speech so it's not just to put it over there where it can be in arm's reach when we're ready to grab onto it again lest we be tempted to grab onto it we are to cast it off we're to throw it far from us so far that it may be out of sight that we're not constantly looking and turning aside and we're seeing it sitting there let's we be tempted to be drawn to it again do you know some who you can't trust what they say i i know some in my life uh if someone say jump i'm probably not gonna do it they say walk i'm probably gonna run if they say stand i'm probably gonna sit their words are not trustworthy that ought not to be among us as believers put far from you crooked speech why what's the rationale because we as god's people we represent light we've been called from darkness into his marvelous light and because our words matter you know growing up we use here sticks and stones may break my bones but your words will never hurt me is that reason so is that reason so right um our words are important they're important to god they hurt they can hurt others if we allow them to but instead what we ought to do visions five tells us that we ought we are called to to encourage one another to build up one another not to destroy each other so how do we put this into practice we guard our mouth psalm 141 verse 3 tells us that we listen more and we speak less james 1 9 tells us to be quick to hear and slow to speak and then what we want to do from proverbs 15 1 we want to understand that a soft answer turns away wrath but grievous words stir up anger so we want to practice that soft word that soft answer that encouraging word that shows us that we are guarding our speech and yes at times when there may be some disagreements among us and you know various relationships pull aside and take some time to pray and and think it through what do you say and how do you respond to this so that we are seen to be those who are walking in the wisdom of the word of god we are not to be argumentative that's a struggle for some of us i'm sure but again we're to guard our speech fourth we're to guard our eyes after all if we guard our hearts we if we guard wisdom if we guard our hearts if we guard our speech and we don't guard our eyes we still have a problem don't we we must guard our eyes look at verse 25 let your eyes look directly forward and your gaze be straight before you let your eyes look forward the idea here is we must discipline ourselves discipline our eyes physically and spiritually we must discipline ourselves we must consider we must behold we must regard we must look straight forward look directly ahead of us and if the object of our seeking if the object of our view is the lord then what are we doing we're looking heavenward we're seeking the things that are above where christ is seated at the right hand of the father collections one if then or since then you have been raised with christ what seek the things that are above where christ is seated at the right hand of the father verse two set your minds on the things above not on the things of this earth if our minds if our eyes are set above or we're seeking the things about that again then everything else falls in place consider behold regard look straight ahead don't turn to the side fix our gaze as it were as believers we should be characterized as as people of righteousness we walk uprightly uh we are not lawless that's how we should be known you know it seems like just a few weeks ago i was teaching my girls at different ages of course because you know one is a few years older than the other um teaching them how to ride their bikes it just seems like yesterday in fact we were uh i think we were either put in looking for our christmas decorations or it might have been when we were returning our christmas decorations to the attic that we found this little instrument um a little bar that we bought yes so many years ago we still have it um can't tell when last i saw it uh but we have this bar that we bought i think at one of these stores and you put it on the the back wheels of the the bike when my girls used to ride tricycles so it's been that long and as a parent you run behind them and you hold this bar you keep them balanced and then there comes a time when we take off the balance wheel and you run behind them for a little bit and they're so confident that their dad was holding them they're riding they're so confident they're making their turns and before you know it i let go and they're riding alone it seems like it was just yesterday and now the older one is an adult i taught her to drive she got her license and now the younger one i taught her to drive and she has her permit so now she gets to drive everywhere and we sit in the in the passenger seat with one of the parents at the front of course and every now and then she looks to the left or to the right and she realized as she does so the vehicle begins to swerve to wherever she looks which is problematic you don't want that to happen because you can drift into another lane and you can cause an accident stay straight ahead keep your focus ahead and they have to say that hey you're drifting oh it's because i was just gazing there no keep your focus ahead and the idea here for us as well is that if we remain focused turn our eyes toward jesus look full in his wonderful face then the things of this earth they grow strangely dim they are there but because we are focused heavenward because we set our gaze on him we're not bothered so much about the things of this world one of our challenges is to seek first the kingdom of god we're reminded from matthew 6 right consider the lilies of the field the birds of the air they don't toil yet our heavenly father feeds them not even salomon in all of his glory is more dressed better is just better than the lilies of the field it's not more beautiful than they are why your heavenly father does this oh you know you have the basic needs of all of us the basic needs of life of where you would lay your head and what you will eat and what you will drink and what you put on your body god knows all of our needs we're told but if we seek him first if we seek his righteousness then all the things of this world that we have need of he will provide him seek him look at him turn towards him keep our gaze on him and it will help us in our battles of life it will help us stay on the course it will help us you know you you see horses particularly those who are in competitions wearing these blinders over their eyes why because the way the horse's eyes are at the side of their head they can look behind them quite easily they can look to the side to the left or to the right and if that were to happen particularly if you're in a race that can be quite a problem and so they put these blinders on the horse to train the horse to look forward god has given us his word to train our hearts to look forward to look at him to keep our gaze on him and when we so look at him i'm telling you god directs our paths and keep us where he wants us to be and every one of us know unfortunately there are times we take our eyes off the lord and what happens when we do so we fall we drift into the broad road we drift onto another path but they're just too the narrow and the broad road and we shouldn't look down some other path because the tendency is to swerve and to drift right there guard our eyes and then finally guard our feet guard our feet it's all where the feet is taking us isn't it we can talk about training our hearts our minds training our eyes training our hands but ultimately our feet will take us and again wherever our heart is our treasure will be there also and so if our heart is looking on the things of the world and focus on the things of the world guess what our feet naturally carry us there we will destroy ourselves destroy our lives destroy our testimonies destroy our home destroy everything else around us and guess what that's exactly what the devil wants that's exactly what the devil wants but we should guard our feet or 26 and 27 ponder the path of your feet then all your ways will be sure if you ponder it if you if you take careful thought if you consider the idea here the word here is to weigh it carefully the path of your feet if you think about the next step where you will put your feet if you have a desire to walk in the way of the lord you will go there but if you're not pondering the path of our feet because we're not guarding wisdom we're not guarding our hearts we're not guarding our eyes we're not guarding our speech well then our feet naturally follow the path of destruction and we will destroy ourselves i know we don't lose our our salvation so don't think that's what i'm saying but our testimony is at stake brothers and sisters in christ ponder the path of your feet we must commit all of our ways to him again trust in the lord with all of your heart not just some of your heart not just some of our decisions not just some of our path but all of our path ponder the path of your feet it is his word that provides a light to us it is his word that is a lamp to our feet it is god who has called us out of darkness into his marvelous light so he wants us to walk in light he wants us to be children of light he wants us to represent a light in everything we do all of our conversations all of our ways all of our decisions all of our steps to be ordered by him but it only happens if we're walking in the wisdom of the word of god and then verse 27 tells us do not swerve to the right or to the left turn your feet away from evil don't swerve to the right or to the left take careful attention to where you're put in your feet because of where your heart is and watch where you go the idea is is of a soldier deployed in the field he's in battle he's got a platoon maybe he's the leader maybe he's not maybe he's been sent to the left or to the right with a few others of his brothers and they are very much aware that the enemy may set some minds in that field for them so they must carefully ponder the path carefully ponder where they put each foot each step at a time must be carefully done if it's heavily wooded then again it's it's even more critical that you go slow and and you step methodologically that you follow the path of the other person who has already cleared that path for you don't serve to the left or to the right follow this particular path what happens when we do this again we experience the blessing from the lord we must turn our feet from evil wisdom for the battle plan of life it is this wisdom that we should live by it is this wisdom that should occupy our hearts our minds it is this wisdom then that will be demonstrated in our actions well you're probably here and you're saying well you're talking about all this wisdom stuff and it might be a little bit difficult even for me to follow that's okay start with a relationship with christ understand that you were created in the image of god and that sin entered this world and so you and i were conceived in sin brought forth in sin and we're totally lost helpless condemned without christ but in him through a relationship with christ the one who took your place on the cross you can come to have a life in him by putting your faith and trust in christ walk in there for a new life a new path in christ then you follow the wisdom of the word of god you incorporate that in your life you live it out you become like ezra in ezra 7 10 who purposed in his heart to study the whole council of the word of god to study secondly to practice it and then third to teach it again i ask you in closing what's your plan for life what's your strategy for your battle when you get up tomorrow and you think about the day you will have you think about a new week what's going to help you what's going to guide you what's going to keep you in step with the lord guard wisdom guard your heart guard your speech guard your eyes and guard your feet let's pray our god and our loving heavenly father thank you for your word help us as we go that we will put it into practice living out your word which becomes a life blessing and great reward for us help us to remember that the devil is after us and he's after us and he's after us and he's after us and great reward for us help us to remember that the devil is after us but you came that we may have life and have it more abundantly help us lord to walk as children of light by guarding ourselves according to your word thank you for this time we ask your blessing on us in jesus name we pray