Student's Guide Lesson Seven

 

PROVERBS AND GODLY WISDOM

Lesson Seven

Reasons for Pursing Godly Wisdom

Text: Proverbs 3:13-26

 

The nature of one’s life is to pursue something.  It is rare to find a person who pursues nothing.  Common pursuits include a sporting interest (golf, football, basketball, baseball, fishing, hunting, auto racing, personal challenges, camping,), music, reading, marriage, parenting, extended family, cooking, academic achievements, surviving, etc.  Most everyone is “into” something!  Most everyone does the necessary to get to the something.  The man or woman who finds no appeal in anything is extremely rare!  Even if we cannot do, we imagine doing.  If there is no opportunity for actually doing, there is always “wishing, imagining, and dreaming about.”

 

Today’s reading discusses the blessings that come to the person who pursues godly wisdom.  Pursuing wisdom produces a gain of understanding.  The godly wisdom discussed is not a pursuit of merely knowing.  It is more than a pursuit of “fact finding.”

 

Godly wisdom cannot be separated from understanding.  It is focused on understanding how to behave in life.  One cannot be “wise” and refuse to understand how to behave as he/she lives life, nor can one understand how to behave as he/she lives life and refuse to be “wise.”  To say the least, the two are inseparable companions. To pursue wisdom is to pursue an understanding of how to live, and to pursue an understanding of how to live is to pursue wisdom.

 

This text states three blessings that occur when a person seeks wisdom.  The three are these:

(1) The person locates something valuable.

(2) The person locates the pleasant existence.

(3) The person will stay in touch with things that will never become unimportant.

 

How tragic to spend life acquiring what was considered valuable only to discover late in life that there is little value in what you acquired.  How tragic never to discover the pleasant existence.  How tragic to use most or all of life “out of touch” with the important.

 

Consider how the writer emphasized the value of godly wisdom.  There is more profit in this wisdom than can be found in the value of silver or (refined) gold.  This wisdom is more precious than jewels.  It holds long life in the right hand, and riches and honor in the left hand.

 

Ask “the man on the street” what is the key to finding the valuable?  He is likely to say, “Obtaining!”   Surely—agreement thus far!  Then ask, “Obtaining what?”  The answers will include wealth in some form, or position in some situation, or power over others.  Perhaps the suggestion is money because money can obtain position or power or both.  Perhaps the suggestion is to have something valuable that no one else has.  Perhaps the suggestion is to have or do anything you want at anytime you want anywhere you want.

 

Uh-oh!  Little or no agreement on the “what!”

 

It is interesting to note that people who acquired incredible “life-changing” sums of money quickly are often worse off a few months later.  It is also interesting to discover how empty and unhappy many are who acquired their dreams.  People get weary of living in the fish bowl of the public eye.  Having often makes one a target.  When the uncommon becomes common, all that is “super-sized” is their boredom.  “Dreaming” is replaced with “having,” and “having” is often not nearly as fulfilling as occasionally experiencing.

 

How often have you thought that the solution to your problems was money?  Or knowing the right people?  Or being in the position to tell others what to do—and they did it?  Or having the power to make your desired things happen?

 

Questions: Why do so many who have their desired things also have such undesirable lives?  If having “the solution” does not make misery an impossible experience, how is it the solution?

 

If those in Christ aspire to what those out of Christ have, what message does that send about being godly?

 

Wisdom produces an existence that embraces peace, that clings to the tree of life, and that results in happiness (not the attempted escape of indulgence).  Why?  Simple!  They belong to the Creator God who made it all.

 

The results: (1) They are secure.  (2) They are directed by God.  (3) They can sleep without fear. (4) They do not live in dread of the wicked because their confidence is in God.

 

This is not because the wicked do not exist.  It is because they have a superior life based on a superior behavior.  That life is based on the Creator God.  It produces beneficial relationships.  When undesired circumstances come, the relationships and the Creator God remain.

 

 

For Thought and Discussion

 

1. Read 1 Samuel 25:2-35; alertly consider 25:31-33.  How does today’s reading relate to that?

 

2.  It is the nature of life to do what?

 

3. Godly wisdom cannot be separated from what?

 

4. In today’s text, what are the three blessings of pursuing godly wisdom?

 

5. The profit in godly wisdom surpasses what things?

 

6. What realizations/experiences are interesting?

 

7. Godly wisdom produces an existence that does what?

 

8. What are the results of obtaining godly wisdom?  Explain why that does not mean the wicked do not exist.

 

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David Chadwell & West-Ark Church of Christ


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