Weekly Sermons from Spruce Creek Presbyterian Church - Port Orange, FL

In this passage before us this morning as we continue to work through the prologue to the book of Proverbs, wisdom is calling and the key question is are we listening? Do we have a teachable spirit? We all assume automatically that we are teachable. Which of us wants to admit that he has a hard heart and does not have a teachable spirit? But the stakes are high and the consequences are eternal. Wisdom is giving her sermon and the stakes are life and death. We will examine wisdom’s call this morning from three perspectives.

Having completed the preamble to the book of Proverbs we now move on to the first of a series of poems given in Proverbs 1:8-9 motivating us to pursue the course of wisdom. This morning we are looking at Proverbs 1:8-19, where two voices, two paths, two ways are given in the words of a father to his son encouraging and motivating him to embrace the worldview and values of wisdom.

Just as our US Constitution has a preamble before the main document, the book of Proverbs contains a preamble before the main content of the book itself. And Proverbs 1:1-7 serves as the preamble to the book as a whole. And the focus of the preamble is to exhort, motivate and encourage us to get wisdom. It serves as a preamble in two ways which we explore this morning.

How do you choose a career? Or who to marry? Or whether you should get married? Or, if you are a parent, how do you determine whether you should home school or send your children to private or public school? Are there black and white rules to follow which will tell us in every situation exactly what to do? Or how do we live as a representative of Christ in our pluralistic society which can’t even agree on issues of right and wrong? What do we need to navigate in such a world as this? In a word, wisdom. And the Book of Proverbs was written to give us authoritative guidance in wisdom for practical living. As such, it is a book of application. It is a very practical book. We begin this morning a series of sermons on the book of Proverbs. We will be exploring this book for the next several months. And this morning we will be introducing this book with an overview that will explore the goal of attaining wisdom under three headings. (1) The Necessity of Wisdom. Here we will explore the importance of wisdom and look at the primary of the book, King Solomon. (2) The Definition of Wisdom. We will explore the structure of the book and what wisdom is. (3) The Foundation of Wisdom, which is found in v.7 the motto for the entire book. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

Last week we began a series of sermons on the topic of Christmas hope. We said that the hope of Christmas was God’s commitment to send His Son into the world to set everything right. As the Old Testament anticipated this hope the New Testament unfolds its fulfillment. And this morning we want to look at the forerunner of that hope in the person of the birth of John the Baptist.

Jeff explores the pattern and purpose of prayer out of Paul's letter to the Ephesians.