God's Wisdom for a Complex World: Get in its Spiral (Proverbs 2)

[00:00:05] Thank you for listening to the Calvary Monterey Podcast. To learn more about our church, please visit calvary.com. And for additional resources from our lead pastor, Nate Holdridge, please visit nateholdridge.com. Teaching today is our lead pastor, Nate Holdridge. Nate Holdridge All right. Good morning, church. Great to see you guys today. Let's take out our Bibles and turn to Proverbs chapter two. We're studying verse by verse through the book of Proverbs.

[00:00:34] Actually, I should say and remind you, we're going verse by verse all the way through Proverbs nine, and then we'll study Proverbs thematically from that point forward because it lends itself to that kind of arrangement. So today we're in Proverbs chapter two. We're going to look at the whole chapter. I'm excited about life groups getting going this quarter and I hope and pray that you find a good one that you can connect with the folks in it to discuss the teaching and text from the previous Sunday, but also just

[00:01:04] just be in community and Christian fellowship with others. We are one week into five weeks of construction here inside of this space that all of you are seated in right now. So that means we're not yet done. We're still working.

[00:01:21] And those of you that are seated near the side of the building, just so you know, that's not finished. So you're going to, if you touch it, we had guys at the men's conference all day yesterday, walking around, look like they had chalk all over their shoulders and all that because they're leaning on the walls. So, uh, you know, just do your friends a solid and brush off their back, uh, for them, uh, today. But, uh, we're excited about what is happening here in our physical space. Just trying to be good stewards of it.

[00:01:50] All right, let's read our text together. Proverbs chapter two. We'll read it twice today. Once here at the beginning, and then we'll read it again as we go through the teaching. Solomon writing to his son. He 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.

[00:02:18] If you seek it like silver and search for it is for hidden treasures, 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.

[00:02:43] Then verse nine, you will understand righteousness and justice and equity. Every good path for wisdom will come into your heart. Knowledge will be pleasant to your soul. Discretion will watch over you. Understanding will guard you.

[00:02:57] Delivering you. Delivering you. Verse 12 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. So you will be, so you will be, so you will be, so you will be, so you will be, so you will be, so you will be, verse 16, delivered from the forbidden woman, from the adulteress with her smooth words, who forsakes the companion of her youth and forgets the covenant of her God.

[00:03:25] For her house sinks down to death and her paths to the departed, none who go to her come back, nor do they regain the paths of life. So, verse 20, you will walk in the way of the good and keep to the paths of the righteous. For the upright will inhabit the land, and those with integrity will remain in it, but the wicked will be cut off from the land, and the treacherous will be rooted out of it. Proverbs 2.

[00:03:54] Let's pray together. Father, Lord, thank you for this passage in your word, and we pray today that you would speak to us from it. As always, Lord, we're dependent upon you, and we need you, Lord, to enlighten our hearts, our minds, our spiritual understanding that we might have application in our own lives. And so, Lord, we look to you today. We ask for your grace in understanding and ingesting this text.

[00:04:24] In Jesus' name, we pray together. Amen. As the eighth and youngest son of Jesse, it was David's duty to deliver food supplies to his three oldest brothers on the Israelite battlefront. Stationed opposite the invading Philistines, Israel's camp peered into the valley below.

[00:04:48] For 40 days, a massive and experienced Philistine warrior challenged Israel's men to representative warfare. Rather than waste the blood of hundreds or thousands of men, Goliath wanted one Israelite man to accept his challenge to a one-on-one combat. Winner takes all. Send me a man, the giant taunted.

[00:05:12] When David arrived with some cheeses and bread for his brothers and their commanding officers, he heard the taunt, and his heart was pricked. He pleaded with anyone in earshot to give him a chance to go up against the Philistine. His insistence eroded the will of everyone who stood in his way, especially King Saul.

[00:05:33] So David was sent with his five smooth stones into the valley of Elah, all with the hopes that the God who strengthened him while he defended his father's flocks from predators would strengthen him while he defended God's flock from this Philistine predator. And as David rushed into the field, the Philistine laughed. He was but a boy.

[00:06:25] His, because it's one of my favorite stories in the whole Bible. But also because it's just another story of God coming alongside of a willing person. A willing vessel. A willing instrument. And that to me is what Proverbs chapter 2 is all about. Proverbs 2 is one long sentence.

[00:06:50] I know that we see commas and periods all throughout our English translations of Proverbs chapter 2. But in the original Hebrew, it's just one long sentence from a father to his son. And it declares an angle on how God's wisdom works. God's wisdom in this passage is presented as an ascending spiral.

[00:07:15] What Solomon tells his son in the early parts of this psalm is that if he seeks God's wisdom in specific ways, then God will respond in specific ways. The son's energy in acquiring wisdom would turn into God using his energy to shape the son in profound ways.

[00:07:41] What Solomon is doing for his son in this plea is he's saying, son. God's wisdom is not just something that you accumulate where it's all on you and you just build it into your life. It is actually infused with the power of God. As you pursue it, God then builds you. He shapes you. He remakes you.

[00:08:06] And on and on it goes in a spiraling nature as you ascend into the kind of person that God wants you to become. This should be familiar to us as Christians. This is a very New Testament concept. Paul the Apostle said in Philippians chapter 2 that we should work out the salvation that we have been given in Christ Jesus. We should work out our own personal salvation.

[00:08:33] We should live it out, in other words, with fear and trembling, he said, because it's God who works in us to will and to work for his good pleasure. As I'm taking steps of obedience, God is meeting me in those steps of obedience. And that's what Solomon is communicating here in Proverbs chapter 2. And since this repeats itself throughout the entirety of our lives, an ascending spiral is a good image of how God's wisdom works.

[00:09:03] We seek it. Then God meets us and changes us. We seek more of it. And he changes us more and more ever increasingly. I would say that the goal of Proverbs 2 is to get us to understand this wisdom spiral, number one, and then choose to live within it, number two. All right, so I want to show you four different parts of this passage. Like I said, it's one long sentence, so it's kind of hard to know exactly how to break it up.

[00:09:32] But I've broken it up into four sections. You guys ready for these four sections today? You guys with me today? You're not thinking about the Super Bowl or anything like that. I am conscious of what today is. You guys were just kind of looking at me a little funny, so I thought, I'll just ask. You know, is it me? Am I okay? Is my zipper up? Am I right? Okay. Just double checking.

[00:10:02] Lori's got my back. She's going to tell me if something's wrong. Okay, number one, I want to show you this. Our part of this wisdom spiral. What's our part of the wisdom spiral? Look at verse one through four. Together Solomon talks to his son. He 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 hidden treasures.

[00:10:31] Look at all the words in those four verses that the wise father that Solomon uses to tell his son about pursuing wisdom. I mean, he uses the word receive. He says, I want you to treasure it. You should be attentive to it. You should have your heart, your ears inclining towards it. You should call out for it. You should raise your voice for it. You should seek it. You should search for it. And then also notice how he describes his wisdom.

[00:11:00] He describes it that he says it comes in the form of words. It comes in the form of commandments, understanding, insight. And what he's saying to his son is he's saying, son, I want you to see yourself as desperate for this wisdom. Okay, this is your part in this wisdom spiral, son. God isn't just going to do it to you. He's not just going to make you wise. Otherwise, you need to have a hunger and a thirst for righteousness.

[00:11:26] You need to pursue this in your life like it is buried treasure that you can't wait to find because you know it's going to change the game in your life. It's going to change your life if you can uncover this treasure. And I think there's some implications of this. One, it means that we have a choice involved. Solomon knew his son had a choice on whether he was going to pursue the wisdom that his father was giving to him. But if he did, then God's hand would be upon his life.

[00:11:56] It's like Solomon is saying to his son, you have a choice. And we have thousands of choices on whether we're going to pursue God's wisdom all throughout our lives. But it also means, I think, that we must lean in. It's not just saying, you know, yeah, this will be part of my life. I'm going to casually pursue the wisdom of God. The way that he's talking about it here in Proverbs 2, verse 1 to 4, there's an intensity, don't you think?

[00:12:23] A calling out, a crying out, a desperation. There's an intensity. It means that we've got to lean in in our pursuit of God's wisdom. And then, I think, maybe implied in all of this, all this intensity, all this hunger, why would someone have that? Maybe this is the key to all of it. There's a hope in what this wisdom can do in your life. And we're going to talk about that a little bit later as we close out our study in Proverbs 2.

[00:12:53] But there's a choice. There's intensity. And there is hope of what God's wisdom can produce in our lives. If those ingredients are there, then we will pursue the wisdom of God with intensity. And God will then meet us and change our lives. Solomon, of course, knew all about this in his own life and in his own experience. As I've told you before in our studies of Proverbs, when Solomon became king, he was the third king in Israel.

[00:13:22] There was Saul. He got cut off, removed by God. Then there was David, new line, Davidic line. And then Solomon, David's son, became the third king in Israel. And when he became king, he did something beautiful. He had a massive worship ceremony unto God. Lots of sacrifices offered to God. He wasn't trying to earn anything from God. He was just praising God, celebrating God.

[00:13:47] It was kind of his way of saying, my reign, my kingdom is going to be centered upon Yahweh. You know, my dad has commissioned me to build the temple. He's already set aside all of the building materials for me. I'm going to build the temple because my reign is going to be centered upon God and his kingdom. And in this massive celebration of Yahweh, this time of worship, God appeared to Solomon. What do you want? What do you want to receive?

[00:14:17] And he said, give me an understanding heart so that I can govern your people well and know the difference between right and wrong for who by himself is able to govern this great people of yours. And as you might know, the story goes on to say that God said, well, that's great. You didn't ask for riches. You didn't ask for military power. You didn't ask for fame. You're going to get all of those things as a result of me giving you my wisdom. But I am going to give you my wisdom. But what was Solomon doing?

[00:14:47] He was making a choice to prioritize God's wisdom over everything else. Like this is the greatest treasure to me. If there was one way that I could define success in my life, Solomon would have said at that moment, he would have said that I have become wise with God's wisdom. That I would be shaped by God. That I would look like the God that I worship in the sense that I think like him.

[00:15:16] I feel like him. I see things the way that he sees things. That's my main objective. And he pursued it with intensity. I mean, just the worship, the leaning in with the hope of what God could produce in his life. So just think about that in your own life, this first one. Our part in the wisdom spiral. You're not a bolt of lightning kind of Christian, are you?

[00:15:46] You know, one of those people that's like, yeah, I don't really want to have a lot of skin in the game. I don't want to really put in a lot of my energy or effort. What I want is like a bolt of lightning for God to just, boom, electrify me. And he changes me in that way. Why would God do that? It doesn't really look like you want to be different. So he's respecting your decisions.

[00:16:14] What Solomon is saying is, no, this spiral, God's power is there and available and ready. But he's wanting us to say, yes, I'm going to pursue it. I want to engage in it. So just think about that in your own life, what that looks like for you. Maybe there's a Bible study you're on the fence about joining or a life group that you're on the fence about joining. Or maybe even for you, you know, just being in a church fellowship is just like a new thing.

[00:16:43] And you're on the fence about whether you're really going to be part of this or whatever. Like, just be thinking about that in your own life. Maybe there's some, you know, like, okay, there's some books I could be reading. There's some better podcasts I could be listening to. And maybe for you, it's just something in that area of, hey, God, he sees that energy. He sees that pursuit of his wisdom. So that's our part. But let's look number two at God's part in the wisdom spiral. Verse 5 to 11.

[00:17:11] Solomon said, if, son, you do all these things, then, verse 5, you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. So look at this. This illumination comes to this young man. He put some energy in, and then God does this. But then he's saying, this isn't just that you acquired it. He said, for the Lord, verse 6, gives wisdom. From his mouth come knowledge and understanding. He stores up sound wisdom for the upright.

[00:17:39] He's a shield to those who walk in integrity, guarding the paths of justice and watching over the ways of his saints. Then, verse 10, you'll 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. Like I said, Solomon is not content to lead his son to believe that what happens is you just go and you just study God's wisdom.

[00:18:09] You read his book. You meditate upon it. And because of that, you get smarter and smarter, wiser and wiser. He wants them to know God's going to involve himself in your life. He'll be like a shield to you. He'll be protecting you. He'll be watching over you. He'll be making you able to understand things that are hard for people to understand. What does righteousness look like? What does justice look like? He uses the word equity. What does equity look like?

[00:18:37] These are hard things for people to comprehend, but God, he's saying when you're involved in his wisdom, he can produce these elements in your life. He's saying if you take care of your side of the spiral, son, then God will more than take care of his side of the spiral. He will give wisdom. Comes from his mouth. He's got it stored up. He's going to do this in your life.

[00:19:05] And I think if you're really thinking about what is God producing in verse 5 through 11, you could say that God is giving this person theological and ethical wisdom. Theological and ethical wisdom. Like they just know who God is, but they know God's ethical standards, what God desires. So this is God just coming in and saying, I love that pursuit of wisdom.

[00:19:30] I'm going to support you in it, and I'm going to change you as you interact with my word. It's not you just deciding to be different. It's you saying, I want to know God in this way, and then him getting behind you in that effort. This sounds to me so much like what we know of the new covenant. You know, the people of Israel, they had, of course, the law, and to me it was beautiful in so many ways.

[00:19:58] But they were promised by their prophets that a new covenant was going to come. Ezekiel, the prophet, talked about the new covenant along with many other of the prophets. Here's one of his prophecies. He said, this is God speaking through Ezekiel, A new spirit I'm going to put within you. I'll remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh,

[00:20:23] and I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. What this is in the new covenant standpoint, it's the new birth in Jesus. You know, Christ came. He started a new humanity. He fulfilled the royal law of God. He loved God with all his heart, mind, soul, and strength. He loved his neighbor as himself. He was completely perfect in the keeping of the Old Testament covenant and law.

[00:20:53] And his death was satisfactory for our forgiveness, the release of our shame, the release of the power of heaven to give us victory over the things that we're enslaved to. He comes in and he creates a new humanity. And it's kind of like the question is, do you want to be part of the old thing or do you want to be part of this new thing that Christ has won? And if you do, if you want to trust in Jesus, then you become born again, birthed by the Spirit of God.

[00:21:21] And the Spirit of God comes to live inside of you, transforming you and changing you, he says, from the inside out. That's what Ezekiel is predicting. A day when the Spirit of God lives inside of God's people and causes us from inside out to walk in his statutes and be careful to obey his rules. God is the one who can do this. Give new hearts, new desires, new instincts. And Jesus is the one who makes this possible.

[00:21:50] In a sense, someone like this no longer needs a tutor telling them how to live. People like this stop asking, do I have to obey God? They're not really asking that question. They just rejoice that they get to live for God. That's where their heart is at. That's where their mind is at. It's not a struggle anymore because they're being changed from the inside out. The flesh is still there. Don't get me wrong. I don't want you to mishear me. The flesh is still there.

[00:22:18] There's still temptations as we're going to see in a moment. But this person being changed and transformed, their truest self longs to walk with God. And I just think this is so encouraging, you guys. That as we pursue God's wisdom, we can expect God to make that wisdom part of us. That as we approach Proverbs and all of his word, we're involved. But he's promising that he will be involved.

[00:22:47] I love this. Because if it were all up to us, like, why even come to church anymore? You know, like, we'll just get crushed by that. The guilt, the failure, you know, if it's just all up to us. If it was just all up to God, God says, you don't have to do anything. I'll just take care of everything. What do you think that might produce? Maybe like laziness, you know, a little bit of spiritual lethargy.

[00:23:14] But God has created this paradoxical, beautiful, symbiotic. I hesitate to use the word synergistic. Because it's kind of been overused in our modern time. But wisdom spiral where he gives enough incentive to us and enough assurance to us to pursue the knowledge of God for our whole life. All right. So, all I'm trying to say is there's this wisdom spiral. God's inviting you into it.

[00:23:42] The Father's inviting his son into it. Let's get into it. Okay. Now, if you're not yet sold, you're like, I don't know. I don't know if I want to be this awesome. Let me try to sell you a little bit more with the next segment. Some benefits of staying in the spiral. Here's what he says in verse 12 to 19.

[00:24:06] He says, if you do, you'll be delivered 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. So, verse 16, you'll also be delivered from the forbidden woman, from the adulteress with her smooth words, who forsakes the companion of her youth and forgets the covenant of her God. For her house sinks down to death and her paths to the departed.

[00:24:36] None who go to her come back, nor do they regain the paths of life. Okay, here in this little section, Solomon introduces two types of people to his son. Evil, crooked men, and the forbidden woman. And both of these characters are going to appear throughout the rest of Proverbs. So, we'll have a lot of time to consider both of them.

[00:24:59] But what I want to point out here is that what he's telling his son is, look, even after you enter into this wisdom spiral with God. You know, your energy and pursuing his wisdom. God's energy and changing and shaping you. You're going to experience temptation. You know, life is going to happen. There are going to be pressures that are coming upon you.

[00:25:28] Temptation is, he's saying, a reality even for the wise. So, entering into God's wisdom spiral doesn't mean that you won't experience pressures or temptations in your life. Now, the types of temptations that Solomon warned his son about here, this is probably too condensed of a way of saying it, but I think you could say, these are the temptations of selfish living and selfish sex.

[00:25:58] The men who press against Solomon's son, they're influential. They have this way. They have these paths that they have cut out. A lot of people are following them. And they're comfortable operating in the shadows. He talks in verse 13 about how they operate in the ways of darkness. Their whole pattern of life is presented as dangerous. The woman that Solomon recounts, she pretends to be one of God's people,

[00:26:24] but she forgets, it says in verse 17, the covenant that she made with God. She's got smooth words. She's willing to forsake her husband. Solomon says going into her house is like sinking down to death. The wicked men might be dangerous. She's also dangerous. She's also dangerous, but she's also deadly, he says. None who go to her come back. If you think about both of these temptations, what are they?

[00:26:49] They are temptations like so much of temptation that place the individual over and against the community. If you go along with the wicked men, he's saying to his son, you're going to do things that harm other people. You're going to have to cut corners. You're going to have to cheat. You're going to have to abuse. You're going to have to steal. You're going to do all that to temporarily benefit yourself.

[00:27:18] I say temporarily because there's plenty of biblical evidence to say that if not in this life, then in the next, all of that will be accounted for. And then to go along with the forbidden woman, that means hurting others also. Her husband, if the son that Solomon is writing to, if he's married his wife or his future wife, her children, the son's children, potential children who are born from the escapade,

[00:27:48] the family and society left picking up the broken pieces of their decisions, all for personal gratification. But Solomon's point is that when you enter into God's wisdom spiral, you are better protected when these types of temptations come into your life. This temptation towards easy money and easy sex are difficult for people quite often to resist.

[00:28:17] But when you're in a devoted and life-changing contact with Yahweh, you become strong enough to resist. But what Solomon is telling his son, listen to me now, he's saying, but if you want to utilize God's energy, you know, if you want to be strengthened by him, when these temptations come into your life,

[00:28:42] you've got to stay in this wisdom spiral that he's created. The second that you depart from it, your strength begins to dissipate. And Solomon would know. He became the wisest man in the world, but God had told him that his wisdom would only last as long as he was seeking the Lord. I mean, Solomon's dad, David, he said this to him.

[00:29:12] He said, son, if you seek the Lord, he will be found by you. But if you forsake the Lord, he will cast you off forever. Like he went into his life knowing that's the way, that's the way the wisdom spiral works, Solomon knew. I got to stay in the lane of seeking the Lord. And the second that I drift from that, the second I depart from that, God's strength will begin to dissipate from my life.

[00:29:42] And that's exactly what happened. Well, Solomon was devoted to God. Wisdom flowed. He was strong. The nation was strong. And when he neglected God by caving to wicked advisors and forbidden women, his wisdom evaporated and he became susceptible. He became weak. So this shows us, I think, the radical importance of staying in the wisdom spiral. I think I would say it like this. If Solomon couldn't leave it successfully, neither can we.

[00:30:12] Like we got to stay in this groove. All right. The last thing I want to point out to you, though, is from the last couple of verses about, and I've just kind of titled this, Envision the Top of the Spiral, from verse 20 to 22. So let's read that together. He says to his son, So you will walk in the way of the good and keep to the paths of the righteous. I just like this parent angle and talk. He's just looking at his son.

[00:30:41] He's pleading with him, being about the wisdom of God. And then he just tells him, you're going to do it. You will walk in the way of the good. You will keep to the paths of the righteous. For the upright, verse 21, will inhabit the land, and those with integrity will remain in it. But the wicked will be cut off from the land, and the treacherous will be rooted out of it. What's Solomon doing here?

[00:31:08] He's ending this little speech, and this is totally the end of the speech. Proverbs 3 is a new section, so it's very clear. This is the end of the speech. This little sermonette that he's got. How many of you parents have little sermonettes that you give to your kids? If you're a parent, I know you got them. Christina and I call them podcasts. You were like, that was a great podcast episode. You just gave the girls. That was great. I want to download that. Double speed it, you know.

[00:31:33] He closes out his podcast, his sermon to his son, by depicting the end of the two paths that are in front of him. And he says, in one direction there's life, and in the other direction there's death. And the way he depicts it is by living in the land. For an ancient Israelite, you could even say for a modern Jew, the land is a huge deal. It's everything.

[00:32:01] Partly because God promised a specific land to them, and partly because, especially in that era, pretty much everyone was an agrarian person. They knew how much their well-being was tied to the land. Fertile soil led to food production. Green pastures led to livestock and the meat and dairy they provided. Flowing rivers, lakes, and underground wells led to human settlements and irrigation for farms.

[00:32:28] Strong forests led to construction and fuel, fishing, crops, trade, shelter, stability. It was all tied to their life in the land. They were very connected to the land in a way that many of us aren't as connected. Some of us are. There's plenty of guys in the produce industry that are here in this church. But a lot of us, you know, we just kind of live through life. We might not think about it as much as they would have. And what Solomon told his son is that embracing God's wisdom would lead to abundance.

[00:32:56] He would inhabit the land, verse 21, and permanence. Like, you're going to be safe. He uses the word remain in verse 21. All in the land, well, neglecting God's wisdom would lead to conditions that banished them from the land. This is all, this all sounds like the book of Deuteronomy. It all sounds like what happened in the Old Testament. The people of Israel, they did wander away from God. They did neglect God's wisdom. And they were banished from the land for long periods of time.

[00:33:26] They called it exile. They were pushed into exile because they abandoned the wisdom of God. And God had told them this is the way that it would work. He told them that if they walked with him, if they honored him, if they kept him at the center of their people, they would flourish in the land. God's blessing would pour down on them in the form of health and abundance and peace. Here's a little snippet from Deuteronomy 28, verse 12 to 14. You could read 1 to 14 to get a fuller concept of this, but three verses was all I had the stomach for to quote to you guys.

[00:33:56] He says, He says,

[00:34:35] Deuteronomy 28, verse 12 to 14. The first 14 verses of Deuteronomy are about this. The end of Deuteronomy 28 is about four times longer than the blessing part because God just really declares to them, here's what will happen in the negative if you walk away from me. It's kind of like these early warning detection systems. Like we just had a drought. What's going on? Are we not walking with God? It was a different era for them.

[00:35:05] They were God's people there in the land. But if they neglected God, then these things would be unfolded on them and they would be, as he says in verse 22 of Proverbs chapter 2, cut off and rooted from the land. Rooted out of the land. So what is Solomon doing here? Okay. Just hang with me here as I wrap this up. I think what Solomon is doing is he's trying to say to his son,

[00:35:29] I want you to envision the top and the bottom of the spiral. I want you to like have this vision in your mind of what would happen if you just got in that spiral for a year and then two years and then five years and then 10 years and then 20 years and then 30 years. I just want you to imagine what would happen.

[00:35:56] Now, you got to remember this kid that he's writing to, he's not just a random individual in Israel. He's a potential royalty. So he's able to really think about how his life impacts lots and lots of other people. But for us, our lives impact plenty of people as well. Maybe not in as grand of a way as a king of God's holy people. But our lives impact others.

[00:36:26] And to have that vision of what it would look like for us to only increase steadily in time in wisdom and godliness and holiness, having a better understanding of who God is and what he means in our lives and just a better theological vision, but also ethical vision of what he's trying to produce. Just to have a vision of what that would look like at the top of the spiral.

[00:36:52] And then he's kind of like freaking, trying to freak his son out a little bit with, and here's what happens if you leave the spiral or at the bottom of the spiral or the reverse spiral. There's death. There's decay. There's departure. You're rooted out of the land. It's not life, but it's death. And I think for us, this is helpful to us to envision the top of that spiral,

[00:37:21] to imagine or envision God shaping something. You ever seen like an incredible artist just constructing something, building something, or a great carpenter constructing something, building something? They have a finished product in mind. God is like that. He's working. He's shaping. He's molding. Envisioning that as best as we can is helpful to us in this process.

[00:37:49] So Solomon's charge to his son, it's the same charge to us today. Don't drift. Don't settle. Do not leave the spiral. You know, when those voices start coming into your head like, oh, yeah, it's fine. You could take six months out of church. You know, just like, just be gone for a little bit. You need a break, you know, kind of thing. When those voices start coming in, you know, like, oh, yeah, those Christian friends, they're not that helpful. They're not that meaningful for you. Take a break. You're at Monday night.

[00:38:18] You're going to regeneration so that you can continue to get victory over an addictive thing in your life. Oh, I'm good now. I'll take a break. Like, that's probably not the voice of the spirit. That's a different voice. Trying to pull you out of that spiral so that the change power that God is producing will no longer be effective in your life. So stay in the spiral.

[00:38:47] Life is a challenge. So what I want to do, what I want to say at the end of this is I just want to say, remember that my story of David and Goliath there at the beginning of this sermon? It was a long time ago. Okay? Remember that story? I want you to envision, I think it would be healthy for us all to envision every day of our lives like that.

[00:39:13] Like, there's just this stuff out there wanting to take me out. Life is hard. Life is difficult. It's filled with all kinds of temptations and compromises and all this stuff. Life is hard.

[00:39:56] It's going to fuse itself with my body, mind, heart, and soul. And so I'm going to pursue him so that he will help me today. He's waiting for me, and he will more than do his part, but he's waiting for me to pursue him afresh each day. And I think if you keep that up, one day you'll be looking down from the top of the wisdom spiral, thanking God for what he's done in your life.

[00:40:23] Giving him all the glory and honor and credit and praise. Amen. Thank you for listening. If you would like more teachings and information about Calvary Monterey, please visit calvary.com. You can also find books, teachings through the Bible, and articles from our lead pastor at natholdridge.com. Thanks again for tuning in. We'll see you next week. We'll see you next week.