Sermon: Choose Wisdom and Live

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And as the song says, Lord, may we obey, and not be merely hearers of the word, but doers.

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Lord, you say that to whom much is given, much will be required. Lord, every person under the hearing of my voice right now has received a tremendous amount of light from your word.

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As we've studied this book, now God, let us realize that even as your people, your covenant people, you will hold us accountable for your revelation.

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So God, help us now to feel the weight of that as we move forward and long to hear from you our source of life.

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And it's in your name that we pray, amen. It's a very sobering ending to this chapter, isn't it?

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There's a parallel in verses 35 and 36 between life and death.

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Those are the two choices. And it shouldn't surprise us that as we move through the book of Proverbs, this covenantal language is inescapable.

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On every page and every chapter that we turn to, we find that the knowledge that we are receiving from God that he has so graciously condescended to give us is not merely theory, and it is not merely information that we are to take in and absorb.

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It's important to remember, in a consumeristic Christian culture that just passively receives and takes in, but never puts into practice, never takes action in the world.

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And yet we're given something that we should not be surprised to find here after wisdom has spent such a long time presenting to us her credentials, her resume, why you should listen, why you should hearken unto her voice.

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And then we have the heart of the matter right here at the end of the chapter, and that is this. Choosing wisdom, or choosing to neglect wisdom, is the choice between life, fellowship with God, true relationship with the

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Lord who is the author of life, or it is barren and impoverished death.

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There is no middle ground. We say often here that there's no such thing as neutrality.

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Jesus says, if you are not with me, you are what? Against me. Against me.

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And we find the same presentation here it's given to us in a covenantal fashion. In other words, here is the teaching, here is the instruction, now what will you do with it?

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How will you respond? How will you act in response to what you have heard?

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You are either waiting, hanging on wisdom's every word, watching outside daily at her gates, waiting beside her doors, hanging on her every word, longing to receive it because you know if you don't get it, you die.

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That's what's at stake. You either have that attitude, that mindset, clamoring for truth, clamoring to put it into practice, or you have those who fail to find wisdom, who neglect it, who end up loving death.

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Those are the options. That should challenge us right off the bat that God demands something from his people, he expects something from us, and that is obedience.

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That is what his expectation is of us. There's no middle ground, we are accountable for what we have heard, for the light that we have received.

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And we've been given a whole lot of light as we've studied the book of Proverbs thus far.

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As we've gone through these first eight chapters, there has been a great deal of instruction.

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Are you obeying? The author of Proverbs has presented to us wisdom's tried and true rewards in time and history.

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You might call them her material benefits, right? Here are the things that for those who will join themselves to wisdom, for those who will make wisdom their bride, who lay hold of her, there are things like safety, sound judgment, recognition of good and evil, the ability to discern between the two properly, to have sound judgment, success, skillfulness in living, honor, the ability to rule and govern justly, to think clearly, and the ability to use the world that God has given us rightly.

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Now, in our section today, wisdom presents to us her credentials by telling us something about herself, and I keep using that, her, right?

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We've talked about in Proverbs how this attribute of God, divine wisdom, is personified in the form of a literary type, and that is

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Lady Wisdom. She is a character that we encounter, but merely we are presented with here an eternal attribute of God.

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And she is saying, here is why you should listen to me, not only for my material benefits, not only for the blessing that I bring, here's why you should listen to me.

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This wisdom of God we have been called on repeatedly to internalize, if you recall, it's not just hearing it, it is receiving it, it is taking the teaching within to ourselves and internalizing it, making it a part of who we are.

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That's the call. That's the demand upon us. This wisdom is found in God's Word itself.

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It's found right here in the book of Proverbs. In an ultimate sense, it's in the revelation of God in the

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Old and New Testaments. We're to hearken unto this wisdom of God, this

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Word of the living God seen in the creational norms all around us, God's structures, the way that He made the world.

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We're to hearken unto the wisdom found in the embodied Word, embodied wisdom Himself, and that is

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Jesus Christ, the divine Logos, and in the Word as preserved for us in the pages of Holy Scripture.

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But for the purposes of our section today, understand this, we live in a spoken world that everywhere bears the marks of its

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Creator. We don't live as animals in a sea of chaos as the subjects of impersonal forces that did not have us in mind.

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We live in an ordered cosmos designed by a God who had us specifically in mind.

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And this cosmos is maintained by His providential oversight. We do not live as mere immaterial beings longing to escape this place for a higher spiritual existence.

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We do live as embodied souls in a world that although fallen,

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God has pronounced good and is actively in the process of redeeming. And so this doctrine of creation, notice here in the text, there's a great deal of allusion, not illusion, allusion to the book of Genesis in the creation account here, which is meant to communicate something to us.

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This doctrine of creation guards us from both the despair of thinking that matter in this life is all that there is, and it also guards us from thinking that the spiritual is all that matters, that in reality, the physical world matters more than we can possibly imagine.

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God is concerned with it. God is intimately involved in it. And at the bottom of that involvement in creation itself, we find wisdom.

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And Her earthy appeal to the children of man. Now I say earthy, because when we consider this, we can be tempted to associate wisdom with just mere theory, right?

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You are given teaching in God's Word. You're giving instruction. And sometimes the response is, because we don't understand how to apply it or how to put it into practice, our first answer is, that's great, but I still need to live in the real world.

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Has that ever been your response? You've been given teaching from God's Word, and you say, well, I'm struggling to apply this.

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That's great, but I still have to live in the real world. There's not really a connection between the two.

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God's Word doesn't seem to fit in sometimes. It's not convenient. It almost is counterintuitive to our approach to life at certain points.

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And is it any wonder that the prophet Isaiah tells us as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts higher than your thoughts?

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Indeed, as creatures with three pound brains and a limited perspective, we can be tempted to rely on our own opinions instead of God's tested, tried, and true wisdom.

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Now I say tried and true, but in what sense? Here's the sense I mean. Wisdom existed before creation.

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Thus is the nature of her appeal as she presents herself to us. She's saying, listen to me.

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God is saying, hear me. I was here before all of this.

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So hearken unto my voice. Listen to me. In verse 22, we see this.

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The Lord possessed me. Wisdom speaking. At the beginning of His work, the first of His acts of old.

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Ages ago I was set up at the first before the beginning of the earth. God's wisdom is older than the world itself.

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That's the authority of her resume. I was here before you. So take a seat, young Skywalker.

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Right, that's a prequel reference for Daniel there. But it almost reminds me of when Pastor James is talking to people sometimes, and he tells them,

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I was debating these things when you were in diapers. In a sense, God's wisdom speaks to us, letting us know that we are not the first to arrive on the scene.

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And that is the appeal of her. That is the appeal of God, is that He has exhaustive knowledge about all things, therefore we can trust

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Him. His testimony is reliable. He knows what

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He's talking about and we're about to be given here about 10 verses or so, proof of that. Through the various aspects of creation.

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Now, it has to be said here, I don't want this to become too cold and calculating, but we have to deal with this for a moment.

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Many Christians and conservative commentators have seen this section as a one -to -one comparison or description of the preexistent, pre -incarnate

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Christ. Right, Jesus before He came into the world and took on flesh.

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And then you have on the other side of that equation, those who would use this passage to deny the deity of Christ.

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Isn't that interesting? There have been people on both sides of the debate who have said, no, this is absolutely a one -to -one comparison of Jesus, the second person of the

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Trinity, and then you have people on the other side, for example, like the Arians, right, who we would call in the modern day sense, the

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Jehovah's Witnesses who believe that Jesus is a lesser created being than God.

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He doesn't actually possess full deity. That came from somewhere in the history of the church and the first major council convened to crystallize the understanding of this doctrine, the incarnation of the

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Lord Jesus, His full equality in divinity with the

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Father, the Council of Nicaea. You had Arius of Alexandria, and he used this very passage to try to prove that Jesus was in fact not

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God, not fully God. And you have even many Jehovah's Witnesses today doing the same.

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Have you ever had Jehovah's Witnesses come to your door and they actually argue with you about this passage, trying to prove that Jesus is not

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God? And then you have others who have used this text and just said, well, the question about this being directly related to Jesus or not is irrelevant because it's just a literary tool.

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It's just personification, and therefore, it doesn't bear an overall connection to Christ.

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So which is the right perspective? Well, the answer is all three of them are incorrect in one way or another.

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This passage does not teach that the second person of the

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Trinity is a lesser created being than God Himself. It doesn't teach that. Likewise here, the immediate context of the passage is concerned not with Christological doctrine, our understanding of Christology, of Christ.

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That's not its primary purpose. That's not contextually how it comes to us in how it's presented in a literary sense.

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So it's not first and foremost concerned with that. It's concerned with practical instruction. Here's wisdom, take advantage of it.

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Don't be foolish. That's its purpose. So therefore, lady wisdom is not a one -to -one comparison of Jesus Christ.

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And then lastly, just because wisdom is viewed through this literary tool of personification doesn't mean, however, that this passage is completely disconnected from the doctrinal reality we see formed in the

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New Testament, namely that Christ is in fact the agent of creation. John 1 .1,

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in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.

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All things were made through him, and apart from him was not anything made that was made. Colossians 1,

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Hebrews 1, we see the same thing there. The point here is this.

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As Christians concerned with proper exegesis, we should not take the poetic portions of Scripture and make them the first and final arbiter of the doctrinal teaching that we find in the

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New Testament. We ought to allow the didactic teaching, which is the systematized, structured, orderly, clear passages that we have in the

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New Testament regarding the nature and divinity of Christ, we ought to take those passages and interpret the poetry in light of the didactic teaching.

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That's the proper role and function of these things harmoniously working together.

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That needs to be our starting point to go from there, okay? Now, again, don't wanna be taking too much time on that, but it is important.

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It is important to understand these things. It says in verse 22,

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Yahweh possessed me, right? Now, the reason that some have taken this passage to say, look, this is the word for create, right?

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So, Yahweh brought me into existence, right? And Aryans and others will try to use that to say that Jesus Christ is a created being.

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This word appears many, many times in the Old Testament, but its primary reference refers to getting something or having something, it's possession, which is why

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I believe it's translated correctly here. Not bringing something into existence out of nothing.

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So, wisdom, the point of it all, has been possessed by Yahweh forever.

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It's an eternal attribute. God is speaking to us, and his attribute, which is eternal because he is eternal, is speaking to us, hearkening us to listen to him.

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Following me? So, all of the major doctrinal statements do allude to the poetic statements that we find here, and really, this passage and others like it form the literary backdrop from which we understand the

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New Testament teaching that Jesus is, in fact, pre -incarnate. He existed prior to even his conception, right?

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Like we did. As the creator and the agent of creation, surely he is.

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But the point here is this. When God set the worlds, when he created the worlds, he possessed me at the very first point of his doing anything.

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Wisdom has priority over all of creation.

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So, if you want to have understanding of how to use the world rightly, if you want to have favor, if you want to have blessing, if you want to have good success, wisdom is indispensable for that process.

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That's the point. If you want this, then you need to have wisdom. Wisdom is older than the universe.

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It flows from God's being and comes before creation. Therefore, by necessity, for any of us to have access to it,

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God must reveal it. It's an important point. We live in a world today that says that the answers are all inside of you.

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And by various spiritual techniques, you get to somehow discover that and get at that special secret information, right?

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Through various methods of spirituality and even denying yourself, because you've got to unlock that secret knowledge within you.

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If you just become introspective enough, then you will determine and define all of the answers inside of yourself.

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But there's a reason that God put ears on the outside of our heads. Because what comes to us, how we are to conform our lives, how we are to live in obedience, comes to us from the outside.

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It comes to us from an external source of authority. And that is the one to which we must incline our ears, our hearts, our understandings, and live in obedience to that.

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Truth is external to us, outside of us. And God, therefore, must condescend.

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He must stoop down and reveal it to us graciously. You know, we've called this series

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Wisdom from Above because that's its origin. It must be found there. And the point of the author of Hebrews in this section is that it existed and it preceded creation itself.

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That's why you should listen. That's why you should hearken unto its teachings. That's the authority that it have.

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Can you claim that? Can you claim that you existed prior to creation? Then listen to wisdom.

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Listen to the word of the living God. And so we see here, wisdom is a skilled artisan.

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In verse 24, she says, when there were no depths, I was brought forth.

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When there were no springs abounding with water. So there's a progression here.

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We have the depths of the earth, to the surface of the earth, and then to the firmament or the expanse and beyond.

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And first in view here are the primeval or the primordial depths of the earth, right?

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And within that, the depths of the ocean, the fountains underneath the surface of the earth that spring up to nourish life itself.

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Wisdom was here before that. And then in verse 25, before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills

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I was brought forth, right? What's that verse that we memorize in the Psalter? When we try to teach our

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Mormon neighbors that God is eternal. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world.

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From everlasting to everlasting, you are God. Before the mountains had been planted in the depths of the ocean, or before they towered above the earth, wisdom was there.

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Wisdom existed prior to the most ancient aspects of the created world. Mountains being one of those.

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And then in verse 26, before He had made the earth with its fields or the first of the dust of the world.

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Now this is tremendous here. You have to understand. Before the first of the dust of the earth.

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If you remember Genesis, in the creation account, God gets to the dust, and then

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He breathes into the dust, and He fashions man in His image from the specks of the soil itself, right?

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God creates mankind out of the dirt. Brings him into being.

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And so, before the first of the dust of the world, which dust is symbolic in scripture of just that, frailty, mortality, right?

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The brevity of life, the fragility of life. So before your fragile, mortal self was here, wisdom was here.

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God was there. Before He ever breathed into the dust of the ground to make you, wisdom was with Him.

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As He was bringing order out of chaos in the dust itself.

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Wisdom existed before the earliest specks of dust from which man himself was brought forth.

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That dirt that He was formed from, that He builds upon, and that He will ultimately return to.

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In verse 27, when He established the heavens, I was there. When He drew a circle on the face of the deep.

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This tells us that God made an expanse, the sky itself, to separate the waters and spheres of creation, which is the canopy or the covering of the earth that we're told about in passages like Isaiah 40, for example, when

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God stretches out the canopy, the sky covering, which is stretched out over the earth where the birds are, where the clouds give moisture to the earth, that fixture in which

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God sets the sun and the moon and the stars and all of that creational glory, where the atmosphere is located, and beyond that, where heaven itself is, that invisible realm which the great creatures, the angelic hosts dwell, and even

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God Himself. God Himself carved the boundary lines of the horizon and upholds the very distinctions between light and darkness.

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If you understand what that means, what that's saying is that God's Word is really what keeps our world from crashing in upon itself.

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He made it firm. He holds it up. Hebrews tells us that Jesus upholds all of creation by His all -powerful

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Word. The only thing holding it up, the only thing holding you in your seats right now, the only thing holding us together at a molecular level is the

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Word of the living God. That's how dependent we are upon Him.

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Utterly dependent. Look at verse 28.

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When He made firm the skies above, when He established the fountains of the deep, right, the clouds in the heavens and the fountains of the deep, they're all made strong and give their yield because of Him.

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We read Psalm 104 before the start of the message. All of this providential language about lions needing to eat, so where do they get their food?

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Well, God feeds them. Right, the birds of the sky, the animals that creep along the face of the earth, they're all looking to something to give them their provision.

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Who does that? Well, it's God. God does this. This whole realm of existence where life dwells.

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And verse 29, He is the one who keeps even the chaos of the sea contained.

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When God formed the earth before He created man, He separated waters from waters and He did not allow the chaotic seas to transgress

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His command. That's what we mean when we say that creation is filled with normativity, with structure, and with laws that God has put into place that cannot be violated.

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Right, they can't be transgressed any more than God's inscripturated word can be transgressed without consequence.

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You will not violate these things freely. They will clap back. There is consequence.

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And then you have here foundations of the earth. God also sets the earth on its foundations and holds it up.

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Again, more of that kind of language. And then verse 30, I was beside Him like a master workman.

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Wisdom still speaking. And I was daily His delight, rejoicing before Him always.

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Wisdom is seen here as delighting in her work. Rejoicing in this ordered structure of the cosmos.

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And so, in this we see God Himself rejoicing in His own wisdom.

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Isn't that incredible? How much for the glory of God, God is

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Himself. That He is marveling in the manifold excellencies of His own perfection and design of the world.

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He's rejoicing in His own wisdom. What else would we expect God, the

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Creator of all things, to rejoice in? Is there any being higher than God? Is there anything above Him to which

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He would give thanks? It's preposterous to even suggest such a thing. We're talking about this

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God. This is the God with whom we have to deal. He's not a God to be trifled with.

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He's not a God to be taken lightly. He upholds the universe by the word of His power. And He delights in His good work.

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He delights in creation. He pronounces it. He evaluates it. And He says, this is good.

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And not only that, let me introduce you to one of my favorite pro -life verses.

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Are you ready? Verse 31, rejoicing in His inhabited world and delighting in the children of man.

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God loves people. God loves people.

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And you see, when we finally get to the apex of creation, the crown of creation, mankind,

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God's image, you have God pronouncing, this is blessing, this is good, I love people,

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I love my image, I love my image that I put in the world because they are my glory bearers.

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And they are designed to bring creation from glory to glory, to fill the earth, to subdue it, to take dominion, to exercise my rule, to replicate my image everywhere.

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That is glorious and God loves it. And He loves people. Wisdom delights in mankind.

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Isaiah 45, 18, for thus says the Lord who created the heavens, He is

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God who formed the earth, listen to this, and made it, He established it,

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He did not create it empty, He formed it to be inhabited. He formed this world to be inhabited.

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He loves man so much that He made a dwelling suitable for Him in order that He could mediate

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His wisdom to His creatures so that we, His image bearers, might worship and serve

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Him and live in obedience to His boundaries, and those boundaries are what bring life, freedom, and security.

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Just as God laid hold on creation by His word, restructured it, gave it away for man to exercise under His rule, pronounced blessing on it, then delighted in it, so His image bearers, like you and like me, unavoidably engage in the same actions every single day of our lives.

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It is inescapable to be an image bearer of God. You cannot deny it, you cannot break it.

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Any more than you can do what God's done in this passage, and that is divide the waters from the earth, keep the sun in the sky, man will inherently image

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God every moment, and God delights in His creatures,

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He delights in people. And so, we arrive at verse 32 here, and here is the warning section, the covenantal warning section that we have.

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And now, oh sons, listen to me, blessed are those who keep my ways.

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Listen to that, and now, oh sons, listen to me.

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Happy are those who keep my ways, and yes, the plural is very important, ways.

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Blessed are those, happy are those who keep my ways. No, I am not a prosperity preacher, but you have to understand something.

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If you want to be happy, if you want to be blessed, God is giving you the secret to the universe right here.

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You need wisdom. You need to live in obedience to the way that He made all things, and you'll be happy.

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God's wisdom is available, and He is calling out for us to listen. If we want to be blessed, if we want to be happy, right, think about that, pastor, think about what that just said.

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God is delighting in His creation, He's delighting in His creatures, everything that He made, and then

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His people are commanded to delight in Him, delighting in us, and find our ultimate enjoyment and satisfaction in Him.

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So, here's the implication, really. All this creational glory, everything that's being talked about in this passage, here's the implication of it for all of us.

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Think about it for a moment. If God can do all of these things by His spoken word, how much more must we hearken unto

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His voice in the written word? If God can do all of these things by His spoken word, how much more must we hearken unto

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His voice in the written word? As I said, violating either does not come consequence -free.

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You can jump out of a window, believing yourself to be a bird, but you will still hit the bottom with tremendous force.

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And the same is true with God's word. You dare not invert, and you dare not attempt to undo

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His creational norms and structures, or what is the end result that we have here?

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What is the warning? You hurt yourself. You don't break

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God's law, you only break yourself trying. And that's true whether we're talking about on an individual scale, or whether we're talking about a national scale, a societal scale, a cultural scale.

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But wherever God is working, we are to rejoice, we are to understand who is speaking to us, to hear this instruction, to keep

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God's ways, which imply what? This is not just a general vanilla obedience to a general will of God.

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These are, this is particular obedience to particular commands of God.

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And this is where we start to kind of get a little bit nervous, because God commands particular things from us, does

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He not? Specific things. He wants His law to be kept diligently, carefully, careful observance.

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And that attitude here is what we are to have towards it. We're to be like beggars, right?

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Verse 34, watching daily at my gates, waiting beside my doors, hanging on my every word, hanging on the word of God, waiting to receive it, because you know if you don't get it, you perish.

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Jesus says, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. Notice that passage does not say,

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Christians shall not live by bread alone. It says, man, every image bearer of God.

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What is to be our response? Eager and diligent obedience.

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Our response to God's word when we are given truth should not be to complicate clear commands, right?

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We do that, don't we? Where we're confronted with something difficult, we come across a problem passage, as if there should be any such thing for a

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Christian. A problem passage, something that rubs up against our sensitivities in the wrong way. We just say, well, you know, that doesn't make sense to me.

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Why would God do that? It doesn't make sense to my natural understanding, or we try to qualify it out of existence, right?

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God's word comes to us clearly and we say, yeah, but except in this case, or what about this case?

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It can't apply there, right? That shouldn't be our response. We should receive the general principle with authority, believe and obey it.

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Our response should not be to keep only what we want to hear and shield ourselves from what we don't want to hear.

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Sometimes we're confronted with scripture, or from a brother and sister who is giving us scripture.

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And what is our tendency? To receive and accept things that only fit our preconceived notions, or the things that are desirable to us, or the counsel that we're already looking for, right?

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We're looking for that, and when we hear it, we latch onto it, but we won't receive the hard word or the hard truth that's meant to challenge us, be corrective and bring healing.

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Our response should not be to make excuses, right?

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When we're confronted, when we're being corrected by God's word, encouraged to obey, our response should not be, yeah,

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I did that, I'm guilty, but you don't understand, I was tired. I'm stressed out.

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Or, yeah, I know I need to be obedient to that portion of God's word.

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I know I need to keep that command of God. This is a popular one now, but I don't wanna make an idol out of that, right?

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We can be very pious in how we exercise this in our excuse making.

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Our response to God's word should not be to have good intentions, but never actually get around to obeying.

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Wow, that really hurt. Yeah, that's convicting, man. Yeah, I'll get to that. Tomorrow, next week, and then you forget about it, and you never actually got around to obeying

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God's word. You deceived yourself into thinking that just because you heard it, just because you have a respect for God's word, that is not the same thing as obeying

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God's word. You understand that? Just because you reverence it, just because you hold it in high esteem, obedience does not make.

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There's a difference. Our response to God's word should not be to adopt a wait and see skepticism before we actually submit to it.

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Okay, I understand. I'll see how it works out for them, and then I'll decide whether or not whether I want to pursue obedience to God in this area.

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We're waiting to see if it will actually bring what God says it will. In a sense, we're putting

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God to the test, trying God, putting Him to the proof. That's another pious pretense.

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When God has already been clear about the issue, right? I mean, we put it this way.

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Wow, that's convicting. I understand, I know I need to obey. I'm gonna pray about it.

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Let me pray about that, right? We kind of volley it up in the air, and just throw it back to God.

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We're throwing out animal skins, right? Okay, well, if God really wants me to obey,

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I'll pray about it, and then He will confirm it. You don't need to pray, you need to obey. You might need to pray for continued perseverance and continued strength to do the right thing.

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But what should the inclination, what should the disposition of our heart be towards that? Right, what does the prophet

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Isaiah tell us? This is the one to whom you will look, Lord, the one who trembles before your word.

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Even if I don't understand it, even if it doesn't fit with my sensitivities, even if it seems counterintuitive to me, what should my response be when it's clearly there, but yes,

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Lord, yes, Lord, amen.

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Our response should not be to trust our own opinion and rely on our own understanding.

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Wisdom, once again, is not inside of us. So I'm gonna give you a few commands here that we've seen in the book of Proverbs so far.

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Don't be lazy. Don't be selfish, right?

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Don't seek selfish ambition. Don't seek your own needs above others. Avoid sexual immorality of all kinds.

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Discipline yourself to read, study, and internalize the word of God like you're seeking buried treasure.

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Honor the Lord with your wealth. Heed the counsel of godly authority and wise men.

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Receive correction. Do not fret the evildoers.

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Pay what you owe. Give to your neighbor when you have it.

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Don't quarrel with your neighbor for no reason. Don't sow discord among the brethren.

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Don't fall in with the many to do evil. Don't envy the wicked or desire what they have.

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Husbands and wives, don't neglect one another. Don't make promises that you can't keep.

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Don't use your tongue to tear others down. Guard your heart, for from it flow the springs of life.

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They're straight from Proverbs. Sermon after sermon, we sit under these specific commands, the ways of our

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Lord. Are we obeying? Are we obeying?

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Verse 35, for whoever finds me, finds life and obtains favor from the

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Lord. But he who fails to find me injures himself. All who hate me love death.

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And here we have it. Here's the choice that's set before us, life and death.

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Those are the two options, life and death. Creation shows us that living within God's structured commands is the way of life and that life itself is a blessing.

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Which means, right, notice what verse 34 said, verse 35, excuse me.

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For whoever finds me, finds life and obtains favor from the Lord. Isn't that what we want?

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Do we want the favor of God? Do we want his graceful disposition towards us?

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That bestows blessing upon us? What can you do without the favor of God in your life that has any real significance or lasting value?

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What are you gonna do? What are you gonna build that will last, that will stand the test of time? Can you do anything of any significant merit or value?

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Anything that really lasts apart from the Lord's favor? And so if you want favor, don't miss the way of life.

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Don't miss the way of wisdom. Don't neglect it. Don't reject it. Isn't it interesting, you know, we talked about our understanding of Jesus and Christology.

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What wisdom says, Jesus says. What wisdom says, wisdom incarnate says.

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Turn with me to John chapter three. John chapter three, verse 36.

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Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life. There it is.

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Whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.

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Or you have John 8, 51. Just a few pages over. John 8, 51.

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Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.

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Are you getting the theme of life and death? The way of wisdom, right? Jesus calls himself what in John 14, six?

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I am the way and the life. The source of wisdom is found in the author of life himself and that is

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Jesus who is wisdom incarnate, wisdom embodied. And then

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John chapter 17, verse three. A few pages over. John 17, verse three.

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And this is eternal life, that they may know you, that they know you, the only true

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God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. That's wisdom.

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That's finding life. If you wanna find life, if you wanna find blessing, if you wanna find favor, if you wanna find the happiness, that God created us to have, don't miss wisdom himself speaking to you.

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The one who misses him acts suicidally. Go back to Proverbs.

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Proverbs chapter eight, those last two verses. Whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from the

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Lord but he who fails to find me injures himself. Sin is suicidal and self -destructive.

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The one who misses wisdom wrongs his own soul. You know,

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George Grant in one of his books, he talks about the way that humanity from the fall deals in death, right?

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We're governed by death because we're governed by sin. We dance to its cadences, our minds are fixed on it and our flesh is ruled by it.

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He calls it the Thanatos factor. It kind of reminds me of Thanos, right?

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He's looking to destroy. But the Thanatos factor, the death factor, all humanity is plagued by it.

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It's nothing more than the natural proclivity towards death. And the

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Bible is clear that we will reap from that account of death, the wages of sin we have paid into it.

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We will reap from the account of death, the wages of sin we have paid into it.

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And the judgment of hell that awaits those who oppose the Lord of life are real.

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But if you think about it, for those who won't submit, for those who will not obey God's word, for those who will not turn at wisdoms and passion calls and pleas, they're already living in hell on earth.

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That's the price of neglecting wisdom is it's not just hell one day, it's hell now.

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It's hell on earth, that's what life apart from God is. It's hell on earth. Have you noticed that at any point you turn your back on God's counsel and ignore it, your life generally becomes pretty miserable.

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This is because at least for Christians, especially the word is living and active and it cuts us deeply when we violate it.

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You may try to break it, but you discover that it only breaks you. And the same goes for a society, which is what we are seeing today.

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A culture that has turned away from God and is destroying itself. Sin is suicidal, it is self destructive and we are embracing death because we have turned away from the author of life.

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Those who go their own way and try to undo the world that God made only do violence to their own souls, an act that will ultimately end in eternal death.

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The tragedy that happened this past week with the shooting of the school,

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I know weighs heavy on the hearts of everyone. I was reading some of the things about the young lady who was the shooter and she was sending messages the morning of the incident, the attack before she went and did that unspeakably evil thing.

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And one of the messages was to one of her friends and it said,

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I'm doing this today, this is what's gonna happen, you're gonna hear about it on the news afterwards.

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And one of the things that she said was, I need to die of herself.

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Now you think about that for a moment. You think about the world that we're living in right now that attempts to disrupt, distort and undo the most basic fundamental aspects of created order.

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Take male and female. Is it any surprise that when we throw off those

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God -designed and God -ordained distinctions that we will reap a whirlwind of self -destruction and death?

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Those who hate me, those who attempt to undo the world that I made and live in disobedience to it, only hurt themselves.

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It shouldn't be any surprise to us. There's no neutrality, there's no middle ground.

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The one who fails to find wisdom ultimately to find Christ himself, love, death.

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I wanna leave us with an exhortation here as we think about this and apply it to our own lives.

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What self -destructive tendencies are there that exist within us that we need to put to death?

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Because I'll tell you something, this should be an encouragement to us. If this God that we've just been reading about who can do all of these things, if he can bring order from chaos, light from darkness and life from death, how much more is he equipped to deal with us, to understand us, to know everything that we're going through to be capable of healing us, to be capable of cleansing us from all of our sin and unrighteousness and enabling us to obey, to live in obedience to him, how much more is he able to do that?

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He knows, he understands. Understand who is speaking to you.

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Wisdom, indeed God, is older than we who are fragile and mortal and creatures of the dust.

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That is why we can rely on him. That's why we can trust in his word even when we don't understand.

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As the book of Job tells us, you remember Job is confronted by God and asked all these questions at the end of the book, where were you when

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I laid the foundations of the earth and so on and so on. And this is his response in Job 42, therefore, he says,

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I had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you. When he was questioned by God, this is what he says in verse six, therefore,

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I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes. Lord, let this creature that you formed from the dust of the ground refrain from ever questioning your goodness and talking back to you.

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Your wisdom is superior. Your understanding is high above my understanding.

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I may not understand, I may not be able to comprehend, but I know the one who does.

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And he is able to comfort, he is able to heal, he is able to bless, he is able to bestow favor upon his people and upon anyone who will turn from foolishness and folly and find wisdom himself,

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Jesus Christ. So if that's you here today, if you've never actually turned from sin, to call upon the

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Lord Jesus for salvation, I want to encourage you, the choice is very simple, it's

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God or absurdity. Trust in Him.

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Lean not on your own understanding. And for the people of God, likewise, understand that this is the

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God with whom you are dealing and you have been given much, much light in His Word.

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Are you obeying? It's appropriate that this is said in the context of covenant.

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We'll end with this, Deuteronomy 30, verses 19 and 20.

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I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse.

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Therefore, choose life that you and your offspring may live, loving the

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Lord your God, obeying His voice and holding fast to Him, for He is your life and your length of days that you may dwell in the land that the

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Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob, to give them.

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Brothers and sisters, hearken unto the ways of wisdom. Commit yourself to particular, diligent obedience to the commands of God.

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And understand this, we have not been given the task as Christians of something that God will not empower us to carry out.

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Do you understand that? There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

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For the law of the spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.

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For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending His own

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Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin. He condemned sin in the flesh so that the righteous requirement of the law would be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit.

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You have been given the spirit of God. If you are made new, if you have been given spiritual life from spiritual death,

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God has put Himself inside of you and He will empower you for obedience.

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So draw near to the throne of grace, confess sin, and commit to living for Him anew this

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Sunday, this day, today, as we go back out into the world obedient to Him, keeping

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His ways, living according to His Word, being restored to the purpose for which we were created.

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We have everything that we need to do that. It is grace upon grace from beginning to end.

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It is God who works in us both to will and to work for His good pleasure. And He's promised to carry it out, brothers and sisters.

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Do you believe it? Do you believe it? Then let's obey. Join me in prayer.

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Heavenly Father, You are most gracious, God. Thank You that You are not a

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God to be trifled with. You're not like us. You're not a creature. You are holy and righteous and just and blameless.

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And God, You love Your creatures so much that You draw near to them to mediate divine wisdom so that we may know how to live lives that are pleasing to You and be effectual in this world for Your kingdom.

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Thank You for gathering us together as Your church. Bring us to maturity in Jesus Himself as we learn to align ourselves more closely with the ways of wisdom.