Proverbs 1:22-33 (The Call of Lady Wisdom)

Thank you for subscribing to the Shepherds Church podcast. This is our Lord's Day sermon. We pray that as we declare the word of God, that you would be encouraged, strengthened in your faith, and that you would catch a greater vision of who Christ is.

May you be blessed in the hearing of God's word, and may the Lord be with you. The human body was made to respond to threats. When threats happen, it was made to naturally respond by elevating our pulse and by doing various different things like igniting our parasympathetic nervous system.

I think I got that right, I did that by memory, where our anxieties increase, where our energies get pumping, our adrenaline starts going. We enter into fight or flight when we enter into those kinds of moments.

Our body naturally does that, and it does that for our good. The problem, however, is if you remain in fight or flight for too long, you eventually become numb to the signals that your body is sending you.

And it will allow you to experience a kind of downgrade in the way that you view that threat to where you will no longer react in the same way that you once did. Think about a country boy, maybe from Arkansas, who moves to New York City, who his first time driving in New York City traffic with those yellow taxis cutting him off at every moment driving 75 like terrorists down the streets of Manhattan, and now his panic, his adrenaline, his fear is pumping.

He's never seen anything like that on back country roads, and now he's in the big city and he's panicked. But after a while, you can imagine that he will eventually get used to it. Or the native New Yorker barely bats an eye at such traffic, it's just normal and part of the everyday thing.

I remember when I was in Iraq, the first time that I heard a mortar round land, I heard it land, and the kill distance is 100 yards. Maybe a little closer, maybe a little further away. But what a mortar round does is when a mortar round lands, it's a big metal bullet, basically.

It's got a blasting cap on the front of it. When it touches the ground, there's an explosion that happens inside of the mortar round that causes the metal to break apart in very shardy bullets that fly and will enter into your body and embed themselves in you.

We had a friend in Iraq who his heart was cut in half by a mortar round that landed 10 feet away from him. So that's what a mortar round does. It's not the explosion. It's not like Hollywood where fire, oh, it's the fire.

It's not like that. It's flying pieces of metal shards coming at your body, and the first time I heard it, I was terrified because you can't see flying shards of metal. You feel them when they hit. And I remember as the round got closer and closer to me, because the way that they would adjust is they would watch where it landed and then they would move the tubes to try to walk them in closer and closer.

And I remember I was panicked at that first occasion of seeing those things shot at me. But it wasn't two months later. I was in the artillery, by the way, and I was a part of radar. So radar where we track the rounds with our technology and we counter fire.

That's in theory what we were supposed to do. I have plenty of stories where we didn't actually do that because it was the Army. Nonetheless, that was what we were supposed to do. So because I was a part of tracking enemy artillery rounds, I was always near artillery rounds.

I was always in places where it was getting shot at. So for a whole year, I'm listening to mortar rounds. About the two-month mark, I remember waking up in the middle of the day, I worked night shift on the radar, I remember waking up and hearing those rounds shaking my little mud house that we were living in, and I reached down, grabbed my helmet, put it on, and went right back to sleep playing the same dueling banjos with my snore rhythms as I was before.

Now, the same thing happens to us. When we are in a heightened period of threat for too long, we will eventually become numb to the danger. And in this particular passage, what we're going to see is that if we listen to the warnings of God long enough and don't heed those warnings, we will eventually become numb to those warnings and we will no longer sense the danger of those warnings.

Like an 18-year-old putting on his helmet and going back to sleep is the way we will treat this passage to our peril even maybe. Proverbs 1 introduces a couple new characters to us. It introduces the fool and it introduces lady wisdom.

The fool is the one who hears the warnings of God but ignores them and hears them and hears them and hears them and continually rejects them. The fool is the one who refuses to listen. The fool is not the one who can't hear.

He hears plenty well. It's the listening part that's the problem. Remember as we talked about last week, listening is both audio waves and brainwaves and it's the fool who hears but does not listen. It's like the child that you call to the dinner table.

You will know the child who listened versus the child who heard by which bottoms are sitting in which chairs. The fool is the one who does not listen to the things of God, does not move when God is speaking, does not repent when God says repent.

And what we will see in this passage is they will eventually become numb. Numb to the commands of God, numb to wisdom, and numb to the danger of spurning the things.

Of God.

Today, we're going to look at that through a couple different things. Two different things actually. We're going to look at the alarm that wisdom gives, the warning that wisdom gives, and we're going to also look at how wisdom itself abandons those who refuse to heed the words.

Of God.

We will see that wisdom in this passage, personification, if you go back to your 10th grade English class, personification is giving human characteristics to non-human things. Wisdom in this passage abandons those who reject, in an ongoing way, the things of God.

And I think what we will see will be quite striking. So if you will, turn with me to Proverbs 1, verses 20 through 33, and we will read the passage together and we will explore its truths. Proverbs 1, starting with verse 20.

Wisdom shouts in the streets. She lifts her voice in the square. At the head of the noisy streets, she cries out. At the entrance of the gates in the city, she utters her sayings. How long, O naive ones, will you love being simple-minded?

And scoffers delight themselves in scoffing, and fools hate knowledge. Turn to my reproof. Behold, I will pour out my spirit on you. I will make my words known to you, because I called and you refused.

I stretched out my hand and no one paid attention, and you neglected all my counsel and did not want my reproof. I will also laugh at your calamity. I will mock when dread comes. When your dread comes 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 they will not find me. Because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord, they would not accept my counsel. They spurned all my reproof. So they shall eat of the fruit of their own way and be satiated with their own devices.

For the waywardness of the naive will kill them, and the complacency of the fools will destroy them. But he who listens to me shall live securely and will be at ease from the dread of evil.

This is the word of the Lord.

The Warning of Wisdom and the Call to Hear

Let's pray. Lord, thank you for your word. Lord, thank you for the soft and tender words when we are heartbroken to cast our anxieties on you because you care for us. Lord, thank you for the joyful, exuberant words when we need to be lifted, where we sing and say, the heavens declare the glory of God, and we are called to that same praise.

Lord, thank you for the maw that cuts at us and rips off those scales. Lord, thank you for your psalms, which lift our hearts. And Lord, also thank you for the hard words, the words of wisdom. Lord, thank you for the warnings, and thank you for letting us know what it looks like when we reject your warnings in perpetuity.

Lord, in a room filled with Christians, we acknowledge right now that we know that you will keep in the faith those who are truly yours. And yet, as our deacon Dan read just a little bit ago in John chapter 2, there were some that were not really of us.

There were some that were not truly in the faith that John said left, and they left because they refused you and refused you until their heart was calcified and looked the same, looked to be of the same substance as Lot's wife.

Lord, I pray that everyone in this room would be a Christian. Lord, I pray that everyone in this room would be a part of your elect bride. Lord, I pray that there would not be any false sons or daughters in our pale.

But Lord, I know from this passage that one of the ways that we will see the truthfulness of the claim of our own salvation and of others is how we respond to passages like this. Do we respond to the commands of God with humility, with repentance, or do we ignore the call of Lady Wisdom, which leads to our own peril?

Lord, I pray for us today to find joy in a hard word. And Lord, for all of us who are in Christ to find joy in the fact that because of you, Jesus, the wrath that we deserve has been paid for in full.

Lord, it's in Jesus' name we pray, amen. We're introduced to a woman in this passage called Lady Wisdom. She is a personification of God's wisdom. She is not God. And she is not even the voice of God.

She is personification of God's wisdom. She showcases the wisdom of God on earth. Let me give you a few examples so you understand what I mean about who Lady Wisdom is. Think about it. When you look under a microscope and you see the intricacies of things that are going on in the cell and your heart is filled with wonder because of all of the beauty inside the cell.

The cell is so small and yet it looks like a tiny little city with all of its parts. And you think to yourself how we're made up of millions and trillions of cells. All of them are working and you didn't do anything to cause it.

And when that lifts your heart and when that causes you to sit back and be in wonder of God, Lady Wisdom is speaking. She's pointing to the beauty and the awesomeness of God's design. When you look at a mountain range and you say to yourself how big and majestic those mountains are.

And if you're in Colorado, they're bigger than the ones we have here. I used to live in Colorado. We have hills here, but they're beautiful too. When you look at those mountain ranges, Lady Wisdom is speaking.

She's boldly proclaiming the grandeur of God and His wisdom. When you look at the intricacies of a snowflake or a fingerprint and how they're all different, Lady Wisdom is speaking. When you look at the innocence of a toddler and how they say things that are so cute, Lady Wisdom is speaking.

When you imagine the grandness of the universe and how it has logic and its interconnected laws which keep it running and you think about the fact that the earth is just so far away from the sun to where we actually can have life and if it were any closer, we would burn.

Up.

If it were any further away, we would freeze to death. And you look at all of that and you say, there must be a designer. You are listening to the voice of Lady Wisdom who is singing the praises of God's wisdom, as Proverbs 1 tells us.

Her purpose is to call out to humanity and to point us to God, to point to His beauty and His design and to the atheist as well as to the Christian. She is always speaking every second of every day, speaking the wisdom of God.

Every borrowed breath that we have, she is speaking, pointing to the majesty of God. Have you ever had that moment where you're driving into work and you look at the sunset and you're like, why have I never noticed how beautiful this is?

But the sky is a beautiful royal red and pink and orange and purple and you're like, God, you are so amazing. In that moment, her voice broke through and you heard it and you celebrated, but she's always speaking.

The world is not a happy accident as the secularists would tell us. That is a lie they have to tell themselves constantly. Have you ever noticed how passionate evolutionary biologists and philosophers and atheists are?

How they're so angry at this God they don't believe exists? Have you ever noticed that? How they have this limitless energy to fight against a fairy tale? The reason is because they're haunted by Lady Wisdom.

They hear her song every minute of every day and they have to fight her like hell to silence her voice and they cannot silence her voice. This is why Paul says in Romans 1 that the truth of God is known by everyone.

They've all heard.

Our response to this Lady Wisdom today is to open up our eyes and look and to praise this God who is so great. I even ask the Lord to unstop our ears to pull out the spiritual wax that causes us not to hear her song and to be a people who praise.

She is that voice, that sweet voice that causes us to give thanks to our God. Now obviously this is personification, but it's true. Just because it's a different genre of literature doesn't mean that it's less true.

She warns all men. Notice what it says. Wisdom shouts in the streets. She lifts up her voice in the square. At the head of the noisy street she cries out. At the entrance of the gate in the city she utters her sayings.

How long, O naive ones, will you love being simple-minded? And scoffers delighting themselves and scoffing and fools hating knowledge. Turn to my reproof, she says. Behold, I will pour out my spirit on you and will make my words known to you.

I love where she goes. She goes to the heart of the city where there's all sorts of bustling street noises and cacophonies of car horns and chattering crowds and people who are walking along, all the things that I don't really enjoy.

I'm a front porch in a big yard where you can't see the road kind of guy. And the Lord, in his delight, caused me to live in Lowell, which is a funny providence. But yet the city, the noise, the sirens, they don't drown to out lady wisdom.

The city is quiet compared to her. Her voice is deafening and reaches every single ear, even though they suppress the truth that she is singing. Again, this is why Paul says in Romans 1, 18 through 21, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.

Because that which is known about God is evident within them. For God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made so that they are without.

Excuse.

For even though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations and their foolish hearts were darkened. I don't have any proof of this, but I think, I think that Paul might have been referencing this passage in Proverbs 1 when he wrote this, or he at least might have been on his heart.

He says everyone knows God to the level that it will damn you. Because they knew God, but they didn't obey God. They knew God, but they didn't follow God. He says everyone, he would say it in Solomon's language, everyone has heard the voice of Lady Wisdom and has chosen to ignore her.

At the busiest intersection, at the shopping marts, at the dinner tables, in the shower, in the bed, and everywhere else, Lady Wisdom is speaking, revealing the wisdom of the glory of God, but so many do not listen.

They hear, but they do not listen. And trust me, she's not muted by our noise. It is through pride and self-sufficiency and complacency, and this idea that we are enough, we don't need help, we have everything we need, that her voice continually is fought against over the course of a lifetime.

From the woman who sits at the traffic light, thanking the universe that she got a green light on a busy day, to the man climbing the corporate ladder, believing that he doesn't have time for God because he's too busy winning, or like a soldier who's ignoring mortar rounds to go back to sleep.

The point is that Lady Wisdom has not been silent. The point is that humanity has been ignoring, suppressing, and fighting against her voice so that at the end of our life when we stand before God, if we have rejected Him, we have not rejected Him once, we have not rejected Him twice, we have rejected Him billions and trillions of times.

Every time that voice breaks through and we say, no, I will have no God but me. Now there's also a downgrade that happens in this passage. If we ignore her voice, there is no neutrality. For instance, you hold out an apple and you let it go, it doesn't float.

I hope this is not groundbreaking for anyone. It may break the ground if you drop the apple, but there's no neutrality is what I'm saying. Unless the apple is held up by an external force, it will fall.

And unless energy and effort towards repentance, towards listening to the things of God is put forward, you will inevitably decline. There is no neutrality. It's like a slowly graded road that travels down and down and down and you don't even notice it.

I remember when I was stationed in Colorado, Colorado is about a mile high in elevation and you get on I -70. And it's okay when you're in Colorado, but Kansas, please forgive me if anyone's from Kansas, Kansas is an ugly state.

It is like creativity went and died there. Kansas is so bad that Arkansas mispronounces its name on purpose.

It's bad.

But it's a good sermon illustration today. As you go down I -70 and you get out of Denver, out of the mile high part of the city and you leave Colorado, Colorado, you leave it, it's about 4 ,000 feet above sea level.

Imperceivably over the next eight hours as you drive through Kansas, you go almost down to sea level and you don't even notice it. Over the course of time you just keep going further down and further down and further down and you do not recognize how it's happening.

In a similar way, the more you refuse God, imperceivably so over the course of a lifetime you will fall further and further down. And this passage describes it. It begins with naivete. Proverbs 122, it says, how long, O naive ones, will you love being simple minded and scoffers delight themselves in scoffing and fools hate knowledge.

There's like four levels here of the downgrade that happens as you refuse to listen to lady wisdom and to the things of God. It begins with naivete, a place of simplicity, a place of ignorance and uninformed inexperience and yet after years of hardening your voice to God, it does not stay there.

It does not stay in ignorance, it goes towards simple mindedness and simple mindedness is not a virtue in the book of Proverbs. When you look at the simple minded, it is not extolling those who are uncomplicated.

Uncomplicated is a good thing. Simple mindedness in Proverbs is not. This is not ignorance. This is willful ignorance. This is unengaged with the things of God in order to maintain a sense of convenience.

Have you ever felt like this where you said, if I give God more of my life, he's going to require more of my life and I'm not ready for that. That's simple mindedness in the book of Proverbs. It's I like my comforts, I like my conveniences, I like my life the way that it is and I'm not ready to surrender to the things of God.

That's simple mindedness. It's holding God at a distance because of how much it's going to cost. Now this is what's terrifying to me. I think there is a lot of people in Christianity who are here where I'm not willing to get rid of this habit.

I'm not willing to get rid of this relationship. I'm not willing to repent in this area or that area. I'm not willing to surrender to the things of God and brothers and sisters, I want to warn you, you're on I -70 driving through Kansas.

You're not at a rest stop. You're going down and you will continue to go down unless you repent. The thing I know is that you will not remain where you are if you are in this place. If you're in this place, you will move on to the next phase, which is scoffing.

It may not happen quickly, but it will be imperceivable to you. The people around you will eventually see that you are no longer willfully ignorant of the things of God, keeping God at a distance. Now you are scoffing at the things of God subtly at first and then openly moving from ignorance to mockery, critics of the truth, deaf to righteousness, a heart that has grown cold, ears that have grown deaf to truth.

And this should cause us terror. If you're here in this place where truth now has become frustrating to you or the things of God have become aggravating to you, or if you say, I will not surrender in that area of my life, I will not give over to God these things that ought to cause our hearts to quiver.

But here's what's so sad about it. Because you've been there for so long, you don't realize what danger you're in. I remember there was another time the mortar rounds were landing really close. And I reached down and I grabbed my flak jacket, which is your bulletproof vest, and I covered up with it and I went back to sleep.

Because I thought to myself, well, I'd rather get sleep than worry about dying. That was the place I was at, I was tired. As I got back to America and I'm in a different environment, I realized how foolish that is to think that way.

But in that environment, it was normal. My point, brothers and sisters, if you walk away from God, your rejection of Him, your hatred of Him, your rebellion against Him will become so normal that you don't even notice it.

Like a fish swimming in a polluted tank, you'll be surrounded by it and you won't even recognize.

It.

This, if you hate spiders, will be a terrifying story for you. There's a spider in the Middle East called the camel spider. Camel spider, the thing that is so terrifying about it is that it bites you with a novocaine-like numbing agent.

So that when it bites you, its goal is to burrow inside of your body to find moisture. That's why they call it a camel spider, because it burrows in the hump of a camel. Every bite numbs your flesh. So with one bite, it numbs you, and with the next bite, it eats your body so that it can burrow a hole inside of you, and you will sleep like a baby and wake up with a hole in your back.

You won't even notice it. You won't even notice it until it's too late, in the same way sin has bitten you, sin has numbed you, and if you're not repenting of it, you will wake up in a place that you do not want to be, which will lead you to being the fool.

The fool is the most perilous state in the book of Proverbs. The fool is that place where you are now beyond the pale of forgiveness and redemption. Many of us have been taught as evangelicals that anyone can be forgiven, anyone can be forgiven, but that's not quite biblical.

The fool is one who Lady Wisdom laughs at and mocks as they head down the final slide into their destruction. The fool is the one who is now past the point of repentance. The fool is the one who walks over a broken rope bridge over the mouth of a volcano, thinking that they're going to make it to the other side, and step by step, every rotted board that they step on, they do not realize the peril that is befalling them, and they eventually fall into that fire.

When you get to the stage of being a fool, there is a hardening that God actually pours out on you to keep you in your path of destruction.

Do you remember Pharaoh?

Pharaoh relented of his evil, and then God hardened his heart. And then Pharaoh relented, and then God hardened his heart. There is a way to be beyond the pale of forgiveness. Romans 1 says, God gave them over, which means there's no turning back.

If God is the one who has given you over, there is no coming back. Proverbs 21 says, a man who hardens his neck after much reproof will suddenly be broken beyond remedy.

Have you ever read that verse?

I saw that verse this week, and I was like, I know I've read that verse, but man, that.

Is striking.

Isaiah 6, 9 through 10, this is what God tells Isaiah to tell to the people of Israel. He said, go and tell his people, keep on listening, but do not perceive. Keep on looking, but do not understand. Render the hearts of this people insensitive, their ears dull, their eyes dim, otherwise they might see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their hearts and return and be healed.

God is saying, go tell them that I have rendered them incapable of turning back to God because of their rebellion. Their rebellion now has reached a point to where their conscience is so calcified and seared that God has given them over.

There's a way to be on that I -70 road to Kansas where you've gone too far and there's no turning.

Back.

I remember as I was driving through Kansas, lots of memorable stories here, folks. There's a sign that says 200 miles to Hayes, last gas station, which I can't even believe is real in modern day America that there's not a gas station for 200 miles.

That just seems crazy. That seems like something that should happen somewhere else, and if you don't get gas, you're done. You're going to be stranded out in the middle of a field with those little, what are those things that blow by you?

Those things. They're real. I've seen them. It's a dangerous game to ignore God. It's a dangerous game to continue on and say, I'll do that tomorrow, or I want to get past this season of my life because I want to do this and I want to do that and I want to live this way.

It is dangerous because the more sin bites and numbs your conscious, the harder it's going to be for you to turn. Many will discover too late that they were not His, that they really were not of us and they left.

One of the sure signs of saving faith is that over time, you grow warmer. Over time, you grow lighter. Over time, you grow softer. The Puritans were fond of saying that the same sun that melts the wax hardens the clay.

The way to know if you're truly His, one of the ways, one of the clearest ways is do you.

Repent?

That's one of the clearest examples of whether or not you're a Christian.

Do you repent?

When you're presented with your sin, do you say no?

No.

That's not for me. Or do you say, Lord, help me to repent. Help me to turn. Help me to turn away from these things because I want to please you. The final warning that Lady Wisdom gives is in verse 23.

She says, turn to my reproof. Behold, I will pour out my Spirit on you. I will make my words known to you. Turn to me while you still can and I will reveal who God is to you and I will give you God's Spirit.

But if you don't, the downgrade will take you totally down. What will happen if you don't repent? This is what Solomon says. Because I called you and you refused, I stretched out my hand and no one paid attention and you neglected all my counsel and did not want my reproof.

I will laugh at your calamity. I will mock when you dread. When your dread comes 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 they will not find me because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord. They will not accept my counsel. They spurned my reproof, so they shall eat the fruit of their own way.

Brothers and sisters, I can't tell you more clearly than this. If you refuse wisdom's call, if you neglect wisdom's counsel, if you don't want wisdom's reproof, if you call upon the Lord too late, if you seek Him when your time is up, if you hate knowledge and hate the fear of the Lord, then wisdom will laugh at you as well, at.

Your destruction.

And wisdom will mock you when the day of devastation comes. And you will eat the fruit of your own wickedness. Brothers and sisters, I know that's a hard message, but I share it with you because it's.

True.

Do not neglect repentance. Do not silence, suppress, avoid, and ignore the things of God because you may have convinced yourself that you're someone that you're not. A Christian repents. If you call yourself a believer and you do not repent, I hope to God that this message will hit your heart and you will say, maybe I am not what I think I am, Lord, save me.

I pray to God that it doesn't apply to anyone here. The statistics say that it does, but I pray that it doesn't. And I pray that all of us would always have tender hearts when it comes to the things.

Of God.

What's the worst that could happen? You repent too much. Sin is so insidious. Sin makes us feel self-righteous. It makes us feel like we're right and that no one else understands us. And the whole while, you're on that downgrade leading to destruction.

Brothers and sisters, don't. Please listen to what I'm saying. Repent and turn to God if this is you. There's a great verse of hope there in the very end, verse 33, it says, but he who listens to me shall live securely and will be at ease from the dread of evil.

It doesn't matter where you're at on that road. If you listen and turn to the Lord, he will deliver you from the day of evil. And there's great joy in that too. Let this message be a warning if you're suppressing the knowledge of God and let it be a great comfort to you if you repent.

The Danger of Ignoring Wisdom Until It Is Too Late

Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for your word, for the hard and for the soft, for the encouraging and for the devastation, for the comfort and for your mockery. Lord, I pray in the name of Jesus Christ deliberately right now that no one in this room would have to hear the laughter of Lady Wisdom as they slide into destruction.

Lord, I pray, please, Father, let us be tenderhearted in this place. It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.