Calvary Chapel Staten Island

Guest (Female) 1: For over 30 years, Point of Grace has shared music, faith, and friendship with listeners across the country. Now, Denise, Leigh, and Shelley are inviting you into their circle. Welcome to Circle of Friends, the podcast.

Guest (Male) 1: Each week, they're talking real life, current events, stories of true friendship, wisdom from God's word, and all their favorite things. If you're looking for a little company, a few laughs, and a lot of Jesus to hold it together, Circle of Friends, the podcast, is waiting for you. Subscribe now wherever you listen or watch podcasts and circle up with Point of Grace.

Guest (Female) 2: Hello and welcome to God in Our City, the daily edition. Your host and Bible teacher is Pastor Dave Watson. Pastor Dave has been the pastor of Calvary Chapel on Staten Island for 35 years. In addition, he is the co-founder and president of the New York Institute for Biblical Studies.

To receive a special downloadable gift from Pastor Dave, please go to calvarychapelsi.org/gioc. That's calvarychapelsi.org/gioc. Now, here's Pastor Dave and our show.

Pastor Dave Watson: Hello everyone and welcome to God in Our City, the daily edition. As Ali has said already, I'm Pastor Dave Watson, the pastor of Calvary Chapel on Staten Island and the host of this wonderful, wonderful broadcast, God in Our City, the daily edition.

Stating it that way assumes there's another edition, and there is. Every Sunday, we are live at 11:30 AM on 570 AM and 102.3 FM, The Mission. We're on also live at 8:30 AM and 11:15 AM on YouTube and Facebook. But for the purpose of everyone who's listening today, welcome. We hope you're having a good time studying the Word of God with us.

God in Our City is here to teach the Scriptures to you, to help you to understand better how to live, how to be like Jesus, and how ultimately to bring honor and glory to the Father through the Son by means of the Holy Spirit.

Thank you for joining us. We are in a series that we call Living iSmart in an eStupid World. For many of my series, I have to give a premise for why we're actually studying it. I don't think I have to prove to anyone that we live in an eStupid world in desperate need of help. So, I'm not going to spend a lot of time doing that.

But I am going to say that we have tremendous resources for you to join us in this study. I know that all these resources will be a blessing to help you to understand things better. The first resource we have is our study guides. Our study guides take you through what we're going to study for the week in an outline form and it puts you right there.

For instance, this week, we're studying iPriorities. Last week was iStart, and now iPriorities. We're going to look at Proverbs 2 and 3, but the outline helps you to follow along and gives you some blanks to fill in and just puts you in the spot where you're actually learning. Please download that. That's free. We'd love for you to have it.

In addition to that, we also have this crazy duo of Proverbs resources. Number one is the actual Proverbs Journal. It's called the Journal Bible from Crossway, and it has just the Book of Proverbs. It has the Proverbs chapters on one side, and on the other side, the page is blank. That's so you can write your own thoughts, your own feelings, your own outline, and your own study of the Book of Proverbs.

In addition to that, we also want to send you this verse pack, these verse cards. This has a different verse to memorize every week as we go through the Book of Proverbs. Last week was Proverbs 1:7: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction."

This week, what we're looking at is Proverbs 3:5 and 6: "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will direct your paths." We have these in a verse pack form so you can just review them.

You might say, "Well, Pastor, I'm too old to memorize." Well, I'm not going to dispute that with you, but you're not too old—none of us is too old—to meditate on God's Word. This allows us to do just that, to meditate on God's Word.

How do I get these resources? Go to God in Our City at calvarychapelsi.org/gioc. Go down the page a little bit and there's the free resources. Fill in the blanks, hit send, it comes to us, and we'll get it right out to you. There's no charge to you. These resources together are probably worth 10 or 12 dollars. Shipping and handling is probably another 4 dollars. It's probably 16 dollars to us, but that doesn't matter. We want you to have the resource, so please take advantage of that.

While you're at this wonderful site, think about making a donation to God in Our City. Help us go from being a local church-sponsored program to a local church plus listener-supported program. That would be ideal and wonderful.

All right, let's move now to our Scripture text for the day. What we're going to look at today and all this week is Proverbs 2 and 3. We just want to read Proverbs 2:1-5 today and get ourselves started. It says:

"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, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God."

Will you join me now in a word of prayer? Heavenly Father, thank you for all you've done for us. Thank you most of all for Jesus, who is the personification of wisdom, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. We worship you, Lord, today.

We focus on your Son. We ask for the ministry of your Holy Spirit in our hearts and our lives, illuminating us. Lord, some of these sayings are tough. Help us, Lord, to have a heart for them. Lord, please provide for our listeners. Some of them are lonely. Lord, please provide companionship because you never leave them nor forsake them.

Some of them, Lord, are worried. May they take the admonition to be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving make your requests to God. May they take that to heart. Some, Lord, are in need of financial help. We pray they'll put you first, and we know that when we do that, you take care of us. May that be their experience. Now teach us, we pray, and bring us closer to yourself in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.

We're now in our second week. Last week, we talked about in this Living iSmart in an eStupid World, we talked about iStart with Proverbs 1. We talked about the prerequisites to wisdom and the necessity of embracing the premise of Proverbs, the necessity of the fear of the Lord, the necessity of having the right relationship with authorities in our life, the necessity of rejecting bad influences, and finally, the importance of just opening our hearts to wisdom.

That's foundational, those things, especially the concept of the fear of the Lord—seeing God as He is, seeing God as who He is, seeing ourselves as we are, and recognizing the distance, how much greater God is than us.

Now we move to what I call iPriorities in the Bible passage, Proverbs 2, just the first section there, and then we skip over to Proverbs 3. You see our memory verse plan. Next week it's 4:23, the following week it's 5:21. We want to get ahold of it, and we'll be covering a bunch of other subjects here.

That memory verse: "Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make straight your paths." That's going to be also foundational for everything we do in the Book of Proverbs. So keep that verse in mind. That's why these two verses are our Proverbs 1:7 and Proverbs 3:5 and 6, our most important or our foundational verses when it comes to memorizing with reference to Proverbs.

Our words today about Proverbs, I just want to say as we think about them, we have the privilege of standing on the shoulders of people who wrote the Constitution of the United States. People have called that a genius document, one of the greatest documents ever written by human hands. I don't think I disagree. I think it's incredible. I think the form of government we have with the checks and the balances, when played out the way it ought to be, is amazing.

But unless you have wisdom, unless you have a discernment, a God's-eye wisdom, it's impossible for you to apply the Constitution in an equitable manner, in a way that's actually equal, in a way that's actually smart. Because the words themselves don't govern us. It is our hearts as we apply the Constitution that govern us.

In some ways, that's really the truth about the Scriptures. The Scriptures themselves are powerful commands that if we will obey, we'll do very, very well with them. But there is a necessity to digest them and then, with wisdom and understanding, apply them.

So, we're going to continue to talk about the necessity of wisdom and seek to be people who genuinely are wise, and we're going to talk about our priorities. So here's the "what" of iPriorities. Receiving wisdom must be an iPriority. I must make that a goal of mine.

Proverbs 2:1-5, but particularly verse one and two, says: "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 for hidden treasures, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God."

"My son," this is parental instruction, a letter from a father to a son. Like we said, much of Proverbs is that way. It has the if-then formula. If this, then that. So he tells us here to do a few things. First of all, he says, "receive my word." Grasp or accept something by choosing.

I grew up in a little town and we played baseball all summer long. What would happen is the neighborhood kids would actually gather at my house because that's where the baseball field was. But in gathering at my house and being there, I was always assured an opportunity to play. When they chose up teams, I would be someone who you'd have to choose because it was my house.

But the best players would be chosen first. I must choose first wisdom because it is the best thing for me to choose. I must choose the words of the wise because those words are important. If I will choose them, if I will seek out wise people and choose their words, I will be so much better off. So, I need to choose up.

Then I need to treasure up. Grasp or accept by choosing my commands. So we are to collect and to store the commands. We are to treasure up these commands. So I choose up and then I store up. That is, I ought to be able to recall what God is saying to me, what God has said to me. I need to choose those things and then I need to store them up.

Then it talks here about making our ear attentive to wisdom, to give heed attentively to wisdom. So I need to choose up, I need to treasure up, and then I need to listen up. Isn't it amazing it says that we can make our ears to be attentive?

So much effort is put in by teachers and speakers and people like that in order to get you, in order to get others, to listen to them. But here it's saying that I can choose to be a listener. Here's the crazy thing. When you really, really like a topic, you will listen. When you see the value in a topic, you will listen.

You can sit in a classroom with young men and young ladies, and if the teacher is talking about something that doesn't interest the boys or a lot of the boys, they'll kind of tune that teacher out. But if someone comes in and talks about the latest scores or the latest video game, all of a sudden everyone's listening up. Why? Because they care about that.

Then he says that we need to incline our hearts. "Make your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding." Again, it is a choice. But here's the thought of bending or stretching or warming yourself up to understanding.

So you're getting a picture here of the absolute positive necessity to choose, choose up, and then to store up, then to listen up, then to warm up. Then he speaks about the fact that if you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding. So there's this also this necessity of calling out, of crying out for wisdom, crying out for knowledge.

The end product of that is that in the end, I'm seeking it like silver and searching for it as for hidden treasure. I'm focusing up. So it begins with that very, very simple phrase, very simple idea of choosing up. I want wisdom. I choose wisdom.

Then I want to store it up. So I'm going to listen up and warm up and cry up, "God, I need wisdom," and focus up, seeking and searching like you were for hidden treasure. What will you get from all that? You'll wise up. You'll find the fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of knowledge. You'll find the knowledge of God.

But it begins with those simple steps. We have an incredible example of this in Solomon. Solomon, as he's just taking over the kingship, the crown, says this to God after God says you can have anything you want. He says, "Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, that I may discern between good and evil, for who is able to govern this your great people?"

It pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this. What does Solomon ask for? An understanding mind, wisdom to do what? To govern the people. Because he says, "Who can do this?" It pleased the Lord that Solomon was this humble and Solomon had this desire for wisdom.

In some realm of life, you are an influence. The smartest thing for you or I to do when we're able to influence people is to push them to the Lord, push them to the one true God, move them through our words and our life example. It begins, though, with something happening in us—choosing up, treasuring up, listening up, calling up, and focusing with the product being, after we've done all that, we'll wise up. We'll become a wise person.

But you see, wisdom doesn't come automatically. There's this process. There's this place on my part where I make myself available to God and to the wisdom he wants to give me. I make myself available. I say, "God, teach me. God, help me."

We're giving out this Proverbs Journal. It's a great tool. You can just sit and read, month after month, one chapter of Proverbs a day and make your notes. It will help you to become a wise person. Beyond that, it will help you to impart wisdom to those around you.

We're sending this memory verse for much of the same reason. We want to hide God's Word in our heart that we might not sin against Him. But also, we want on our lips, for our mind's sake, these Scriptures embedded there so that we are indeed smart, we are indeed wise followers of the Lord Jesus.

So let's just go back so it's in our heads. What is he asking us to do? To choose up, choose wisdom. To store up, put it in your heart—you're not going to use all of it today. Put it there. To listen up, to have an attentive ear to what the Lord is saying to you. To warm up, to have a heart that wants what God is saying, and cry up, to raise your voice asking for wisdom, and to focus up, seeking and searching like you were for hidden treasure.

What will you get from all that? You'll wise up. You'll become a wise person. So, retaining wisdom must be an iPriority. Winging it is not a smart thing to do. But reaching back, reaching deep for the wisdom that we have stored up is the smart thing to do.

We'll pick this thought up again tomorrow with a further idea of not just receiving wisdom but retaining it as we just talked about. Let's pray.

Lord, dismiss us now with your blessing. Help us to apply the truths we've learned to our own hearts and our own minds. Lord, may we receive wisdom and then retain it. In Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.

Please join us again tomorrow for another edition of the daily edition of God in Our City. Please go to calvarychapelsi.org/gioc, take advantage of our resources, and consider making a donation. God bless. See you again tomorrow.

Guest (Female) 2: Thanks for listening to God in Our City with your host, Pastor Dave Watson. We hope the show was a blessing to you. Again, to receive a downloadable gift from Pastor Dave, go to calvarychapelsi.org/gioc. That's calvarychapelsi.org/gioc. Please check out Pastor Dave's blog at nycshepherd.com. That's nycshepherd.com. Please invite a friend and join us every weekday for another edition of God in Our City.

Guest (Female) 1: For over 30 years, Point of Grace has shared music, faith, and friendship with listeners across the country. Now Denise, Leigh, and Shelley are inviting you into their circle. Welcome to Circle of Friends, the podcast.

Guest (Male) 1: Each week, they're talking real life, current events, stories of true friendship, wisdom from God's word, and all their favorite things. If you're looking for a little company, a few laughs, and a lot of Jesus to hold it together, Circle of Friends, the podcast, is waiting for you. Subscribe now wherever you listen or watch podcasts and circle up with Point of Grace.