Proverbs 9:1-6 (In The House Of Lady Wisdom)

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Thank you for subscribing to the Shepherds Church podcast. This is our Lord's Day Sermon. We pray that as we declare the

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Word of God that you would be encouraged, strengthened in your faith, and that you would catch a greater vision of who

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Christ is. May you be blessed in the hearing of God's Word, and may the Lord be with you.

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When Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin left the safety of the Shire, they thought that they were ready for a world of adventure.

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They had food in their packs, they had songs on their lips, and the thrill of an adventure in their hearts.

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But the old forest, that's where they were at before they reached Rivendell, doesn't honor merriment and cheer.

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Its shadows swallowed them whole, in fact, and soon they stood beneath the brooding boughs of old man

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Willow, an angry tree who was determined to swallow them whole. As they lay asleep upon the wild, wild tree, it struck them.

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Its roots lashed out and seized them, and one hobbit was swallowed into its trunk.

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Another was crushed against its side, and others were penned helpless. They screamed, but no one came.

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They struggled, but the tree only tightened its massive grip, and there, beneath those roots, four small little knives began to wither in the darkness.

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And what I find so fascinating is, before they had done anything, the whole tale almost ended because they fell asleep on the wrong tree.

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Before the ring, before the great adventure that would go towards Mordor, it was about to all get smothered in the darkness before any adventure had even began, and that is what doom feels like.

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That is what folly feels like. It binds us, it squeezes us, it chokes the life out of us, and unless someone stronger than you comes along and sets you free, you will not escape.

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In the Lord of the Rings, suddenly, a very powerful voice was heard in the distance, breaking upon the forest.

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It was the strong man who had come to rescue them, and it was none other than old Tom Bombadil, who was a picture of Christ in Tolkien's world, the commander over the trees in the forest, the light -hearted, singing man who was totally free, striding into the darkness, commanding the trees to release its prey, and they obeyed him instantly, and his first impulse for those little hobbits was to invite them into his home, and there's an entire chapter called

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In the House of Tom Bombadil, a chapter that the movies left out, a chapter that I believe is one of the most glorious chapters in the book, because in Tom Bombadil's house, no shadow can enter, no black rider can pass.

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Within those walls, there was bread and laughter and meat and safety, and all danger was left on the outside, and to me, this is a great picture of Proverbs 9, 1 through 6, that we have been invited into a similar kind of house, but an even better house, the house of Lady Wisdom.

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Like those little hobbits, we should have been suffocated and crushed by every peril that accosted us, and yet one stronger than us, our

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Tom Bombadil, but better than that, came and saved us and brought us into the house of Lady Wisdom.

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So if you will, turn with me as we're going to look at this house that Wisdom built, as we're going to look at the lavish feast that Wisdom put upon her table, as we look at the call that Wisdom cries out to those of us to come to her home, and as we see how all of these things will find their fulfillment in Christ, in Christ alone.

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So if you will turn with me to Proverbs 9, 1 through 6. If you're wondering why

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I skipped the final verses in chapter 8, I don't know.

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I thought we were finished with chapter 8, and I proceeded accordingly. So next week we will finish chapter 8.

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So if you were a part of this lottery to determine how many verses I'm going to preach, curveball to you.

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Proverbs 9, 1 through 6. Wisdom has built her house.

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She has hewn out her seven pillars. She has prepared her food.

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She has mixed her wine. She has also set her table.

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She has sent out her maidens. She calls from the tops of the heights of the city.

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Whoever is naive, let him turn in here. To him who lacks understanding, she says, come eat of my food and drink of the wine that I have mixed.

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Forsake your folly and live. And proceed in the way of understanding.

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Let us pray. Lord, I pray as we view your text this morning,

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Proverbs 9, 1 through 6, that we would understand what Solomon, by the

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Spirit's authority and authorship, was telling us to do.

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To leave our naivete and our folly and our foolishness to go and live in the house of God.

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Lord, help us to see these things. Help us to have joy in these things. And help us,

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Lord, ultimately to raise our eyes above the hills to see where our help comes from. And it comes from the

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Lord. Lord, we ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen. When Solomon tells us that wisdom built her house, he is communicating that every life is going to live somewhere.

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Every life is going to live in some sort of building. Some lives are going to live in the foundationless bungalows that have built their life upon the sand that cannot weather a summer squall.

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And other lives are going to be built upon wisdom, built upon the rock that the storm and the tempest will not destroy.

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And it is obvious that Solomon would describe the home that wisdom itself would build as a home of seven pillars.

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Free -flowing wine and a super abundance of good meat and bread.

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Because a life built on wisdom will abound with the blessings of God.

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When Solomon talks about wisdom, he's not describing a shack that was pieced together with rotting wood and tarp.

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He's not sketching out a homeless encampment down by the river that could be swept away with the heavy evening rain.

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He is portraying wisdom as a palace to us, as a castle that is strong and permanent and immovable that will be a safe haven for you and I to dwell.

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He is telling us just by the words that he uses to describe it, that wisdom is not fragile, that wisdom is not temporary, that the implementation of wisdom is a house, is a fortress, is a stronghold for your life raised by stone, not what are those houses, the prefab houses called, modular that fall apart in 20 years, not that.

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This is a house that was built and resting upon seven pillars of perfection. And if you're a builder, this is not a literal seven pillars, that seven is somehow the magic number for a strong house.

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Seven is the number of God's perfections. So this is a house that is built perfectly strong and secure for the people of God.

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And in case we forget what wisdom is, I want to remind us every week, wisdom is knowing and doing the will of God.

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Wisdom is obeying every command of God with joy. Wisdom is something that trickles down into every corner of our life, which leads us into many blessings.

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And today we're going to consider the blessing of being in wisdom's house. When Solomon tells us that wisdom has built a house, he's talking about a life that is built on wisdom.

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That's what the metaphor is communicating to us. A life that knows how to live in God's world by the authority of God's word, so that our life is in fellowship with him.

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And while this is subtle in this passage, it is not an accident of chance that this home was built by seven pillars, which

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I said, again, the number of God's perfection. In scripture, seven is the number of completeness and perfection.

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The pillars are images of strength and permanence. So at a bare minimum, what we're seeing here in this metaphor of wisdom building a house is that God is inviting us, those of us who would take up wisdom, to live in the strength and the permanence that only

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God can provide. But it's even more than that, because there's also temple language that is built into this passage as well.

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When Solomon's hearers heard him talking about wisdom's house, they would have heard a couple things.

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The first thing they would have heard is that it's a house held up by seven pillars, which would have reminded them of the great house in the country of Judah that was held up by two strong pillars,

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Jasonth and Boaz. That was the temple of the living God. So when they heard that here is a house that is held up by seven pillars, they would have immediately thought of the temple, but greater than the temple.

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That house is held up by two. This house is held up by seven. And you'll remember that the temple was known as the house of God.

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And here you have wisdom, which is an attribute of God building a and you have nothing less than the promise that a greater temple is going to be built, whereby the people of God can come in and live.

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It's a very subtle, but a very poignant, Christo -centric reality that's embedded into this passage, that one day a greater house than Solomon's temple will be built.

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And I find it beautiful that Solomon's the one who wrote this. He just spent years of his life gathering and taking the resources that were gathered for him, building a two -pillared house for God.

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And in this passage, he's even saying that God is going to build a seven -pillared house one day that's even greater and better than that little house that I put together in Jerusalem.

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It's the same Solomon who, when he prayed, the highest heavens all the way down to Sheol could not contain me, much less this little house that I have built.

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So here you have Solomon in his wisdom saying that a greater house is coming for the people of God, where they will live in God's wisdom, where they will live in God's presence.

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What is the temple but the presence of God on earth? So if you're being invited into a seven -pillared house, you're being invited not into the courtyard of the house.

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You're being invited into the deepest recesses of the house to know this

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God. So when Solomon says that for those who would receive the call of wisdom, you will come into a seven -pillared house, he's saying nothing less than you will come into relationship with this

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God that the high priest could only come into for one day, once a year.

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You will get to live there. You will get to eat there. You will get to sleep there.

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It will be your abode. What an astounding promise here as early as the

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Old Testament. And in that, we see it's not just a metaphor. It's a theological truth claim that God is going to live with his people and enjoy him forever if they will build their life upon wisdom, if they will build their life upon the rock.

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In opposition to that, you have the fool, the disobedient and the derelict, the sluggard who pitches their tent in the gutter, who throw together their cardboard palace under the bridge.

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And that kind of life that leaves you exposed to every element.

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Wisdom raises a palace for the people of God that cannot be shaken, but folly and disobedience allows you to rot away in the elements with no covering.

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I want you to imagine it like this. A master builder constructs a sprawling mansion for you to live in.

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He spares no expense. He lays the finest stone and even installs a heated floor in your bathroom, polishes every countertop.

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And when it is complete, he hands you the key and all you have to do is walk in.

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But for us who are addicted to vices and idols and sin, what we do instead is we sleep under the bridge.

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We let the weather soak us. We let the cold bite us. We let the snow bury us. We let the filth cling to us.

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We let our hair become knotted and mats and clothes riddled with holes, all while the key sits inside of our very pocket.

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Lady Wisdom calls out to us, and yet we often do not go in. And when we do that, we end up in the squalors of sin and the encampments of evil and the dilapidated buildings of the devil.

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And all of us need to choose this day what kind of a home that we're going to patron and live in.

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Are we going to live in the homeless slums of sin, or are we going to sleep in the beds of the house of Lady Wisdom and feast at the tables of wisdom?

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Let me give you a few examples of how this can play out, because this is the choice before us. This is the call that Lady Wisdom sends out.

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In marriage, you can choose the homeless encampment of sin when you let your marriage rot with bitterness and infighting and backbiting.

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Or you can live in the house of Lady Wisdom when a husband and wife serve one another in peace and unity of Christ.

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In your family, you can live in the slums of sin when you become a father who provokes your children to anger or a derelict father in discipline.

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Or you can live in the house of Lady Wisdom, patiently training your children how to fear and obey the

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Lord. You can choose the slums of sin as a man when you're enslaved to pornography.

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Or you can choose the house of wisdom as a man satisfied with the wife of his youth or the prospect of the future wife.

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You can choose the household of sin as a family when you treat the

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Lord's day as common, that it is an optional thing for you to do, instead of the thing for you to do, to come to the house of God and feast at the

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Lord's table. These metaphors are there. Or you can choose the house of wisdom, gathering around the word and sacrament, resting in God's grace and design.

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The homeless encampment of sin is a Christian who neglects scripture and prayer.

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A woman chasing likes and worldly applause online. An employee wasting time and cutting corners.

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A family burning money on greed and entertainment. A body wasted on cake, drink, and indulgence.

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A life frittered away in trivialities when the house of wisdom is for all who would follow

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God and obey his commandments. Each of these choices, or each of our life's choices, has an address on it.

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You're either going to be sleeping in a van down by the river, or you're going to be dwelling in the house of wisdom.

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And it is here that I would remind us, how do we get into the house of wisdom? God has told you, know his will.

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What is the will of the Lord? It's revealed to us in holy scripture. And then not only knowing the will of God, but having the courage to do the will of God, to submit to it, to bring your life in conformity to it, under the authority of what scripture says, to obey it, to beat your flesh into submission until it follows you, to drag your sins to the cross and live by the power of the spirit.

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That's how you live in the house of wisdom. And the keys have been given to you and are in your hand.

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So therefore don't accept the squalor of sleeping on newspaper and being covered by cardboard when the

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Lord has offered you His house. That's the first lesson

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I want us to learn is that wisdom has built a house and it is available to you. The call has gone out to you and you must respond to that call.

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The second thing that I want us to see here in this passage is that the feast that wisdom gives is lavish.

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You are not invited into an empty house just in order to get out from the elements and out from underneath the rain.

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That would be more blessing than what we deserve. Yet we're given feasting in this passage. Notice the text says that she has prepared her food.

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It does not say that she's laid out scraps of bread and lukewarm water.

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It says that she's prepared her food and mixed her wine. These words matter in the ancient world because in the

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Hebrew, the English says she prepared her food, but in the Hebrew it says she has slaughtered her slaughter.

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I love that because when it's talking about her food preparations, unless you're a radical vegan thinking that every head of lettuce you cut is a homicide, she is talking about good food.

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She's not making tofu lollipops and 25 cent ramen packs. She's butchering the fattened calf.

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She's seasoning it, roasting it, preparing it for the table so that everyone at her table has a tomahawk porterhouse.

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Amen. And this is not only the meat.

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It says that she has mixed her wine, which means that she's brought the good stuff.

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In the ancient world, potable water was hard to come by, especially for peasants. So one of the ways that you would drink potable water and disinfect your water is by watering wine down to just the point where the alcohol would disinfect the water and make it palatable.

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But really you don't have wine anymore when you do that. This is not what

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Lady Wisdom has set before you when it says she mixed her wine. What this is referring to is a pure wine that is mixed with spices, honey, or blended vintages.

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That was a kind of drink that was reserved only for royal banquets and the most important celebrations.

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And taken together, this seasoned slaughtered meat along with the mixed spiced wine, what you're talking about here is a meal that only the richest people in the ancient world could have ever afforded.

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Meat was very costly in those days because when you slayed an animal, the way you're thinking about it in an agrarian society is

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I'm not only slaying Bessie, but all of her future offspring and generations of offspring in that one animal.

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So to slaughter a fattened calf was one of the most costly foods that you could put in your mouth.

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Spiced wine was even more rare because it was made of the kind of ingredients that ordinary people like us did not have access to.

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To hear both of these things coming together in a single meal is almost to suspend belief.

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This would be the kind of meal that when we watch those videos on YouTube and it looks ridiculous.

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$10 ,000 burger, gold flake burger. This is kind of like on that level.

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It would be like me saying to you that, hey, when you come over to my house today, this is not going to happen.

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But it'd be like me saying, when you come over to my house today, I'm going to serve you an A5 Wagyu ribeye.

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A5 is the best. And I'm going to pair it with a lovely Chateau Petrus, making the meal that I serve just to you, just your plate and your cup, about $5 ,000.

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And we're going to be doing the same thing for dinner. And we're going to be doing the same thing for breakfast. And we're going to be doing the same thing perpetually.

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So just grab your bags and move over because it's about to be a party for your senses.

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And you would immediately think this is the best meal that I've ever had in my life. And now I get to do this every single day, sleeping on the finest mattress.

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This is sort of like what we're talking about here. This is the picture that Solomon is painting. That wisdom's feast is not a moldy crust of folly.

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It's not the gutter food that's eaten in shame. It's not the sour vinegar that's gulped down in the shadows. It's not the mouthwash.

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I used to work in a jail, so I'm pulling on things that I remember. There was a man I met one time who was so desperate for alcohol that he went to Dollar General and bought mouthwash in order to drink it to cure the itch that he had for the substance.

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It's not that. Lady Wisdom is promising

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God's best. And it's not literally a filet mignon. It's not literally the choicest lamb that you could ever eat.

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This is not an endorsement of the carnivore diet, although it is good. The food here is metaphorical.

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I want you to remember that to live in Wisdom's house is to know and do the will of God. In this way, the feast is emblematic of the blessings that come to the life that will adopt wisdom, that will live by wisdom.

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And how do you live by wisdom? But by knowing and doing the will of God. To live that life is to be nourished by God.

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To live that life is to drink the wine that will give you joy and the strength that only

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God can give. It is a life of true abundance in a world that's confused about what abundance actually means.

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I want you to picture two kitchens. The kitchen of a Michelin star chef overflowing with the finest food.

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Every ingredient is fresh. Every dish is crafted with care and your tongue can't wait to taste. And then the other is one of those kitchens like you see on the

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TV show Kitchen Nightmares, where the freezer swarms with cockroaches.

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The meat is infested with maggots. The cheese is rancid and rats are running across the floor.

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And there you have a picture of the difference between a life of wisdom and a life of sin.

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One will fill your life with merriment and joy. One will kill you slowly via poison.

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Solomon is using this metaphor to talk about the difference between a blessed life and a cursed life.

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If you obey God, you will come into blessings. You have a life well -lived. You have a life where God is giving to you his good things.

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And if not, if you disobey him, if you spurn his commandments, you will live a life spiritually speaking, choking on crumbs and drinking dust to wash it down.

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That is the difference between wisdom's feasts and folly's scraps. Wisdom leads you into blessing.

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Foolishness, disobedience, and folly lead you into starvation. Here's a few examples of this.

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Prayer is eating at the table and feasting on the good things of God.

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It strengthens you. It brings you into communion with God. Fellowship with the saints on the

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Lord's day is a part of the banquet that God desires to give you. Marriage and joy and purity and covenant love is a part of the blessings that God intends to give you.

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Sabbath rest, worship, delight in the law of God, discipline, exercising your body, your mind, your soul for the glory of God.

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All of these things while having contentment in Christ. These are a part of the feast that God wants to give you as opposed to the polluted food of the back alleys of sin like adultery, violence, indulgence, greed, chaos, endless work, laziness, unrest, bitterness, contention, gossip, slander, and a list that could go on for pages.

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Every choice you make is either a table filled with the blessings of God or a floor filled with scraps.

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This is the point that Solomon is making and I would tell you that when such a table is afforded to you, don't go on eating the scraps of the moldy bread of sin when wisdom is offering you a banquet.

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Stop drinking the vinegar of rebellion when wisdom has poured you a cup of covenant joy.

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God has set a table for us that we will talk about very soon that is good for us.

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Stop eating in the pig trough that the world has offered you thinking that it is good.

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But this is where things get a little interesting because wisdom, it says, she has sent out her maiden.

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She calls whoever is naive, let him turn and come in. Wisdom has a disposition towards you that she wants you to come.

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And she sent out all of her associates to get you and to compel you to come. And did you notice what's being said here?

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The call doesn't go out to the wise. It doesn't say all you wise come in and eat. The call goes to the naive.

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The call goes to the foolish. The call goes to the disobedient, the downtrodden and the broken.

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The call doesn't go to the obedient ones. It goes to the disobedient ones. And she sent out her entire entourage to compel those to come.

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Turn in here, she says, leave your folly, enter the house of wisdom and live.

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Get your face out of the dog bowl and come and eat at the five star table that I've prepared for you.

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But here is the problem. That call goes out to no one who is wise because there is no one who is wise.

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That call goes out to no one who is filled with the knowledge of God because all of us have become fools.

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This is why Jesus said to the Pharisees, you are unwilling to come to me so that you may live.

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This is why Isaiah says, come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters and you who have no money, come buy and eat.

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And yet we do not come. None of us do. This is why Paul says that none of us are righteous, not even one.

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None of us understands no one who seeks after God. None of us realize the squalor that we have ended up in in our sin.

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And none of us have the foresight, the knowledge, the intelligence to leave it because we cling to our shanties instead of standing in the splendor that God has hewn out in his seven pillared castle.

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Like Israel, we have forsaken the fountain of living waters and we've dug out cisterns for ourselves, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.

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Jeremiah 2 .13. Her table is spread with steaks and wine and yet we go on chewing crickets and drinking sour vinegar, just like those who gave our

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Savior the vinegar to drink. Her voice rings from the heights.

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Look at Proverbs 8. This is not the first time we've seen wisdom call. She's been calling repeatedly from Proverbs 1 through 9.

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Proverbs 8, 1 through 2. Does not wisdom call and understanding lift up her voice? Isn't she screaming at us?

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On the tops of the heights, beside the way, at the crossroads, she takes her stand and no one listens.

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Because as Jesus said, we love the darkness instead of the light. John 3 .19. Because we are enslaved in sin.

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John 8 .34. Everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. Raise your hand if you have not committed sin.

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And that slavery to sin does not just make us ignorant. And that slavery to sin does not just make us make bad choices.

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That slavery to sin makes us blind, deaf, and dead.

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Like Israel of old, Isaiah said in Isaiah 6 .9 through 10. They hear indeed, but they do not understand.

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They see indeed, but they do not perceive. Render the hearts of these people insensitive, their ears dull and their eyes dim.

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What it's saying is that God has brought judgment upon people so that they cannot respond because in their wickedness, they chose that over the good things of God.

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That's why Paul says that we are dead in our trespasses. Our sin has rendered us dead.

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And dead people don't talk. And dead people don't listen. And dead people don't get up and walk into the house of lady wisdom.

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So what we're seeing here is that the call goes out to the gullible and the foolish, which means that the call goes out to all of us.

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And yet because of our sin, all of us are dead and cannot respond and cannot get up and leave our squalor to stand in his splendor.

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Left to ourselves, we will never respond. This is why Jesus said in John 6 .44, no one can come to me unless the father who sent me draws them.

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And what we have here, this is an example of our plight. It's sort of like a blind and deaf child playing beside the intersection of a busy street.

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You can cry out to them. You can wave your hands at them. You can do everything that you can possibly do to compel them.

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They cannot see you. They cannot hear you. And the barrel of a loaded semi truck is heading towards them.

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And nothing but someone coming and grabbing them will save them. And that is where we are.

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Spiritually blind, spiritually deaf, and spiritually dead, which means that there's only two outcomes that can happen.

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Lady Wisdom will call and call and call, and you and I will continue to fail to heed, fail to heed, and fail to heed.

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We will stay in our slums, both temporally and eternally in hell.

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That's the first outcome. If we are not given help, because in our own flesh, we cannot actually respond, or that God will work a miracle, that God will work a resurrection, that God will give us new eyes to see, new hearts to hear, new ears or new ears to hear, new hearts to feel.

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Unless he raises up our dead hearts, we will never leave the gutter and the slime to run to him.

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You and I would never leave our addictions because we love the chains that they give us.

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You and I would never leave the grotto of our lust because we are pleased drinking poison and calling it pleasure.

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You and I would never leave the back alleys of greed on our own because we clutch our ego and our pearls.

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And you and I would never leave the cardboard cathedrals of anger because we warm our hands over the trash fires of our rage.

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The maidens can cry out and cry out and cry out, but without a resurrection, we have no hope.

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And that is where we have hope, because there is a resurrection. Proverbs 9 is not just about a woman's voice echoing through the empty streets of Jerusalem where no one comes.

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Proverbs 9 is about Jesus. And what I think is so fascinating about is every aspect of Proverbs 9, 1 through 6 is fulfilled in Jesus.

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For instance, it says Lady Wisdom has built a house. What has

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Jesus come to do but to build a house? It says that Lady Wisdom has sent out her emissaries to compel people to come.

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What has Jesus done but better, but leaving heaven and coming down to earth to do what we could not do for us so that now we could receive the call of the gospel?

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Now, because of what Jesus has done, now because of his death, burial, and resurrection, he is building his house.

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And he is the very cornerstone of that house. And he has sent out his apostles and pastors and teachers and elders and everyday

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Christians under every square inch of this world to compel the world to come, not with a powerless call like it was in the

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Old Testament because of our sin, but now backed by the power of the same Spirit of God that raised

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Jesus from the dead who brings dead hearts back to life. And what else has

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Jesus done? He's building a house. He's made us living stones of that house.

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As 1 Peter says, he's brought us to the table of that house as we celebrate every week where he feeds us with the best meat and wine.

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Every aspect of this passage is fulfilled in Jesus Christ. The question is, do we belong to him?

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And if we belong to him, will we stop craving the slums?

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And will we respond to Jesus to come to feast at his table, to feast in his word, to feast on prayer, to be fed by, nourished by, and blessed by Jesus Christ?

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I want to remind you of something. You're like me and I'm like you.

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And we've spent a lot of our life probably losing the battle against sin.

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And it's easy to get a loser's mindset when it comes to sin. When you've gotten punched in the face enough, it's easy to just expect that everything is a punch.

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I want to remind you that if you are in Christ to fight your sin, confess your sin, leave your sin at the foot of the cross, and to run to Jesus Christ.

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Because the very power that you lacked in yourself has been given through his Spirit so that now you have a new heart, new eyes, new ears, and you may come.

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So brothers and sisters, as we close out this message, come. Come to the only table worth coming to.

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Come to the only house worth living in. Build your life on Jesus Christ, the wisdom of God, and feast on his blessings.

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It's the only way. It's the only truth. And in him is the only way that you will have life.

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Let's pray. Lord, we thank you that in Jesus every sin and malady and distress was healed.

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And now, Lord, I pray that in great joy we would come. The call has been sent out earlier today for us to come.

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And we have come into the very house of God this morning. Just like Lady Wisdom issued a call this morning, the call was sent out, but this time the people came.

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Lord, we thank you that that means that you have done a great work, that you have performed a miracle, that you have performed a resurrection.

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The fact that any of us came is evidence that you have come and you have done a great, exceedingly great work.

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And Lord, I pray standing upon the foundation of that great work that we would now come to your table and that we would now feast upon your grace, a grace that is better than tomahawk wagyu steaks, a grace that is better than the finest

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French and Mediterranean wine, a grace that is uncalculable in what it has done for us.

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Lord, help us to feast and be nourished and be delighted in all that you've done.