Restored Church

Restored Church San Diego

Sunday Sermons from Restored Church San Diego.

  1. 4d ago

    Proverbs: How to Build a Life: Wisdom with Money

    In this message from our Proverbs series, How to Build a Life, Royce Nicholas looks at what Proverbs says about the practical use of money. Setting aside the dangers of greed and envy (covered earlier in the year), Royce argues that because everything belongs to God, including our money, God has a plan for how we use it, and that plan is meant to free us rather than burden us. He works through four lessons from Proverbs on spending, debt, saving, and generosity, and closes with Zacchaeus and the gospel, where our spiritual debt is cancelled and Jesus's righteousness is credited to our account. ## Three Reasons a Money Sermon Belongs at Church Royce opens with a story from a cruise he and his wife took shortly after they were married. They were given $500 in onboard credit, were told they could take home whatever they did not spend, and skipped every excursion to save it, only to learn at the end of the trip that the credit was not refundable. "We misunderstood whose money it was and what we could do with it. And I think in the same way with our literal actual money, we do the same thing." He reads Psalm 24:1-2: the earth and everything in it belong to the Lord. "So everything according to God who made everything is his. Even our money. It's not like an exception." The second reason is that the one who created money knows how to use it best. "He actually can free us from using our money badly, help us to use it better, to actually enjoy it better as well. So it's not meant to be like a burden when God helps us to know how to use this money." The third reason is that spending reveals our hearts. Royce quotes Jesus: where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. "If you care about your heart, if you care about really the most spiritual thing about you, you're going to care about your spending and your use of money as well." 4 Lessons on Money from Proverbs 1. Live Within Your Means 2. Debt Is a Curse 3. Save and Invest 4. Sharing Is Caring ## Live Within Your Means Proverbs 21:20: the wise store up choice food and olive oil, but fools gulp theirs down. "The idea is not just using up everything you have as quickly as you have it. Not living paycheck to paycheck." Royce then reads Ecclesiastes 4:4-6, where all toil and achievement spring from one person's envy of another, and better is one handful with tranquility than two handfuls with toil. Envy drives us to overwork. "When we overwork, this type of envy of other people's achievements or possessions, it can lead us to be this really busy, exhausted, to have a chaotic life where we just never feel like at rest." He recalls Jesus's question, what good is it to gain the whole world but lose your soul, and says Christians should be able to work hard out of God's image rather than for it, put in the day, and then rest. Envy also drives us to overspend. Nearly half of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, and roughly 35 percent say they probably or definitely could not cover a $2,000 emergency expense. Royce shares a study Grant sent him: researchers looking at Canadian lottery data found that when someone wins a large prize, the neighbors nearby become more likely to file for bankruptcy. Visible consumption triggers comparison, and comparison leads households to overspend or borrow. Social media has made this worse. "You could live in the poorest neighborhood where you can barely afford just to live there, but then you're online looking at people living in the richest, most lavish neighborhoods and you're like, oh, I want that." The application is simple: have a budget and stick to it, and stop feeding the comparison. Proverbs 13:7: one person pretends to be rich, yet has nothing; another pretends to be poor, yet has great wealth. Royce illustrates this from The Millionaire Next Door, a twenty-year study of American millionaires. When the author hosted a group of them with expensive food and wine, nobody touched it; one said he only drank two kinds of beer, free and Budweiser. Royce reads from the introduction: "Most Americans have no idea about the true inner workings of a wealthy household. The advertising industry and Hollywood have done a great job conditioning us to believe that wealth and hyper consumption go hand in hand. Yet, as I have said many times, the large majority of the rich live well below their means." He continues with the account of a millionaire engineer who, after college, lived on one income and saved the other, stayed twenty years in the same modest house, and whose kids sometimes asked if they were poor because she made them order from the dollar menu. "Wealth is not the same as income. If you make a good income each year and spend it all, you're not getting wealthier. You're just living high. Wealth is what you accumulate, not what you spend." And: "Wealth is more often the result of a lifestyle of hard work, perseverance, planning, and most of all, self-discipline." Eighty percent of American millionaires are first-generation rich. ## Debt Is a Curse Royce clarifies what he means. "If wealth is a blessing because it makes your life better, then in the same way debt is a curse. It's going to make your life worse, or at least more risky, or at least cause you some anxiety." He reads Proverbs 22:7, the borrower is slave to the lender, and Proverbs 22:26-27, do not put up security for debts, or your very bed will be snatched from under you. He tells the story of Dave Ramsey, who leveraged real estate until prices fell and he went bankrupt, then turned to Proverbs and concluded that Christians should avoid debt altogether. "A lot of people were like, no, you're wrong. There's like good debt, there's your house debt and there's bad debt. And he's like, no, there's just bad debt. And I'm kind of beginning to actually, the more I study it, think like he's on to something here." Royce shares his own experience with a commercial loan whose terms allowed the bank to call the note when he closed his business, and how stressful even a well-serviced mortgage turned out to be. "Not having it is better than having it. Like if you had a paid off home right now, you probably wouldn't go take out a mortgage." "Having debt is not a sin. It's just unwise." America has a fascination with borrowing, from buy now, pay later to no money down to financing a burrito. The Bible does not ban debt; it treats it as a mostly unfortunate reality, and Nehemiah 5 shows God's people trying to get out of it as quickly as they can. Royce reads Deuteronomy 15:6, where the blessing is that you will lend to many nations but borrow from none. Debt can leave us feeling helpless, drowning. "While it may feel hopeless to us, our debt is not hopeless to God." Galatians 5:1: it is for freedom that Christ has set us free; do not be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. "I think that God wants to help us to get out of debt, to live freely. He can absolutely do that. It is such an easy thing for him." Spending less and saving more, paying off debt little by little, is how it starts. ## Save and Invest Proverbs 13:11: dishonest money dwindles away, but whoever gathers money little by little makes it grow. "It's like the tortoise and the hare situation. We don't need more cryptocurrency, dogecoins, or get rich quick schemes or whatever. It's just saving little by little over the long term." Royce works the math for his twelve-year-old son: $100 in a boring index fund today, never added to, becomes roughly $15,000 by age 65; $1,000 becomes roughly $150,000. Money has historically doubled about every seven years. "Most financial advisors would be like, hey, investing should be pretty boring. You just save a little bit every month, buy an index fund. Forget about it. If your investments are so exciting, you're like, I'm going to check on this every week, it's like, either you're excited about something that's pretty boring or you're investing in stuff that's too exciting." The other error is doing nothing. Inflation costs roughly three percent a year in purchasing power. Royce points to the parable of the talents, where the servant who buried the money out of fear is called wicked and told he should have at least deposited it in the bank to earn interest. "We don't want to be too fear averse. We don't want to be going crazy, dogecoin. Also not just doing nothing with your money as well." The point is habits over one-time decisions. "Our financial habits are more important than any one time decision. Just like we have good spiritual disciplines, we need to have good financial disciplines as well." And the goal of saving is not only a better vacation. "We should have extras so that we can share." ## Sharing Is Caring Proverbs 28:22: the stingy are eager to get rich and are unaware that poverty awaits them. Proverbs 11:24: one person gives freely, yet gains even more; another withholds unduly, but comes to poverty. "Paradoxically, a lot of times holding wealth, saving just for ourselves without giving or investing in others will leave us far less rich than we would have been if we were generous." This is a general pattern Solomon observed, not a formula or a promise; Jesus himself was the wisest person who ever lived and did not end up rich. Royce mostly commends the church on this point: cars given away, hundreds of thousands of dollars given to fund other churches and missionaries, and all of it as a group effort of sacrificial giving. He recalls investing in the LA church plant when it looked uncertain. "That was definitely, probably the best investment I've ever made in my life." He also remembers his parents quietly paying for his non-Christian friends to go to Hume Lake camp each year. "I just remember picking up generosity habits from watching them. If you have kids, they're going to naturally pick up your generosity, your use of money. So let's do a good job." Galatians 6:9-10: let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give u

    Proverbs: How to Build a Life: Wisdom with Money

  2. Aug 23

    Proverbs: How to Build a Life: How to Ruin your Life

    In this message from our series How to Build a Life, a walk through the book of Proverbs, Grant Clark extends our look at wise counselors by turning the question around: what about the voices we must never listen to? Reading Proverbs 5 alongside Genesis 3, this sermon traces how seduction works, why the way that "seems right" ends in ruin, and how the same chapter that records the fall also announces the grace that rebuilds a life. The sermon opens with Proverbs 14:12: "There is a way that seems right to a person, but its end is the way to death." A path can look desirable at the entrance while its finish line leads to ruin. Grant illustrates this with Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, where Ebenezer Scrooge is shown the end of his road, his own neglected grave, and wakes up a changed man who chooses a different way. That is how the warnings of Proverbs work: the father shows his son the end from the entrance. Proverbs 5 gives a visceral picture of this. The forbidden woman's lips "drip honey and her words are smoother than oil," but in the end she is "as bitter as wormwood and as sharp as a double-edged sword." Her feet go down to death. The father pleads with his son to keep far from her door, because at the end of that road a person laments: "I'm on the verge of complete ruin before the entire community." Warnings of Proverbs 5: 1) Don't listen to everything you think. 2) Don't go after everything you desire. 3) Don't trust everything you feel. From there the sermon moves to Genesis 3:1-13, the Bible's paradigmatic picture of temptation and seduction, read as both a warning and a playbook that unmasks the serpent's schemes. The serpent, identified in Revelation 12 as "the ancient serpent who is called the devil and Satan, the one who deceives the whole world," opens with the first question in the Bible: "Did God really say?" He does not start with a bold statement; he plants a subtle seed of doubt about God's word and God's character. Eve's reply distorts what God actually said. In Genesis 2:15-17 God's command is an abundance of yes with one small no: free access to every tree, with a single warning attached to one. Grant shares Joshua Ryan Butler's illustration of an all-expenses-paid vacation to anywhere on earth with only one dangerous destination excluded. The serpent's tactic is to zoom in: he narrows Eve's focus from a garden full of yes down to the one no, and the offer of abundance starts to sound like restriction. Two details in the text expose the play. First, until this moment God alone has defined what is good; now Adam and Eve take it on themselves to call good the one thing God said would kill them. Second, the narrator consistently names God "Yahweh Elohim," the Lord God, the covenantal and personal name, but the serpent drops "Yahweh" and speaks only of "Elohim," and Eve takes the bait and does the same. The serpent casts doubt on God's word, then denies it, then dethrones God in his language while elevating Eve. He is a dangerous counselor, and his voice is reshaping how Eve sees God, herself, and the world. "Eve is talking to Satan about her problems with God instead of talking to God about her problems with Satan." - Philip Bethancourt Locked in on the one forbidden tree, Eve sees that it is "good for food and delightful to look at, and desirable for obtaining wisdom." A good desire has become an over-desire, an idol, and she has become discontent in the middle of abundance. "What the heart most wants, the mind finds reasonable, the will finds doable, and the emotions find desirable." - Tim Keller ## Practicing the Absence of God Drawing on Alan Fadling's book A Non-Anxious Life, Grant contrasts practicing the presence of God, living aware that God is with us and for us, with practicing the absence of God: losing sight of God in our circumstances and making decisions with no reference to him. In Genesis 3 Eve is practicing the absence of God. She is no longer listening to his voice or thinking about him at all; she has bought the lie that God is holding out on her. Adam, meanwhile, is silent and passive through the whole exchange. He never challenges the serpent and never speaks God's word. Ruin comes not only through active rebellion but through passive abdication. They eat, their eyes are opened, and for the first time they hide from the Lord God in shame. "What is shame? Disgust over having disobeyed. Shame tells us we are nothing better than our worst moments… Satan shifts from using his powers of deception to instead accuse… The serpent easily moves from seducing to shaming, from deceiving to devouring, from alluring to accusing." - Philip Bethancourt This, Genesis 3 shows us, is how to ruin your life: don't listen to God's word or wisdom, walk your own way, be seduced by things that look great from the outside, practice the absence of God, and you will find yourself isolated, exposed, and ashamed. ## How to Rebuild a Life But Genesis 3 also shows us how to rebuild a life. First, God pursues them. Adam and Eve hide, and God does not reject or stonewall them; he comes looking, calling "Where are you?" The question is not for God's information but for their diagnosis, an Ebenezer Scrooge moment: which path have you gone down, and what will you do about it? Second, God covers their nakedness and shame. In Genesis 3:21 the Lord God makes clothing from skins for them, which means an animal died so their shame could be covered, an echo picked up when John the Baptist announces in John 1:29, "Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world." Ultimately Jesus dies to cover our shame and clothe us in his righteousness. Third, Genesis 3:15 gives the first preaching of the gospel, the protoevangelium: the offspring of the woman will strike the serpent's head while the serpent strikes his heel, fulfilled at the cross where Jesus crushes the serpent, is wounded in the process, and rises in victory over Satan, sin, and death. The serpent says God cannot be trusted; the cross says look how far God will go to save you. Reflection Questions: 1) Name the Lie: In which ways are you currently tempted to DOUBT God's goodness to you? Are there any areas where you believe the lie that God is holding out on you? Or, that God is not for you? 2) See the Entrance: Are there any specific areas where you are tempted to be seduced? To choose the way of Ruin, rather than the way of wisdom? 3) From Ruin to Redemption: Are there any areas of your life where you need God's forgiveness? God to cover your shame? Or, to redeem a decision you have made? A closing word before communion adds one more observation: the devil tempts people with what they already have. He told Adam and Eve they would be like God when they were already made in God's image, and he offered Jesus the kingdoms of the world when every knee will already bow to him. Both Eve and Jesus responded to temptation with God's words; Eve changed them, Jesus did not. Know your Bible, not just for knowledge's sake, but to combat the lies of the enemy. Verses referenced: Proverbs 14:12 Proverbs 5:1-14 Genesis 3:1-13 Genesis 2:15-17 Revelation 12:9 Genesis 3:14-15 Genesis 3:21 John 1:29 Genesis 3:15 Genesis 1:26-27 Philippians 2:10-11 John 3:16 Romans 5:8

    Proverbs: How to Build a Life: How to Ruin your Life

  3. Aug 16

    Proverbs: How to Build a Life: How to Choose a Counsellor?

    Part of "Proverbs: How to Build a Life," Andy Rodgers picks up the second half of a two-part look at wise counsellors. Last week Grant Clark asked why we need trusted voices and who has permission to tell us something we do not want to hear. This week turns to the follow-on question: once we have discerned that someone is qualified to speak into our life, how do we get the most out of what they say. The message covers therapists, pastors, spiritual fathers and mothers, GC members, and friends. Andy opens by distinguishing two things that are often confused. Therapy is a practice: a trained professional with a set of skills, a licensed person helping a specific person with a specific problem, with ethics, accountability, and evidence based practices behind it. Therapy culture is something else. It is when the language of therapy and a therapeutic orientation become the way you engage every relationship in your life, and when organizations, schools, churches, and the political sphere all route their questions back to what feels good therapeutically rather than what is good. "How does that make you feel?" is an excellent question in a counselling room and a poor one for setting the economic direction of a nation or for asking what a passage of Scripture means. He is explicit that this is not an anti therapy message. Restored started a therapy centre, has subsidised thousands of dollars of therapy for people in the church who could not afford it, and runs the Restored Counselling Network. Good therapists using good practices are very helpful. A number of the people writing against therapy culture are themselves therapists. On reading for authorial intent rather than feeling, he points to Mark Twain, who prefaced a later edition of "Huckleberry Finn" by telling readers the book is not an allegory and asking them not to treat it as one. His English class spent fourteen weeks treating it as an allegory anyway. That is survivable with a novel. It is a real problem with Scripture, and a bigger one when the same instinct is used to determine what marriage is, what your identity is, and what is good and true and beautiful. ## Four markers of therapy culture 1) Concept creep. Precise language meant to help us see something clearly starts to mean more than it meant, and once it means everything it means nothing. Gaslighting comes from a 1938 play and describes a genuinely abusive man deliberately making his wife doubt her sanity. It is real and it is rare. It now gets used for ordinary cognitive dissonance. Andy walks through a recent scheduling mix up with a fellow pastor where he genuinely felt confused, and notes that memory is fallible and two people can remember the same event differently. Choosing the gaslighting reading would have turned a good friend into someone dangerous who had to be removed from his life. Choosing "maybe I forgot that" carried far less pressure and required villainising no one. The same creep has happened to abuse, to trauma, and to narcissism. Genuine narcissistic personality disorder runs around one percent, so it cannot be everyone's dad, just as borderline personality disorder cannot be everyone's mom. Naming everything as abuse diminishes our ability to help the people actually experiencing it. 2) Boundaries become walls. Boundaries are a biblical idea: knowing where you stop and another person begins, holding your values, refusing to be manipulated. To be a Christian you have to have firm boundaries. But for many people boundaries have come to mean cutting out anyone who makes them uncomfortable, which is avoidance, and which most good therapists will tell you leaves you less mature because you never learn to handle difficult people or hard conversations. Seventy three percent of millennials have gone no contact with a close friend or family member in the last two years, half of those tied to their parents' politics. Disagreeing with your parents is normal. Cutting them off is new. Where there is genuine danger or a history of abuse the calculation is different, but the usual work is helping people figure out what they can realistically expect from a relationship and how to show up in it. 3) Validation becomes authority. Being heard matters, but being heard is a means, not the end. It creates a space safe enough to look at what is hard to look at. If someone has to tell you that what you want is good, that will keep you from wisdom, because sometimes what you want is dumb. Andy is candid that he has plenty of dumb ideas himself and needs godly, loving, wise people alongside him for exactly that reason. 4) Diagnosis becomes identity. Restored is not anti diagnosis. The DSM categories are genuinely useful for describing patterns of behaviour, understanding how someone relates to others, and explaining a tendency. They are never an excuse to hurt people or to continue in sin. Andy speaks openly about his own ADHD, the forgotten texts and missed medications, and the systems he has had to build to take responsibility for it. Most diagnoses people receive are not their fault, but to thrive and love people well they still have to do the work. God's standards do not decrease; some people simply need more help in a given area than the average person. The irony he draws out: something you went to in order to see clearly now makes the world look more threatening than before. Something you went to in order to protect your relationships has produced more isolation. Somewhere you went to be heard has made you unreachable. He notes the same dynamic can quietly reshape a GC, where groups drift into venting and status updates rather than asking what Scripture says and what Jesus is calling us to. It is fine to say a thing is hard. The question is whether the group helps you then go and do it. Two tests run underneath the whole message. If we are engaging counsel in a way that makes us more fragile rather than more resilient over the long term, something is wrong. And if we have adopted a worldview that makes us less open to insight we do not want to hear, it is keeping us from becoming wise. ## We get the most out of the counsel we receive when we do five things 1) Choose the right story 2) Are discerning about who we let counsel us 3) Engage honestly 4) Work towards a goal 5) Seek sanctification over validation ## Choose the right story There are no neutral worldview people. Everyone speaking into your life is answering a set of questions whether or not they say so out loud: What is a person? What is a man, a woman, a mother, a father? What is parenting? What is marriage? What is sexuality and what is it for? What is actually wrong with us? How do people change, by insight, by empathy, by repentance, or by better tools? And what is the goal of a life, which decides the goal of counselling. The Bible says we are image bearers of God, made with inherent dignity, value, and worth, created to be known and loved. That is a different story from being a bag of chemicals and neurons colliding. Andy is careful that these are not simple either / ors. We are image bearers and we do have physical bodies that God chose for us. Scripture names three broad things that can be wrong: a fallen body in a fallen world, with real physiological realities; sin committed against us by others, which covers much of what people bring to therapy as wounding, shame, and pain, and which is not their fault; and our own sin, the lies we tell ourselves and the ways we try to live independently of God. He pushes back on starting the story at Genesis 3. God made us wonderful, beautiful, and glorious, and sin damaged it. One of the worst things about sin is that it diminishes the good person God created you to be. He is now restoring that, like a fine painting, over years and with patience. Repentance and clinical tools are not rivals. A tool can make repentance easier. Andy uses his own example: externalising what he cannot hold in his head helps him forget less and love his wife better. But the decision to get help in the first place is an issue of the will. Someone whose trauma triggers leave them in fight or flight is not at fault for being triggered, and may still need to deal with the thing they have been avoiding, because the people around them are still getting hurt even when the motive is not bad. The question that matters is what wins when two stories are mutually exclusive. When a view of the world conflicts with the Scriptures, the Scriptures need to win. He works this through cognitive behavioural therapy, the most used approach in talk therapy, whose core claim is that emotions and behaviours run downstream of thoughts. He agrees that is broadly true, finds CBT tools genuinely helpful, and notes that CBT ironically has the most in common with biblical counselling. But Scripture carries a category the therapeutic world often does not: we do not only have bad thoughts, we have bad desires upstream of our thoughts. James says our conflicts come from wanting something and not getting it. "The tools are great. They're just not everything. There's not one tool that solves life. The only person who solves all of life is Jesus." ## Be discerning about who you let counsel you Counsel in a person's heart is deep water, and a person of understanding draws it out. Good counsellors ask good questions and get beneath the surface. Does a therapist need to be a Christian? Andy says it depends on the issue, and that for some things it is close to vital. Marriage is his clearest example, because a counsellor is helping you understand the story you came from and the story you are building, and it helps enormously if they share a Christian understanding of marriage, sexuality, communication, and desire, even if they use plenty of clinical tools alongside it. Better is open reprimand than concealed love, and the wounds of a friend are trustworthy while the kisses of an enemy are excessive. Friends who only ever validate you are not evil, but

    Proverbs: How to Build a Life: How to Choose a Counsellor?

  4. Aug 10

    Proverbs: How to Build a Life: Wise Counsellors

    Part of "Proverbs: How to Build a Life," Grant Clark opens the first of a two-part look at wise counsellors, asking why we need trusted voices speaking into our lives at all. The argument is simple: to build the kind of life Jesus has for us, we need other people. Next week's message turns to how to choose those voices. Grant opens with a scene from the BBC comedy "Amanda Land," in which a mother turns to ChatGPT for help talking to her teenage son, and ends the night asking the chatbot whether she is a good mother. He notes that in April 2025 OpenAI described one of its own updates as "overly supportive but disingenuous," excessively flattering and sycophantic, and rolled it back. The cultural data he cites: a 2026 Pew finding that 10 percent of American adults had used an AI chatbot for emotional support or advice; KFF finding 16 percent had sought mental health advice from AI in the previous year, rising to 28 percent among 18 to 29 year olds; and an ABC report that roughly one in five young people aged 12 to 21 in the United States have used AI chatbots for mental health support. Research from OpenAI and MIT associates heavier use with greater loneliness, emotional dependence, and reduced real world social interaction. The whole book of Proverbs is itself a conversation between a wise counsellor and someone who needs wisdom, a father speaking to his son. Not all voices carry equal weight. Proverbs presents a cast of characters, some to seek out and some to avoid: The Wise (Proverbs 1:5; 3:13-18; 9:8-9) The Simple / Naive (Proverbs 1:22; 7:7; 9:4; 14:15) The Fool (Proverbs 1:7; 12:15; 15:5; 26:1-12) The Scoffer / Mocker (Proverbs 3:34; 9:7-8; 13:1; 15:12; 22:10) The Wicked (Proverbs 4:14-19; 10:6-7, 24-32; 12:5-7) The Righteous (Proverbs 10:3, 6-7, 24-32; 11:5-8; 24:15-16) Lady Wisdom (Proverbs 1:20-33; 8:1-36; 9:1-6) The Forbidden Woman (Proverbs 2:16-19; 5:1-23; 7:1-27; 9:13-18) The Friend (Proverbs 17:17; 18:24; 27:5-6, 17) The Parent / Instructor (Proverbs 1:8-9; 2:1-22; 4:1-27; 6:20-23; 23:22-25) A wise counsellor is someone whose life we know and want to imitate, not simply someone with a confident voice who always knows the right thing to say. They fear God, they are humble and teachable, they listen carefully and speak honestly, and they want our good more than our approval. ## We all have blind spots. Proverbs 12:15 and Proverbs 21:2 set the problem: the fool's way is right in his own eyes, and all a person's ways seem right to him. A wise person accounts for their own biases and preferences and goes to others for clarity. Grant tells of a friend who returned from a conference having learned that the average person has 2.8 blind spots and asked his wife to name them, and of his own weekend at the beach where everyone but him could see he was covered in a rash. The point of both stories is the same: other people saw what he could not see himself. Christians have more reason than anyone to expect to find sin and blind spots, and more reason than anyone to be secure when they hear it. "The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope". - Tim Keller Many people will tell you what you want to hear. Wisdom is choosing on purpose to be told what we need to hear. Independence makes us Foolish. Community makes us Wise. ## Three cultural forces that keep us from asking. "I Know Best" "I Know Myself" "God Told Me" The first is the pull of individualism, which hears asking for help as weakness. Proverbs 18:1 answers it: one who isolates himself pursues selfish desires and rebels against all sound wisdom. The second leans on self-knowledge, the Enneagram, Myers-Briggs, DISC, StrengthsFinder, family of origin work, attachment styles, Keller's "Counterfeit Gods," all good gifts that can still tip into "I am the expert on me." The third is a privatized faith that cannot be questioned. Ephesians 3:12 is true, in him and through faith in him we can approach God with freedom and confidence, and we do hear from God ourselves. But underneath all three sits the same assumption, that I can discern God's wisdom without needing God's people. ## Many and sound. Proverbs 15:22 says plans fail when there is no counsel, but with many advisers they succeed. Proverbs 20:18 says finalize plans with counsel and wage war with sound guidance. The words to notice are "many" and "sound." Many, because going to a single voice makes us codependent on it. Sound, because the voice should be helpful, godly, thoughtful, unbiased, honest, and pointed toward Jesus and his Word. Proverbs 13:20 adds that the one who walks with the wise becomes wise, but a companion of fools suffers harm. Reflection Questions: 1) What are the loudest and most influential voices in your life, at the moment? 2) What content are you consuming, that could be shaping how you think about, see, and respond to the world? We do not go to many counsellors for permission or for consensus. We go for clarity. Grant recounts the decision to move his family from South Africa to San Diego, and a Zoom call in which Chris Winant heard his worry that the move might be a pandemic era overreaction and answered that the decision was not Covid caused but Covid inspired. ## Give wise people permission to speak. Identify them: people who know you, who fear God, whose lives you would want to emulate, and who will tell you the truth. Invite them, because no one knows you are wrestling with something unless you say so. Give them permission to ask any question. If what they say is hard to hear, you do not have to accept it in the moment, but go away and pray and process it. Test the counsel against Scripture, in prayer, and against the character of Jesus. Then take your next step. ## Start with Jesus. Through the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5 to 7, Jesus repeats "you have heard it said, but I say to you," which means following him involves unlearning as much as learning. In John 14:6 he says he is the way and the truth and the life. Matthew 7:24-27 closes it out: both builders hear the words of Jesus, both build a house, both face the same storm, and the difference is that one acts on what he heard. Jesus is not only our wise counsellor. He is the way, the truth, and the life, and he asks us to hear his words and do them. Two closing questions. Who has permission in your life to tell you something you do not want to hear? And is there a decision you are currently making alone that you should bring other people into, not for consensus or permission, but for clarity? Verses referenced: Proverbs 12:15 Proverbs 21:2 Proverbs 18:1 Proverbs 15:22 Proverbs 20:18 Proverbs 13:20 Ephesians 3:12 Matthew 5-7 John 14:6 Matthew 7:24-27

    Proverbs: How to Build a Life: Wise Counsellors

  5. Aug 3

    Proverbs: How to Build a Life: How to Build a Marriage

    Grant Clark continues the Proverbs series "How to Build a Life" by turning to what the book teaches about marriage. Rather than the usual texts in Genesis 2 or Ephesians 5, he draws five recurring themes out of Proverbs itself and presents them as five gauges on a dashboard, inviting listeners to check which one needs attention, whether they are married now or may be one day. He opens with recent headlines from an advice column, each one a person in a hard situation asking an expert what wisdom looks like for them: "My Wife Won't Forgive me for Cheating" "I Can't Talk to My Wife About Money" "My Husband Hates our Life" "Do I Like Being Single Too Much to Fall In Love" "Do I Work on my Marriage, or Cut my Losses?" The central text is Proverbs 31:10-31, the passage on the wife of noble character. Grant notes it is an alphabetical acrostic running the twenty two letters of the Hebrew alphabet, a literary device signaling completeness, and warns against the two common misreadings: turning it into a wife hunting checklist for men, or an impossible standard for women. It is an idealized portrait, not a job description. "This passage is a rich way to end the book on a high note. While it depicts wisdom exemplified in the life of a woman, it is not a lesson only for women, but for men as well. Both men and women need to be like the 'Proverbs 31 woman'!" - Lindsay Wilson The portrait functions as the embodiment of Lady Wisdom from Proverbs 1 to 9, set in contrast to the adulterous woman whose way leads to ruin. "The 'good wife' points us to what Proverbs regards as 'the good life'." - Lindsay Wilson ## 1) Become a Person of Character Proverbs 31:10 and Proverbs 31:30 put character ahead of charm and beauty. Grant tells of asking his brother in law for advice before pursuing his wife, and being pointed to the question that mattered most: does she fear the Lord? "The Fear of the Lord is a reverential awe, that produces humble submission, to a loving God." - Skip Heitzig He contrasts this with current cultural priorities, citing a 2025 University of Amsterdam study of dating app behavior which found physical attractiveness overwhelmingly determined who got matched, weighted roughly ten times more heavily than intelligence, personality, priorities, job, or height. ## 2) Trust Your Spouse Proverbs 31:10-11 can be read as the husband entrusting his heart to his wife, a vulnerability with real risk, since a spouse knows us best and has seen us at our worst. Grant passes on a practice from pastor John Tyson: take a fifteen minute window a day to share with your spouse what is happening in your inner world and to listen to what is happening in theirs. He then walks through research from the Gottman Institute on the roughly six hours a week that sustain a healthy marriage: A 2-minute meaningful goodbye in the morning. A 20-minute reunion at night processing the day and being present to one another. A hug and a six-second kiss every day. 5 minutes of appreciation and affirmation every day. A 2-hour date a week. A 1-hour state of the union a week, zooming out and looking at the big picture of your life and relationships. ## 3) Be Lovers Proverbs 5:15-20 speaks openly about sex within marriage, with no shame or awkwardness, using the imagery of the cistern, the well, and the fountain. Grant observes that in many ancient cultures marriage was primarily a familial and economic arrangement, which is part of why male unfaithfulness was often socially tolerated. Proverbs instead presents both the ecstasy and the exclusivity of sex in marriage, husband and wife belonging to one another. He is candid that for many this is a vision being built toward rather than a starting point, and offers the church's help for those for whom this gauge is a point of pain. ## 4) Spouses are Close Friends Proverbs 2:16-17 uses a Hebrew word for companion that describes the closest of friends, a marked contrast to a setting where wives were often viewed as property and child bearers rather than companions. Grant then turns to how couples erode that friendship through their words, in Proverbs 25:24 and Proverbs 27:15. "To nag is not to do thoughtful criticism, but to do 'drive-bys,' making brief caustic or cynical remarks that complain and question motives and character. Two telltale signs of a nagging statement is that it begins, 'You always . . .' or 'You never . . .'" - Timothy Keller The alternative is not silence about real problems but pouring out the concern at the right time and place, working it through to completion rather than dropping barbs along the way. ## 5) Marriage is Kept together by a Covenant Grant draws the contrast between a covenant and a contract, and between vows and speeches. A speech describes how the other person makes you feel. A vow is a promise: for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, forsaking all others. He calls forsaking all others the most radical part, a commitment made in faith without knowing what the future holds. He illustrates the alternative by reading a contractual, watered down version of the vows and letting it land. "It is not your love that sustains the marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer, written from prison in 1943 He notes that Scripture nowhere makes happiness the purpose of marriage, referencing Gary Thomas in Sacred Marriage on marriage being ordered toward holiness more than happiness, with hard seasons serving to form us into the likeness of Christ. Ephesians 5:25: "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her..." Marriage is a billboard displaying the love of God, to a spouse and to the watching world. Grant closes by pointing underneath all five gauges to the covenant of grace Jesus has already made, loving us at our worst, forgiving us at enormous cost, and promising never to leave. It is hard to give what you have not received, so as the love, forgiveness, sacrifice, and unconditional commitment of Jesus go deeper, we are empowered to extend the same to a spouse. A marriage is not built in a moment but through thousands of ordinary daily decisions. Verses referenced: Proverbs 31:10-31 Proverbs 31:10 Proverbs 31:30 Proverbs 31:10-11 Proverbs 5:15-20 Proverbs 2:16-17 Proverbs 25:24 Proverbs 27:15 Ephesians 5:25

    Proverbs: How to Build a Life: How to Build a Marriage

  6. Jul 19

    Proverbs: How to Build a Life: The Hidden Power of Everyday Words

    We continue our series through the book of Proverbs, How to Build a Life, with a message from Proverbs 18:21. Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and Grant Clark walks through what Proverbs teaches about the hidden power of everyday words, spoken or typed, to destroy or to give life, and why the deeper call is not simply to speak better but to let Jesus change the heart our words flow from. A little fun with words to start: pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis (45 letters) Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia (36 letters) The shortest complete sentence: "Go." or "I am." Shortest English word containing all five vowels: Sequoia (7 letters) "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo." In 2013 a PR worker named Justine Sacco posted a twelve word tweet before an eleven hour flight, switched off her phone, and landed to find the sentence had gone viral, cost her job, and redefined her life. Twelve words, less than a minute of typing, changed everything. Proverbs 18:21 says death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit. Our words carry power for good and for evil, power to destroy reputations, end marriages, start feuds, and crush people, and creative power to place dreams in hearts, comfort the brokenhearted, and shape how someone sees their own worth, whether those words are spoken or typed. Grant shares from a heavy season this year, and how a folder of letters of affirmation, read in the early hours of a significant birthday, lifted a real weight and put life back into him. We should not live for these kinds of words, but they are incredible fuel for the journey God has for us. Proverbs 10:11 says the mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life, and Ephesians 4:29 says no corrupt talk should come from our mouths, only what builds someone up and gives grace to those who hear. ## Words of Death "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" is not true. A broken bone heals, but words can hang around for years. "There exists, for everyone, a sentence, a series of words, that has the power to destroy you. Another sentence exists, another series of words, that could heal you. If you're lucky you will get the second, but you can be certain of getting the first." - Philip K. Dick Proverbs 16:27 says a scoundrel's speech is like a scorching fire. A wildfire brings immediate devastation, but its most lethal effects are often invisible, the toxic smoke that damages from the inside long after. Some words work the same way, a gut punch at first, then a slow internal toxicity that scars confidence, self-image, and identity. Proverbs 26:20-21 says that without wood a fire goes out, and without a gossip conflict dies down. A throwaway comment can be the small bit of fuel that grows into a fire that damages families, communities, and churches. Be a church that extinguishes fires rather than one that feeds them. This connects to expressive individualism. Our culture treats our inner feelings as the truest thing about us, meant to be voiced and affirmed publicly. Proverbs pushes back. Our mouths, our tongues, and our speech belong to God, and some things should not be spoken even when they feel natural or normal. Proverbs 10:20 says the tongue of the righteous is pure silver, and Proverbs 12:18 says rash words pierce like a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing. Silver is purified over time in the fire, and in the same way we train and discipline our speech. Psalm 19:14, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, Lord, my rock and my Redeemer. This is not a call to avoid hard conversations, which we often need to give and to receive, but a call against careless, hurtful words that do great damage. Justine Sacco later said she had to reclaim her identity, because she feared that one sentence had replaced everything else that was true about her. Many of us carry a word like that, spoken over us and repeated until it found a home in our hearts, defining us more than anything else. Grant pictures a word written on our forehead that we walk through life believing is the truest thing about us. Jesus wants to redefine us. If you are in Christ, the truest thing about you is that you are a child of God, forgiven, made new, chosen, and called his beloved. ## Blessing and Cursing James 3:5-10 says the tongue is a small part of the body that boasts great things, a fire that no one can tame, and that blessing and cursing come out of the same mouth. This is not magic or manifestation. A curse is a word that wounds, redefines, and strips the nutrients from the soil of a soul. "Blessing is the projection of good into the life of another." - Dallas Willard If blessing is the projection of good into the life of another, then cursing is the projection of bad. Not flattery or well meaning lies, but the truths of God spoken into people so they can live in the reality of who Jesus says they are. ## Words of Life "Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless." - Mother Teresa Proverbs 12:25 says anxiety in the heart weighs it down, but a good word cheers it up. Proverbs 16:24 says pleasant words are like honeycomb, sweet to the taste and healing to the body. Proverbs 25:11 says a timely word is like gold set in silver. The right word at the right time has power to change a life. Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, once read his own obituary when a newspaper confused him with his brother and named him the merchant of death. Disgusted by how he would be remembered, he reassessed his life and left most of his fortune to establish the Nobel Prizes. Words changed his life. ## Words Reveal the Heart Matthew 12:34, out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. Proverbs 4:23, above all else guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. Luke 6:45, a good person produces good out of the good stored up in the heart, and an evil person produces evil, for the mouth speaks from the overflow of the heart. Speech full of gossip, slander, judgment, lying, and complaining reveals what already lives inside, and so does speech full of encouragement, honesty, blessing, thanksgiving, confession, and grace. ## Jesus's Ministry of Words John 1:1-5, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and in him was life. John 1:14, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. John points back to Genesis 1:1, where God creates and orders the world through his word. His claim is that the Word is not just something God speaks but a person, the logos, Jesus Christ, the wisdom of God and the perfect expression of who God is. In Jesus, God has spoken himself to us. In John 6:66-68, after a hard teaching, many of Jesus's disciples turn back. He asks the twelve if they will leave too, and Peter answers, Lord, to whom will we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God. The big idea is not that we should simply speak better or stop sinning with our mouths. James already told us no one can tame the tongue. We do need to train and purify our words, but first we need Jesus to transform our hearts, which is what Proverbs points to again and again. On the cross Jesus bore the condemnation our words deserve, and from the cross he spoke words of forgiveness and life. He does not merely give us better rules. He gives us new hearts and, through his Spirit, teaches us to speak grace, life, and truth. So the invitation is to come to Jesus for a clean heart and a redefined life. For everyone in Christ, God loves you, your sins are forgiven, you are made new, and you are no longer defined by your worst words or your worst moments. You are God's beloved child. Where other words have been burned deep into how we see ourselves, he wants to write a new word over our lives. Verses referenced: Proverbs 18:21 Proverbs 10:11 Ephesians 4:29 Proverbs 16:27 Proverbs 26:20-21 Proverbs 10:20 Proverbs 12:18 Psalm 19:14 James 3:5-10 Proverbs 12:25 Proverbs 16:24 Proverbs 25:11 Matthew 12:34 Proverbs 4:23 Luke 6:45 John 1:1-5 John 1:14 Genesis 1:1 John 6:66-68

    Proverbs: How to Build a Life: The Hidden Power of Everyday Words

  7. Jul 13

    Proverbs: How to Build a Life: Training in Wisdom

    We continue our series through the book of Proverbs, How to Build a Life, with a message from Proverbs 3:1-12. A house is built by wisdom, and it is established by understanding (Proverbs 24:3), and that word for house does not mean a building but a household, a family. Many of us carry gaps in our formation, conversations we wish our parents had had with us about money, marriage, relationships, parenting, decision making, and conflict, and we are left figuring out the big things of life on the go. The book of Proverbs is what we wish we had received. Solomon sits down with his son and shows him the way to live, and each of these fatherly discourses follows a pattern. The Pattern of the Fatherly Discourses: 1) Address 2) Call to listen 3) A Command 4) Reasoning 5) Warning 6) Conclusion Grant Clark walks through the third of the ten discourses and shows us five practical things we can do to train in wisdom. From Proverbs 3:1-12: 1) Trust in the Lord 2) Submit to His Word 3) Be humble 4) Be generous 5) Learn from suffering and hardship Submit to His Word. Proverbs is bookended by wisdom from a father in chapter 1 and a mother in chapter 31, which suggests God's primary way of forming us is meant to be through relationships in the family. Proverbs 3:3 hyperlinks back to the Shema in Deuteronomy 6, where parents internalize God's Word by praying it into the center of their being, writing it on the tablets of their hearts. This is not behavior modification but inside out transformation, and it points ahead to Jesus, who gives us a new heart and makes us new. In a home like this, Scripture sits at the center of both the formal moments and the informal ones, sitting on the couch, driving somewhere, eating breakfast. It is slow, daily, repetitive work that takes a long time before it bears fruit. Trust in the Lord. Proverbs 3:5-7 may be the best known passage in the book, and you could almost boil the whole of Proverbs down to a single phrase: trust God, not yourself. That sounds like heresy in a culture built on following your heart and being true to yourself. It is possible to know God, to be here, to sing the songs, and still be trusting something else with significant parts of who we are. Our ways take us somewhere and our ways turn us into someone, which means our ways determine our destiny. Trust is also relational. You would not follow a stranger who called you over from the bushes, but you would open the door at three in the morning for someone you know and love. Until we know God personally and experientially, it is very hard to put the weight of our lives on him. Be humble. Verse 7 contrasts this with the person who is wise in their own eyes, the one who always thinks they know best, who never asks for help, never prays about a decision, never asks for perspective. Proverbs calls them foolish not because they make bad decisions but because they are out of touch with reality. They lack the fear of the Lord. "The Fear of the Lord is a reverential awe, that produces humble submission, to a loving God." - Skip Heitzig Be generous. Proverbs 3:9-10 turns suddenly to money, which feels out of place until we remember that Jesus taught this way too. Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also (Matthew 6:24). Our wallets and possessions are deeply tied to our hearts, which means our budgets and our spending are clear indicators of what we believe and worship and live for. Our budgets are theological statements. Solomon is not letting his son's practice get disconnected from his faith. Learn from suffering and hardship. Proverbs 3:11-12 prepares us for the reality that we can trust the Lord, walk in wisdom, and do everything right, and suffering and surprises can still find us. Wisdom is not a formula that guarantees we will be exempt from pain. It is what shapes how we walk through it. Suffering is a teacher, and it will either drive us to God in greater surrender and dependence and love, or it will lead us to become bitter and hard hearted and choose a different path. Grant speaks openly here about walking through the hardest year of his life, and about the costly praise of blessing God in the darkest valley. In the midst of it, we do not serve a God who is removed from suffering or who has not suffered himself. "I could never myself believe in God if it were not for the cross. In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it?" - John Stott We never have to doubt God's love and commitment to us, because he has already shown it to us at the cross. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, just as a father disciplines the son in whom he delights (Proverbs 3:12). You are not doomed to repeat what you did not receive. Even if we did not have a perfect father, we have a perfect Father in heaven who wants to teach us, guide us, make us wise, and lead us along the way. Verses referenced: Proverbs 24:3 (CSB) Proverbs 3:1-12 (CSB) Proverbs 3:1-3 (CSB) Proverbs 1:8 (CSB) Deuteronomy 6:4-9 (CSB) Proverbs 3:5-7 (CSB) Proverbs 3:9-10 (CSB) Matthew 6:24 (CSB) Proverbs 3:11-12 (CSB) Proverbs 3:12 (CSB) James 1:5 Job 13:15

    Proverbs: How to Build a Life: Training in Wisdom

  8. Jul 5

    Proverbs: How to Build a Life: The Way of Wisdom

    We begin a new series through the Old Testament book of Proverbs called How to Build a Life, the art of living according to the book of Proverbs. In this opening message from Proverbs 1:1-7, Grant Clark makes the case that in an age drowning in information yet starved for wisdom, the good life is not something we invent from scratch by looking inward, but a skill we receive from God by starting with him. The series began with a diagnosis of why the modern world leaves us disoriented: "For most of us, somewhere along the path to adulthood comes the unsettling realization that most people are winging it. They don't know what they are doing. They don't know where they are going. And they aren't sure what the point is. To some extent this is just the challenge of growing up and figuring out life, but there is something special about the modern world which has disoriented us and our moral imaginations... We lack guiding principles and authority figures to orient us toward the Good Life." - Alan Noble (To Live Well) The first challenge is the information age. We have more content than we could ever consume, but access to information is not the same as wisdom. Data is very different to discernment. "From the dawn of civilization to 2003, five exabytes of data were created. The same amount was created in the last two days." - Eric Schmidt (Former Google CEO) The second challenge is the age of authenticity, in which the old authorities, institutions, and inherited ways of living have all come under suspicion, so we are left trying to build a life from scratch. "Expressive individualism is also iconoclastic because it involves an inherently critical position toward culture. It inclines us to suspect that society is always trying to squeeze us into its mold and make us inauthentic... It sees traditional forms of external authority and social existence as intrinsically oppressive. Therefore, traditional religious institutions and teachings could be seen as less plausible, as hindering innovation, and as a negative, oppressive moral force." - Carl Trueman (The Desecration of Man) So what is a proverb? A proverb is a simple, but insightful saying, meant to train us in moral skillfulness. Proverbs are not life hacks, inspirational quotes, or success formulas. As wisdom literature, a proverb is a principle, not a promise, prophecy, or precept. "A proverb is a short sentence based on long experience." - Miguel de Cervantes And what is wisdom? Wisdom (Hokmah) is "skill in the art of godly living." This wisdom is the skill of living in God's world, according to God's design. "Its function in scripture is to put godliness into work clothes." - Derek Kidner Where is this wisdom found? The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge (Proverbs 1:7; 2:6; 9:10). We start by coming to God as the foundation we build our lives upon, and when we see him rightly, everything else comes into focus. "I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else." - C. S. Lewis (Mere Christianity) But what is the fear of the Lord? Thomas Aquinas described two types of fear: servile fear (the fear of punishment) and filial fear (the fear of offense). Proverbs calls us not to a cowering dread of God but to a reverent, relational fear of him. "The fear of the Lord is a life-rearranging, joyful, awe and wonder before the greatness of who God is and what he has done that deeply humbles us, and makes us come alive." - Tim Keller Proverbs sets before us two ways to live, the way of the wise (humble and teachable) and the way of the fool (proud and resistant to correction), and it invites us to ask God for wisdom (James 1:5; Proverbs 4:5) and to pursue it actively: call out for it, seek it, treasure it, love it, prize it, and hold on to it. Ultimately Proverbs points beyond wisdom to Jesus, the true and wiser King. He does not only teach the way of wisdom, he is wisdom itself (1 Corinthians 1:24; Colossians 2:3), and he saves us from our own foolishness, which is a matter of the heart. Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it (Proverbs 4:23). Verses referenced: Proverbs 1:1-7 (CSB) Proverbs 1:7 (CSB) Proverbs 2:6 (CSB) Proverbs 9:10 (CSB) Proverbs 2:5 (CSB) James 1:5 Proverbs 4:5 Proverbs 3:13-15 (CSB) 1 Corinthians 1:24 (CSB) Colossians 2:3 (CSB) Proverbs 4:23 (NIV)

    Proverbs: How to Build a Life: The Way of Wisdom
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Sunday Sermons from Restored Church San Diego.

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  • Creator
    Restored Church San Diego
  • Years Active
    2016 - 2026
  • Episodes
    300
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Show Website
    Restored Church