-Transcript-
00:37 Amen. Glory to God. Thank you for being here today.
00:40 It’s a great day in the cafe. Hope you’re having a wonderful week. Hope you’re having a wonderful day.
00:47 Today we are talking about how to get God-given wisdom, how to find that wisdom, how to stay away from the bad people in our lives, the ones that don’t help us, and the ones that don’t have any wisdom. True wisdom is God-given. Our text verse today isProverbs 14:6-7. A scorner seeketh wisdom and findeth it not, but knowledge is easy unto him that understandeth.
01:15 Go from the presence of a foolish man when thou perceivest not in him the lips of knowledge. Proverbs 14:6-7. You know, Proverbs 14:6 is one verse that our family was studying recently during our family altar time. We try to have family altar time on evenings when we don’t have church, and we focus on the Proverbs.
01:41 There’s a lot of young kids there, and years ago or a year ago I heard Brother Adrian Rogers preach on teaching kids Proverbs, I think it was, and I thought that was a great idea, and Proverbs being the book of wisdom. And so I believe that’s who I got the idea from to kind of make our family altar all about Proverbs. So we spent a lot of time in the book of Proverbs, and what you’ll notice when you spend time studying Proverbs is there’s kind of typically a dichotomy or a split.
02:10 There’s a good and a bad, and there’s the good way and the bad way. There is the good result and the bad result, and sometimes it’s the good first the bad second. Oftentimes it’s the bad first and the good second, and they’re just great teaching tools.
02:24 And so I urge you, if you’re in the ministry or if you just at home have a family, want to get them suited up in the armor of the Lord, maybe spend some time in Proverbs studying it. It’s a great way, especially because each verse kind of individually can be focused on, and that’s what we’re doing here really the whole week on KJV Cafe is focusing on different Proverbs. So Proverbs 6 -7 is dealing with wisdom, so I’m just explaining maybe one method to get godly wisdom, and then here we are today talking about godly wisdom.
02:53 And we have this comparison here. A scorner seeketh wisdom and findeth it not, but knowledge is easy unto him that understandeth. Well, what’s a scorner? Who’s a scorner? The definition of a scorner is a person who expresses contempt or disdain for someone or something.
03:13 Similar words would be like a sneerer, a disagreeable person, an unpleasant person, a person who’s not pleasant or agreeable. That kind of says the same thing. You know, think of a scorner as someone that really does not like somebody or something, and biblically I think a scorner is one that does not like God and does not like the people of God.
03:36 How often can you come across something in your life and in the ministry, maybe a church, where you feel like you might be attacked not because of who you are, but because who you’re aligned with. And the Bible speaks to this. If they hate you, don’t worry.
03:52 First of all, they hated me or they hated me first, and that’s Jesus I’m paraphrasing. And so people hate the Lord and they’re gonna hate you if you love the Lord. And they’re gonna hate the things of the Lord.
04:04 And you can see this maybe in political theater or on the political stage, but you see it really everywhere. In school, at work, even in the local church, unfortunately, you see the scorner. And we understand that true wisdom is God-given.
04:18 A scorner seeketh wisdom and findeth it not. So how come the scorner cannot find wisdom? Well, I turn to another proverb, Proverb 1:22. How long, ye simple ones, will you love simplicity, and the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge? How long, ye simple ones, will you love simplicity, and the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge? So Proverbs 1:22 tells us the scorner does not want to find true godly wisdom.
04:49 So they are looking for wisdom, but because of their hard hearts, because of their unbelief, because of their hatred, because of their sin, they don’t even want to find it. Think about it. The sinner that’s in love with their sin, that does not want to be corrected, in fact wants to spend time correcting others inappropriately, they have no desire to have true wisdom.
05:11 They don’t even understand what true wisdom is. And so where the scorner would look for wisdom is not where they’ll find it. Would the ungodly scorner pick up the Bible for wisdom? I doubt it.
05:23 More than likely they’ll pick up a newspaper, or they’ll pick up their cell phone, or they’ll pick up some secular book, or some pagan ideology. They’ll pick up things that do not line up with the Word of God, or frankly contradict the Word of God. How easy is it for the scorner to do that, when, hey, you see this whole world is structured around the devil’s agenda, and the perversion of the things of God.
05:49 It’s very easy for the scorner to do that. And the Bible here tells us they delight in their scorning. They love this.
05:56 They get satisfied out of stirring the Christian up, out of bringing the Christian down. And they hate knowledge. They hate truth.
06:03 They don’t like the light. They love the darkness. So we see in Proverbs 14.6, a scorner seeketh wisdom and findeth it not, but knowledge is easy unto him that understandeth.
06:15 Well, how could knowledge be easy to him that understandeth? Proverbs 12:15, the way of the fool is right in his own eyes, but he that hearketh unto counsel is wise. Well, think about a godly person. What are the traits of a godly person? What are the fruits of the Spirit? Meekness, humility, kindness, gentleness, moderation, or temperance.
06:38 All of these qualities that make you understand that you don’t have all the answers. And more broadly, help you to understand that man wouldn’t have all the answers. And you know, the Bible tells us it’s better to trust God than to trust a man, and I completely agree with that.
06:53 And so we have to understand that the godly person has kind of, they’ve got themselves under control. They’ve reigned themselves in, and they’ve humbled themselves. And they are now seeking God.
07:06 And they are looking to God for their knowledge. And that is when it becomes easier to find that wisdom. It becomes easier to get that knowledge.
07:14 And they have that wisdom because, hey, they’re seeking God. And God, the fear of God is the beginning of all wisdom. So they fear God.
07:22 They’re put into their place. They’re no longer acting the way of a scorner. They’re no longer involving themselves with a scorner.
07:28 And instead, they are seeking godly wisdom. And God is giving that wisdom in droves, in bundles. Again, we look at Proverbs as the book of wisdom.
07:37 I’ve been using a bunch of Proverbs in this message here. We understand that God is not restricting that. And you say, well, I can’t afford a Bible right now.
07:45 I’m really poor. Well, do you have a smartphone? You could download a Bible app. Do you have the internet? You could search it up online.
07:53 Do you have access to a library? You can read the Bible at the library, either the physical copy or online. You could ask people if they have an extra Bible. A lot of churches will give Bibles.
08:03 Our church, we’ve got, I was just looking the other day, we have a little bookcase, four or five Bibles just sitting on there. We even have Bible cases, Amen, looking to give them away, okay? And they’re good Bibles. So if you’re in Lincolnton, you look up Heartland Community Baptist Church, come see us, amen.
08:16 We got room, we got seats, and we got Bibles, okay? So we get you a Bible. And what I always tell my family, going back to that Proverbs time, that family altar time, is that if people understood the wisdom in this book, they would run to it. If they understood that this book is more valuable than gold, more valuable than diamonds, think about how hard man works to find gold and diamonds in their life, how hard they get into the most complex snares, right? They go into, okay, we’re going to buy this imaginary thing on the internet, and we’re going to sell it for a trillion dollars, and we’ll call it NFTs or cryptocurrency, or we’re going to be involved in real estate or this, that, and the other.
08:59 Man’s running for wealth, and they’re running away from God’s Word and to the world where they’ll just be disappointed. And God’s saying, look, hey, I’ll give you wealth if you just get into my Word. But here, for the sake of time, let me get to the third part of this verse.
09:16 Proverbs 14:6-7, I’m specifically going to focus on verse seven here. Go from the presence of a foolish man, when thou perceivest not in him the lips of knowledge. Now, this is a command here.
09:28 We need to go away from the foolish person, from the scorner, when we realize that that’s who they are, and they don’t have knowledge. And we realize that true knowledge and wisdom comes only from God. Amen.
09:43 Proverbs 9, 7 and 9, 8 are really fascinating, talking about what happens if we stick around this foolish person. He that reproveth a scorner getteth to himself shame, and he that rebuketh a wicked man getteth himself a blot. And so here we are thinking we’re righteous, and we need to reprove that scorner, but we realize they’re a fool, and they’re not listening.
10:04 And we understand in Proverbs 12, the way of the fool is right in his own eyes. And so we see, hey, they think they’re right, and we’re going to try to reprove them? You’re going to bring yourself to shame. You’re going to get a rebuke.
10:19 You’re going to have a problem. You’re going to have a blot. Proverbs 9, 8, reprove not a scorner, lest he hate thee, rebuke a wise man, and he will love thee.
10:27 And so again, a wise man here is compared to someone that is humble enough to take rebuke, to take a correction. Amen? They fear God, and they’re willing to be corrected. And that is not something easy.
10:42 A real man is willing to be corrected by God and godly people. Amen. And that’s why in a previous message, we were talking about scorners. I wanted to delineate and say we should not get rid of people that are godly that happen to correct us.
10:57 Amen. So you may have someone that tells you things you don’t like, but it is absolutely the word of God. You don’t need to get rid of those people in your life. They’re trying to hold you accountable to the word of God.
11:06 They’re doing what God’s called them to do, and they’re a godly influence. And we want those influences in our life. And I use myself as an example.
11:13 I need that. Amen. I need godly influence in my life. I need people to hold me accountable.
11:18 And so we’re talking here about scorners, those that if they were reproved, they would hate you. They would absolutely just go nuts on you. And we are told to leave these people, to depart from these people, because we cannot reprove them.
11:37 We cannot rebuke them. We cannot do anything to change their minds. We cannot show them anything that will convince them otherwise, because they are foolish.
11:47 And the Bible tells us that anyone that believes there is no God is a fool, right? And these people clearly don’t fear God, and so they have great unbelief. And we realize that you cannot please God without faith, and so they’re not pleasing God. And you’re around them.
12:03 Are you going to change them, or are they going to corrupt you? More than likely, they’re going to corrupt you. Now, yes, we need to be long-suffering. Yes, we need to witness to the lost.
12:11 Yes, we need to approach the sinners. And at the same time, that shouldn’t be our inner circle that we are saying, I’m going to go have prayer. Let me go get this person that hates everything I stand for and have them ruin the prayer time, right? You understand? And the Bible is very clear about this.
12:31 We need to cast out the scorners. And the last thing I’ll say is, do you have a spirit of scorning in your life? This isn’t just for lost people attacking Christians. It could be for Christians that are acting like this inappropriately.
12:42 So we need to reflect on ourselves. Are we getting that attitude, that spirit of discontent, of disagreeableness, of fighting over the little things, of putting people down? You know, I think that disgusts God and it grieves the Lord. I know it does.
12:57 And so we need to make sure that we ourselves are fearing God and loving our brothers and sisters and being long-suffering and forgiving and not having a spirit of scornfulness, not having a spirit of, oh, we know best all the time. We need to really make sure we have that humility about us and that meekness about us. And that goes against the flesh and against natural desire.
13:16 And that’s why God’s telling us, think about this, pray about this, make sure you get those scorners out of your life and make sure that you reign that spirit of scorning in and put it in its place and get rid of it and exhibit meekness and humility like our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ did and does every single day. And He is so good to us. So we need to turn to Him in all our ways.
13:43 And we need to pray to Him and seek Him and cast out those scorners in our life and be humble and meek beyond measure and love others. And people will say, truly, they are of Christ. And that’s how we’ll win them to the Lord by showing great love and patience, but also getting rid of that negativity and that spiritual darkness out of our lives.
14:01 I appreciate you listening. Thank you so much. Take care. God bless and Amen.