Harvest Detroit West
Sunday Sermon - Proverbs 8:30-31 “Christ, The Wisdom of God”
June 30, 2024 In this week’s sermon, Jon Shepherd draws a parallel from the wisdom of God revealed in Proverbs 8 to the person of Christ revealed in the New Testament. Proverbs 8:30-31
"We hope and pray that you are blessed by the Word of God as it's preached." And so let's look at Proverbs 8 today. When the pastor said that for the summer we're going to be looking at Proverbs, I knew the verses I wanted and it was these. And there really isn't time to really do justice to them. But we're going to use the time that we have. And so Proverbs chapter 8, in verses 30 through 31, profound verses, especially when you read them in light of the New Testament, which is really the way we should read them because that is the way the apostles, the authors of the New Testament read them. Tremendous verses. But let's pray before we go into God's Word, the only Father we come to you right now, pray for your Holy Spirit, your Holy Spirit to call our hearts and our minds. Call my heart and my mind, and let it be focused on you and what you have for us during this time. And for all of us in these pews, God, we can get tired, we can fall asleep. I pray God, you keep them awake through your Holy Spirit. I pray, Lord, they're energized even now for what they've heard of, what your Holy Spirit is already doing on the other side of the planet. But you want to do something here in this room this morning. So I pray to your Heavenly Father that you would do that. Hearts are so hard, eyes are so blind. You can be the best speaker on the planet. You can be the best, the finest teacher in none of it matters if your Holy Spirit isn't open in eyes. And it isn't softening hearts so that hearts can respond to you and eyes can see you for who you truly are. The world holds us captive, break the hold of the world, to Satan we say, get you behind a Satan that you will not hold us captive any longer, that we will see you. So God, open your word today right now, that we may see Jesus, and in His name we pray, amen, amen. So Christ, wisdom, wisdom. We've had a lot of sermons in the Book of Proverbs, and wisdom, of course, is one of the big themes. I mean, wisdom, lady wisdom. And here in chapter 8 we see lady wisdom again, but then we come to verses 30 through 31. And lady wisdom speaks, and she says, I am beside Him like a master workman. I was daily His delight rejoicing before Him always, rejoicing in His inhabited world and delighting in the children of man. Here in verse 30, the beginning part of verse 30, we see wisdom was beside God, was with God, with God alongside God, like a master craftsman, and I love that word master craftsman. The only time in Hebrew this word is used here, and there's tremendous debates over it, at least in the modern era. But this wisdom is beside God, like a master craftsman, I mean, the skilled trades are something that are going away, I keep preaching the value of skilled trades to my boys. I hope one of them takes it, but I mean, there's something to admire about someone who can take whatever, a car engine and fix it and make it run. I can't do that, of someone who can take steel and weld it together and make something. I mean, it reflects God because it's creating, it's making something. And here at creation, we see wisdom, and we see that personification of a lady wisdom is beside God, like a master workman, and in the verses before these verses, 27 to 29, we see that at creation, wisdom was there in the most beautiful work of artistry. You can never imagine the creation of all that there is. When He established the heavens, wisdom says, "I was there." When He established the heavens, can you imagine anything more magnificent than the heavens? I mean, it makes you feel small, it's beautiful, it's expansive, it's magnificent. Wisdom was there, I was there when He drew a circle on the face of the deep. When He made firm the skies above, when He established the fountains of the deep, when He assigned to the sea its limit. And now we don't know the limits of the ocean, the depths, the mysteries of the ocean. But wisdom was there so that the waters might not transgress His command. When He marked out the foundations of the earth in verse 30, then I wisdom was beside Him. So if we had lots of time, we could develop all of this, but honestly, if you've been in church any amount of time, you read these verses, you should automatically think of John 1. How can you not think of John 1 when you read these verses? When the foundations of the earth went made, I was there. When the heavens were made, I was there. When the sky was made and the firm ended above, I was there, John 1, 1 through 3 words that someone said. One of the church fathers said was worthy to be written in gold. In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God, like wisdom was with God. And the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God, all things were made by Him. And without Him was not anything made that was made. And then later in John 1, we know the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we beheld His glory, the glories of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth, the Son of God, the eternal Son of God, that was with God from eternity and that at one point in history took on flesh, Jesus Christ. I mean, this is a profound. If you're falling asleep right now, somebody slap them, I'm serious. Just slap them. How can you sleep in a time like this? I don't know if somebody's actually sleeping out there, maybe. If you're bored out of your mind and drooling on the pew in front of you, somebody stop them, pull their head up, because this is incredible. Here we have Proverbs speaking of lady wisdom, this personification, wisdom was beside God. Everything was made with wisdom, which is true. Russian, it all makes sense. It's all cohesive. It all has a purpose. It's made with wisdom. How we need to hear that message in this chaotic world that we live in today. Everything was framed with wisdom. Everything has a meaning. Everything has a purpose, an ultimate end. It's not all meaningless. No wonder there's so much depression. No wonder there's so much suicide. Who wants to live in a world without any purpose or meaning? Jesus though, here he is, the eternal word made flesh, the Son of God from eternity. He was with God like a master craftsman. He was the one with his hands spinning the stars into the sky. I mean, we see all the miracles in the New Testament, like the woman with the issue of blood. Those doctors, that was nothing for Jesus to heal her. Lepers with leprosy, no one could eat. The one that framed the universe was standing right there. The word made flesh. It was nothing to see a miracle happen. All those miracles we see in the New Testament, raising the dead. This is the one that framed life, that molded life, that made life what it is. I mean, just last night, and I don't even know if I wrap my mind around this completely. If you're here and you're a real expert on this, I apologize, I should have you come up and talk about it. We could talk about the galaxy, we could talk about the Milky Way, how expansive it is. But really, I just stole that from John Piper, so I didn't want to do it. Or we could, I read a book by Nancy Percy, and this always stood out to me called Total Truth, and she talked about DNA, the DNA double helix. Those stay with me, and then think about Jesus as the word of God, the word of God, intelligence of ration. She said that the core of life, that those who are, you know, modern genetics have discovered that the core of life is biological information, is information, a code that's in us. The DNA molecule is built up of four base chemicals, which I won't quote right now, but A, T, C, and G, they function as a chemical code. It's a language, and for me as an English major years ago, it's always love language. I find this very interesting, and I've always loved John one, that in the beginning was the word, the word was with God, the word was God, and all that was made was by the word through him, and that at the very most elemental biological existence, biological life is tied that DNA, the structure of it is a language. Do you know that this DNA, I think maybe it was said here once before, but I just read it last night, that you could unwind your DNA and stretch it. It would stretch from the earth to the sun and back 600 times. How could you, you can't even wrap your mind around that. I mean, look at yourself here, I mean, it's an amazing thing. But we are made in the image of God, isn't it, 600 times that in one little cell, the DNA, which tricks out to six feet, if you unwound the whole thing. And then all the sequences, so I'm a real tall guy, obviously, as you can see, all right, I'm starting to shrink, which is what I'm told happens. Some of you are very short, a lot of people are in between our heights. Maybe somebody's even taller than me, all right, what determined that the DNA, the sequences of the DNA, there's over 12,000 sequences of DNA in that massive DNA that caused you to be who you are, tall, short, whatever. I mean, it's astounding, it's astounding. So you, your genetic code, your individual genetic code at its most base level is an incredibly complex language. It's a complex language. Even those who don't believe in God say it's a complex language. The Logos, the word, the intelligence, the wisdom, the rationality, the word made flash, the son of God, modern eugenics seems to be telling us that life is just a big story told by the divine word. The word of God, David said I was knit in my mother's womb, huh? I was knit, the word of God through him creation was made. And even in Colossians, it says that he sustains all things. He sustains all things, he created all things and he sustains all things. That is Jesus Christ. That's a big thought. Even as we sit here today right now, we look at ourselves, he has written the very code of our life, the genetic, the language of biological life down to its most elemental level. That is incredible. So Christ is the blazing center. How could you not say you reject him? You reject the very creator and maker of all things. Remember what your dad used to say? I brought you into this world. I can take you out. Did he ever say that? Only some of us older guys remember that he did bring us into this world. He knit us in our mother's womb. Who are we to reject him? Well, nothing without him. He knit us in our mother's womb. Without him sustaining us, we're just food for worms, we're dust in the wind. He is the blazing center. He is the blazing center. Christ is also the blazing center because he is not only the maker of all things, but because of the relationships within the Trinity, which the pastor has talked about very well, it's the father's infinite delight. The son, the word is the father's infinite delight. And as we see in this passage, that wisdom in verse 30 is daily the object of his delight. In the Hebrew, it's wisdom is the object of his delight. He loves wisdom. God is the most infinite, most profound being in existence. So you figure what he loves, what he finds most satisfaction is, is the thing that gives you the ultimate satisfaction, right? The ultimate joy, the ultimate delight. And so thus, it ought to be our ultimate delight, shouldn't it? If it's God's ultimate delight, then you would say, man, it must be something pretty good. Maybe it should be my priority in life. Maybe it should be the blazing center of my life. And Jesus emphasized this on when he was on earth, the word made flesh, that the father loved him. Remember his baptism? What did he say over the son? This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased. And at the transfiguration, this is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased. Listen to him, I and the father are one. In John 17, Jesus says in his high priestly prayer, the father loves the son, I've made known to them your name, I will continue to make it known, your name, that the love with which you have loved me, the love with which you have loved me from eternity. God was never alone, he wasn't lonely, he didn't make us because he was lonely, he needed somebody, he always had perfect fellowship within the Godhead, and he had eternal everlasting love for the person of the son. The word made flesh, in here in Proverbs it says daily, it's just a light from the beginning, from the ages, if we look back in Proverbs chapter 8, it's not fully fleshed out, but within the whole scope of God's revelation, we get to the New Testament, we see the son, his wisdom, the son is the word, the son is the son of God, and the son is the father's infinite delight. John 1, 18, I've always loved this verse. In fact, while I'm sharing with Muslims, I always quote this verse and they don't even know it. I quote lots of verses and they don't know it, but the word was close to the father's heart from the beginning, and bosomed in the father. I love that verse, and in King James it translates it that way, which is the way it should be translated, that the word was close to the father's heart, and bosomed in the father's heart, close to the father's heart, and then breathed out into Mary, the Virgin Mary, and sconched in flesh, the word made flesh. But from eternity, jeez, the son wisdom was the father's delight, was the father's joy. And Jonathan Edwards, probably the greatest American theologian, he's the one, I stole it from him that said, if the son is the father's infinite delight, then it only makes sense then that the son should be the creatures, us, our infinite delight, our joy. I mentioned materialism a little bit ago with some comfortable in America, and I speak to myself, we have so much comfort. I mean, when I was in Bangladesh, one thing I missed was my bed and my chair. My chair, I love to sit in my chair. There was no comfortable chair in Bangladesh, a dust kind of stink. We're so soft, we're so soft, we're so comfortable. I mean, growing up in America, kids, don't they get obsessed with stuff, stuff? When we get a little older, we think maybe, maybe I'm not that way, but maybe we are with our cars and our houses, always gotta get a little something more, gotta get a little something better, gotta get a something a little more prestigious, gotta have that dream house somewhere, the American dream is not God's dream. The American dream of the suburban paradise isn't God's dream for us. Did Paul live the suburban paradise? Did Jesus live the suburban paradise? Do you think they were worried about what they were wearing? And here I am, I'm wearing this. Why did I wear this? Burn it, burn it suit, all right? The material, you remember Paul said, covetousness is as idolatry. Man, the guys went to Bangladesh, they saw the idolatry, Kali, not, Kali is a horrible goddess, blood dripping, big fangs, blue skin, chopped off her husband's head, ugly woman, hideous, blood sucking, terrible, all right. Paul says covetousness is as idolatry. It's on the same par. It takes you over as much, you like become obsessed and possessed by this spirit of materialism. We could go on and on with that. Where is our joy? Where is our happiness? One clue. We could go on, but one I thought of this morning is where we spend money as churches and specifically in the world of missions. So one out of four people in the world is completely, they don't even have a chance to hear about Jesus, all right? Not even a chance, 33% of the world is reached, 38% has access to the gospel, all right? But where do we, where do we send our missionaries? So the reached place, honestly, that's easy, the easy place, Latin America, Mexico, certain parts of Africa, these are the places that we would consider reach because it has a church there that's thriving, 97% of our missionary force goes there to places that have a church that are reached and a church could be reaching their own people, say in Brazil or Argentina or wherever it might be. I don't know if we got missionaries there, all right? I apologize if we do, all right, there we go. But that, you see the point, 97% of the dollars go where it's real easy, only, or 97% of our missionary force, only 3% of the missionary force goes to places where they don't have a witness of the gospel, that big band from North Africa all the way to Southeast Asia. And then as far as dollars, 1% of our missionary dollars goes to that least reached world, like places like Bangladesh, 1%, in fact, we spend more money as Americans on costumes, Halloween costumes, for our pets, than we spend than the church spends on sending money to, oh, there we go, yeah, I mean, that is, I mean, I think I would spend money on that. That's hilarious, but we spend more money on costumes for pets than to the souls of people like in Bangladesh. I mean, shouldn't that break our hearts, the sheep without a shepherd? You want to, a lot of people are into trafficking, or at least, there are a lot of bad people into trafficking, but Christians have been more in tune with trafficking, right? There's nothing like South Asia for trafficking, nowhere in the world. And when you have all of that poverty and neediness, evil people go there, there's tremendous needs and we spend more money, remember that, spend more money on costumes for pets than for lost souls that needed most of it, finish the unfinished task. And then finally, Jesus is our blazing center. He is the ultimate joy, ultimate satisfaction. We need to remind ourselves of that all the time. Jesus is my satisfaction. Jesus is my joy. It doesn't matter what happens to me if I have Jesus. But finally, Christ is the blazing center because He is a savior who delights in men, in His elect, in saving men. And I mean that generically, all people. Verse 31, I love this verse as I studied this week. He rejoices in verse 31, wisdom rejoices is in His inhabited world. I wish I could spend more time there in delighting in the children of man. Those words there that are used rejoicing and delighting is the root word speaks of the exuberant joy that a child has when he plays at play. Have you seen a child at play? All of us have seen children at play. Have you seen, you remember your own children at play. I remember my three boys and they would play with exuberance, jumping, screaming, yelling, just unabandoned joy, right, complete joy. That is the picture wisdom has here. Wisdom is playing in the world. Wisdom helped to craft alongside of God. Wisdom is delighting, playing amongst the children of men, enjoying the children of men. You know, I mean, I grew up in church, the concept of God, laughing, joyful, dancing, that was not really there. But here we have a God who takes, doesn't just love us. Over, over the top loves us, exuberantly loves us, dances over us. I love this verse from Zephaniah as chapter three, Zephaniah 3 17. The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save, that ultimately is Jesus, right? The Word made flesh. He is in our midst. He's the mighty one who has come to save and he will rejoice over you with gladness. He will quiet you by his love. He will exalt over you with loud singing, exalt over you, celebrate over you, tremendous joy over you. So the wonder of wonders, we've seen a lot of wonders here this morning. The Word made flesh crafted all that there is, even down to the most biological level of life. He is the very center of joy because the Father takes infinite joy in the Son. We too can find that ultimate joy in Him and finally he delights in us. That is a wonder of wonders. Who are we? I mean, we're nothing. I mean, without his sustaining us, we will die and all of us, all of us ultimately will die and we'll go the way of all flesh. So we are nothing. We cannot last. Our strength cannot last. We're under the illusion it will last. All of us men, eventually with dawns on us that my strength is not going to last forever. That I am mortal. Women are the beauty fades. I mean, we're just, we're just dust. And then not just dust, we're rebels. We're rebels against Him. Sin is rebellion against God. Here is the maker and creator of all things. You know, like feeding the dog, you know, and the dog ungrateful bites your hand. That is us in rebellion against Him. He's our maker. He's our creator. He's loved us. He wants us to find all joy in Him and we shake our fist in His face that I don't need you. I don't need you for joy or maybe okay, I'll have you over here, but I want all this stuff too. I want all this American stuff that we have. All of this comforts, yet in spite of that rebellion, He loves us. And He gave His Son. It's amazing, wonderful wonders to die for us, to die for us. And that not only He died for us, but He delights in us. You know how much people need to hear that? To know that they're loved. We hear a lot about identity anymore, you know, people searching for their identities. Used to say people trying to find themselves. People have lost that. I mean, the rudders have been cut loose. They don't know who they are and they don't know that they are loved, that they are loved. My wife and I, we used to do foster care. We had our very first foster child, was a little girl, a little girl. And I resisted doing foster care, not because I was selfish, I just wanted my comfortable life. Kids messed that up. Huh? They messed that up big time, don't they? But man, once I laid eyes on that little girl, I loved her. I mean, I was crazy about her and my wife was crazy about her. And yeah, people who are realistic, they probably should have said, "You're just foster parents. Don't pour yourself out so much, all right. You won't protect yourself a little bit." But now we didn't do that. So yeah, treated her like our own little girl, my wife's always dressing her up in beautiful dresses. And remember, she had this little hat thing that was like a sunflower. I mean, just beautiful and then that big, my wonderful baby. So good. I mean, she sleep through the night and just so pleasant, just a pleasant, happy, wonderful little girl. But as if you've done foster care, you know how it often works. So on the front end, she's definitely going to be adopted and, you know, on this sort of thing. But as it went, we saw now that she's going to get reunited with her, with her mom. And we knew where that was going to go, not that we're super cynics, but you just were discerning. You could tell she goes back there, she's going to go right back in the system. But sure enough, but we're one of the worst days of my life where we went to the courthouse, she was reunited, went back home, had to get all her stuff together. And then I had to willingly take her and put her in the car seat of these people I knew that weren't going to take care of her and buckle her in. I mean, honestly, I wanted to run a Canada or something. And maybe I'd be in jail right now. But just last Sunday, we saw her for the first time in 22 years or so. She's 24. I don't know how I got so old, but I mean, she, she's a grown, with my mind, she's this little kid. Now she's this grown woman. My wife, before she left, she made this little photo album, little photo album like that. And when she made that, it's like, man, that is never going to last. I mean, there's no way that's going to last. But that little girl took that with her everywhere she went. And she always looked back at those, the book and she didn't remember us, but she, you know, I was with these people. They obviously love me. And at 10, she went into foster care and in two, spent a two years, she went to five different foster homes, five. We never, we didn't know. So one of the first things she said to us was, why didn't you come to get me? She, but she came to, and then she always thought she wasn't, she was unwanted and unloved. But man, she was so loved, so loved. But we as human beings, we didn't know. We didn't know. Had we known, yeah, we would have gone to get her a rescuer. And in the end, and that is all of us, huh, in the end where we were in this lie and Satan keeps us in this lie that we're not loved, that we're not valued, that we're not treasured, that he wants, Satan wants us to think that way. And in our world, in our culture today, so many people are like that little girl. Why does, I'm not loved. No one treasures me. No one loves me. So listen out there today, if you are a child of God, and Jesus Christ has come, and he has died in your place, and he's been raised from the dead, and he's ascended into heaven, and you sit there with him, Paul says, in heavenly places, and he will come again and take you to himself so that where he is in heaven there, you may be also forever. You are treasured, and you are loved, and there's no identity you can find that is going to surpass that because you're loved by the King of Kings, and the Lord of Lords. They need any guys out there, maybe you got daddy issues, daddy issues. I think everybody's got like daddy issues or something, right? All my dad didn't do that, my dad didn't do that, my dad didn't love. Ultimately, our dads did the best they stink and could with what they had. And me, myself, I try the best I can with what I have. But in the end, all that dad did was just point to your heavenly father, who never drops the ball and calls you his son, you are my son, and in Christ, I am well pleased in you. So Christ is the wisdom of God, he's the son of God, he's the word of God, which in so many words means he is and should be the blazing center of our lives, of our lives. So as the worship team comes up to close us out, they're going to sing, but I would like all of us to stand right now. Maybe God has spoken to you today. He's spoken to you. Maybe you're sitting out there today, and I hope you are in your super restless, in your super, like what is going on with me, what is wrong with me. I need what this guy talked about. There was a time I was in your place, I was in those pews as well. And I'd been in church all my life, but I knew I didn't love Jesus. I didn't have Jesus. Maybe you got parents that bring you here, but you yourself have never dealt with Jesus. There's no pedigree with just being in some Christian family. You yourself need to repent. You yourself need to say, I'm going to follow Jesus. He died for me. I'm going to live for him. Maybe God spoke to you about Bangladesh. Maybe it spoke to you about these people who are being beaten, come and pray for them. Even now as they sleep, you can pray for them. You can pray the church will grow in spite of Satan's efforts to destroy it. Not the pulpit, but this front area here is open. Come on up. Pray. Take somebody else's hand and pray. Pray for our church. Whatever God has spoken to you about, come. If you want to talk to me, I'll be up here. Come on down. [MUSIC PLAYING]