We don’t just get wisdom. This daily devotional looks at how we have to gain wisdom through seeking God.
Nuggets
- Gaining wisdom comes after an active pursuit of God.
- Wisdom comes when we honor our Sovereign God.
- Wisdom comes to the heart level when we humbly submit to God.
We all want to be considered smart. But wisdom – in the biblical sense – carries a different meaning.
Wisdom is connected with seeking God. Let’s take a look.
Let's Put It into Context
Wisdom is an enlightened acceptance of God’s principles, gained through knowledge, discernment, and good sense, that is put into practice through salvation, increasing our goodness and virtue.
- Discernment means we can evaluate the situation and recognize right from wrong.
- Salvation is the gift of life through the deliverance from condemnation and sin to acceptance and holiness and changes us from being spiritually dead to spiritually alive.
- Sins are actions by humans that disobey God and break one of His reasonable, holy, and righteous laws and commandments, goes against a purpose He has for us, or follows Satan’s promptings.
- Holiness is the transcendent excellence of His nature that includes elements of purity, dedication, and commitment that lead to being set apart. Purity means possessing God’s moral character, having eliminated the stain of sin.
- Spiritual death is the spiritual separation from God that occurred as a consequence of Adam and Eve’s original sin.
- The spiritually alive are those who have ABCDed, so they are no longer separated from God.
- God’s goodness is His holy, pure, and righteous behavior.
- God’s holiness is the transcendent excellence of His nature that includes elements of purity, dedication, and commitment that lead to being set apart.
- God’s purity stems from the fact that He cannot sin.
- God’s righteousness is the result of His being pure.
- Virtues are standards of moral excellence.
Christian humility is our yielding our dependence to Christ to serve Him and others.
The Connection of Wisdom and Seeking
“My son, if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you, making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding; yes, if you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding, if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures” (Prov. 2: 1-4 ESV)
Gaining wisdom comes after an active pursuit of God.
What? We’re talking about wisdom again????
Yes, we are. Goodwin said that wisdom is always associated with religion.
Well, think about it. We talked about knowledge as being a virtue. We said that knowledge is that kernel of fact that we learn. Wisdom is how that kernel of fact changes us for the better as a person.
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But we have to remember that we are not taking about worldly wisdom here. We are talking spiritual wisdom. Pratt reminded us that “Worldly wisdom is too often connected with pride; spiritual wisdom is always accompanied by humility.
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We want to be better. We want to be more like God.
It is interesting that understanding is thrown in here. We can regurgitate something from rote memory — but do we really understand it?
This is kind of the same concept — I can tell you how to change a tire. I can’t do it.
If I have a flat tire while I am out driving, the knowing doesn’t help me.
I love what Goodwin said. He wrote, “The principal attribute of a wise, discerning man is to be able to see things as they really are, to pierce through outside appearances and get at the heart of things, and not be cheated by sham outsides.”
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Not outward appearances. Get at the heart of things.
Get at. That is going to take work.
But that means we must be docile. Docile means easily taught.
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That means we do not teach ourselves. There is no self-help means here.
We get instruction through asking God. “yes, if you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding” (Prov. 2: 3 ESV).
We get this instruction by seeking God. Solomon said we gain this knowledge through prayer.
Searching for and Seeking God
Hearing His Word (Rom. 10: 17).
Reading His Word (Rev. 1: 3).
Praying to Him (Heb. 4: 16).
Studying His Word (Ac. 17: 11).
Meditating on His Word (Ps. 1: 1-2).
Memorizing His Word (Ps. 119: 11).
Who better to learn from than God?
We have to get our heart involved. Parker said that gaining wisdom depends on our spirit. We have to be seeking to become holy and righteous as He is.
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Wisdom is essential. It is what keeps us pure. We cannot be pure if we are not seeking to become holy and righteous.
Look at it this way. God wants us to find Him when we seek Him.
• “… if you receive …” (Prov. 2: 1 ESV)
• “… if you call …” (Prov. 2: 3 ESV)
• “if you seek …” (Prov. 2: 4 ESV)
Because of that, God promises us great things when we find Him.
The Connection of Wisdom and Reverence
“then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. For the Lord gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding; he stores up sound wisdom for the upright; he is a shield to those who walk in integrity, guarding the paths of justice and watching over the way of his saints” (Prov. 2: 5-8 ESV)
Wisdom comes when we honor our Sovereign God.
The fear of the Lord means awe, reverence, and love, not terror. This is the Old Testament term.
The New Testament term is godliness. Godliness is reverence in thought, feeling, and conduct that is promoted by walking in His Spirit and obeying God’s laws and commandments and produces a moral likeness of God.
We have to have this reverence, we have to be walking with God, in order to gain wisdom. We aren’t going to be easily taught if we do not want to learn of Him.
Goodwin agreed. He wrote, “A religious fear of God is the first step in true wisdom. He who would know God aright must love Wisdom and humbly and vigorously seek after her.”
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In other words, we have to have a reverence for God in order to be wise.
Thomas said that the knowledge and reverence impact both the intellect and the heart. It gets us to the understanding and wisdom.
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Let’s tie this together with what we were discussing last year. Our topic for the year was godliness.
To become godly, we have to put on God’s character. In order to do that, we must do what is just and right.
The reason we are doing this is that we are aiming for perfection. Perfection means we reach a state of maturity because the combination of the spiritual graces form, when all are present, spiritual wholeness or completeness — holy, sanctified, and righteous.
- Spiritual graces are worldly morals that have been submitted to God to further His kingdom instead of enhancing this world.
- Holy means to be set apart — because of our devotion to God — to become perfect, and morally pure while possessing all virtues.
- Pure means not being sinful or having the stain of sin.
- Sanctified means to be set free from sin.
- Righteous means we are free from sin because we are following God’s moral laws.
- Pure means not being sinful or having the stain of sin.
- Virtues are standards of moral excellence.
Glossary
Solomon reiterates in verse 6 that wisdom comes from God. Wisdom comes to us through the Holy Spirit. Tamson said that He does this through inward and outward teaching.
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.The words Tamson used to describe who receive this wisdom are familiar to us: a humble, sincere believer. We would say someone who is walking with God. Walking with God means we are humble, reverent, teachable servants of God.
See, having wisdom is based on our character. We have to have the character of God in order to receive it – be righteous and just.
The Connection of Wisdom and Humility
“Then you will understand righteousness and justice and equity, every good path; for wisdom will come into your heart, and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul; discretion will watch over you, understanding will guard you, delivering you from the way of evil, from men of perverted speech, who forsake the paths of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness, who rejoice in doing evil and delight in the perverseness of evil, men whose paths are crooked, and who are devious in their ways” (Prov. 2: 9-15 ESV)
Wisdom comes to the heart level when we humbly submit to God.
The verses say we get all these good things when we become saints. That is a good reward for getting wisdom.
What? We are talking about humility again????
We have to remember that humility has to jump start and go hand in hand with gaining wisdom. I like what Miller said. He wrote, “This [Humility] is the first sought and last won of the Christian graces.” We just talked about how we need to follow Christ’s example of being humble.
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To read a related devotion, click the button below.
It bears repeating. We have to have God’s character to gain wisdom.
We’ve got to get it down all the way to the heart level.
Making the Connections
Bevan gave us a great reminder. When we neglect God, we lose our faith. That is especially true when the neglect is because sin has closed our hearts to the need for God.
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How Do We Apply This?
- We cannot have the cleansing of our morals if we do not gain wisdom through seeking God.
- We must make a habit of meeting God in prayer to gain wisdom.
- We must be humble, not puffed up with self-esteem.
- Wisdom comes after inward peace is achieved.
- We need to be focused on serving God.
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I like what Thomas said. He wrote, “Virtue, morality, and religion constitute a righteous man.”
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We can’t leave off the religion part and think we are going to become wise. We have to follow God.
Father God. We are actively seeking You, God. Please provide us with wisdom. We want to give You all the reverence and glory that You deserve. Amen.
What do you think?
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