Bon Appetit

Let's take our Bibles and turn to Proverbs 1 this morning. Our new series for the fall is "Wisdom For the Road." And we find ourselves now in Proverbs 1:20. We're gonna read all the way to the end of the chapter this morning. If you remember the context, it's a father speaking to his son, preparing him for life out on the road of life, where he'll be making lots of choices. And so if the original book of Proverbs is pitched to young adults, to those just about to gain independence for the first time, I think we can all agree, there's plenty for all of us to learn in the book of Proverbs. So let's hear God's word.

I've learned a lot from Youtube over the years. I don't know if y'all are the same, but I find myself often running into problems, issues, questions at my home that I don't know the answer to. But I know a place I can turn and find the answers pretty quickly: Youtube. How do I repair a hole in the drywall? Youtube. How do I install a power cord on a refrigerator? Youtube. How do I catch a raccoon that keeps getting into my garage and tearing up my trash? And Youtube's like, "I really don't need that much information." All the time I'm pulling up information that helps me do what I need to do and answer the questions that I have. But do you know what I do with my phone as soon as I've finished watching that video? I turn it off, put it back in my pocket, and I don't pull it out again until I need something, until I have another question, until I run into another problem. It's so handy that way.

The problem comes when I try to treat my relationship with Jesus like that. We would all kind of like God's wisdom to come to us in just the same way that we pull up wisdom and information from Youtube and Google. We would never say this out loud, but basically what we want is for Jesus to forgive us of our sins, to take us to heaven when we die, and then pretty much leave us alone in between, until we get into trouble, or we have a problem, or we get confused, or we get scared. And we want to be able to pull out our phone, dial up the appropriate Bible verses, get the help that we need, get the little life hack, get the tip or the technique for money or marriage or whatever our issue may be, and then just put that phone right back in our pocket, and get back on about our life, managing things according to our own wisdom and under our own power.

That's the way that we would like God's wisdom to work in our lives. But Jesus isn't into that. Jesus is not your smartphone. Jesus is the Lord. And the only way Jesus gives wisdom to people is through a relationship with him. See, Jesus is not interested in giving you little bits of wisdom and help along the way just so that you can be more comfortable ignoring him 95% of the time. Jesus is interested in you coming under his lordship, and taking his yoke upon you, Matthew 11:28 says, learning from him how to live in a day-by-day walk where you are submitting to his authority in every area of your life, letting him show you the way, letting him correct you, letting him encourage you and build you up, listening to his voice in the scriptures, listening to his counsel when he sends that to you through wise Godly people in your life, and letting Jesus gradually over time change you into a wise person. That's how wisdom works. That's how you get the wisdom of God. That's how you become a wise, mature Godly person.

And that's what the father tells his son in our passage today. He's still preparing him to walk out the front door of the house where he's been sort of sheltered and nurtured and trained and hearing the voice of mom and dad all these years guiding his steps and all of that. And now he's about to walk out the front door and step onto the path and make his way through the town out to the city gates where he'll then step onto the road of life for himself or for herself and out on that road of life. This young man or this young woman soon to be an older man, an older woman, that person on the road of life will be making choices every single day that will determine the destination that they arrive at and will determine the kind of person they will be when they get to that destination. And so before this young person gets on the road and begins to make all these choices in life, the father says there's just one more choice I need to tell you about. It's the most important of all. It's the foundational choice of your entire life that will change everything for you. It's the choice to walk on the road of life with wisdom herself, wisdom himself.

See in the book of Proverbs wisdom is portrayed as a person. It's portrayed as a lady. This wise, graceful lady that invites people to walk with her, listen to her, and let her guide their steps. You're gonna be hearing about lady wisdom a lot in Proverbs 1-9. But when you get to the New Testament, Jesus says, "Guess what, I'm wisdom. I'm the wisdom of God." He identifies himself with this wisdom in the book of Proverbs. So what Proverbs 1 is really talking about is living your life in a personal day-to-day relationship with Jesus where he's the Lord, he's the mentor. He's the expert guide that is keeping you from the pitfalls and the traps and the snares that everybody else is falling into, that you keep falling into on your own. The expert God who will lead you safely home through a life of peace to the place that he made you for. Jesus, the wisdom of God, is calling to you today. So why not walk through life with him?

And I want to look at what he has to say in three different steps. First, I want you to notice what we learn about:

I don't go to Sam's a lot. But recently I went through Sam's and I was just gonna kind of blow through there and pick up some coffee, and 36 rolls of paper towels, and just all the stuff that you get at Sam's. And I was surprised when I dashed in there and found all these people standing in the aisle calling out to me, hawking these phone plans, and trying to get me to buy a big screen tv. I wasn't used to all that! It's one thing if you're walking through a marketplace in some Caribbean nation or whatever, I expect it there. It's like, man, this is Sam's! I'm just trying to take care of business, you know? But they're calling out, "Hey, stop, stop! What's your phone plan right now? Let me tell you about my plan," and all this crazy stuff.

I thought about that when I was reading Proverbs 1 because that's really what the person of wisdom is doing in verses 20-23. Wisdom is calling out to this young person who is stepping out the door, headed for the road of life, calling out to all of us before we make our choices, and make our decisions trying to get our attention. Because wisdom has an offer for you just like wisdom has an offer for me. I want you to notice that it is:

What's wisdom doing to try to get your attention? Wisdom is trailing you. Wisdom is calling your name. Wisdom is raising her voice up above the crowd. This is like restraining order material, right? If somebody does that in Savannah, we're calling Jeremy Bowen to take care of that. This is not what we expect in day-to-day life. This person is really persistent trying to get your attention. That's what Jesus is doing in your life right now. Jesus, the wisdom of God is not hiding from you. You don't have to go on a quest to Nepal to climb a mountain to find wisdom. Jesus is trying to get his wisdom to you every single day, chasing you, hollering at you, begging you to listen. How is Jesus doing that? In these Bibles that are lying around everywhere in your life, in these sermons you have to sit through that sound like Charlie Brown's teacher! He's trying to get your attention through the Godly parents or grandparents or other church members who are in your life who try to guide you and give you advice as Jesus calling out to you. Jesus is calling out to you with his wisdom every day in your experiences when you do things his way and it works out or when you don't do things his way and it doesn't work out. Jesus is calling to you in the examples that you observe of people all around you who are either walking Jesus' way or not walking Jesus' way and experiencing the fallout. Jesus is calling out to you. He's got this urgent message. He wants you to hear him.

Why? One reason is because the stakes are so high. Y'all, do you realize we have one life to live? We get one shot at this deal to glorify God in these bodies with these lives in this world. Jesus doesn't want you to waste that, and I don't want to waste that. And he's urgent with this offer because the actions we take every day, I know they don't seem significant at all, but the actions we take every day carry major consequences. We are forming the people who we are and who we will end up being every day by the choices that we make. And meanwhile, it's not just the voice of Jesus that's calling out to us. There are all kinds of other voices calling out to us all the time trying to influence us and shape us and direct us. And so Jesus is urgent in his offer to you and to me to hear his wisdom. It's an urgent offer.

It's also:

Who Is this wisdom is for? Who is Jesus offering this wisdom to? First of all to the simple. That's that person we met last week. This person who is so influenced by the crowd, so influenced by what other people think and what they tell him to, he doesn't realize they're playing him like a jukebox. Right? Just leading him down this road to distress, just being carried along. The simple.

Then there's the scoffer, the person who treats God's wisdom like a joke. The scoffer treats everything like a joke. So the scholar is not serious about anything because that just kind of seems cool to be aloof and unserious. The fool, that's the person who's so wise in his own eyes. She's already got it figured out. She's got her life under control. She's managing everything just fine. You can't tell him anything. You can't tell her anything. That's who the fool is in Proverbs.

Can we just admit together today we've been all three of these? We've been simple. We've been scoffers. And we've been fools. Can I get an amen? That may be the only one I get this morning, but that is true. For all of us, we have all made tons of choices that seemed brilliant in the moment that turned out to be incredibly stupid, right? We have all been overly influenced by people who we shouldn't have given the time of day to, right? We have all been so easily deceived and are so easily blinded to our own issues and our own sin by our pride. And I don't mean like 20 years ago before you got saved, I mean, like right now this morning. We are easily blinded and deceived. If we know that, we should be eagerly seeking out wisdom, but we don't. With all of our simplicity, and scoffing, and foolishness, we hate it when people try to help us. We hate it. When people try to show us where we're getting off the path, we hate it. When anybody tries to bring any correction and bring any wisdom into our lives, we get mad. We get defensive. We bow up. We strike out on our own path and we make it worse. Does this sound familiar? Is this is like your biography? It's my biography.

Who would want to fool with people like that? The good news is Jesus does. That's the whole point. Jesus loves simpletons, scoffers, and fools. That's good news for us. And Jesus is earnestly appealing to people like us who don't just have an information problem, we've got a heart problem. We delight in being simple. We hate knowledge. We love being foolish. There's something wrong with us on the inside, what our hearts love. And Jesus sees that, knows that, and appeals to us. He wants to get involved with our crazy mess. He wants to get all up in the middle of our lives even after we've rejected him, after we've made horrible choices. What Jesus is saying to you and me right now is, "How long are you gonna keep doing this? What's so great about your life, rejecting me and you handling stuff that you want to keep me at arm's length? Because from where I'm standing," Jesus could say, "You're not looking so good. It doesn't look like it's working out too great for you. Why don't you just let me lead you? I made this whole world. I made you. We can work together." That's what Jesus is offering to us today. His offer is urgent. His offer is merciful. His offer is also:

"If you turn at my reproof," y'all, here's the best news you will hear all week: If you want to have an abundant, satisfied, joyful life, you don't have to be really smart. You don't have to have this top flight education. You don't have to be incredibly good looking. You don't have to be really athletic. You don't have to come from a great family of origin. You don't have to be well connected to all the right people. You don't have to have any of that. If you want an abundant life, you need two things: humility and decisiveness.

You've got to be humble enough to know that you need Jesus to correct you in 1 million ways. And you've got to be willing to receive it. And then you've got to be decisive enough to do something about it. I see humility and decisiveness in that word turn. "Turn at my reproof." Some of us are humble enough perhaps to recognize that we need Jesus' help real bad, but we're not decisive enough to do anything about it today. And that's the problem. It's the problem of complacency, which we will come back to at the end. But just look at those six words again in verse 23: "If you turn at my reproof." Y'all, your future hangs on those six words! The script of the rest of your life hangs on what you do with those six words. "If you turn at my reproof." If you will just take Jesus up on that, listen to this extravagant promise, "Behold, I will pour out my spirit to you. I will make my words known to you." Jesus who holds this whole thing together will become your personal mentor.

I mean, people pour tens of thousands of dollars into counseling and therapy every year to get help, to get mentorship. And I'm not throwing shade on that. But I'm saying Jesus is offering himself for free. He is the creator. He is your redeemer. He will make his words known to you. He will show you how to navigate his world in all of its brokenness with skill and success. He'll teach you to avoid the pits that others fall into. He'll teach you how to manage the problems that can't be avoided in a fallen world. Jesus will teach you how to get self-control. Jesus will teach you how to speak to your spouse so that she's glad to see you when you walk through the door. He'll teach you how to speak to your kids so that y'all have a relationship after they turn 18. He'll show you how not to go bankrupt by taking bad and crooked deals. He'll show you how to identify toxic people so you don't pour out your heart to them and entrust yourself to them and get totally shattered and beat down because of it. He'll show you how you can be the kind of employee that earns promotions and that gets opportunities. He'll show you how not to get burned by gossips and liars and manipulators. He'll show you how to enjoy God's good gift of sex without the brokenness of the world. Jesus will show you how to manage your time. He'll show you how to get out of bed and get something done and have some purpose so you're not walking around like the walking dead. Jesus will show you how to appear smarter than you really are. Can I get a witness? I want that. I'm telling you, Jesus wants to help you with everything. He wants to forgive you of your sins. He wants to take you to heaven, but there's a lot going on in between and he wants to help you with that right now in the nitty-gritty of your daily messy life. Jesus wants to get involved with that. And not only will he make his words known to you through the scriptures, he'll even pour his spirit out on you so that he gives you the power from within to want it and to persevere in it. Y'all that's wisdom's offer. It is incredible.

I remember several years ago, not to get all political today, but I remember when John McCain was running for president, he rode around on a tour bus through America and on the side of the bus, it said the "Straight Talk Express." Anybody remember that? That always reminded me of my grandmother because sometimes when I was talking to her, it was kind of like the straight talk express. My grandmother was a wonderful Christian lady and she had this counseling ministry in her home with my grandfather for lots of years, and helped tons of people in their personal lives, their walk with Jesus, their marriage, and everything else. And my grandmother didn't just come in through the front door of your house to give you her counsel. But if you came to her, she would tell you, she would give it to you straight. And one of the things that my grandmother often did was share Proverbs 1:24-31, the words of wisdom to those who reject Godly counsel, who reject what the scriptures say to them. Wisdom is very honest in these verses.

I want you to notice that wisdom is honest about what you can expect if you don't listen. Wisdom has made this incredible offer to us to change our lives, make his words known to us, pour out his spirit upon us, but many of us frankly are just too busy to be bothered with the wisdom of God. We're too proud to be corrected by the wisdom of God. We're too unserious to think that we need the wisdom of God. And so wisdom tells us straight about what we can expect. It may take a little while, but a storm is coming in your life. That's the word that's used. It's an image that's used in verse 27. And following a storm that's going to be sudden, violent, destructive, it's going to hurt. And wisdom is talking about the natural consequences of living in God's world without following God's wisdom.

Now, look, if you are the creator of the world, you could make up your own rules and you could live however you want to and it would work out just like you wanted it to, but I'm sorry to break it to you, we don't live in your world, we don't live in my world. We live in God's world. He sets the terms. He makes the rules. And we can either go with the grain or we can go against the grain. And wisdom here is warning those who are trying to go against the grain, trying to live in God's world as if they are God and able to set the terms. And what wisdom says is, "look, it is as predictable as ignoring the physical laws of the universe, what will happen if you ignore God's law and God's word."

So if you are constantly harsh and demeaning to your children, then as soon as they get independence, they are going to get as far away from you as quickly as they can.

If you can't control your wants, (we've all got a real powerful, high functioning "wanter," amen?), but if we can't control those wants by the power and the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, you will end up being buried in debt and it will control your life.

If you use people for what you can get out of them, then you're going to reach a point in your life where no one is there for you because you've mistreated everyone.

If you gossip all the time, no one is going to trust you and you won't have any real friends.

If you are always arrogant or negative or grumpy or critical in your speech, you're not gonna have many friends and you'll be really lonely.

If you rely on alcohol to cope with every problem or hiccup in life, you're going to develop a dependence upon it and it's going to control you and it's gonna take everything from you.

If you can't learn to submit to authority, you're always gonna wonder why you never get promoted at work, why you get stuck in this dead end job, and you might even wind up in jail.

If you hang out with fools, they are going to drag you into their drama and ruin your life.

If you are lazy and irresponsible, you are going to stay broke all the time and people are gonna get tired of bailing you out.

If you quit what you start, break all your promises, don't follow through, no one is gonna take you seriously when you say you're going to do such and such.

If you're rude and selfish with your spouse, (So I'm a man, I'll talk to men), men, if you're rude and selfish with your spouse during the day, it may be a little bit chilly that night, right?

We can write the script to this. We don't have to guess, why is this happening? Why is my life the way that it is? Wisdom is like, "hello, I'm telling you how it is. I'm telling you exactly how it's going to be." You cannot live a life in defiance of God's order to the universe and expect an orderly, peaceful, joyful life. It doesn't work. It's like we said last week. You cannot get on the road driving with all your might on 64 East and get to Selmer. It doesn't happen. If you want to get to somewhere, you have to turn around, get on 64 West. And so wisdom is honest about what you can expect. If you reject God's wisdom, wisdom is also very honest about who you can blame. Because friends, when our world comes caving in, in big ways, or when life just kind of becomes unpleasant in smaller ways, it's consequences for choices we've made.

Wisdom does something kind of unexpected. Wisdom does not dry our eyes and give us a bandaid and make us hot tea. Wisdom laughs at your tail. That's what wisdom says, "You are going to blow up your life, you're going to crater your life, and I'm gonna stand over you and I'm gonna laugh." Well, I don't think that was in Jesus calling. You know what I'm saying? The Jesus in Jesus calling always kind of sounds like this very tender middle aged lady. The Jesus in Proverbs 1 sounds a lot different than that. "I'm going to laugh at your calamity. I'm gonna laugh when the whirlwind picks you up." Why? Because you laughed at wisdom when it was offered to you. And now your life is a vindication of that wisdom, just in a negative way. So when negative consequences come down, wisdom says you are going to want to blame everyone else and everything else. But if you spend your life rejecting the wisdom of God and your life is a hell hole, it's not because of your family of origin. It's not because of this horrible spouse that you have. It's not because you have lousy friends. It's not because so and so is in office in the government. It's not because of anything else that you want to point to. It's because of the choices that you made.

Verse 31: "They shall eat the fruit of their way and have their fill of their own devices." Wisdom says you will be eating a meal that you prepared. Bon Appetit. You are reaping the harvest that you sowed with all you had all those years. That harvest is kind of bitter right now, but it's your harvest. Y'all, that's tough to hear, isn't it? It's tough to hear when you're suffering under the consequences of your choices. It is really tough to hear. But if you'll hear it, it's the only way forward. This is some really good news in the midst of some really tough talk. The really good news is no matter what choices you've made, what horrible consequences you've pulled down on your own head today that I don't know about, that I couldn't even guess no matter what the story is, if you are willing to come face to face with Jesus Christ, the wisdom of God and say, "this is my meal that I prepared and I don't like eating it, but I know who prepared it. This is on me, Lord. Can you do something with this? Because if you can do something with this, I'll give you everything I've got." Jesus loves those prayers. The gospels are full of people coming to Jesus just like that and they get a whole new life. It's not always easy, but it's really good and it ends in a really happy place.

But you will never get that happy ending until you own up to the consequences of your own actions. Our society does not promote personal responsibility. Your own families may not promote personal responsibility. Maybe mom and dad always kind of bailed you out of the bad stuff that you did. But Jesus, he preaches personal responsibility. The only way out of this thing is coming to him in humility, taking ownership of what you did, said, thought, believed, felt, you own it all. And he always gives grace to the humble, he always opposes the proud, but he always gives grace to the humble. That should be good news to us.

So wisdom is honest about what we can expect. Wisdom is honest about who we can blame. And wisdom is honest about why we should act right now. Why should we turn now to what wisdom is saying? Because if you don't, there's no guarantee that you'll be able to turn it around later. That's the urgent piece of this verse 28. After it all comes down on them, then they will call upon me, but I will not answer. They'll seek me diligently, but will not find me again. I don't remember that one in Jesus calling, but jesus' words always fit the occasion. So when people come to Jesus broken over their choices, saying, "Lord, I'm not worthy of anything from you, but I just fall at your feet," Jesus has words of grace for those people. He's got hope for those people.

But Jesus is trying to talk to us now before we blow our lives up. That calls for urgency and what Jesus is saying to all of us is, "don't assume that you'll be able to walk out those doors, ignore what I've said, and then run to me later to fix it up because it may not work out like that." We don't know what the future is going to hold. The Bible calls that presumption. Here's one way this works out. Sometimes when we ignore wisdom for a really long time, we think, "well, I'll just get wisdom when I need it." We ignore wisdom all this time. We get into the crisis, we need the wisdom, and y'all, it's just not there. You know why it's not there? Because you haven't been doing what wise people have been doing for the last 15 years, which is reading the Bible, submitting to Jesus, coming to church, praying, cultivating a correctable posture with other wise people. That's how you get wise! If you hadn't been doing that your whole life, when you hit a crisis, do you think you're gonna have wisdom? No, it's not a microwave oven. It's a lifetime kind of a deal. So that's one way that we should be warned not to neglect wisdom's call right now. But then sometimes we don't even get a chance to call on him because our choices are so detrimental, so devastating that either our hearts are so hard that we don't even want to call on wisdom for help or we don't get the opportunity to do it.

So wisdom is very honest as you're heading out on the road of life, whether you're 16, 18, or 86, there's a stretch of road in front of you. You never know how long it's gonna be, but there's a stretch of road of life in front of you. How are you gonna walk on that road? What are you gonna do with it? Wisdom is honest right now. If you reject the wisdom of God's word, it's honest about what you can expect, who you can blame, and why you should act right now. Why don't you just turn at wisdom's reproof?

That brings us as we close to:

If you're like me, too many options paralyze me in indecision. That's why I hate going through drive thrus. I get to Taco Bell, (confession is good for the soul), and I just see all that stuff and it just all sounds good. I mean, do I want a chalupa? Do I want a Gordita? Do I want the crunch wrap? It's just so much. It's kind of all the same, but it's in different forms, and I just don't know what to pick, and it's too many options. I just get Candace to order for me. What's good about wisdom literature in the Bible like Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Sermon on the Mount, which has a lot of wisdom elements to it, wisdom literature always brings you to a point of decision, where you just have two options, two choices.

Our lives so many times are complicated. They're messy. We're balancing all these different considerations and dynamics. Wisdom literature is such a gift from God because it lifts the fog, it lifts the haze, and we see our lives really clearly in terms of just two options. We're gonna choose one or the other. Like Jesus says, you can either build your house on the rock or you can build your house on the sand. It's just one of two options. You can either serve God or you can serve money. It's one or the other. That's what wisdom does here. It describes this young person at the threshold of the city gate, stepping onto the path of life, and the road is forking off in two directions. It's kind of like that sermon graphic that we've got where it's forking off in two directions. There are only two of them. You got to pick one.

Path one is complacency. Path two is correctable.

Here's why that's an important word. The word complacency means like apathetic. I don't really care that much. In other words, when you reject the wisdom of Jesus Christ, it usually doesn't feel like you are. You don't feel like some kind of snarling atheist professor at a state university saying, "I hate the Bible." None of us are gonna feel that way. When we reject the wisdom of Jesus, what we're gonna feel is complacency: I'm fine the way that I am. Yeah, I'm sure I could probably change a few things, but that'd be a lot of trouble. I have to move a bunch of stuff around. It's not really worth it. It's not that big of a deal. That's complacency. I'm just ok with me managing things on my own, taking care of stuff, not yielding anything else to Jesus, not making any changes. That's complacency. And that feels so easy. That feels so right, so much of the time. But look what wisdom says in verse 32: "The simple are killed by their turning away and the complacency of fools destroys them." I just really want to urge you with all that I can, don't be lulled into a sense of complacency that just because you're kind of managing life right now not submitted to Jesus, that you'll always be able to do that. Because if God's Word is true, there is a storm coming and if it's not coming in this life, it's coming for all of us at the end of this life in judgment. Don't be complacent. That's what's gonna destroy you.

But there's another path that you can take. And that's the path called correctable. See on the path called correctable, you're not always gonna get it right. In fact, often you're gonna blow it in really big ways, in embarrassing ways, in ways that are gonna cost you. But on the path of correctable, you are in the company of Jesus Christ. And you have someone to turn to, to repent to, to be restored by. You have someone who will walk with you and show you all the ways that you're getting it wrong, someone who can lead you in the steps that God has marked out for you on the path of correctable. You can't keep your pride. You can't keep your ego because Jesus is telling you to stop trusting yourself and start trusting him. You can't keep your pride on the path of correctable. But I'll tell you what you can keep: You can keep peace and assurance and security. That's verse 33, "Whoever listens to me will dwell secure and will be at ease without dread of disaster."

Life can be hard on the path of correctable because it's just a broken world. But you don't have to fear disaster. "What have I to dread? What have I to fear leaning on the everlasting arms of Jesus?" That's how I want to spend the rest of the days that I've got to walk on the road of life. I don't know how many there will be, but however many I've got, I want to spend them in peace and security, not dreading disaster looking over my shoulder. I want to spend it in the company of Jesus Christ. I encourage you to take that option too. Complacency or correctable. Which are you? There's only two. Let's pray.

Sermon by Eric Smith
Senior Pastor, Sharon Baptist Church