Proverbs 1:7-33 (June 11, 2023)

The Fear of the Lord and the Two Ways to Live

Proverbs 1, Proverbs 1, we're going to be in verses 7 through 33, the end of the chapter this morning. And remember, we are, we're studying through the book of Proverbs this summer. It's a book about wisdom, which is the art and the skill of living well in God's world.

And we ended last week's sermon in verse 7, and we're going to pick back up in verse 7 as we read through the rest of the chapter today. But in verse 7, it says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, and in the wisdom literature section of the Bible, knowledge and wisdom are pretty well synonymous.

And so we said that the one thing necessary to get wisdom in this world is the fear of.

The Lord.

I want to pick back up there in verse 7. And rather than reading the entire chapter here at the beginning of the sermon, we're going to read a little bit as we go along. So let me begin with verses 7 through 10 in Proverbs 1, 7 through 10.

And the word of the Lord says this, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction. Hear my son, your father's instruction and forsake not your mother's teaching, for they are a graceful garland for your head and pendants for your neck.

My son, if sinners entice you, do not consent. Amen. This is the word of God to us. And here Proverbs presents us with two ways to live. There are two ways to live in this world. There's the way of the wise, and then there's the way of the fool.

There's the path of wisdom and the path of folly, righteousness and sin. These are the two ways to live. And ultimately, there are not many paths in this world. There are two. There's the path to heaven and the path to hell, the road to hell.

And there might be many varieties and manifestations of that road to hell, but they all lead to the same place. As Jesus taught us, the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction. But there is one way to heaven, the narrow gate, the way, the truth, and the life, Jesus Christ himself.

And if there are but two ways to live in this world, that means there's two types of people.

In the world.

There are those who are united by faith to Jesus Christ, that is those who are with Jesus, and then there are those who are not united by faith to Jesus Christ, those who are against Jesus. And again, you have the wise and the foolish.

And according to verse 7, the wisdom of the wise is rooted in the fear of the Lord. The folly of the fools is rooted, and they're despising, it says, of wisdom and instruction. That being the case, beginning in verse 8, we see a father's instruction to his son.

His instruction to walk in the way of wisdom. He says to heed your father's instruction, to hear your father's instruction and heed it, and forsake not your mother's teaching. And so the first thing we see here is that training in wisdom begins at home.

Both fathers and mothers have incredible opportunity and incredible responsibility to impart wisdom to their children. That is, they're the first ones tasked with the job of teaching and training kids the art and skill of living well in God's world.

And so one quick point of application here just to begin, we'll phrase it as a question, parents, are you training your children in wisdom? That is, by your action, or for example, by your actions, are you teaching them that actions have consequences?

Are you teaching them by what you do with them that sin hurts? Or are you teaching them that they can get away with it? It's one application for parents. How about kids in here? Children in the room. Are you hearing your father's instructions and heeding it?

Are you listening to what they say?

Are you coachable?

Kids, are you teachable? Do you ignore their instruction and bristle against it? So here's the thing, kids. Your parents' teaching and training in wisdom, the Bible says it's a graceful garland for your head and a pendant for your neck.

Now what does that mean? What does that mean? Well, garlands were symbols of victory. So an athlete in a sporting contest, if he won, he would get a crown of garland for his head. It's kind of like winning the gold medal in the Olympics.

It was a symbol of victory. Pendants were a symbol of luxury, or we might say the spoils of victory. And so what we can say here is that wisdom, it's a crown of victory for your head. It's a crown, a symbol of victory for your neck.

Wisdom is for winners. Wisdom helps us win. I'm using victory here as a metaphor for successful, fruitful living, for things going well. And if you want that in life, you're going to need wisdom. And so we need to hear and heed instruction in wisdom.

That's what Solomon has given to his son here. And then in verse 10, Solomon gives some firm instruction for wise living. Instruction that we all need to take seriously. He says, My son, if sinners entice you, do not consent.

Do not consent. And for the rest of this sermon, and for most of the rest of this sermon, I want to exhort you in this instruction to not consent when sinners entice you. Say no to sin. There's this old senator years ago from North Carolina named Jesse Helms.

He's known as Senator No because of how he would often just vote no, no, no on appointment confirmations and other bills. We need to be like that with the temptations of this world.

No, no, no, no.

Do not consent. Do not consent when sinners entice you. And then Solomon gives an example beginning in verse 11, reading through verse 16. Let me read God's word. It says, If they say, Come with us, let us lie in wait for blood.

Let us ambush the innocent without reason. Like shale, let us swallow them alive and whole like those who go down to the pit. We shall find all precious goods. We shall fill our houses with plunder. Throw in your lot among us.

We will all have one purse. My son, do not walk in the way with them. Hold back your foot from their paths for their feet run to evil and they make haste to shed.

Blood.

This is God's word to us this morning. We see here in this example that Solomon gives, the invitation, the specific invitation here is to robbery and murder. And so here we see an invitation to unjust, to get unjust gain.

And it's the temptation of the love of money. Now it's not that wealth itself is bad, it is not, but rather the love of money. The lust for it so much that you would sin to get it. Or even more so that you would steal it.

Or even more so that you would murder in order to steal it. That's what is wicked in this scenario. It's the sin of greed that you would be willing to sin in order to get money. We also see the sin of impatience played out here.

That of wanting to get riches quickly. Rather than building wealth through diligent work, as we see is wise throughout the book of Proverbs, they would rather short-circuit the process by stealing it and killing for it and then covering up their crime.

It's the sin of impatience. They want it quickly, they want it now. Now you've heard the phrase that misery loves company, well so do sinners. You see it's not enough for the wicked person to sin in such awful ways, he must drag others along with him.

You notice it says in verse 11, if they say, come with us, there's an invitation, there's recruitment, come with us. This is the spirit of the age. Come with us as we take advantage of the weak. Come with us as we defile our bodies.

Come with us as we rob the poor. Come with us as we corrupt the innocent. Come with us, come with us, come with us the sinners say. Sinners are not content to just sin on their own, they want to bring down everyone around.

Them.

Lest they see the righteousness of others and feel the pangs of conviction and be tormented by their own guilty consciences. Sinners love company. And so there will be no shortage of temptations for us in this life.

There will be no shortage of invitations or recruitment towards evil in this world. And knowing this, what is the wise instruction that Solomon gives to his son? Verse 15, he says, my son, do not walk in the way with them.

Hold back your foot from their paths. Do not walk in the way with them. Hold back your foot from their paths. Their feet run to evil, verse 16 tells us. Do not let your feet trod where the wicked run.

That is the wise instruction. Don't even start down that road. To answer the question why, why should we not start down that road, I want to use the metaphor of a train. You see, first trains, they pick up speed as they go along.

And the same thing happens with sin, right? Sin not only reveals the state of our hearts, it does that. When we sin, we're showing something about the state of our hearts. But it not only does that, but our sin then shapes our hearts further in that same direction.

Sin hardens the heart further.

It corrupts us even more. And so what we see is that one sin clears the way for the next sin. And then that clears the way for the next one. And outside of repentance, people just get more so. They keep going further down that line.

They keep picking up just a little bit of speed. Sin is like a runaway train with no brakes. You can think of David. His lust gave way to adultery. His adultery gave way to murder. You see how one sin led to the next and it escalated.

You see, the sin train just picks up a little bit of speed, picks up a little bit of speed, picks up a little bit of speed until it's just chugging along. And when it's chugging along, where does it go?

That train leads somewhere. Where? Let's read verses 17 through 28 in Proverbs 1, and the Word of God says this,. For in vain is a net spread in the sight of any bird. But these men lie in wait for their own blood.

They set an ambush for their own lives. Such are the ways of everyone who is greedy for unjust gain. It takes away the life of its possessors. Wisdom cries aloud in the streets, in the market she raises her voice.

At the head of the noisy streets she cries out. At the entrance of the city gates she speaks. How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge?

If you turn at My reproof, behold, I will pour out My Spirit to you. I will make My words known to you. Because I have called and you refuse to listen, have stretched out My hand and no one has heeded.

Because you have ignored all My counsel and would have none of My reproof, I will also laugh at your calamity. I will mock when terror strikes you. When terror strikes you like a storm and your calamity comes like a whirlwind, when distress and anguish come upon you, then they will call upon Me, but I will not answer.

They will seek Me diligently, but will not find Me. In these verses, we see that the sin train leads to destruction and death and catastrophe. And the tragic thing is, it's so avoidable, but we lack wisdom.

We lack the wisdom to see sin for what it really is and to act accordingly. I mean, if we really truly considered the consequences at the end of the line, surely we wouldn't sign up for the destruction that we see here.

Surely we wouldn't sign up to be on the wrong side of it's too late. Yet we walk around with blinders on. Our sin blinds us. Wisdom is taking off the blinders. It's knowing where sin leads and it's not starting down that road.

See, verse 17 says,. For in vain a net is spread in the sight of any bird. So a bird will not knowingly fly into a trap. It'll flee by instinct at the sight of the net.

But people,.

Will seemingly see the trap sprung by sin and will walk right into it. Will think, nah, won't happen to me.

Nah, not this time.

We know where the sin train goes and yet when conductor folly calls out,.

All aboard!

We get on. As a bird flees the trap. But verse 18 says, These men lie in wait for their own blood. They set an ambush for their own lives. The sin train will lead to their destruction. They think they're setting an ambush for somebody else.

They think they're out to do someone else harm. But they're actually setting an ambush for themselves. Think of Haman in the book of Esther. He built the gallows for Mordecai, right?

And in the end of the book,.

Haman is hanging on the gallows that he built. Or think of Judas. He betrays Jesus.

But in the end,.

Jesus walks out of his grave and Judas is laid in his. You see, the wicked will not ultimately prosper. They dig their own grave. And so when you see wickedness ascendant in our culture, when you see evil seeming to prosper, know that the seeds of their own destruction are sown within their midst.

And we don't know when,.

But eventually the wicked will fail and falter. They lie in wait for their own blood, their own destruction. They lie in wait for their own lives. So, do not cast your lot with them. Don't walk in the way with them.

If sinners entice you, do not consent. For we also see that this sin train leads to death. Verse 19, It takes away the life of its possessors. It takes away the life of its possessors. Sometimes this means physical death like Haman.

It means things happen physically in this world that come back upon them. But it always means spiritual death for the wicked. The second death, damnation. Sin will always cost a life. It will either be Jesus' life in your place, Him taking the curse, Him taking God's wrath in your place in His death, or it'll be your own.

But sin always leads to death. If you do not repent and place your loyal trust in Jesus Christ, the end of your life will be death. The eternal conscious torment of the wrath of God separated from the life that is found in fellowship with God.

Sin always leads to death. It also leads to catastrophe. And here I refer to the awful effects of sin. And while if you are in Christ Jesus, you are safe from the second death, you are safe from damnation, Christ has paid that penalty for you.

But even believers can sin and make a wreck of their lives. Do not consent when sinners entice you. I want to draw your attention to verse 22.

It says,.

How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? How long? The simple, the foolish, they delay in obedience and persist in their folly. But here's the thing about delaying. Delaying in this way mocks God.

You see, the sinner refuses to listen, refuses to heed counsel, refuses reproof, refuses correction. And what is the result? Wisdom lasts at his calamity.

He mocks.

Wisdom mocks when terror strikes. It says in verse 27, When terror strikes you like a storm, your calamity comes like a whirlwind, when distress and anguish come upon you. Then they will call upon me, but I will not answer.

They will seek me diligently, but will not find me. You see, there comes a time when it is too late. I want you to notice that, that wisdom, it's wisdom personified that is speaking here. This isn't necessarily God speaking, neither of the two are related, because God is the source of all wisdom.

But this is wisdom personified speaking. And so what does it mean in verse 28?

It says,.

They will call upon me, but I will not answer. Is it saying that God's not going to hear your prayers? I don't think that's what we're, what it's saying here. Rather that wisdom will not answer. What's in play here is the biblical principle of sowing and reaping.

That's what's at play here. You might call it a creational principle, because God has baked this principle into the very fabric of the world. And that is you reap what you sow. And so if someone sows folly, they will reap calamity.

But when calamity comes, they will cry out in a panic for the fruit of wisdom. Because they'll recognize their folly, and they don't want this calamity to happen. But in that day, it'll be too late. Because wisdom is not something that can be won in an instant.

It's not something that can be summoned.

In any given moment.

But it must be cultivated over time. And because of this, wisdom doesn't answer. The time for wisdom was when the man was sowing folly. Now is the time to reap. And he shall reap what he has sown. And so friend, I would ask you this this morning.

What are you sowing? Righteousness or wickedness? Wisdom or folly? What are you sowing in your life right now? If you persist in folly and sin, there will come a day when the bill comes due.

And in that day,.

You will cry out for wisdom, but wisdom will not answer. She'll be in the corner chuckling at the dark comedy of it all. Because wisdom will laugh. The Psalms say that God also sits in the heavens and laughs at the wicked and holds them in derision.

And the Bible says that eventually when their hearts are sufficiently hardened, God gives over the wicked to their depraved minds. Their feet run to evil and God lets them run. And they store up wrath for themselves.

Therefore, the word to those who have ears to hear this morning is this. If today you hear His voice,.

Do not harden your heart.

As in the day of the rebellion. Hebrews 3 .15 If today you hear His voice,.

Harden not your heart.

As in the day of the rebellion. No, today if you hear His voice, turn to Him in repentance and faith. If you're outside of Christ.

And you know it today,.

Let today be the day of salvation. If you are a Christian, but you have been persisting in sin and folly, let today be the day of repentance.

Turn from it.

It will only lead to calamity. It will only lead to destruction and catastrophe and death. Let today be the day of a new beginning.

Do not harden your heart.

So are you running from God? Run no longer, but find your rest in Jesus. Are you fighting against God? Lay down your weapons and be at peace with God through Jesus. Are you delaying obedience to God? Fear the Lord and do not mock Him, for you are not guaranteed another day, you are not guaranteed another hour.

Do not presume upon the kindness of our Lord, for do you not know that the kindness of our Lord is meant to lead you to repentance? Romans 3. You see, delayed obedience is disobedience. There is no I'll obey tomorrow, for tomorrow never comes.

The can always just gets kicked down the road.

And all the while,.

The heart is hardened. Sin is sowed and eventually the harvest comes in and the rent comes due. And when you cry out in that day, there may not be an answer, because one day it may be too late. Do you not fear God?

The Fear of the Lord and the Fruit of Our Way

Let me read verses 29 -32. God's Word says, Because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord, would have none of His counsel, despised all My reproof. Therefore, they shall eat the fruit of their way, and have their fill of their own devices.

For the simple are killed by their turning away, and the complacency of fools destroys them. You see, where there is no fear of the Lord, there is destruction and catastrophe. I want to remind you how we defined the fear of the Lord last week.

I quoted Charles Bridges saying that the fear of the Lord is that affectionate reverence by which the child of God bends himself humbly and carefully to his Father's law. It's the reverence and awe at God and His holiness.

It's trembling at the thought of crossing Him. This is the fear of the Lord. And where there is no fear of the Lord, the feet of the fool, the feet of the foolish run to evil and reap destruction. But, verse 33, there's good news in verse 33, but whoever listens to Me will dwell secure and will be at ease without dread of disaster.

Whoever listens to Me will dwell secure and will be at ease without dread of disaster. Here's the thing, there may be coming a day, there is coming a day when it will be too late, but today is not that day.

It is not too late yet. And so, if you will listen to wisdom today, you will be freed from the curse of your sin. The death you deserve will be turned to life. You will dwell secure and you will be at ease.

You will have no reason to dread destruction, for Christ has already reaped what you have sown. He has taken the wrath, He has died the death, He has paid the penalty, and you are free. This is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Let me read to us from 1 Corinthians 15, where it says that death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.

But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Amen.

This is the good news. Believe this good news. Do not consent when sinners entice you. Do not walk in their way. Walk in the way of Jesus. Immediately after the service, we're going to go down just outside the fellowship hall, as I mentioned, for a baptism service.

Baptism is a picture of this victory. It's a picture of this gospel. A visible expression of death to sin, resurrection to new life in Jesus Christ. I invite you to come and be a part of that baptism service.

Don't just leave here and go home. Come and celebrate new life in Christ with us. But if you're here this morning, and you're not walking with Jesus faithfully, you're still in your sins, you're still sowing sin and unrighteousness, I want you to hear the warning from Proverbs.

That you will reap destruction if you do not turn from your sin, and turn to Jesus Christ. And so if that's you today, if you hear His voice today, do not harden your heart, and do not delay. But turn to Jesus.

Trust in Jesus. Believe in Jesus, and be saved, and dwell secure,.

And be at ease,.

Without dread of disaster, forever. Let's pray together. Our Father in heaven, by your Holy Spirit, convict us of sin and righteousness, point us to Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

Do not let anyone who is here today mock you through delay, but bring all to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. Father, we ask you that you would give us wisdom, that you would help us to know what to do and how to do it, that you would give us the courage to do what is right, you would give us the courage to obey you, and that we would do all of this for your own glory.

And we ask it all in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ.

Amen.