“My son, if you accept my words and store up my commands within you, listening closely to wisdom and directing your heart to understanding; furthermore, if you call out to insight and lift your voice to understanding, if you seek it like silver and search for it like hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and discover the knowledge of God.” (Proverbs 2:1-5 CSB – Read the chapter)

Think for just a second about the total number of things you have learned truly on your own. You did the research. You performed the experiments. You found all the secrets. You not only solved the equations, you came up with them in the first place. This was truly unique knowledge, you are managed to get it for yourself. How long is that list? I have a sneaking suspicion that it’s not actually very long. Let me add another thing to it: the Christian faith. No one comes to or grows in the faith all by themselves. Let’s talk about how it actually happens.

If you are a follower of Jesus today, the reason for that is almost assuredly that someone at some point along your journey shared the Gospel with you. Maybe it was a formal presentation all at once, maybe it was a series of very informal conversations, but you didn’t know it, and you were informed. Now, you absolutely played a role in that process, but you weren’t the only one in the driver’s seat the whole time. At the very least you read about it in the Scriptures meaning Paul, James, John, Peter, or Jesus Himself was your teacher. You could certainly do worse than one of those guys.

Even when people go seeking to gain knowledge for themselves in some way, they don’t blaze their own trail. They rely on those who came before them and the work they did to help them along. Only a handful have truly done their own work and they were all geniuses of the highest order. When Einstein published his paper on general relativity, for instance, he didn’t cite a single source. Between you and me, you’re probably no Einstein.

If we are going to grow in wisdom, all of this same thing still applies. In fact, it may doubly apply when it comes to wisdom. If you want to become wise, you are going to have to seek it. That’s precisely what Solomon calls his son to here, and through him, us. “My son, if you accept my words and store up my commands within you, listening closely to wisdom and directing your heart to understanding…”

Like we have already talked about along the way of this journey, if we want to grow in wisdom we need to seek it from those who already have it. We need to be sponges when it comes to wisdom. We need to put ourselves in the orbit of people who have lived a long time and pursued God faithfully for much of it, who have invested themselves deeply and intentionally in the Scriptures and prayer, and because of all of that have gained much wisdom for themselves, so that we can glean from their harvest.

We all start out as beggars when it comes to wisdom. So, like the poor and landless did in ancient Israel, we find a good spot to glean. We seek out and find a Boaz-like figure who has accumulated much wisdom and is willing to be generous with it. Then we work hard to learn from him or from her. We pay attention to what he does or how she does it, and we start to model our own habits after those patterns. This all means having the humility to acknowledge we don’t know everything out of the gate.

But this seeking we need to do has to be more than casual. “Furthermore, if you call out to insight and lift your voice to understanding, if you seek it like silver and search for it like hidden treasure…” We’ve got to throw ourselves into this like we are searching for the greatest treasure in the world (because we are searching for the greatest treasure in the world). We need to be like one of those treasure hunters we celebrate on page or screen. We pay attention to clues, we track down every lead, we talk to all the best experts, we are fearless in our pursuit of it.

And if we do all of this with all the intentionality and courage we can muster, “then you will understand the fear of the Lord and discover the knowledge of God.” But wait, I thought we were seeking wisdom. Why do we get to the end of this search here and find fear of the Lord and knowledge of God? Remember what we’ve already talked about? Those things are wisdom’s source. Because God Himself is the source of all wisdom, until we are willing to have a respect for who He is that allows us the ability to come to understand Him more, real wisdom will be off the table for us. We may gain some experience in this or that, but true wisdom comes from God.

More to the point than that, true wisdom doesn’t come from us. We don’t drift into it naturally. We won’t stumble upon it accidentally. We will find it because we seek it, because we humble ourselves to receive it gratefully and graciously from the one who delights in giving it. This pursuit is not always easy. It will take effort on our part. That’s what Solomon describes here, lots of effort. We are to listen closely, direct our hearts, call out, lift our voices, seek, and search. But if we will do that, we will find the God who desires to be found, and He will grow us in wisdom. And then we will be able to enjoy the sweet fruits of our labors. That will be a very good day. Let’s do what it takes to make it happen.