if you truly call out to insight and lift your voice to understanding,yes, if you call out for discernment, and lift up your voice for understanding;Yea, if thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding;Yea, if thou cry after discernment, And lift up thy voice for understanding;
3 sermons cite this verse
… And I'll start it off in verse 1, if you'll pick it up in verse 2. Proverbs chapter 2, verses 1 to 22. The way of wisdom will save your life. Solomon says, my son, if you receive my words and treasure my commands within you. So that you incline your ear to wisdom and apply your heart to understanding. Yes, if you cry out for discernment and lift up your voice for understanding. If you seek her as silver. and search for her, ask for hidden treasures. Then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find knowledge or the knowledge of God. For the Lord gives wisdom. Verse 7. He stores up sound wisdom for the upright. He is a shield to those who walk uprightly. Then you will understand righteousness and justice, equity and every good path. Discretion will preserve you. Understanding will keep you. To deliver you. From the way of evil, from the man who speaks of perverse things. From those who leave the paths of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness. …
… and with your own pastoral challenges in view, let me invite you to open to Proverbs chapter 2, verses 1 to 8. In the history of God's covenant people, it's no accident that God's first covenant people get law first and wisdom. First Moses and then Solomon. The first need is clear revelation from God. The covenant people need the crystal clear Ten Commandments. and they need the God-given applications in case law. But you can't treat every scenario in life. The clarity of the commandments is vital, but the instruction from God needs to be internalized, become part of his people, shape them, form them, condition them so deeply that as they encounter daily scenarios, they don't have clear commandments, they can discern God's will in a particular moment. and the book of proverbs doesn't jump straight to the maxims of solomon and other sages we got this long nine chapter framework in theology the heart of a father for his son before you get to chapter 10 to 31 to read these proverbs from solomon and the others That's the challenge with Proverbs. …
But this melancholy diversity is sometimes explained, as I just now hinted, in another way. Some men will tell us that this difference of opinion in religious matters which exists, is a proof, not that the Truth is withheld from us on account of our negligence in seeking it, but that religious truth is not worth seeking at all, or that it is not given us. The present confused and perplexed state of things, which is really a proof of God's anger at our negligence, these men say is a proof that religious truth cannot be obtained; that there is no such thing as religious truth; that there is no right or wrong in religion; that, provided we think ourselves right, one set of opinions is as good as another; that we shall all come right in the end if we do but mean well, or rather if we do not mean ill. That is, we create confusion by our negligence and disobedience, and then excuse our negligence by the existence of that confusion. It is no uncommon thing, I say, for men to say, "that in religious matters God has willed that men should differ," and to support their opinion by no better argument than the fact that they do differ; and they go on to conclude that therefore we need not perplex ourselves about matters of faith, about which, after all, we cannot be certain. Others, again, in a similar spirit, argue that forms and ordinances are of no account; that they are little matters; that it is uncertain what is right and what is wrong in them, and that to insist on them as important to religion is the mark of a narrow mind. And others, again, it is to be feared, go so far as to think that indulgence of the passions, or self-will, or selfishness, or avarice, is not wrong, because it is the way of the world and cannot be prevented. …