11/3/2024
Turn with me to Proverbs 18:15. This is our verse to study and memorize this week.
Proverbs 18:15 The mind of the prudent acquires knowledge, And the ear of the wise seeks knowledge.
Introduction
The first 14 verses of Proverbs 18 primarily looked at the tongue from a negative standpoint. We saw how not to use it. We also saw many causes of evil words. Powerful desires, prideful self-esteem, wicked hearts, the deceitful nature of people, injustice, foolishness, grumbling, gossiping, laziness, trusting in riches, prideful haughtiness, answering hastily, and hopeless depression were all seen to be causes of dangerous, sinful words.
After learning about all of that that it could be rather discouraging to think of how many different ways we can be tempted or led into evil with our words. Thankfully, though, the next 7 verses take a more positive turn. We need warnings throughout life on what not to do, but we will not have victory in our lives by just focusing on what not to do. We also need to see what to pursue. Now we get to see some pictures of how we should use our tongues and what causes righteous, God-honoring speech. Some of these 7 proverbs will still have warnings implicit in them. But coming in the context of seeking wisdom they positively guide us in how we are to speak and live.
In its context, our first verse reminds us of the foundational truth that we need to live by for our words to be righteous. The following verses then give wisdom for using our tongues in different public settings. In conclusion the final two verses highlight the blessing and power for good that the tongue can be. They also give another reminder that the opposite is true too.
Let’s take a look now at the first of these verses to see what produces righteous uses of the tongue.
15 The mind of the prudent acquires knowledge, And the ear of the wise seeks knowledge.
The wise pursue knowledge. This proverb emphasizes the wisdom of seeking wisdom.
What we think about has the greatest impact on what we say and do. If we allow our minds to think on and pursue wicked things, then wickedness will end up coming out of our mouths because that is what is in our hearts. We have seen that in the preceding verses with all of the sinful focuses people have which produce wicked words. Thankfully, the opposite is also true.
The wise person knows that what we dwell on affects all that we do. So they make it their business to get knowledge. The prudent person thinks ahead and sees what he or she needs and plans for it. There is a lot of intentionality with this. Wise people seek out knowledge. They are not lazy. They do not just wait for what happens to drop into their lap. They do not just wait for Sunday or Wednesday to hear whatever they might hear at church. No. They actively pursue it themselves. A little bit of knowledge and wisdom being handed to you a couple times of week is not going to be enough to guide and guard the way you use your tongue every single day of the week—morning, noon, and night.
The word for “acquire” here is the general word to “buy.” When we buy something, we use money that takes work to get. It costs us something. It is not free. If something is worthwhile, though, we will be willing to put in the work for it. We will be willing to sacrifices our time and effort to make it happen. The wise person knows that knowledge is worthwhile. So they put in the effort needed to gain wisdom.
They do not want to just know facts. They want to know truth that they can apply to their lives. They want to know what is right and wrong. They want to know what is pleasing to God. They want to know what God hates. They want to know what God’s purpose for their lives is since He created them. They want to know the heights of God’s love for them. They want to know God’s peace and joy in their circumstances. They want to know the future that God has for them. They want to know God’s design for their family life, their sexuality, their vocation, their leisure and entertainment, their rest, their government, their church, their money, and every other area of life. And, in relation to the context here in Proverbs 18, this most definitely includes knowing how they ought to use their words in the different situations they encounter.
The reason they want to know all these things is so that they can honor God with their lives and live in thankfulness for His amazing salvation of them from their sin. They want to know so that they can have God’s best for their lives and truly have an abundant, well-lived, purposeful, contented, eternal life. Ultimately, they want to know God and be known by Him in true fellowship in their ongoing relationship with Him.
Because of these realities, the wise person continues to seek out God for His wisdom. Notice, in our proverb it says that the mind of the prudent “acquires” knowledge. Their ears “seek” knowledge. They characteristically pursue hearing it and knowing it. This is an ongoing way of life for them. They continue to make the effort and sacrifices needed to get what they value most. Since they value the true knowledge of God, they become like Enoch. They walk with God until the day they go to be with Him permanently (Genesis 5:21-24). They become like Paul, and count everything else as but garbage in contrast to their desire to know Jesus, the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His suffering (Philippians 3:7-11). They make it their life ambition to know Him.
Since the way that we know about God is by His infallible Word they are consumed with it. They read it. They meditate on it. They memorize it. They study it. They pray by it. They live by it. They make decisions by it. They share it. Their words day by day are guided by it. This is how we will be if we are wise. We will decide to pursue knowing God because we know it is right and best.
Even in cases where we fail and give in to the temptation of the moment when we get pulled away from the focus we should have, the truth of God’s wisdom that we have been pursuing will rush in to our hearts and call us to repentance. It will cause our consciences to flare and we will know where we have erred and not walked in the truth of God’s wisdom. We will know the great wickedness and evil of our sin. We will remember the height of Jesus’ love for us and the cost of His payment for our sin on the cross. We will remember the great grace, forgiveness and power of God to overcome that sin. We will abhor it and once again want Him more than our sin. As we humble ourselves and run back to Jesus He will guide us in His wisdom on getting back on His righteous way of redeemed living.
At its core, for our words to be righteous, we must seek this wisdom of God to guide us. If we are living this way, with this pursuit of the knowledge of God’s wisdom being our foundation, then we will be protected from those many wicked causes of evil words that we have been seeing in our previous proverbs. Out of the good overflow of our hearts—from the wisdom we have pursued and are pursuing—our mouths will speak.
Scriptural Example: When we look to Scripture for examples of this proverb we find this pursuit of knowledge throughout the life of Joseph. After his brothers treated him harshly he was enslaved in Egypt. He was far from home and everyone and everything he knew. Yet he looked to God’s wisdom when he was tempted by Potiphar’s wife. You can see this in his response back to her. He would not commit adultery with her because he knew that it would be a great evil, and a sin against God (Genesis 39:9). He had pursued the knowledge of God’s wisdom until he not only knew the facts about this kind of behavior and how God would view it, but he also knew it as a deep core conviction which shaped his actions under the deepest of temptations—even the repeated pestering of an immoral woman.
This pursuit of God’s wisdom was not just a one time thing. When we next see him in prison he was not blaming God and harboring bitterness for what had befallen him. We know this because of the reason he gave when the cupbearer and baker had dreams and he asked them to tell him the dreams. He said that God was the interpreter of dreams (Genesis 40:8). He apparently had a close relationship with God and was going to rely on Him for wisdom with their dreams. He continued to pursue knowing God even while things got harder and harder in his life. He let nothing stop him from having that focus.
Later on, after being elevated to second in command over all of Egypt, he retained this same priority of seeking God. Despite all the wealth and power that he had, he still kept pursuing the knowledge and wisdom of God. We see that in his dealing with his brothers when they came to him. On the one hand, he did not just automatically condemn them for having sold him into slavery years before. He did not pursue using his power to hurt them or judge them like he could have. He also did not just naively welcome them as if nothing had happened. He sought God’s wisdom on how to deal with them.
He carefully arranged situations to see if his brother’s character had changed or not. He wanted to know the reality of the situation and what their relationship with God and others was truly like. He tested them until he found out. Now they were actually willing to lay down their own lives on behalf of their father and their little brother. They were no longer just concerned about what benefitted themselves and saving their own skin. When he saw that he knew exactly how God would have him treat them. God had already dealt with them. He was to welcome them as brothers indeed. In his pursuit of the knowledge of God all those years he was even able to assure his brothers that though they had meant their actions for evil God had turned it all out for good.
This pursuit of the knowledge and wisdom of God did not stop there, though. Right before he died we also see it in his final request. He requested that his bones be buried in Canaan with his forefathers when God brought them all into the promised land in future generations. He knew God’s promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He trusted them. He wanted to be a part of them. Regardless of all the power and prestige of Egypt, it was not an exalted burial there that he wanted. If anyone knew how to do exalted burials it was the Egyptians. Yet, what he wanted in death was not that, but rather in light of his knowledge and trust in God he wanted his bones to be buried in the humble grave of his fathers. He wanted the promised land of God more than the exaltation of man with their vain attempts at immortality.
Throughout his life Joseph had the pursuit of knowing God as his focus. It guided his actions and his words—even in some of the hardest of life choices that could occur! Under the temptations of the lusts of the flesh, and under the temptations to the pride of bitterness and revenge he had his heart locked on acquiring true knowledge and wisdom. Those temptations did not overcome him because he had a greater and more powerful pursuit upholding him and propelling him forward to what was right. He wanted to know God and serve Him. He valued his relationship with God more than anything else. So he kept pursuing knowing Him and what He would have Him do in life throughout every stage of life—whether it was through intense suffering, or in hardly believable exaltation.
The mind of the prudent acquires knowledge, and the ear of the wise seeks knowledge. Will you make the pursuit of the knowing God the aim of your life? Will you continue to seek Him in the ups and downs of life? That is what will uphold you in the lowest of lows and in the highest of highs and enable you to still walk in righteousness. Knowing Him and having His wisdom is what will also enable you to have the right words—or the appropriate silence—in each situation that you experience.
Make no mistake, though, this is not just a one time decision. It does in essence start as one when we trust in Jesus as our Lord and Savior. To know God we must start with that. This means that we must know the truth of our sin against our holy, righteous, good Creator. We have defied what He has designed as right and turned to evil what He made for good—like Joseph’s brothers did. We have had evil thoughts, spoken evil words, carried out evil deeds, and been born into sinful bodies in a sinful world. And there is nothing on our own that we can do to undo any of that.
We must also know about what Jesus did when He came to this earth. He lived a perfect, sinless life. Then He offered Himself as our substitute. With His death on the cross He underwent the punishment which we deserve for our sin. He gave His life in exchange for ours. He bore all that judgment, but then overcome sin and death and rose from the grave. Now He gives His eternal life to all those who trust in Him as their Lord and Savior. He takes away their sin and gives them His righteousness.
In so doing, He makes us fellow heirs with Him of all things. He gives us His Spirit to indwell us and transform us. Through His Spirit Jesus remains with us to help us walk in His holy redeemed way of life as we serve Him by calling others to know and follow Him. He gives us His Word, the Scriptures, to be able to grow in knowing Him and to have all the truth that we need for life and godliness.
Trusting in Jesus as our Lord and Savior thus begins us on this pathway of learning and knowing Jesus. He has given us His wisdom, and brought reconciliation so that we have a real relationship with God, but this knowledge is something that we then daily pursue more and more. If our salvation is real, we know the evil of our sin and our daily need for His wisdom. If it is real we want to know more the One Who would love us so much. We give whatever it takes to know and follow Jesus. We see it not as a one time thing, but as a lifelong pursuit of knowing and serving Him. Like Joseph, we go to God for wisdom in the different circumstances of our lives. It is the guidance that we need for everything that we do. It is what guards our tongues and gives us wisdom on what to say.
Proverb in Comparison: When we compare this proverb with the rest of Scripture we see this pursuit of knowledge with the Bereans in Acts 17:10-12. On Paul’s second missionary journey Paul and Silas endured a fair bit of persecution. After narrowly avoiding a mob in Thessalonica we read this:
Acts 17:10-12 The brethren immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived, they went into the synagogue of the Jews. 11 Now these were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so. 12 Therefore many of them believed, along with a number of prominent Greek women and men.
The Jewish Bereans truly wanted to know God. They were living by God’s Word. What then happened when Paul and Silas came to them? What did they do when they heard about Jesus fulfilling the Scriptures as God’s redeeming Messiah bringing forgiveness of sins through His sacrifice on the cross? They went right back to the Scriptures that they had. They diligently compared what Jesus did and what He said with the Scriptures they had. Thus they believed. God opened their eyes to know Him more. God guided them in what following Him looked like.
This kind of life is exactly what Paul commanded Timothy to have in the last letter of Scripture that he wrote.
2 Timothy 2:15 Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.
How will we know Jesus more? How will we have God’s wisdom? How will we grow in our knowledge for life? How will we be faithful servants of God with His approval? Study God’s Word carefully and faithfully. Take time to meditate on it. Compare it with itself. Follow its guidance for every aspect of life. Get to know Jesus through His Word. It reveals Him and His wisdom for all of life. It shows us where we find our true identity and meaning in life. It gives us right and wrong. It tells us what pleases God. It tells us what God hates. It tells us real love and peace. It tells us the future. It tells us God’s design for life, sexuality, work, government, money, and everything else we need. Therefore, we ought to be diligent to acquire knowledge from it. We ought to have our ears, eyes, and hearts seeking out knowledge from it.
This ought to be an ongoing, continuous things in our lives. If it is not, we should ask ourselves why not? Why are we not reading it, thinking about it, and going to it for guidance on all of life and to get to know Jesus better? Do we think we know better than God? Do we think we do not need His wisdom? If getting to know Jesus better is not a continuous priority in our lives we need to realize this means we have actually already begun replacing our pursuit of God’s wisdom with the world’s distractions and lies. We are buying into the lie that what the world offers is better than the wisdom and knowledge of Jesus.
Instead, pursuing knowing Him ought to be something that we would be willing to buy with our hard earned money and to sacrifice everything that we have for it. God’s wisdom for life is more important than any possession that we could have. Our time, our thoughts, and our use of all that we have should reflect that. Jesus told a couple of short parables on this in Matthew 13:44-46.
Matthew 13:44-46 “The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field, which a man found and hid again; and from joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. 45 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking fine pearls, 46 and upon finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.
That is what it means to truly seek knowing Jesus and His wisdom. He is an incomparable treasure. He is life from the dead for us. He is purpose. He is our present and our future. He is all goodness. He is everything that we need. He is hope. He is strength. He is love. He is contentment. He is justice and righteousness. He is mercy and grace. He is holiness. He is everything to those who know Him. His magnificence only grows in our eyes the better we know Him.
The less we know Him, and the less we seek knowing Him, the less we will value Him. The wise seek Him. The prudent look to Him for everything that they need and plan accordingly. And that is exactly what Jesus said our lives should look like in Matthew 6:33.
Matthew 6:33 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.
God knows everything that we need for what will happen. God made us. God knows everything that He designed us individually to be. God made us. God knows everything that He designed us to do with these lives that He has given to us. God made us and is the standard of right and determines what is wrong. Nothing takes God by surprise. God is sovereign and omniscient. He knows the past, present, and future.
Therefore, we ought to seek His kingdom first, above all else. We ought to live by His righteousness. We ought to trust Him for everything else that we need. We ought to seek knowing Him, His purposes, and His righteousness as our goal in life. All other goals, if elevated to being our primary goal, will fail and will make poor, dangerous, weak, insufficient, evil gods for us. Our actions will end up reflecting what we are truly pursuing. Our words will end up reflecting what we are truly pursuing.
Truth in Connection: As we connect this proverb to our lives it needs to be real to us in the nitty-gritty of what we desire and what we do. Nothing that we do ought to be apart from who we are in Christ. Nothing that we do ought to be separate from our seeking to know Jesus and His wisdom. Every area of our lives should be impacted by who He is and His design for us.
There is so much talk these days about people’s identity. People identify themselves by all kinds of things, as if that made up who they really are. They identify by their ethnicity, by their nationality, by their sexuality, by their preferred pronouns, by their job, by their current role in relation to other people, by their politics, by their sports, by their hobbies, by their possessions, by their likes and dislikes, and all kinds of other things. By doing this, people are really saying that this is their god. That is what they pursue. That is what gives them purpose and meaning. That is what they live for.
All of those pursuits, those gods, ultimately fail at being our identity and purpose. So you see people destroying themselves with their gods and switching identities, and attempting to find new things to try out as their god. But we were not designed to find our identity, purpose, and meaning in them. We were designed to find our identity, purpose, and meaning in God.
Unless we find our identity in Christ all of those other things will devolve into perversions of God’s intended good purpose for us in creating us. We will twist them into sinful, evil things. Anything that we exalt above our pursuit of knowing Jesus and His wisdom will ultimately take His place in our hearts and desires. They will become an idol to us.
What then should we do when our pursuits and desires are not what they ought to be? What should we do if we want entertainment more than God? What should we do if we want pornography more than Jesus? What should we do if want drugs more than Jesus? What should we do if we want money, things, ease, or comfort more than we want Jesus? What should we do if we want revenge on someone who has deeply hurt us more than we want Jesus?
Frankly all of us are going to encounter that reality at many points, even as Christians. We still have our struggle with the flesh that God’s Spirit within us wars against. In many ways, though, those are simply the wrong questions. That kind of question misunderstands the reality of our situations and what is most important.
What we want, desire, or feel at any given point does not make something right or wrong. That is not to be our standard for what we pursue, get, seek, or acquire. We all have lots of different desires and impulses throughout each day, but that does not make any of them right or best to pursue. Many of them are outright sinful and destructive. The wise person knows this. The prudent person then acts on and pursues what is truly best.
Know the truth about who Jesus is. He is the most magnificent One Who could ever exist. Let that truth set you free from whatever hook is trying to set itself back into you. Nothing is better than Jesus and knowing Him. As we come to know Him, we will also learn who we really are. His gift of salvation, His purpose in life, and His future in eternity for us is so far beyond compare with anything else in existence that they are all but as nothing. If you have truly trusted in Jesus as your Lord and Savior realize your identity. 1 Corinthians 1:30 helps us see it:
1 Corinthians 1:30 But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption,
We are in Christ. We are His. He is our wisdom, our righteousness, our sanctification, and our redemption. What does this mean?
2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.
We are not to make up who we are. We are to be who God made us to be. Listen to how Ephesians 2:19-22 describes us.
Ephesians 2:19-22 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household, 20 having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone, 21 in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, 22 in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.
We are now part of the very family of God. We go from being “dead in our trespasses and sins,” living “in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind,” and being “children of wrath,” as Ephesians 2:1-3 says, to being children of God and fellow citizens with all His people. That is who we are. We are God’s children who have been taken from this world system and are now “in Christ” with all that entails with God’s perfect plan for us.
Philippians 1:6 tells us more about that.
Philippians 1:6 For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.
Jesus’ plan for us is to make us holy. He has completed His work of salvation for us and is doing His work in us now to present us “holy and blameless and beyond reproach” before the Father, as Colossians 1:22 says. This holiness, though, is not simply avoiding sin. It is also a positive holiness that does what is good, righteous, and holy. It serves God and others. Listen to how Ephesians 2:10 describes God’s plan.
Ephesians 2:10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.
God is not holy simply because He has an absence of sin in His nature. He also does what is good, right, pure, and best. That is His plan for us as well. He has designed for us to walk in righteousness helping one another as Ephesians 4 talks about and to be His ambassadors here on the earth as 2 Corinthians 5:17-21 declare.
Through it all we will still struggle with the challenges of sin in our flesh, in the world, and from the devil. We still live in a corrupted world with corrupted bodies. We will desire and want wrong things, but God does not leave us without help. He promises this in 1 Corinthians 10:13-14
1 Corinthians 10:13-14 No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it. 14 Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry.
God is at work in our lives. He tells us that He has made a way of escape, and He tells us to flee idolatry. The only real way to flee idolatry is to pursue knowing, worshipping, and serving Jesus. Many people run from one idolatry to another. But that does not fix anything. Flee idolatry by seeking Jesus and His wisdom. Our feelings and desires will lie to us about what is right and best. Part of our temptations will indeed be wanting things that are wrong. But we can flee that. We do not have to let those desires keep us from continuing to pursue knowing Christ and His wisdom as the most important thing in life. As we learn Him better we will end up valuing, feeling, treasuring, and loving Him even more than those desires which are tempting us. As we see Him for who He really is we will treasure Him like that pearl of great price. We will be willing to give up all that we have to know and serve Him.
Conclusion
If you do not know Jesus as your Lord and Savior, and have not turned from your sin to faith in Him, then that is what you must do. Repent and follow Him. Give everything else up. Do not hold on to your sin. Let Him remove it. You cannot do it. Accept His free gift of salvation. Trust Him to pay your sin’s penalty in full and to give you His righteousness, love, grace, mercy, truth, and eternal life. He is the only savior. There is no other. He is the only creator. He is the only perfect, good, sovereign God of all things. Come to truly know Him.
If you have trusted Him but are not valuing and seeking Him like this proverb talks about. Then do not wait to “feel it” before turning back to Him. Flee those feelings. Turn to Him now because you know you need Him. Then daily pursue knowing Him more. As you do, His desires will become your desires, and you will behold Him more nearly as He truly is. Will you be prudent and acquire His knowledge? Will you be wise and intentionally seek filling your ear, your heart, your mind with His wisdom?
If you have been seeking Him, then praise God and continue seeking Him. He wants us to know Him even more and to help us day by day in living out His wisdom in our words and actions. May we delight in learning to know Him better and in seeing His holiness, greatness, and love more and more clearly!
If you have any questions on any of this or want help in coming to know Jesus as your Lord and Savior please come talk with us. We are available. Let’s pray.
Col 1:12-22 giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in Light. 13 For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. 15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16 For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. 17 He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. 18 He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything. 19 For it was the Father’s good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him, 20 and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross; through Him, I say, whether things on earth or things in heaven. 21 And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds, 22 yet He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach—
© 2024, Kevin A. Dodge, All rights reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations taken from the New American Standard Bible® (NASB),Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. www.Lockman.org
English (US) · 