WWUTT 1319 Every Good Path (Proverbs 2:9-22)

Everything that we are instructed to pursue in Proverbs, the commandments of God, wisdom, understanding, insight.

We gain all of these things when we have the fear of the Lord, when we understand the text.

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Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. In our study of Proverbs, we've been in Chapter 2.

I only made it through the first eight verses last week. I'm hoping to get through the whole chapter today. We'll see how far we get.

Let's read through the whole thing again. Proverbs 2, starting in verse 1. My son, if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you, making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding, yes, if you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding, if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures, then you will understand the fear of the

Lord and find the knowledge of God. For the Lord gives wisdom.

From his mouth come knowledge and understanding. He stores up sound wisdom for the upright.

He is a shield to those who walk in integrity, guarding the paths of justice and watching over the way of his saints.

Then you will understand righteousness and justice and equity, every good path.

For wisdom will come into your heart and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul.

Discretion will watch over you. Understanding will guard you, delivering you from the way of evil, from men of perverted speech who forsake the paths of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness, who rejoice in doing evil and delight in the perverseness of evil, men whose paths are crooked and who are devious in their ways.

So you will be delivered from the forbidden woman, from the adulteress with her smooth words who forsakes the companion of her youth and forgets the covenant of her

God. For her house sinks down to death and her paths to the departed, none who go to her come back, nor do they regain the paths of life.

So you will walk in the way of the good and keep to the paths of the righteous for the upright will inhabit the land and those with integrity will remain in it, but the wicked will be cut off from the land and the treacherous will be rooted out of it.

As many of you probably know, we're moving soon, next week in fact. My family is moving from Kansas down to Texas.

I've been at this church for 10 years and I've been thinking about what I'm going to preach in my final sermon, which is this

Sunday. What do I want to leave my congregation with as there's going to be this transference of teaching from me to the next guy that comes in after me?

And one of the things I keep coming back to is the fear of the Lord. Everything that we understand here in Proverbs is according to what was stated in Proverbs 1 .7.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction.

We are supposed to live in the fear of God. What does that mean to fear God? It's not being afraid of His wrath because we who are in Christ are no longer under the wrath of God.

We are in His love. We are adopted children of God and that's the way we need to understand our relationship with God is that we are

His son or His daughter by faith in Jesus Christ. But there still must be a reverence of His holiness.

God is so right. He is so pure. He is so good.

You cannot stand in His presence. Even in the state that you're in right now, though you are justified, you have not yet been fully sanctified and you've not entered into your glorified state.

And so even as you are now, if you were to stand in the presence of God, it would destroy you. The scripture says, no one can see my face and live.

We are not holy enough to stand in the presence of God. And so it's understanding that He is that great.

So much more perfect than we are. A perfection we can't even wrap our minds around and we won't understand until we enter heaven.

For as it says in 1 John 3, 2, we will see Him as He is because we will be made to be like Him.

When our lowly bodies have been transformed to be like His glorious body, that's when we will see

God and be able to be in His presence and not be, you know, vaporized just by standing in the presence of a holy

God. It's knowing these things about God that for us, there's a deep reverence for who

He is. And it's living in that reverence. It's in that fear of God that we gain wisdom and knowledge and understanding these things that we're talking about here, treasuring up the commandments of God, that we would gain insight, even call out for insight, raising our voice for understanding.

We want to know these things because we want to know God. And furthermore, we want to know how we may live our lives in such a way that is honoring to God, especially considering this

God gave us His Son who died on the cross for our sins and rose again from the grave.

Jesus who left His throne in heaven to live, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us to live with us on earth, who kept the law perfectly, making

Himself that perfect sacrifice, the spotless Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

And He died on the cross for us so that whoever believes in Him, our sins are atoned for. We are forgiven our sins and we have everlasting life with God.

In light of this wonderful, precious gift, we desire to live with the love and affection that God has poured out upon us through His Holy Spirit.

And so we have read here, as we finished up last week, the Lord gives wisdom, from His mouth come knowledge and understanding.

He stores up sound wisdom for the upright. He is a shield to those who walk in integrity, guarding the paths of justice and watching over the way of His saints.

God certainly does this, but I believe that what is being said here, and we talked about this last week, is that we likewise guard the paths of justice and watch over the way of His saints.

For isn't it our role as fellow Christians, according to Colossians 3 .16, that we encourage and admonish one another with all wisdom according to the

Word of Christ that dwells in us richly. That's a responsibility that all of us have, to care for one another, to look out for each other.

Admonishing means to correct with goodwill. So we watch over the way of His saints. We guard the paths of justice.

We desire the things of God in the fear of the Lord. So like I said, these are some of the things that I'm thinking about as I am leaving this church and going on to another, and what my final departing words would be.

We all are called as Christians to live in the fear of God all of our days. 1 Peter 1 .17,

if you call on Him as Father, who judges impartially according to each one's deeds, conduct yourselves with fear for the rest of the time that you live here on this earth.

And then, I'm going to continue on in Proverbs 2 .9, then you will understand righteousness and justice and equity, every good path.

You understand what true righteousness is when you have the fear of God. You understand what

He has established as just when you live in the fear of God.

You understand equity, that He deals with each person with equity, not equally, but with equity.

Right now, our country is very liberally throwing around the word equality, when what we really should be striving for is equity.

To be equitable is to deal with one another impartially, and that is what we've been called to be in Scripture.

We've been called to be impartial. James 3 .17, the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, then gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere.

And I just read to you 1 Peter 1 .17, where once again it says, if you call on Him as Father who judges impartially according to each one's deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile for the rest of your life here on earth.

So God deals impartially, we need to be impartial, showing no favoritism or no discrimination against anyone for any reason.

As it says in James 2 .1, my brothers show no partiality as you hold to the faith in our

Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. So when we have the fear of God, when we desire the things of God, we understand righteousness and justice and equity, every good path as God has established them.

And how do we know these things? As I said last week, studying the word of God. Verse 10, for wisdom will come into your heart and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul.

No matter how hard the truth is that we're reading, when we come into the word of God, we love to read it.

We love to be convicted by it, that it sets us on a right path. It is pleasant to our soul when we have the fear of God.

Going on into verse 11, discretion will watch over you, understanding will guard you, delivering you from the way of evil, from men of perverted speech.

Let's kind of break this down a little bit. So we've talked about discretion before this word came up in chapter one. Very simply, discretion is being able to make a wise decision.

It could have to do with your actions, though most often we tie it into the words that we say.

For example, a month from now, you're going to be gathered around the Thanksgiving table and you will probably know not to bring up politics with your family.

That's using discretion, you know, when the right time is to speak and when not to speak.

And furthermore, you know what to say in those situations, maybe not to say too much.

That's speaking with discretion. So we learn here that by gaining the wisdom and knowledge of God, discretion will watch over you.

We will know how to rightly discern situations and how we should act or speak in those situations.

Understanding will guard you. That's the second half of verse 11. And that applies to the same discretion will watch over you.

Understanding will guard you. Understanding a situation, you know how to act, respond, behave in those particular circumstances.

Verse 12, delivering you from the way of evil, from men of perverted speech, delivering you from the way of evil.

That seems pretty straightforward, right? We'll know the right path to take according to what

God's word says is right. And it is in the fear of God that we are kept from evil.

That's in Proverbs 2, Proverbs 16, 6. By the fear of the Lord, one turns away from evil.

So we will be delivered from the way of evil when we have the fear of God, when we gain wisdom and knowledge and understanding according to his ways that he has set forth in his word.

We will be delivered from men of perverted speech. Now, when we read here about perverted speech, we're not talking about a person who, you know, swears or tells dirty jokes and stuff like that, though that's what we often attribute with perverted speech.

There could be, this definitely could include persons who speak in such a way that, you know, their language might be sexual in nature.

That could be very enticing to people who are worldly, who are after the passions of their flesh. But more specifically, we're talking about a person who weaves lies.

They know how to manipulate people. They know how to get you to feel the way that they want you to feel so that they can get out of you what they want, assert dominance over you.

Another thing that is attributed to perverted speech is flattery. We don't often think of flattery as being perverse speech, but Proverbs sure talks about it this way.

Proverbs 29 .5, a man who flatters his neighbor, spreads a net for his feet, wants to kind of butter you up so that when the timing is right, he can get you to do something that will benefit him.

This was something that the Lord taught me very early in my pastorate, and I'm very grateful for having learned this lesson before I became senior pastor.

Reading a verse like this, a man who flatters his neighbor spreads a net for his feet, because when

I first started teaching, I was hearing all these compliments and I knew that I would because I grew up hearing these kinds of things and became a very arrogant young man because of that.

So I had to learn my lessons there. Thankfully, I learned them before I became senior pastor, but I heard all these compliments like love your voice,

I love your enthusiasm in the pulpit, and I knew I would hear those things. But then oftentimes those comments would be accompanied with something else.

Those people would say, you're much better than the last guy. Oh, we like you more than our previous pastor.

And I was never developing a confidence when I would hear comments like that. As a matter of fact, it would make me very, very cautious because how long will it be before someone else comes along who sounds better than I do and who has more enthusiasm in the pulpit than I have or who says things that the people like to hear more than what they hear me say.

As soon as that happened, then I was going to lose all of this favoritism that I had in the early days when when

I first started teaching. Proverbs attributes this to perverted speech because it means to corrupt people, to corrupt a way of rightness.

It goes against righteousness and justice and equity. So we need to be careful.

We need to be wise to those ways of perverted speakers who forsake the paths of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness.

We are told in Ephesians 511, take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them for it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret.

But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible for anything that becomes visible is light.

Therefore, it says awake, oh, sleeper, arise from the dead and Christ will shine on you.

Think of the person who has perverted speech there. They are scheming, but they're not revealing what their scheme is, what their plan is by these ways that they're talking, being manipulative, lying, flattering you to to try to manipulate you later.

Their ways are all in darkness, but we must walk in the light of the

Lord, speaking the truth in love, as we are instructed in the chapter before in Ephesians chapter four.

So continuing on here, they forsake the paths of righteousness to walk in the way of darkness. Verse 14, who rejoice in doing evil and delight in the perverseness of evil, in corruption, corrupting the way of rightness and instead going the way that benefits me.

Men whose paths are crooked and who are devious in their ways.

Isaiah 520 says, woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.

We need to keep ourselves from the ways of these manipulators and walk according to what

God has said in his word. Verse 16, so you will be delivered from the forbidden woman.

Again, this goes back to the start of chapter two. My son, if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments, making your ear attentive to wisdom, inclining your heart to understanding, calling out for insight.

If this is the desire of your heart, all in the fear of the Lord, you will be delivered from the forbidden woman, from the adulterous with her smooth words.

Now James says in James four, four, you adulterous people. Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?

Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. And James says, if you want what the world has, if you're trying to please

God and man, well, that makes you an adulterer. You are in bed with this world rather than being part of, of the pure and spotless bride of Christ that we are called to be as Christians in the church.

So we can read this section of Proverbs two verses 16 through 19 this way, uh, as being sort of metaphorical.

But I think there's something very direct about this as well. Sexual temptation, the passions of the flesh

God uses to test a person's genuineness in their faith more than anything else.

Just consider when you go to the new Testament, just consider how many instructions you see there to the church about abstaining from sexual immorality.

Oftentimes when you see a list of sins, sexual immorality is at the top of that list.

Consider what Paul says to the Thessalonians in, in first Thessalonians four, three.

This is as he's beginning to give instructions about living in holiness. He says this for this is the will of God, your sanctification that you abstain from sexual immorality, that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor.

Not in the passion of lust like the pagans who do not know God and that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter because the

Lord is an Avenger in all these things. As we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you, and here

Paul is just talking about sexual immorality. I quoted to you from Colossians three already. It's in Colossians three, five where it says, put to death therefore what is earthly in you, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry on account of these things.

The wrath of God is coming. All of those things that are listed there pertain to sexual immorality.

So where the father is giving his son here, wise instructions, walking in uprightness, desiring the wisdom of God.

He says in these things, you will be delivered from the forbidden woman, meaning you will not even walk by her house.

You will not be tempted in your flesh to be anywhere near that woman, the adulteress with her smooth words, who forsakes the companion of her youth, who is her husband.

She's bored with him. Now she's interested in you and forgets the covenant of her

God. So we're not talking about a person who lives among pagans that you're looking at and you're going, they're obviously wicked.

This is someone who might be nearby and she flatters with her words. She bats her eyes, a guy's confidence kind of gets built up in that, wow, she wants me.

And so for a little bit of gratification of the flesh, you go after that adulterous woman, but her house sinks down to death and her paths to the departed, none who go to her come back, nor do they regain the paths of life.

Now that doesn't mean that a person who goes after an adulterous, who commits adultery, that does not mean that person can't be forgiven, but more often than not, the person who goes after those things, who's been thinking about it for a long time, his mind and his heart have left

God and gone after the way of the world, the passions of the flesh. My friends, you must not, you must not entertain these things and these thoughts thinking that you can just come back from it or God will just forgive you of it because what might be revealed in that is your heart was never for God anyway.

You would rather have the stuff of this world. So as the father then turns from this to his son and says, so you will walk in the way of the good and keep to the paths of the righteous.

This is if you learn the fear of God, if you learn in the fear of God, his commandments, his wisdom, his understanding, calling out for insight, you will walk in the way of the good and you will keep to the paths of the righteous for the upright will inhabit the land.

And as I said last week, the upright means a person whose confidence is in Christ who loves his commandments and desires to keep his word.

And where it says the upright will inhabit the land, those with integrity will remain in it.

Certainly we talk about a spiritual land, a heavenly kingdom that we desire.

As it says in Hebrews chapter 11, even those faithful of the old Testament, they weren't looking for a place on earth where they might dwell.

They were desiring a greater kingdom that is a heavenly one. And we should desire that too.

But I still think there's something quite local about this. You will have a better community, a better town, a better state, a better nation in which you live when the upright inhabit the land.

When those who love God's commandments and walk with integrity, they will remain secure in this land in which they live, where God has placed that person.

But the wicked will be cut off from the land and the treacherous will be rooted out of it.

And certainly when God's kingdom comes, that will be the case. For it says in Revelation 21, 8, as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.

Repent of your sin. Look to Christ, desire his word and his way, which is righteous and just and equitable.

Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we pray that you guide us according to these things. May our confidence not be in ourselves, but we hold fast to Christ in whom we are rooted, who teaches us his word, that we may walk in uprightness before you all our days.

Keep us in the fear of God as long as we live here on this earth. In your precious and holy name we pray.

Amen. This has been When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabriel Hughes.

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