SERMON: Proverbs 9:10-18 (Wisdom’s Feast or Folly’s Funeral?)

Over the last several months in the book of Proverbs, Solomon has led us through a battleground of competing voices.

From the very first chapter, two women have been competing for our attention.

Lady Wisdom and Lady Folly. Each of them calls out. Each of them invites.

Each of them spreads a feast. And each of them claims to offer the path that leads to life.

And by now you know that these two women are not just side characters in the story of the book of Proverbs, but they are the book's moral architecture.

They personify the two great paths that are at the heart of the book of Proverbs, but actually also at the heart of reality.

Lady Wisdom represents fearing God, obeying His commandments, submitting to His Word, ordering your life under the rule of God.

She's the embodiment of righteousness and covenant faithfulness. Her way leads to stability in a world that seems constantly broken and fragile.

And eternal life in a world filled with death. Now on the other hand, we have

Lady Folly, who represents life as a law unto yourself.

Doing whatever you want. Whatever pleases you. Refusing God's authority.

Despising His commands. Embracing a libertine existence. Lady Folly in the book of Proverbs is rebellion dressed up in the dresses of liberation.

And her way leads to chaos. Both now and eternally forever.

And what Solomon is dramatizing in these two women is what Paul later describes as the battle between the spirit and the flesh.

And in that way, wisdom resonates with the spirit -formed conscious pulling us towards God, while folly really echoes the cravings of the flesh that is seeking after carnality.

These two women show up in every chapter of the prologue, chapters one through nine. Lady Wisdom is the one who cries out in the streets.

She's the one who raises up her voice in the public square. She's the one who stands in the heights and builds her house with seven pillars and spreads a feast that will strengthen the men of God.

Her call is public, principled, pure. And she's calling out for all of us to fear

God and obey His commands. For as Solomon says in Ecclesiastes, that is the heart of everything.

But Lady Folly appears just as often in this book. Sometimes openly seductive, sometimes tickling lust, sometimes deceptively subtle and always deadly.

She whispers from the darkened doorway. She hides destruction behind saccharine sweetness.

She flatters with smooth words. She preys upon the unsteady and the naive.

Her house looks like it's full of life, and yet it is a graveyard for the soul.

Her feast looks pleasant, and yet it is filled with maggots and worms.

And across these nine chapters, whenever Wisdom rises up to proclaim, come to me, all who will,

Lady Folly also rises up and says, no, come to me. And Proverbs, as I said, dramatizes the spiritual war by placing these two women with these two voices in these two houses, pointing to these two different destinies as a metaphor for that war.

And Solomon, as a good father, is writing this book first and foremost for his son, so that his son would know the voice of wisdom, so that his son would follow

Lady Wisdom, so that his son would avoid the perils of folly, so that his son could make a decision to follow

God in all ways. And today, we're faced with that same decision today, reading this book and reading the end of Proverbs chapter 9 today, which is astounding in and of itself, because we'll be covering nine verses.

But these last nine verses really represent everything that we've been learning so far in the book of Proverbs.

And hopefully, this will be a good recap for where we've been.

Now, it's interesting, I do want to give you a little bit of a look towards the future. I did say that we're starting our Christmas series soon, that'll begin in two weeks, and we're not going to be back in Proverbs again until January, which is crazy to think about.

The book of Proverbs is 31 chapters, so how are we going to do the rest of the 21 chapters that are remaining?

Well, chapters 1 through 9 are verse by verse. The truths that are revealed there can be preached in an expositional way.

But the rest of the book of Proverbs is small statements, just little statements where it's this thing and that thing, this is wise, this is foolish, this is true, this is false.

So what we're going to do when we come back to Proverbs in the new year is we're going to organize every single one of the verses in these 21 chapters into categories, and we're going to preach miniseries on those.

A miniseries on manhood, a miniseries on womanhood, a miniseries on government, a miniseries on the home, a miniseries on education, a miniseries on worship and obedience.

So we're going to go through and do those in the beginning of the year, but right now we're going to close out the expositional part of this book in verses 10 through 18, and we're going to look at four things.

We're going to look at the benefits of wisdom. We're going to look at the beguiling nature of the woman,

Lady Folly. We're going to look at the bondage of the will, and we're going to look at the boundless love of our

Savior. So if you will join me, Proverbs 9, 10 through 18, as we close out this chapter and we prepare for what the

Lord has for us next. Proverbs 9, 10 through 18, I'll begin.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the

Holy One is understanding. For by me your days will be multiplied, and years of life will be added to you.

If you are wise, you are wise for yourself, and if you scoff, you alone will bear it. The woman of Folly is boisterous.

She is naive and knows nothing. She sits at the doorway of her house on a seat by the high places of the city, calling to those who pass by, who are making their paths straight.

Whoever is naive, let him turn and hear. And to him who lacks understanding, she says, Stolen water is sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.

But he does not know that the dead are there, that her guests are in the depths of Sheol.

That's the word of the Lord. Father, we thank you. We thank you for this book.

We thank you for the fact that it teaches us so much about how to live a life of wisdom, how to live a life that truly matters, how to live a life of obedience, how to now as Christians who are indwelled by the

Spirit of God to follow you in every aspect of our life. Lord, the very fact that you're called

Lord means that you have ultimate authority, that you're Lord over everything, over every square inch of the cosmos in our life, over our personality and our opinions, over our behavior and our obedience.

Lord, would you help us as we grapple with the truths from this book that we would live a well -ordered,

Christian, holy, and obedient life in honor and service to our

King. And Lord, we thank you that you have laid out so many truths in this book so that we could learn them,

Lord. It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen. The passage begins this way.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.

For by me days will be multiplied and years will be added to you. Those are some incredible benefits to wisdom.

And that's our first section, the benefits of wisdom. Solomon here is talking about what is the bedrock of all godly living.

What are the blessings that are going to come? The benefits that are going to come to the one who lives a life filled with wisdom.

And he begins with this word, beginning. That's the same word that he uses in Proverbs 1 -5 in how he begins the book.

And that word in Hebrew is reshit, which means the foundation of.

So the beginning of wisdom, or the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, means that the foundation of your life is the fear of the

Lord. That's the first principle, that's the starting point, is fear God.

Wisdom does not arise out of natural intelligence. Wisdom does not arise out of IQ scores.

Wisdom does not arise out of master's degrees and doctorate degrees. Wisdom arises not from your personality or your life experience or your intuition.

Wisdom begins with, founded on, rooted in the fear of God. The holy, sovereign, all -knowing, and all -righteous

God who brings life into all things. This fear is not a terror to the believer.

This fear is a awe and reverence and a wholly overwhelmed -ness at who

God is. It's the posture of the heart that bows down under God's authority, that treats his word as truth incarnate, that obeys him without delay or negotiation.

It's letting God define your morality instead of your appetites and impulses.

It's letting God's scripture correct you, even when your emotions are fighting back and saying,

I don't feel like it. It's treating God's commandments as though they are the path to life and not as burdens that you're called to manage.

And this fear reaches down into the most ordinary parts of our life and it shapes who we are in everything.

And it shapes who we are when our anger flares up or when our jealousy is provoked. And it shapes who we are and calls us to repentance when any sin threatens our obedience.

It governs how you treat your spouse, even when you feel wronged. It steadies your parenting when your patience has run thin.

No one has ever experienced this, I know. It guides how you handle your finances when the pressures are mounting and the bills are not getting paid.

It disciplines your eyes when the temptation appears on the screen. It humbles you into repentance when you sin.

It moves you towards reconciliation when a conflict arises. The fear of the

Lord is not an occasional spiritual concept. It is the foundation of everything.

Solomon even adds that the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. So the fear of the

Lord is the beginning of everything in your life. And then from that comes knowledge of the Lord. And that knowledge of the

Lord leads to discernment in all things. That word knowledge, da 'at, speaks of relational, covenantal knowledge.

It means growing in awareness of who God is through His self -revelation. So what this means is as you fear

God at the core of your being, you learn who He is. And this just makes sense.

In all relationships, when we bring awe and reverence into a relationship, knowledge of that person comes next.

When I first met my wife, I wanted to be around her. I wanted to talk to her. I wanted to get to know her.

My awe of this beautiful shining light in a dark jail where we met.

We met in jail, if you didn't know that. We were both guards. Many people heard that joke, but there's visitors today, so there you go.

Welcome to the Shepherd's Church. I met my wife in jail. But that light that I saw,

I just wanted to be around her. I wanted to get to know her, and knowledge of her started flowing from my awe of her.

In the same way, our awe of God, but even more so, leads us to the knowledge of God.

And it helps us learn His character and His ways and His judgments and His promises and His holiness.

And it begins to change us. That knowledge of who He is becomes translated into us as understanding and discernment and sound judgment.

As I begin to know God, and as you begin to know God, it changes your character.

His character begins pressing into you. That means that the more that you get to know this

God, the more your instincts will be shaped by Him. The more you will begin to see and sense what is foolish and what is wise.

The more you will begin to detect temptation, even when it's disguised as a good opportunity.

You will become skilled at identifying sin before you have to clean up the disaster that comes later.

You can distinguish the call of wisdom from the whispers of folly.

In the same way that if someone calls me on the phone, and I know that it's not my wife, they could say that it's

Shannon. They could be calling from her number, but I know her voice. And I know that there's very few people in New England that can replicate it.

In the same way, the more we get to know God, the more we know His voice, the more everything else comes into focus.

The more we understand what foolishness and sin is, the more we understand what wisdom and holiness is.

When you know God rightly, you stop falling for everything else. And this comes with a promise.

Solomon says that if you fear the Lord, if that's the foundation of your life, and then from that you're learning who

God is and knowing who God is, then your days will be multiplied and the years of life will be added to you.

Now, Solomon, in this sense, is not promising a trouble -free life. Many unstable charlatans have latched onto this passage and preached a kind of health and wealth gospel where if you just believe, then you won't die until you're 100 years old or whatever they say.

What about missionaries that get killed in the service of Christ? What about women who have died of cancer in their 20s but were faithful believers in Jesus?

What about infants who die? This is not what this passage is saying. It is not guaranteeing that we have a long life if we are obedient.

It is not flattening down the world like that. But what it is saying is that when you fear God and when you have the knowledge of God, then those self -inflicted wounds that likely will shorten your life and hollow out your life will not be involved.

Wisdom will keep you from the kind of sexual sin that will destroy a family. Wisdom will keep you from the anger that corrodes your relationship.

Wisdom will keep you from the laziness and slothfulness that will sabotage your waistline and give you a heart attack one day because our bodies are meant to be in motion.

Wisdom keeps you from foolishly spending that will lead you to financial bondage. Wisdom keeps you from addictions that will consume your strength.

Wisdom keeps you from the pride that blinds you and isolates you. The principle is that sin steals your years, but wisdom stretches them out.

Wisdom multiplies your days because it guards your life. And even when hardship comes because it will, wisdom strengthens the kind of days that you will live and sweetens the days that you live.

It gives you a stability in the chaos of life. It gives you clarity when confusion arises.

It gives you courage when fear threatens your safety. And it gives you endurance when suffering lingers.

Wisdom fills your days with the nearness of God and God's guidance and God's blessings.

And how could it not then sweeten your life and sweeten your days?

That's the benefit of wisdom. That it brings you into reverent submission with the Holy God.

It deepens your knowledge of reality so that you know how to live and you know how to walk and you know how to avoid sin.

And in that, it sweetens your life, all the days of your life. Sounds great. Why do we so infrequently pursue it?

If wisdom gives you God and God gives you life, then we ought to pursue it with all of our heart.

But that's just the problem now, isn't it? Because this passage tells us what so many pursue.

And that's the beguiling of this woman, Lady Folly. Solomon says in verse 12,

If you are wise, you are wise for yourself, and if you scoff, you alone will bear it. The woman of Folly is boisterous, he says.

She's naive and she knows nothing. She sits at the doorway of her house on a seat by the high places of the city.

She calls out to those who pass by, who are trying to make their path straight, no less.

Solomon does not want his son to be impressed with Lady Folly because Lady Folly is his own carnal flesh.

He wants him to be warned by her, and he draws her in plain, albeit metaphorical lines, so that he will not be fooled by her makeup.

First he tells her that she's boisterous. She's loud.

She's unruly. She's noisy. Her volume is a part of her weapon. She has no restraint in her speech, no modesty in her demeanor.

She's the opposite of what a biblical woman is. No brake pedals on her desire.

She's the kind of woman, and more broadly speaking, the kind of influence that loves attention and refuses correction.

She talks more than she listens. She shouts more than she studies. She reacts more than she reflects.

Folly, in this sense, must be loud because the truth will expose it.

In our day, you see her, Lady Folly, in the personalities who dominate social media with outrage, vulgarity, and drama.

You see her in the woman who cannot live without being seen, who must post, flaunt, stir, and shock.

Folly is always noisy because noise distracts us from how empty it actually is.

Solomon also adds that she's naive and knows nothing. This does not mean that she's innocent.

This is not that kind of naivete. It means that she's ignorant, she's stubborn, and she's dangerous.

She has no true grasp of God. Righteousness and holiness or consequences are not in her vocabulary.

She plays with fire while denying that the fire burns. She speaks confidently about things that she's never studied.

She mocks truth that she's never understood and invites others into her sin. She parrots the slogans, follow your heart, live your truth.

We're all good. Do what makes you happy. With no regard for scripture, no fear of judgment, no interest in wisdom, she cries out across all ages for you to come.

And men follow her because of her ignorance, because her ignorance gives them permission for them to be ignorant as well, like a bull led off to the slaughter.

Her voice lands because it harmonizes so clearly with our flesh. She speaks the very lies that our sinful heart craves and that we are already predisposed and inclined towards gratifying.

She is ignorant, and she draws us because we are ignorant. Her strategy in all of this, she sits at the doorway of her house, on a seat and at the high places of the city, which

I think is a fascinating description of her because she's not hidden in the alleyways. She places herself in the public view where normal life and spiritual life coalesce and intersect.

The doorway is where a man decides how he's going to go. The high places in that time is the places of worship.

So Lady Folly has parked herself at the crossroads of your life and of your worship where she can poach you.

And remember what it says. She poaches those who are on the straight path.

She poaches those who are trying to follow wisdom. She poaches those who are trying to pursue the things of God.

She placed herself at the high places. She placed herself at her doorpost. She placed herself there to trap and to bait.

It says that she calls out to those who pass by who are making their paths straight. Notice who she targets.

Again, she's not hunting down just the openly rebellious. She's hunting down you. You and I.

We're the target. Those who are trying to walk by the wisdom of God. Those who are trying to go to the house of God.

Those who are trying to live out obedience to God. That's who Lady Folly is targeting.

If you didn't know that you have a target on your chest, here you go. And temptation often intensifies as we try to obey.

Have you ever noticed that? The more you try to obey the Lord, isn't it interesting how temptation will often get ratcheted up in just that moment?

You try your best to clean up your language. I remember when I got out of the military and I became a

Christian, I was like, I can't talk this way anymore. And then as soon as I make that decision,

I'm saying this and I'm saying that. And it happens in every aspect. The moment you confess that you shouldn't be watching pornography, isn't it interesting that your flesh says, but just one more look.

The moment you resolve to be honest with money is the moment where you're most susceptible to the small compromises.

The moment you decide to lead your home. The moment you decide to lead your family. And family worship is the moment where you and your family getting to an argument and everybody goes to bed annoyed and angry.

Isn't that interesting? I've talked to so many people who say, we're going to go back to church and then something happens.

And they don't go back to church. She hunts those who are on the right road, trying to pull them off with sideways glances and soft voices.

If you listen to her message, whoever is naive, let him turn in here.

Then you will lack understanding. If you let that voice win, then you will be consumed in sin because that's her goal.

She uses the same invitation as Lady Wisdom. She copies the language of wisdom, but in the reverse direction.

And that's how sin works. It rarely ever advertises itself as rebellion. It always advertises itself as pleasure.

Sin always sells itself as wisdom and goodness dressed up in cheap grace.

And in our day, this comes in so many forms. God wants me to be happy, doesn't he?

We love each other. Doesn't that count when you're sleeping with your girlfriend? It's just online.

It doesn't hurt anybody, right? Lady Folly is exploitive.

She preys on your stupidity and gullibility. And don't take that offensively because we're all stupid.

That's why the Bible calls us sheep. Because we are not wise by nature.

We are fools. She looks for the simple, the inexperienced, the wounded, the tired, the lonely, and she bends her voice to manipulate them.

That's why she unveils her slogan, Stolen water is sweet and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.

What a statement! She's saying that stolen water is sweet.

What is stolen water? It's a metaphor for drinking what God has not given you.

Adultery, pornography, emotional entanglements, any kind of tackling or taking on your self intimacy that is not yours, any kind of pleasure, whether it be in food or in drink or in anything else that is not from God for you is drinking stolen water.

And the stolen water might go down sweet at first, but it is like drinking an ocean of wrath.

It will poison and sour your stomach and it will turn your guts inside out.

That is what sin does. It hides the bitter pill inside a thin veneer of chocolate coating.

She says that the bread that is eaten in secret is sweet. That's hidden sin.

That's the things that you hide in the caverns of your heart that you don't let anyone else know. And you downplay it because no one does know.

The deleted search histories, the secret accounts, the quiet compromise, the lie that you told that you got away with.

All of those things are the secret bread that's eaten and we think that it's not a big deal because no one saw it and no one found out about it.

It's like the married man who flirts and says it's harmless or a teenager who hides their apps in whatever way that they know how to do that.

A wife seeking emotional support from a man who's not her husband. A businessman altering the numbers because no one's going to find out.

All of that is Lady Folly tricking you and scheming you and polluting you so that what the end result of you will be is not sweetness but bitterness and death.

And that is the destination that she takes us to. It says, but he does not know.

Who is he? He's the one who listens to Lady Folly. He's the one who obeys her voice. He's the one who follows her into her cavern of death.

It says he does not know that the dead are there. That her guests are in the depths of Sheol.

Her house looks like a party on the outside but it's a morgue from within.

Her bedroom is not a place of life. It is a place of death. And those who go down to her do not come back the same.

Something in them dies. Either it's a marriage, a reputation, a ministry, a friendship, a conscience.

And sometimes even the body follows where our bodies are affected by our sin. Sheol was the realm of the dead.

And Solomon wants his son to understand that following this woman, this beguiling woman, does not lead to life.

It leads to a graveyard. And that's what makes her so wicked. That's what makes her loudness and her noise and her boisterous and her beguiling and her persuasion and her seduction and her excitement attractive but deadly.

And she is everything that our age celebrates. And we could preach 10 ,000 sermons on the application of that.

Expressive, self -defined, sexually liberated, autonomous, authentic, and everything that God condemns.

The practical question that becomes painfully direct in this passage is where is

Lady Folly calling you? What areas of your life is the smell of her ovens attracting you in?

Where is it? Is it the shows that you watch that make sin look normal and holiness strange?

Is it the websites you linger on? Is it the relationships that pull you away from obedience? Is it the friend group that causes you to think less of the things of God?

Is it how you talk to your spouse or your elders or your church? Is it the lack of prayer?

She is at the heart of every voice, platform, pattern, and habit that encourages you to ignore

God and indulge yourself. Where is that smell pulling you?

And here's the problem. As the reformers used to call it, the bondage of the will.

None of us actually have resisted her. The path of Lady Wisdom is narrow, so narrow in fact that only one crossed it.

The path of Lady Wisdom is costly and requires a heart that fears the Lord. And since the fall of Adam, there is no heart that fears the

Lord. So whether we like it or not, all of us have given in to Lady Folly. All of us have indulged her messaging.

Scripture is unanimous about this. Romans 3 .11. There's no one who understands. There's no one who seeks after God.

There's no one who has a clean heart, who listens to the things of God, who the fear of God is at the center of their being, and who the knowledge of God is coming out of that so that they know how to obey the things of God.

None of us have done that because all of us have fallen short of the glory of God. None of us have obeyed.

That's why Jesus says that we're slaves to sin. That's why Paul says in Ephesians 2 that we're dead and are trespasses in sin.

That according to the course of this world. That's why Jeremiah says of our human heart that is more deceitful than anything else.

It's desperately sick. Who can even know it? That's why Proverbs 12 says that the fool does what is right in his own eyes.

That's all of us. That's why Ecclesiastes 9 .3 says that we are full of evil.

Which means that Lady Folly doesn't have to chase you.

You chase her. And you've chased her your whole life in a variety of different ways, and in a variety of different vices, and a variety of different things.

We are not the spiritually undecided. We are not the innocent wanderers who occasionally make wrong turns.

We are people who feasted in the halls of Lady Folly, and who deserve the death she brings.

And here is where we get to what Luther calls, incurvitus in se, which means the natural curve of our will towards slavery.

Because like Luther, we must come to terms with the fact that our will is actually in bondage.

We can't please God. Our will is dead. We can't obey Him. When anger flares up, your heart does not want to crucify it.

You want to savor it. When money feels tight, your instinct is not faithfulness, it's fear.

When authority corrects you, your reflex is defensiveness, not repentance. When God's Word confronts you, you explain it away like I do, instead of obeying it.

When your schedule fills up, the first thing you do is you drop communion with God. You drop prayer. You drop fellowship.

We all do this. When conflict arises, our heart prefers resentment over reconciliation.

No one drifts into wisdom because no one drifts into fearing

God. And a man left to himself may become sophisticated and successful, but you will never become wise.

You will never fear God. You will never have discernment. You will never end up at the things of God if you are drifting by your own power and strength.

That's why when Solomon says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, it means to us that in our own strength, in our own power, we will not fear

God. We will not have discernment. We will not have life.

And we will end up in the deathbeds of Lady Folly en route to eternal

Sheol. But this is where also that we see the hope.

And this is the very gospel that we proclaim. That it is not our strength, and it is not our will, and it is not our obedience that saves us.

Because if left to you and I, we would all be damned. If left to you and I, we would always choose sin.

If left to you and I, we would always choose Lady Folly. And yet, for all of us fools, and for all of us philanderers, and for all of us who are naive and foolish and dumb,

Christ, the very wisdom of God, came. And He came as pure wisdom because we're not wise.

And He came as pure wisdom because we didn't walk the path of wisdom. That's why

I said earlier that the path of Lady Wisdom is so narrow that only one walked it, and that was

Jesus. And He's the one we rejected. And He's the one we scoffed at.

And He's the one that we ran from into the arms of Lady Folly, away from the house of wisdom.

But here's the good news of the gospel, that even in our hatred of God, and even in our hatred of the things of God, even in our rejection of Christ, He saved us out of His grace.

He came down to be life while we were death. He came down to delight the

Father's will when we broke it. He came down to walk in perfect reverence to God when you and I were blasphemers.

He came down as we despised God's commands. He came down and He embraced them.

He came down and stood on the foundation of righteousness as we were asleep in the beds of Lady Folly.

He is the wise Son who never walked through the doorway of death until that is we killed

Him. But even in that, that was foolishness to man but wisdom from God because in His sacrificial death for us,

He traded places with us. Because every one of us who deserved death,

Christ died for us. For all of us who were foolish, Christ paid for our foolishness.

For all of us who were broken, Christ took on our brokenness. For all of us who were cursed,

Christ took on our curse. For all of us who were guilty, Christ took on our guilt. For all of us who were ashamed of our sin,

Christ took our shame. For all of us, in every malady of our heart, in every infirmity in our being,

Christ died for His people so that He could trade places with us so that we could receive

His wisdom, so that we could receive His wholeness, His health, His goodness, His innocence, so that we could receive

His life. No one in this room deserved life. We all deserve death. And yet because of Jesus Christ, we now have life through faith in Him.

And I'll end by saying this. The late John MacArthur, I watched a video of him talking to a little girl who was 11 years old,

I think. And she said, how do I know that I'm a Christian? And he said, and he smiled like a grandfather.

And he said, do you believe in Jesus? And she said, yes. He said, do you believe that Jesus Christ died for your sins?

She said, yes. Do you believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead in order to pay for your sins?

She said, yes. Do you believe that He rose again and now He reigns? She said, yes. Do you believe that He sent

His Holy Spirit inside of you and now He lives in you? She said, yes. Do you believe that He's Lord over all?

She said, yes. And he said, my dear sweet girl, you are a Christian. And none of us got into faith by our works.

But all of us got this unimaginable and astounding grace because of His.

Lady Folly and Lady Wisdom call out to one man. And only one man answered the call righteously, and that was

Jesus. And all of us today stand in the shadow of Him and stand in the grace of Him and stand in union with Him.

So if that doesn't get your heart feeling grateful, then I would ask you for the rest of the service to pray that God would wake you up.

Let's pray. None of us deserved your kindness,

God. None of us deserved your grace. None of us deserved your love.

None of us deserved your covenant kindness. None of us deserved any good thing from you because all of us have sinned against you, fallen short of the glory of God.

The wages of sin is death. And yet this free gift of God is life eternal through Jesus Christ, our

Lord. Lord, we thank you that you have taken our sin. Lord, we thank you that these first nine chapters of Proverbs, with all of the commands and all of the

Spirit -inspired wisdoms and statements and precepts that you have given to us, that we have not obeyed, that that record is not held against us because it's your

Son's record that was given to us by your kindness and love. Lord, thank you that by nothing that we've contributed, you have saved us.

And Lord, thank you that you've washed us white as snow through the precious blood of your Son, Jesus Christ.

Lord, help us as we take up our cross now and as we seek to follow you now.

As saved people who've been given the Spirit, now, Lord, help us grow. Help us grow to fear

God above all things. Help us grow in the fear of God to understand the knowledge of God.

And in the knowledge of God, help us to grow in the wisdom of God, knowing that we can't do that work without you, but now that we have you, now that your

Spirit dwells within our chest, that we may do that work. Lord, help us to do that work as an act of gratitude to you, as an act of worship to you, as an act of growth in you and Spirit.

Would you sanctify us so that we can do that better? It's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen. Will you stand with me as we declare the gospel together through song by singing,