So let's start out in verse number one.
The Proverbs of Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel.
And then he gets into the purpose of the book,
to know wisdom and instruction, to perceive
the words of understanding, to receive
the instruction of wisdom, justice, and judgment,
and equity, to give subtlety to the simple, to the young man,
knowledge and discretion.
So let me show you what I mean about my four points here, OK?
First of all, he says in verse three,
to receive the instruction of wisdom.
Notice, the instruction, the wisdom, has to be received.
I can get up and give you all kinds of facts,
and all kinds of information, and all kinds of deep truths,
and expound the Bible to you.
But if you're not open to receive that,
it's not going to do you any good.
You have to show up wanting to learn,
wanting to learn what Pastor Anderson can give you
from the Bible on Sunday morning, Sunday night,
Wednesday night.
If you show up ready to hear and ready to learn,
you're going to learn a lot.
But if you just show up thinking that you already
know everything, you're not going to learn much, are you?
How many things did we study in school growing up,
and we have no idea what we were supposed
to get out of that class, and we didn't learn anything
because we didn't want to?
Think about how many people have gone through Spanish 1
and Spanish 2 in high school.
I know it was required in California
to graduate from high school.
You had to do two years of Spanish.
Who here has had a couple of years of Spanish?
Who here has had a couple of years of Spanish,
and you don't speak Spanish at all?
It's almost the same number of people.
Why?
Because you probably weren't that jazzed about it.
You're kind of just grinding it out
because it's a requirement.
And you show up.
You cram for the test.
You get through it.
But let me tell you something.
I went to Spanish 1, 2.
I actually went to Spanish 3 even in high school.
And I took some Spanish in college as well.
But honestly, I didn't really learn that much
until I became a pastor.
And then as a pastor, I started seeing
how many doors didn't speak English
and how many people needed to hear the gospel in Spanish.
Then I had a desire to learn Spanish.
And I learned more Spanish just on my own in like six months
than all of those classes put together
because I really wanted to learn it.
It was really important to me.
And so you learn what you want to learn.
If you go to school and you don't really want to learn
what they're teaching, you're not
going to get a whole lot out of it.
Well, guess what?
Church is the same way.
Reading your Bible is the same way.
You have to want to learn.