YA GOTTA WANT IT

Proverbs 17:16 (KJV)

Wherefore is there a price in the hand of a fool to get wisdom, seeing he hath no heart to it?

*There is a difference between wisdom and education.

·   Money can buy an education but

·   It can never buy wisdom along with it

Interestingly, an education can escape people. Some who would have really benefitted from one never get the opportunity but wisdom eagerly awaits us all – only the fool misses it because he has no heart for it.

Wisdom might be defined as the ability to look ahead.

Wisdom sees the results of action:

“If I do this, and this, I will get this.”

Some would call it common sense.

The illustration that came to mind comes from my ironworking days.

We would often pick up heavy items by hooking them to a crane, using cables we called chokers.

All of us carried in our pockets a little guidebook that told us how much a certain diameter choker could safely pick up.

We also had been taught a mathematical so, if we did not have the book we could still figure it out.

Most of the time, when we hooked these heavy things to the crane, we were going to ask the crane to lift that piece very high over our heads.

Wisdom says, “I want to make sure that I use a choker that won’t break when that thing is way over my head.

The fool just grabs any little choker, maybe the easiest to get to or the lightest to carry, failing to consider it could break and kill him.

I want to give you three things concerning wisdom and money:

*I. YOU CANNOT GET WISDOM WITH MONEY

Proverbs 17:16 (KJV)

Wherefore is there a price in the hand of a fool to get wisdom, seeing he hath no heart to it?

Obviously the word price means money.

The Bible asks the question, “Why give the fool the money to get wisdom when he has no heart to get it?”

Colleges are filled with people whose parents have scrimped and saved and pay a fortune to send their kids to get an education, but the kid:

·   Attends the parties

·   Oversleeps in the morning and

·   Skips classes

I know enough people who went to state universities to know that, for a good number of them, college was all about

·   Getting away from mom and dad,

·   Believing like they could do anything they wanted so

·   Classes were not the priority of their college experience

Having worked as a teacher in two Bible Colleges I can attest that, while we never let the endless parties happen on campus anyway, we had plenty of students who were not there to get wisdom.

The college had:

·   Rules on what time they had to go to bed

·   Rules limiting how many hours they could work

·   Rules about how many girls had to be there whenever a girl was with a boy

Even with all of those rules:

·   Some students could not get to their first class on time

·   Some students could not get their homework done on time and

·   Some students got themselves in moral trouble with the opposite sex.

To be honest, I never thought we should have all the rules.

I thought we should have clearly expressed:

·   Moral expectations,

·   Spiritual expectations and

·   Academic expectations

And if a student did not meet those expectations we would invite them to go home.

Most college students go to college a year or two too soon.

Instead of going right out of High School, they should probably stay home, get a job and maybe go to a community college for at least a year, maybe too.

Either that or go into the military.

That will get the “I’m and adult, I can do what I want.” Attitude taught out of them.

You cannot get wisdom with money.

It takes heart

On the other hand,

*II. YOU CAN GET WISDOM WITHOUT MONEY

Proverbs 17:16 (KJV)

Wherefore is there a price in the hand of a fool to get wisdom, seeing he hath no heart to it?

I think George Washington is a great example of this.

Circumstances were such that he could not afford to go to college.

Because of that, he had some weaknesses.

He was not a good writer – academics laugh at his run on sentences even to this day.

And Washington would not write much because of it.

He knew his grammar betrayed his lack of formal education.

This did not stop him from gaining wisdom.

Washington famously copied our and memorized 110 rules of civility and behavior.

They weren’t his own, he found them in a book written by Jesuit priests in 1595 and first translated into English in 1640.

By practicing these 110 rules, Washington made himself welcome in the company of people much more educated than he was.

And it gave them a sense of respect and trust of him.

With that, some military experience and hard work, Washington became:

·   First in war

·   First in peace and

·   First in the hearts of his countrymen

*III. THOSE WITH WISDOM WILL FREQUENTLY GET MONEY

Proverbs 17:16 (KJV)

Wherefore is there a price in the hand of a fool to get wisdom, seeing he hath no heart to it?

Washington never was a really rich man; most of his money was tied up in his plantation.

But you would be hard pressed to find anyone who thought of him as a pauper.

Washington served as both the Commander in Chief of the Continental Army and President out of his own pocket.[1]

Wisdom does not always lead to money.

·   Sometimes wisdom will keep a person alive just a bit longer than the foolish.

·   Sometimes wisdom will make a person happier than the foolish person.

·   Sometimes wisdom will help a person avoid  a few more obstacles than the foolish person

But almost always, wisdom will help a person use what money he has better than a foolish person will.

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[1] He did keep track of an expect reimbursement for expenses.