Proverbs 2:1-22
September 8, 2024
preached by Pastor Ryan Bouton
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Time of Reflection Quotations

“…when I began to talk with him, I could not help thinking that he was not really wise, although he was thought wise by many, and wiser still by himself; and I went and tried to explain to him that he thought himself wise, but was not really wise; and the consequence was that he hated me, and his enmity was shared by several who were present and heard me. So I left him, saying to myself, as I went away: Well, although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better off than he is – for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows. I neither know nor think that I know. In this latter particular, then, I seem to have slightly the advantage of him. Then I went to another, who had still higher philosophical pretensions, and my conclusion was exactly the same. I made another enemy of him, and of many others besides him.”

~ Socrates in Plato’s Apology

Do you have none? Do you cry out for the One?
Would you offer anything to understand?
Study her well and in time the truth will tell
How it’s wisdom that completely makes her man
And she will now so.

Get her boy and let yourself surrender
Run alone with her and never fall
She is wisdom and the most praiseworthy trait of all, of them all
Embrace her and the love she brings will save you
To the Father’s justifiable ways
She is wisdom waiting with her prize: Garland of grace.

~ Smalltown Poets, “Garland of Grace”

Sermon Passage

Proverbs 2:1-22 (ESV)

¹ My son, if you receive my words
and treasure up my commandments with you,
² making your ear attentive to wisdom
and inclining your heart to understanding;
³ yes, if you call out for insight
and raise your voice for understanding,
⁴ if you seek it like silver
and search for it as for hidden treasures,
⁵ then you will understand the fear of the LORD
and find the knowledge of God.
⁶ For the LORD gives wisdom;
from his mouth come knowledge
and understanding;
⁷ he stores up sound wisdom for the upright;
he is a shield to those who walk in integrity,
⁸ guarding the paths of justice
and watching over the way of his saints.
⁹ Then you will understand righteousness and justice
and equity, every good path;
¹⁰ for wisdom will come into your heart,
and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul;
¹¹ discretion will watch over you,
understanding will guard you,
¹² delivering you from the way of evil,
from men of perverted speech,
¹³ who forsake the paths of uprightness
to walk in the ways of darkness,
¹⁴ who rejoice in doing evil
and delight in the perverseness of evil,
¹⁵ men whose paths are crooked,
and who are devious in their ways.
¹⁶ So you will be delivered from
the forbidden woman,
from the adulteress with her smooth words,
¹⁷ who forsakes the companion of her youth
and forgets the covenant of her God;
¹⁸ for her house sinks down to death,
and her paths to the departed;
¹⁹ none who go to her come back,
nor do they regain the paths of life.
²⁰ So you will walk in the way of the good
and keep to the paths of the righteous.
²¹ For the upright will inhabit the land,
and those with integrity will remain in it,
²² but the wicked will be cut off from the land,
and the treacherous will be rooted out of it.