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This is the podcast for RUF at the University of Texas. A community for students to experience God's grace and express God's grace to others. For more information, visit www.ruf.org ut or find us on Instagram exasruf. It's so good to be with you guys. My name is Ryan Dugan. I the campus minister here for Texas ruf and we are really glad to see you all back. It was a wonderful break, but I'm glad you're here. Ruf. What is ruf? We are a Christian ministry on the campus of Texas and actually over 200 other campuses across the country. A group of students, a group of people who are learning to love. Learning to love God, to love one another, to love ourselves, to love our campus. And so what do we do? Every week we meet here on Wednesday nights for a large group where we sing and we hear the preached word. We meet throughout the week in Bible studies and one on ones over coffee and walks. All in the hopes that we can encourage each other to love and to experience God's love. Because we believe the reason we love is because God has loved us first. And if you're here for the first time, I want you to know that at RAF we believe that every person in this room is in desperate need of that love. Because we're all sinners. Convinced and unconvinced, skeptical or not, we're all in desperate need of God's love. So no matter who you are or what you believe or what happened last weekend, we're really glad you're here and you're welcome here. I am going to pray in a second. The printer didn't work again. Probably my fault. User error. So we're going to pray that my laptop doesn't fall off of the music stand the halfway through this. It's the new year, if y' all didn't know. I'm sure you do. The first couple of weeks, back to school, lots of goals, lots of new dreams. So I thought tonight I would begin this new year with offering you some insights, some things to keep in mind as you set those goals and make those plans. None of these are original to me. It said they actually come from one of our modern, our contemporary philosophers, Phil Dunphy. If you know Modern Family, you'll know him as probably America's most lovable dad, the goofy one. And in one episode, he collects little wisdom sayings, little collections of one liners that he calls Phil's osophies. And I want to read you a few as you kind of focus in on what this year should all be about. Success is 1% inspiration, 98% perspiration, and 2% attention to detail. You can tell a lot about a person from their biography. Watch a sunrise at least once a day. If you're ever in a jam, a crayon scrunched up on your nose makes a really good pretend mustache. You see this on the front of your bulletin. If you love something, set it free. Unless it's a tiger. And last, and probably my favorite one is if life gives you lemonade, make lemons, because then life will go. What a small collection of bite sized wisdoms from a dad for his children. Here's the thing. Phil and the Bible actually have something in common. The book of Proverbs is also a collection of little one liners. Now, they're not as silly and ridiculous as Phil's. Instead, they're given to us, this book of Proverbs to provide insight into the areas in life where we need it the most. Relationships, work, rest, money, speech, and much, much more. The burden of the Proverbs is to try and fill the gaps of our education. Most of y', all, unless you repeated a couple grades, have spent 16 years studying math and language. Some of you in here excel at excel. Say that 10 times fast. You've spent all of your life studying in school, but where did you learn about how to interact with people? Where did you learn how to make good decisions? Where did you learn about how to juggle your school and social and family calendars to make time for yourself, but also for your friends or maybe the church? The truth is that most of us just wing it. And we hope that things just kind of work out and we're devastated when they don't, over and over and over again. But that's exactly what the Book of Proverbs does. It enters the scene and provides for us a way to move through life. Not just blindfoldly blind, blindly walking through, but actually with wisdom. That's what Proverbs is about. Wisdom. And so this semester we're going to talk about wisdom in all those areas of life. And tonight included. I'm deeply indebted to the work and thoughts of guys like Matt Howell and Britain Wood and Tim Keller and Jack Collins. Much of what you'll hear this semester comes from their wisdom and their study. Especially tonight from Matt. So tonight I want us, as we begin our adventure into Proverbs, I want us to look at three questions. Why do we need wisdom? What is wisdom? And how do we get Wisdom. Why do we need it, what is it? And how do we get it? So first let's read our text. This is Proverbs, chapter one, the very beginning. Starting in verse one, we'll go through verse seven. The proverbs of Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel. To know wisdom and instruction. To understand words of insight, to receive instruction in wise dealing, in righteousness, justice and equity. To give prudence to the simple knowledge and discretion to the youth. Let the wise hear and increase in learning, and the one who understands obtain guidance to understand a proverb and assaying the words of the wise and their riddles. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. And fools despise wisdom and instruction. Pray God, you are good and you are a faithful, loving, merciful God. Who is near those who need you most, the sick and the downtrodden, of which we all are. I pray God tonight that you would open our hearts to hear your wise words. Spirit, help me to be faithful to your word. Protect this computer from crashing down on the floor and be with us this night. We love you. It's your name we pray. Amen. So first, why do we need wisdom? If you could ask for anything in the world and know that you got it, what would it be? If you knew, like a genie, that you could ask for one thing and you got it no matter what, what would it be? In 1 Kings, chapter 3, we read of that kind of moment with a man named Solomon, who we just read about in Proverbs 1, the Son of David, the king of Israel. When he became king, God walks up to him, speaks to him and says, anything you want, I'll give it to you, anything. And I'll grant it again, like a genie in the bottle. Then Solomon answers, I want a wise and discerning heart able to distinguish between what is right and what is wrong. He could have had anything and he asked for wisdom. And this is super interesting. A heart that can discern between right and wrong. It's interesting because he's not just a king, he's the Israelites king. Which means he would have had the Bible, he would have had the ten Commandments. I don't know if you know much about the ten Commandments, but they're pretty black and white. They're pretty spot on with the right and wrong. If you remember, they say things like, don't murder, don't steal, don't lie, don't worship other gods. So why in the world would he have asked for wisdom when he had that at his disposal? It's because where does it in the Ten Commandments tell you who you should room with next year? Where does it tell you who you should date or how many dates you should have before you have that dtr? Where is the explanation of when you should confront your friend or what career path you should choose? Why did Solomon ask for wisdom? Because wisdom looks like walking through the gray areas of life, not the black and white. It looks like walking through those areas of life where the black and white don't seem to apply and most of your lives are gray. Why do we need wisdom? The simple answer to that question is because life is really complicated. Think about the number of decisions you have to make in a single day. This room right now at this point in history, is filled with people who carry a burden that no one else has had to carry before. It's the burden of infinite voices, of infinite choices. You are bombarded every day with an infinite amount of supply of information about every little thing of your life. What you should wear, what you should read, who you should listen to. You're slammed with infinite opportunities about what you should eat. Again, what career or major you should choose, who you should date. You could download seven different dating apps right now and date anybody, anywhere in the world. The irony is that the multitude of opportunities you face is actually paralyzing, isn't creates Fear, not Freedom, a New York Times article that came out in 2010. So things have gotten much worse since then. Alina Tujan writes about this horror of choice for her son. I took my younger son to an ice cream parlor, and if you want to torture him, make him choose what he has to eat. Should he have chocolate chip or coffee? Or coffee chunk ice cream, a cheeseburger or a turkey wrap? His fear, he says, is that whatever he selects, the other option would just be better. Gabriel is not alone in this agony. Although he has a long Although it has long been common wisdom in our country that there's no such thing as too many choices, psychologists and economics have studied and concluded that an overload of options may actually paralyze people or push them into decisions that are against their own best interests, she later on concludes, the research shows that excess of choices often leads us to be less, not more satisfied once we've actually decided. Because there's a nagging feeling that we could have done better. This nagging feeling that we could have done better. That's a way worse, more haunting version than order envy. It also makes sense then, why Solomon, when asked, I'll give you anything. What do you want? He says, I want wisdom. I want to know how to discern in the gray areas of life. I want to know what's right and what's wrong. I want to know the good options. See, because he was a king who, much like you, had endless options and endless opportunities, which consequently means he had endless possibility of complications, he knew that he needed help in discerning what was good and what was bad, what was right and what was wrong. Why do we need wisdom? Because life is complicated and you know it. Secondly, what is wisdom? If you read in verse 2, we hear immediately the desire of Solomon as he's writing these proverbs, to know wisdom and instruction. The word wisdom in the Hebrew literally means skill. That's what it means. It's like skill, like carpentry or sculpture, being a sculptor, or like going to war. But what sort of skill is Solomon talking about right now? He's talking about the skill of living life. Well, that's what he wants. If you read in verse 8 these proverbs, he's writing to his own son. He wants his son to hear how to live life well. And there's two things that you and I have to remember about skills. The first is that they're taught, and the second is that they take time to learn. The first is obvious, especially from the text. The entire assumption of wisdom is that you have to have humility in order to receive instruction. Look at verse five. But the wise hear and increase in learning. There's an assumption here that you and I don't know everything that's going on. There's an assumed humility. This movie's been out for a while. It's a spoiler alert, really? That's your own fault, Avatar. Do y' all remember this Pocahontas ripoff where the Marines from some Planet Earth type place came to. Oh, it's not Naboo. That's Star Wars. I don't remember where they came to the planet of the Avatar people. The giant blue aliens and the human beings and the robots were like the John Smiths, and the blue aliens were like the Pocahontas. This main character named Jake Sully was commissioned by the army and the military to go and to learn all they could about the tribe, the native tribe. And so he gets plugged into a machine. He gets this kind of avatar, this clone of the native people. And he goes up to the chiefess, the chieftain's wife, for the first time, and he tells her that he's there to learn. And she says to him, oh, this fell down. Whew. I just caught that. We'll keep going. She says to him, you cannot pour into an already full cup. There's a humility present for those who are able to receive it. You can't already pour into a full cup. What does that mean? You and I will never be able to gain wisdom, the skill of right living, if we don't first concede that we don't have it all together and we don't know what we're doing. In other words, you've got to admit that you need help because skills are learned. The second reality to any skill is that it's a process. And it's often a painful process. Think back to the first time you learned how to ride a bike. It demanded of you moments of falling, scrapes and bruises and cuts. You're probably frightened a little bit. Why would you imagine that our growth, our process of developing wisdom spiritually would be any different? Here's what I mean. It's amazing to me that what's baked into the system of God's wisdom is an assumption that you will not be flawless. You will struggle and you will fail, but not ultimately. That's his promise to you. We can actually grow in wisdom as we practice the skill. He's going to give us the strength to keep going, but you will have ebbs and flows of successes and failures. That's what a skill takes to learn, to try, to fail, and to try again. The Bible tells us we can actually develop this skill, that we can actually learn how to grow and living life well. So, last question. How do we get the wisdom? First, why do we need it? Because life's complicated. Secondly, what is it? It's a skill. Lastly, how do we get the wisdom? The first thing we have to recognize in order to get wisdom is that we are in God's universe. I don't have enough time to really support that giant claim I just made, if you want to talk to me afterwards. But the assumption of a Christian, the assumption of the proverbs, is that there is not a square inch of the universe that God does not declare mine. It's a world that's designed by Him. And you and I can either go with the flow, with the grain, or against it. We can go with the grain and invite flourishing, or we can go against it and invite damage. Like think. Think about this, how the world is naturally ordered. Think about it physically. There are healthy foods and there are unhealthy foods. And if you eat healthy foods, more than likely you will be healthy. And you'll live longer. But if I were to give my 5 year old Kendall permission to eat whatever she wanted and she decided to exclusively do what she desires most in the world, to eat ice cream and Kraft Mac and cheese, she would one, be the happiest person in the room. But two probably wouldn't make it to the age of six because it's unhealthy. You see, to go with the grain of God's design invites flourishing. To go against it invites damage. Think about the social universe. You could choose to be resentful and bitter and jealous and hold grudges, or you can be someone who's forgiving and gracious and kind. And generally speaking, if you're that latter person, relationships are going to go well for you. But if you are are bitter and mean and resentful, you're going to be left alone and isolated and bounced from friend group to friend group, never really having a place. Because to go with the grain of how God's wire the universe leads to flourishing and to go against it leads and invites damage. Now think about God's spiritual design. There was a way that you and I are hardwired. We were hardwired spiritually to live within God's world. What is it? Well, in Proverbs 4. 23, I think this is on your bulletin, it says this. Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flows the spring of life. What's this saying? Whatever you love, from that flows the rest of your life. To say it another way, whatever you love controls the direction of your life. Do you all remember in the office when Michael Scott said goodbye? Spoiler. And for a few episodes in the season, they just brought in like every celebrity they could find that was funny. Like, Jim Carrey was on there. My favorite was Will Ferrell, the d' Angelo Vickers character. Y' all remember this guy? He was the new manager of the office and he walked around and he got his eye on Andy Bernard and he basically declared Andy Bernard was the funny guy of the office. And one day Andy's in the, in the rec room or the, the break room and d' Angelo walks in, he's having a hard day and he says, andy, you're the. Hey, funny guy. Make me laugh. Make me laugh. And so Andy like walks over and like he doesn't know what to do. So he puts his hand in the toaster, pretends like he gets burned, and d', Angelo like kind of grins. So then he picks up a giant bucket of cheese balls and dumps it all over himself. And d' Angelo starts to chuckle a little bit more. So then he takes a hot pot of coffee and spills it on his crotch. And d' Angelo's now rolling, laughing. Then he looks over. He says, drink the soap. Drink the soap. So Andy, like, gets the soap dispenser and starts squirting it in his mouth. That's ridiculous. It's a very funny scene. Go back and watch it. Why would he do this? Why would Andy do such foolish things? Because he was driven by the love in his heart of hearts, which was to be admired by his boss. Why would he make himself look like such a fool? It's because his highest love and desire was to be liked by d'. Angelo. So he loses himself to that love. Because whatever we love directs the rest of our life. And here's the thing. You and I are hardwired to love God. We were designed to love God and have him fill our hearts, to have him fill our admiration, to have him be the one who loves us. And so from that comes wisdom. From that comes making wise choices, not foolish ones. That's what Proverbs 1:7 is talking about when it says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. In other places, like Proverbs 9, it says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. It's the same thing. Wisdom journey begins with loving God and. And living in that love in the way that he's designed. The fear of the Lord. What does that mean, the fear of the Lord? Are we meant to be afraid of Him? Are we meant to be scared of Him? The fear of Lord basically just means and should be understood not as terror, but of awe. It's not being afraid of the dark. It's being afraid of disappointing someone. It's understood biblically as awe and wonder. To revere him, to adore him, to see him as delightful. For our hearts to be gripped by Jesus and to submit to him. And our hearts are hardwired for this. And to give ourself away to anything else. To go against that grain of reality is to invite damage. I think about this. Some of you in here have set your heart of hearts on romantic relationships. The thing you most desired is maybe one day to get married. But because that is what your heart of hearts is really gripped by, it's led you to make really foolish decisions. On the one hand, your standards might just be crazy high. You might be expecting a guy or a girl that can only be made on a video game. Like just perfect tens across the board. They Gotta be kind and strong and smart. They'll laugh at all your jokes. They like all the same things you like. They don't argue. They're perfect physically. They're not too short, they're not too tall. They got everything you could ever want. The list goes on and on and on. So you're incredibly picky. So much so that you're either never in a relationship or you're only in them for a short. A short time or to the opposite side. You're so desperate to be in one that you make foolish decisions left and right. Going into bad relationships, into bad relationship, you'll take whoever will take you. And once you're in a relationship, you're so desperately, overly emotionally dependent upon them that you crush them and you smother them, which then leaves you utterly alone. Do you see the foolishness here? To place relationships in your heart of hearts actually leads you to isolation. To go against the grain of God's reality, which is to have him as our highest love, invites damage and destruction. In either case, you're left. If you put anything else, you're left without the thing that you wanted. There's a theologian once that said the fastest way for someone to ruin community is to obsess over having community. Do you see how foolish this is? And it works in everything it could be. Maybe it's not relationships, maybe it's success. I want to be successful. And that's the heart of hearts, of who I am. I can't show that I'm weak. I have to be strong. I have to have everyone around me think that I'm awesome. I have to excel. My professors have to adore me. So you run people over. You ignore your friends. You give yourself away late at night to studies. And what happens over time if you do that? You burn out. And what happens when you burn out? You can't work. And so you lose the very thing you sought to gain to begin with. Do you see this? If you set your heart on anything besides God, it's destined to fail. So how do we get this fear of God then? How do we get him as the center of our hearts? How do we develop a wonder of who he is? How do we get wisdom? We look at the center of the gospel. Psalm 130. This might be on your bulletin too. I don't know. Verses 3 and 4 says this. If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand, but with you there is forgiveness that you may be feared. If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness that you may be feared. Do you notice what's happening here? It's almost like a spiritual math progression. Wisdom. Knowing how to live life well begins with fearing the Lord. Fearing the Lord begins with experiencing his forgiveness. Do you see this? How do I grow in my heart of hearts in awe. And a wonderful, the majestic King Jesus. I recognize how desperate I really am for his forgiveness. To the extent that you know God's love and forgiveness for you is the extent that you'll be in awe of Him. In other words, the more you know and experience the extravagant love of God, the more that you'll want to be with him. The more that you'll want to submit to his ways, the more that you'll think of him and love Him. And out of that comes wisdom, the skill of living a life. Well, I'll say it one more way. The more that you and I grapple with the fact that the God of the universe, who in First Corinthians Paul says in him, were hidden all the treasures of wisdom, that he was ashamed and treated as a fool so that you and I, the fool, could be made wise. The more we grapple with that, the closer we come to wisdom, the more that we're compelled and convinced that there is a God out there that sees you as you truly are, which, if we're honest a lot of times is wretched. But he sees you and he loves you and he has given his life to rescue you. The more that we wrestle and think about that reality, that ultimate reality, from there is where wisdom comes. So here's my invitation for you tonight and for the rest of the semester. Consider the lavish love that God has given you. Look at the cross as a display. The wise being made a fool so the fool could be made wise. Ponder the depths of sin that he has forgiven and keep coming back as we explore how his reality gives us all the answers and shapes how we live in the gray areas of our lives. Let's pray. God, thank you for tonight. Thank you for these students. Thank you for a moment to stop in the middle of a busy week to be in your word. I do pray, Holy Spirit, that you give us the grace and the courage to wrestle not just with where we feel short, where we feel convicted, maybe seen, but how extravagant, how deep and how wide, and how unknowable your love really is. God, we love you. It's your name we pray. Amen.