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Sunnyside Baptist Church Michael Dirrim, Pastor
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Let's go to the Lord together in prayer. Lord, we look to you today as our great King. We know that every blessing that we have, we have in you. That if there's anything that we would want to have settled with God, we look to you.
Any direction that we need, any reordering of our lives, we have you as our great King, as our Good Shepherd, our Savior. We rejoice in the fullness, the perfection, the effectiveness of your salvation.
We rejoice in that today. I ask that you would graciously, mercifully, persistently keep our attention on you. There is no greater good for us than you as our Good Shepherd. So we ask by your Spirit to put our attention upon you, and that we would know the blessings of having God as our Father.
We pray all these things in the name of Christ. Amen. I invite you to open your Bibles and turn with me to Proverbs chapter 3. We're reading verses 21 through 24. Proverbs 3, verses 21 through 24. The title for our sermon this morning is Wisdom Keeping, Wisdom Kept.
Wisdom is the skillful mastery of life. It is a whole life stewardship in godliness. This wisdom is not extraordinary to Adam. It was not super added to Christ. Wisdom is simply the image of God in motion.
Wisdom is a clear sign and a sweet fruit of God-given life. Wisdom is something that we need to keep. And in keeping wisdom, we will find that wisdom keeps us. I invite you to stand with me if you are able.
Let's read Proverbs 3, verses 21 through 24. This is the word of the Lord. My son, let them not depart from your eyes. Keep sound wisdom and discretion, so they will be life to your soul and grace to your neck.
Then you will walk safely in your way, and your foot will not stumble. When you lie down, you will not be afraid. Yes, you will lie down, and your sleep will be sweet. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
You may be seated.
Excuses. Excuses.
It's a famous saying from John Calvin that men's hearts are a perpetual forge of idols. Perpetual forge of idols. Always making new idols. Creating new idols. And that's observable in the Scripture. So you see time and again men turning to idols.
Creating versions of God that suit them. God made man in his image, and man has been returning the favor ever since. Making God in his image. But also, in a related fashion, not only are the minds and hearts of men a perpetual forge of idols, but they are also excuse generators.
Always generating excuses. Always having excuses at the tip of the tongue, at the foremost of the mind. Trying out a variety of excuses. And these things are related. And excuses are something that we need to take more seriously.
And begin to hear ourselves say out loud. And wonder why am I always coming up with excuses. There was a man that I met my first few months here at Sunnyside Baptist Church. His name was Michael Johnson.
And he had just been released from a 25-year sentence in prison. He was coming up from Texas. He found a ride. Come up from Texas. Some church put him up in a hotel overnight. And then he was looking for a ride to eastern Oklahoma where his brother lived.
And where his wife, who had not divorced him in 25 years, also was in eastern Oklahoma. And so I didn't have a lot going on that day, so I gave him a ride. 6 -11, barely fit into my minivan. 25 years in prison, I asked him, what were you in for?
He got into a fight and he punched a police officer. 25 years in prison. And we got to talking about the Lord. And I asked him how is it that he became a Christian. He talked about what happened when he was in prison.
How they had various students and professors come from Dallas Theological Seminary. They would come to the prison and they would teach through the scriptures. Expositional Bible teaching. Let's get into the word together.
Let's read. And I asked him, I said, how can you tell the difference between people in prison who just kind of want to go to the Bible study to get out of their cell versus those who actually really want to grow in Christ because they're born again.
How can you tell the difference? He said, when they stop making excuses. When they stop blaming other people. When they stop blaming the system. When they stop blaming their parents. When they stop blaming their friends.
When they stop blaming all these various people. When they stop making excuses, he says, you know, they're the real deal. He said, I don't make any excuses anymore. It was wrong of me to assault that police officer.
He said, I'm not sure 25 years is the best time frame for a prison sentence. He said, but, you know, I did the wrong thing. And he was on his way to go live, to go sleep on his brother's couch and reconcile with his wife and get a job and take what he had left of his life and use it for the Lord.
I got a follow-up call over a year later. Things were going well. It always stuck with me, though, that when they stopped making excuses, you knew. Something had changed. The opposite of excuses is confession.
Excuses are very common. People talk about their sin and they say, I lost my way. I couldn't help it. There was no way out. I had no choice. And these are some among many excuses that men make for sinning against God and sinning against others.
Excuse-making not only begins early in our lives, I think around three years old, probably, but excuse-making also begins early in the history of mankind, Adam and Eve refusing to take responsibility for losing wisdom, for sinning against God.
Someone says, I lost my way. You lost your way, but didn't you abandon the map, the road, the group, and the group guide? Someone says, I couldn't help it. But you could have helped it in many ways. You chose to invest in an avalanche of bitterness or lust, and in the crash you disavowed yourself of any responsibility whatsoever.
You had no way out, but you locked the doors and you barred the windows. You had no choice, but you rejected counsel and direction because it didn't suit you at the time. Why people make excuses is to unburden themselves of any responsibility, but, in fact, the excuses lash us to the sinking, crushing millstone of pride.
It makes sin all the worse. It makes sin all the worse. When God made us in his image, he fashioned us without excuse. He said, very good. No exceptions. We have no warrant for a change of venue. We cannot bring God's concern for righteousness into the courtroom of man and change the standards.
We cannot excuse ourselves from the claims that our Maker has upon us. We can only bow the knee to our Lord and plead the blood of Jesus Christ. Although the consequences of sin are made far worse by excuse-making, there is great hope.
Jesus calls us to freedom. He calls us to liberty. He calls us to rest. He calls us to humble ourselves. He calls us to humble ourselves, confess our sins, which means that we would agree with God without excusing ourselves.
We would put our hand over our mouth like Job and say, I have no excuse. I agree with God. What he says about me, I agree with. I'm on his side about my issues. What God says of me, that's what's accurate.
That's what's true. And when we confess our sins, what is the promise that we find forgiveness and cleansing in Christ? Not when we excuse our sins, but when we confess our sins. And there is a wonderful beauty in the grace of repentance, the grace of forgiveness, the grace of cleansing.
But do you know there's also a wondrous good, a wondrous grace in keeping close to the Savior, of keeping wisdom, of holding fast for all the right reasons. Now, we love stories of restoration. We love stories like that of Michael Johnson, of being brought back from a very bad situation and seeing things made somewhat whole again, things being changed, things being turned around, and only the way that God can, you know, restoring the years the locusts have eaten.
We like those stories. But you know, stories of faithfulness, stories of staying true, stories of keeping the faith, stories of finishing the course, these stories of wisdom-keeping and wisdom-kept fortify the saints.
We have a responsibility to keep wisdom. We're going to look at that in verse 21. Another time, we're going to look at the reasons to keep wisdom, verses 22 through 24. But first of all, we have a responsibility to keep wisdom in verse 21.
Solomon says,.
My son, let them not depart from your eyes. Keep sound wisdom and discretion. Now, all the key terms in this verse are about vision. Do not let them depart from your eyes. Even the word keep has the idea of keeping watch.
Now, how would you look after wisdom? How would you optically stare at discretion? This is obviously a metaphor. There is an important encouragement here, an exhortation here. Solomon is saying something along the lines of, you need to pay attention to sound wisdom, and you need to stay focused on discretion.
That's what he's saying. My son. Solomon appeals to his son, as he has so many times already. But here, he gives, notice, he begins with an unlabeled exhortation, which calls for a specific action, while generating some interest.
The father says,.
Son, you better not lose these.
The son says,.
Better not lose what?
What are the these?
You've given me a dangling pronoun. What are you doing? He's generating interest. Whatever you do, my son, do not lose these.
Lose what?
Sound wisdom and discretion. He catches the interest of his son, as his son leans forward to hear what the these are. Solomon says, Keep sound wisdom and discretion. So Solomon is making his son accountable, notice.
He says,.
Son, you have a responsibility. I'm keeping you accountable. You have to keep track of sound wisdom. You're going to have to watch over discretion. Do not let them out of your sight. It's your job to make sure they do not exit your field of vision.
This is a very important job of the parents for their children, is to hand off responsibility to their children. You keep your eye on wisdom. Yes, they have to learn to make their own meals. They have to learn to take care of their own belongings.
Yes, they have to learn how to put gas in the car and change the tire and change the oil. They got to learn to pay bills. They got to learn all those responsible things. But the main thing, the underlying thing, is that as a parent, you are no longer having to feed them the basics of how to fear the Lord, but they themselves fear the Lord.
They themselves are keeping their eye on sound wisdom and discretion. We have in our common parlance, well, somebody never grew up. What do we really mean by that? Someone never really matured. Someone never really came into his own.
What do we mean by that? They relied on everyone else to continue to hand-feed them sound wisdom and discretion, but they themselves took no responsibility for it, would not pay attention for themselves, did never learn to feed themselves.
So Solomon says it's your job to keep track of sound wisdom and discretion. It is your job to keep up with them. Don't get separated from them. Keep both eyes on them. Pay attention. And this is the kind of language that someone who was a watchman on the wall would be familiar with.
Keep your eye on the horizon. Keep your eye on the path. Keep your eye on the path.
Keep watch.
It's the language someone would use for the shepherd in the field. Keep your eye on the horizon,.
The edge of the woods.
Keep your eye on the sheep. Don't let them escape. This is the kind of language that is associated with repetitive,.
Menial work.
It is hard work to stay awake and to stay watch. Ask Jesus' disciples. It is hard to stay focused. It is hard to keep watch, but it is enormously important and rewarding. I really tried to remember the origin of this story.
I don't remember who said it, but they told a story about being over in Africa and learning the ways of a particular tribe. And they noticed that the eight-year-old boys would go out in the morning with sticks.
And they'd come back later on. And what are they up to? Because everybody in the village had a job. Everybody worked. Everybody did something to help out. Oh, well, we send the eight-year-old boys, about that age, they go out and they watch the goats and they keep them from getting eaten by lions.
And the question was, well, why do you send them? I mean, they're eight-year-old boys.
And they say,.
Because they're really good at hitting things with sticks. So when you think about it, yeah. Eight-year-old boys, no matter where they are in the world, are very good at hitting things with sticks. That's actually the easy part of the job.
The hard part of the job.
Is keeping watch.
The hard part of the job is staying awake. The hard part of the job is paying attention. This is an endurance issue. But it examines how much we really value what we watch over. And if wisdom is as valuable as Solomon is saying, if wisdom is indeed, notice what he says in verse 15, she's more precious than rubies and all the things you may desire cannot compare with her.
If wisdom is of that great value, then you will show that by how you keep watch on wisdom and never let wisdom out of your sight. So Solomon is saying to his son, he's already told him what's most important and now he's saying keep what's most important, most important.
Don't drift. Don't get distracted. Don't deviate. And you're responsible for that. Don't get distracted. Don't deviate. Talking about principles. Now it's said of some folks that if they had, if they didn't have double standards, they would have no standards at all.
What bothers us about that is that we disagree with their principles. They have an underlying principle, which would be some sort of wayward, malformed principle that would put themselves first and foremost in any given situation.
They're able to be flexible with their standards and arrange things to benefit themselves as far as they see it. But principles that are righteous and good, fear of the Lord, must be held on to, must be kept watch over lest we veer away, lest we get distracted, lest we get lost.
The word for principle comes from the Latin principium, combination of that which is first and that which you take hold of. The idea is, here's what we take hold of first before anything else. And Solomon is saying, that's wisdom, that's discretion, take hold of that first and foremost and never let go.
This should never be second place, should never be modified. And when he says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, we can wholeheartedly agree that loving God supremely is the basis for our loving others rightly.
And having these rightly ordered, then we may steward the creation faithfully. So we agree, keep these things first, keep wisdom first. But notice how he says it,.
Keep watch,.
Pay attention, do not let go. What? Of sound wisdom. Sound wisdom. This word looks at the very substance of wisdom, meaning the fruitful effect of wisdom, the success of wisdom. Sound wisdom is proven wisdom.
And as we've talked about before, wisdom has a real world impact. It is not just a state of mind. Sound wisdom is proven wisdom. And when Solomon says, keep sound wisdom, he means, I want you to preserve all of the gains that have been made.
There's a sense of keeping watch over all that wisdom has already accomplished and been fruitful in and not letting it go. And there's additionally a sense of rolling that snowball and keeping the snowball together and growing while keeping momentum, which is the second part, discretion.
What is this discretion? Well, let them not depart from your eyes, keep sound wisdom and discretion. This is an interesting word. It is rarely used in the positive sense. Generally, it refers to a man's purpose, but in many, many passages in the Bible, it is used to refer to a wicked man's plotting and scheming.
It's usually how the word is used. But Solomon says to his son, keep discretion, keep this. What is he saying? He says, keep the plot. Ever heard? I think he's lost the plot. Keep the plot. Keep the plotting.
Do you know what's better than a wicked man's plotting and scheming? A righteous man's plotting and scheming. Far better. It's based on sound wisdom. Solomon is telling his son to keep the gains.
Don't lose the plot.
Keep on keeping on in the right direction, no matter what. Make plans to succeed in the fear of the Lord. As long as his son keeps these guiding principles in view, he'll know the blessings of God's peace.
And then we see that in verses 22 through 24. Solomon outlines the reasons why you should keep wisdom. Right now, he's emphasizing the responsibility to keep wisdom. We have a responsibility. And what will keep us from owning that responsibility?
Excuses.
It's very likely that some of us are rather overwhelmed when meditating on the large-scale machinery of economic and political doom. But that's not an excuse to give up on wisdom, to lay aside discretion, to not make the plans that are based upon the fear of the Lord and to proceed forward.
We are not without response. We are to keep sound wisdom and discretion. Surely the next step or two are clear. Here's the challenge. We need to be humble enough to value plodding along in the right direction.
It is pride that dictates only leaps and bounds for me. If I don't have something in mind that is leaps and bounds successful right here, right now, right in front of me, then it's not worth it. Pride dictates only leaps and bounds.
Jesus advocates for small, silent progress, like leaven and dough, like a mustard seed growing silently there in the garden. Pride also, you'll notice, freezes us at the edge so we don't move forward lest we look foolish.
So it's two things. Unless I have a really amazing opportunity, I'm not going to do it. And I'm not going to do it because I'm afraid it'll make me look bad. So pride makes fools of us all. I'd have you notice that in all of these expressions, Solomon addresses his son's gaze.
The father knows it matters a great deal what his son looks at. Where has his son put his attention? What direction is he looking? Where, then, is he heading? What, then, does he value? How did God communicate with Adam?
He directed Adam's eyes to look at all that he had made, that it was very good and to be used and governed by Adam, except for one single tree. Look over here at this one tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the testament to God's sole right to define good and evil.
And isn't it interesting that the original temptation and sin had so much to do with the eyes? Genesis 3, 5 through 7, the serpent, Satan, tempts Eve, says,. For God knows that in the day that you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.
So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave her husband with her, and he ate.
Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings. Do you see what happened? When they had eyes only for God, they were unashamed, and they were happy in righteousness.
But when their eyes turned to that which they thought would primarily benefit themselves for the sake of themselves, they were filled with shame and misery. Now this is the lesson that God taught Israel through the covenants.
David learned this joy of keeping his attention upon the Lord, a man after God's own heart. He kept his eyes on the Lord. This is when David was joyful. Psalm 119, verses 35 through 37, he says, Make me walk in the path of your commandments, for I delight in it.
Incline my heart to your testimonies, and not to covetousness. Turn away my eyes from looking at worthless things, and revive me in your way. David knew that he, in the image of God, was made for the word of God.
Covetousness, which is the desire for that which should not belong to you. That's what covetousness is. It's not saying, oh, it would be more advantageous to increase, or to escalate, or to do something more, or to try this hard thing.
That's not covetousness. Covetousness is a desire for that which should not belong to you. And he knew that covetousness would only repeat the original folly, so he says, incline my heart to your word, and not to covetousness.
God made his word central to the covenants. In this way, they addressed the death of the first Adam, who abandoned the word of God, and anticipated the life of the last Adam, who is the word of God. So, what should we not let depart from our eyes?
What is the sound wisdom and discretion that we are to keep first and foremost? Where are we to be looking? What should define all of our direction? Well, Paul prayed for this for the Ephesian saints.
Here's his prayer request for the Ephesian saints. This is what Paul had the Ephesian church write up on their whiteboard on the current Wednesday night. Here's the prayer request that Paul has for them.
Ephesians 1, verse 15. Therefore, I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers. Here's his request.
That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him. The eyes of your understanding being enlightened, that you may know what is the hope of his calling, what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints.
That you would be filled with hope and your attention put upon glory. Wisdom, knowledge, and understanding are Paul's prayer requests for the Ephesian church. They need to keep the hope of God's calling and the riches of the glory of his inheritance of eternal life, the very gospel of Jesus Christ, front and center.
Paul does not want them to lose sight of this. Why have communion so often? It helps us keep sight of this. It helps us keep our attention where our attention needs to be. And don't we need that help?
Don't we need to be reminded so often in so many ways of not losing the plot, losing track of what's important, losing where we are in the story, giving up hope, not remembering our inheritance. Jesus acknowledges that we are prone to be distracted.
He tells us, where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. In the same chapter he says, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things, all these things that you might worry about, be anxious about, be distracted by, will be added to you.
Wisdom.
Keeping wisdom at some level means not replacing it with something you think is better than wisdom. We may be tempted to seek first our own feelings. We may be tempted to seek first our own pleasure, seek first our own image, seek first our own name, seek first our own way.
We may be even tempted to think that we are more holy than God, more righteous than God, more merciful than God, more punctual than God. I can't sit around and wait and do small, wise things. I can't move slow.
I don't have time. My time is important to me. Why would I do small things? Why would I do small, often embarrassing and humbling things? Why would I go wash in the Jordan River to get rid of this leprosy?
Small things, humbling things. Seeking first the kingdom of God. When we think that we have a better sense of the timing and the operations than God does, when we, as the sheep say to the shepherd, I think you'd be doing a better job, we pierce ourselves through with many unnecessary sorrows.
Seeking first the kingdom of God, what does that look like? It looks a whole lot like a happy, trusting, toddling after our father, if we're humble enough to accept it. And communion reminds us of this too.
When you take communion, it's by nature somewhat humbling, isn't it? Such a small portion. Such a small thing. It reminds us of our participation in Christ. It's there to memorialize our participation in Christ, to encourage us in Christ, and to remind us that our communion with Christ is by faith alone.
It brings our attention back to where it must remain, that we must keep the preeminence of Christ and his authority before our gaze at all times, to keep our good shepherd in view. And when our good shepherd is in view, as Psalm 23 affirms, what fear can impede our next step in following him?
Though this world with devils filled, he prepares a table for us in the midst of our enemies. Our anointing is in him. Our cup of blessing that we share is in him. He is the one who brings us into everlasting communion with God and with one another.
Keep wisdom and be wisdom kept. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the time you've given us in your word. I pray that you would help us to humble ourselves, not make excuses for ourselves, and refuse to take hold of the blessings that you give us.
Help us to trust you and take the small, humbling steps of obedience that you set in front of us, trusting that you as our shepherd know the way and know the best. We pray these things in Jesus' name.
Amen.
