The First Day of the Rest of Your Life

Let's turn to that word in Proverbs 9 as we come to a milestone moment in the book of Proverbs. The book is set up with chapters 1-9 as a kind of introduction, of a father and a son talking together. The father is preparing his son for independent adult life. We've now come to the conclusion of that conversation and we're about to move out now into life on the road. The son will have to make those choices, and deal with the consequences, and learn about some of these Proverbs from which the book derives its name.

But Proverbs 9 is the conclusion of this big introduction we've been working through together all fall long. The whole chapter is really one of the great texts for considering your life before the Lord. It confronts us all with the decision of what we're going to do with the rest of this road that lies before us. So if you're able, let me invite you to stand with me as we honor the reading of God's word.

I still remember really vividly the night before I left for college. I drove out to a place that had been kind of like the backdrop of my whole life. It's called Okeena Park in Dyersburg. And when I was a preschooler, my mom would take me there for mother's day out play dates. Then when I was in grade school, we would take field trips there and swing on the swings, play on the slides, play tag, and eat sack lunches. When I was in high school, our cross country team had practice there, so we ran all over those hills. It's where friends would hang out at night. We played a summer sand volleyball league at Okeena Park. I spent so much time there. It was iconic in my growing up years.

And I drove out there all by myself, knowing that in the morning I was leaving. My little Honda Accord was all packed up. I was going to be relocating to a different town. I wasn't going all that far away. I went to Union University in Jackson just 45 minutes from my home where I had grown up. But I knew even at 18, I was turning a page, because I was going to a new place where there were new people. There would be a new lifestyle and new responsibilities. I knew that even if I did come back home, I wouldn't be the same person that I was right then. And I could sense the momentousness of it all even at age 18. And I was kind of nostalgic, you know? I knew I probably wouldn't see my high school friends that much anymore. They had all started to scatter and go their separate ways. I was one of the the last ones to leave. I was also excited about what was to come. I was a little bit anxious. Can y'all remember moments like that in your life? It was the moment of crossing the threshold from being a child, growing up in your parents' home, to really stepping out into more independent, young adulthood. It's still really clear in my mind's eye.

And that is the moment that we've reached in the book of Proverbs. As we come to chapter 9, this young man has been at the kitchen table with his father. His diploma is over here on the counter. He's written all the thank you notes for the graduation gifts. The car is packed up. The dad has been having these final discussions with him about taking all this wisdom, this teaching, this Bible that mom and dad have been pouring into him and making it his own, binding it to his heart, wearing it like a chain around his neck or a garland around his head, pleading with him to make it personal.

Finally, the father has come to the end of the line for what he could share with him, the situations he could rehearse for him that he's going to face as he moves out into life. And he just commended in chapter 8 that he become wisdom's mentee, that he take the person of wisdom, God himself, as his mentor to walk with him down every road of life, to go with him to the places where the dad could never go, all the way to the end of his life. And now all the talking is over. And the son takes a deep breath. He steps across that threshold of mom and dad's front door and he walks out onto the road of life all by himself.

And in chapter 9, we should picture him kind of taking the first steps of this adult journey and his dad receding in the distance. Now, he's alone just like he's been thinking about, dreaming about it. And it's all new. And it's kind of exciting. And he keeps walking down the path until he gets to the end of the day as the sun's beginning to go down. And he's thinking about where he's going to stay for the night. And he finds himself at a fork in the road. And at the opening of each of these paths, there is a big tall hill. And at the top of each hill is a house. And on the front porch of each house is a hostess, a lady, a proprietress running this kind of bed and breakfast type place. And both of these hostesses are calling out to the young man to come and stay with her, to get a good meal, to get some rest, and then to start out the next day, refreshed for the journey.

But as we see in the passage, these ladies aren't just interested in giving this young man one night's rest, they want to begin a relationship with him. They want to advise him. They want to influence him. They want to shape the way that he thinks about the rest of the journey of his life. They want to accompany him from this point forward. And the names of these two ladies are wisdom and folly. Those are the two hostesses issuing these invitations. And so I think we should picture this young man standing here at this crossroads, at this parting of the ways, looking first at one house and then at the other, listening to these offers, considering what his options are, knowing that he can only choose one and that he must choose one. There's no third way. Now this young man may not realize it, but this choice that he's making on day one of his journey is the fundamental choice of his life. It is the choice that will determine really every other choice that he makes. Is he someone who will live in a relationship with wisdom or in a relationship with folly? Have you got that picture clear in your mind?

Now picture yourself standing there, because that's what Proverbs wants us all to do, to put ourselves in the place of this young adult. This is the place to which Proverbs has brought us. We have been listening to this conversation between the father and his son since August preparing us for this moment of decision, this moment of choice, and now we've got to choose. So whether you are a senior in high school and this has kind of been describing where you're about to be in the month of May in 2025, or you're somebody who can't even remember when you graduated from high school, we've all got a certain amount of road left in our lives. And God is calling us through Proverbs 9 to choose who we're going to walk with for the rest of that road. Will it be wisdom or will it be folly? It's going to be one or the other and only you can choose. So I want you to consider first of all:

Look at verse one, "Wisdom has built her house, she has hewn her seven pillars." This young man looks at wisdom's house. The first thing that he notices is this massive, elegant seven-pillared palace. Most people are living in a one or two room house at this time. It would have stood out. Everyone who goes by this house is going to notice it, they're gonna admire it, they're gonna be drawn into it.

And that's exactly the kind of life God's wisdom wants to help you build, a life that's like this house, that is lovely, that is stable, that's built to last, that is complete, that is compelling, and that attracts other people. God wants to help you build a life like that, wants to help this young man build a life like that.

But notice he doesn't just see something. I think we're also to read that he smells something wafting from the backyard, because wisdom hasn't just built and decorated this beautiful home, wisdom is at the grill cooking up some steaks. Verse 2, "She has slaughtered her beast. She has mixed her wine. She has also set her table." Now again, think about it. The average Israelite reading Proverbs is eating flatbread and beans at every meal. This lady is inviting him to Texas de Brazil, all-you-can-eat meat of every kind, with delicacies that he could never imagine all spread out beautifully on this tablescape set up in the dining room. This is kind of like what we're going to all enjoy next week at the All Saints Feast, Lord willing.

And we're to imagine the life that God offers us not only like a house stabilized by wisdom, but also like a feast satisfied because of wisdom. Wisdom wants to spread for you a table that is filling and delicious and joyous. And we've been kind of sampling that together, haven't we? Just in chapters 1-8, if you've been here for the series at all, you have found help for your work life, and the way that you think about time, and how you choose your friends, and how you make your decisions, how you operate in marriage, how you cultivate and protect your reputation, how you guard against temptation. We have a delicious meal already just in chapters 1-8! How many people know if we would just listen to and implement 10% of what we've been talking about in Proverbs, our lives would be a whole lot better? Can I get a witness on that? And we're just through chapter 8! We haven't even gotten to the Proverbs yet. That starts in chapter 10. So we've just gotten the hors d'oeuvres to whet our appetite. We're being invited into a delicious meal of God's wisdom.

Look at verses 3-6, "She sent out her young women to call from the highest places in the town, 'Whoever is simple, let him turn in here,' to him who lacks sense she says, 'come eat of my bread, drink of the wine I have mixed, leave your simple ways and your simple companions and live and walk in the way of insight.'"

Here's what you need to know. This invitation to a wise Godly happy life is not for someone else, it's for you. It is for you. Wisdom is sending out servants to invite, to compel, to lead by the hand to this house, to this moment. Wisdom has done everything that she can do to let you know you're wanted here. This could be your place at this table in this house. In the same way, God is sending out people into your life, constantly calling you through His word to come and listen and live. It's why God gives you pastors and Sunday school teachers and for many, parents and grandparents and Godly friends. These are wisdom's servants pleading with you, "You can't imagine what your life could be like if you will just come to Wisdom's house! You can come just as you are. I don't care if you stumble into church with a hangover smelling like cheap gin and vodka this morning. This is for you!"

He wants you come naive and simple-minded, come as that person who is easily led astray by your peers, come if you're that person who is constantly anxious and fearful about the future and overwhelmed by life, come if you're lacking sense, constantly tripping up, making painful mistakes that you can't even identify so that you can't even begin to fix them. Come if you're that person who is sad and regretful over all the time you've already wasted in your life. You're just who wisdom is looking for! You're just who Jesus wants at his house, at his table.

He will give you a fabulous meal and the best night's sleep of your life. You'll wake up to strong coffee and find that wisdom is ready to take the rest of your life's journey with you. Now, that's a deal. And that's what Christ is inviting all of us to through the person of wisdom. Listen friends, you don't have to spend the rest of your life getting scammed by the world's lies. You don't have to spend the rest of your life getting beat up in the school of hard knocks. It doesn't have to go down like that. You don't have to learn everything the hard way. You can walk as the text says in 'insight,' that looks past the deceptive appearances of things to the reality of them, because you can walk in the light of God's truth as it shines on every part of your life.

I hope that you're learning from Proverbs Jesus isn't just interested in talking to you about spiritual things, saving your soul, forgiving your sins, and taking you to heaven when you die, and then leaving you to just kind of stumble around in the dark between here and death. That's how basically everyone thinks about Jesus, but Jesus is a much better savior than that! He is so wise. He is such a good shepherd. He is a wonderful friend. He will be your mentor in every area of life. And y'all, it's absolutely free. What a gift of grace you can get in this life. You can come to this house, you can sit at this table, and you can have this mentor on your journey. All you need is to know you're a mess and be willing to make some changes. That's what trips a lot of us up, because you have to leave simple ways and simple companions behind if you want to walk with wisdom, but the invitation is for you and you will find satisfaction in living God's way in God's world. It is the truth.

Now, meanwhile, across the road, folly is running a rival establishment. There's another house and another hostess recruiting customers from exactly the same base. Did y'all notice how in verses 13-18 the picture of folly parallels exactly the picture of wisdom in verses 1-6? It's like a mirror image. Both are going after the simple and the naive using the same words, "Turn in here, come over here, I've got a meal for you." But there are some key differences, aren't there?

The first thing the young man notices about folly is that she gets your attention by being loud. She is loud. She's like Buc-ees, ok? She has huge, colorful billboards with cartoon characters every five miles on the interstate. You can't miss it. You can't avoid it. Folly is going to make sure as you walk through this world, you cannot miss her invitation. It's everywhere. She's also seductive. That is the word that's used in verse 13. Folly knows what you like. Folly knows how you think. Folly knows what draws you in. And so Folly is always able to appeal to, for instance, your selfish ambition, or your pride, or your lust, or your greed, or your desire to fit in, or your insecurity, or your laziness.

Folly knows just what you like and just how to pull you in. But the truth is, verse 13 says, folly knows nothing. When you go to folly, you discover she can't really teach you how to live a successful life. Now, wisdom tells you the truth. When wisdom says, "I've prepared a meal for you that will satisfy," she has actually done it. God really does have the wisdom that will build up. No one has ever come to Christ and regretted it. No one has ever taken God's word seriously and regretted it. Wisdom tells you the truth. Meanwhile, folly just brings a bunch of empty promises. That's why we see folly sitting. We're twice told she's just taking her seat. Wisdom can't stop working. Wisdom is building houses. She's slaughtering beasts. She's mixing up good wine. Folly is telling you all this stuff that she's got for you, but she hasn't done a lick of work. She has not prepared anything for you that will help you like wisdom has. She's just feeding you lines like verse 17, "stolen water is sweet, bread eaten in secret is pleasant."

Now, let's be real. That sounds kind of exciting, to steal stuff with folly. We could make up our own rules, throw out authority, think for ourselves, live for the moment. I mean, that sounds kind of exciting. It sounds fun. It sounds delicious. The only problem is that's not reality. That kind of lifestyle does not end well on this planet which belongs to Almighty God, because God has made the world. He has established the rules. He has set the terms. And your actions in this moment really do come with consequences in the future, sometimes immediate, sometimes a little further down the road, which means if you listen to folly, you're gonna get a little bit of short term gratification and it's gonna be fun, but it will be followed by a lot of pain and chaos and regret. Can I get an amen? That's the way it works.

Verse 18 is describing what you can look forward to after you take the line that it's gonna be sweet and fun to drink the stolen water and eat the stolen bread. Verse 18 tells you what you can expect when all the fun and the laughter is over. This young man does not know that the dead are there, that her guests are in the depths of Sheol. Folly will tell you anything you want to hear to get you inside, just to get you across that doorstep. But once you're in, you realize there's no food in here. This place is a dump. It stinks in here. All the furniture is broken. There's graffiti on the walls. You turn around to ask, "hey, what's the big idea?" And there's folly looking crazy with a 357 pointing at your head. And there's a shovel leaned up against the wall. And she's about to use that to bury you in the backyard just like she's buried every other fool that's listened to her and not to wisdom. And what you're going to discover is that Folly is running the Bates motel. It sounded so good on the front end, but there's nothing but death waiting for you on the other side.

What is Folly's house? Folly's house is the life that rejects the wisdom of God outright and says, "I don't want that." It's for losers. It may have worked for grandpa back in World War II, but not for me. You can reject God's wisdom outright like that. But you can also just be too busy to pay attention to God's word. That will get you at Folly's house too. Folly's house is the place of simply living your life in the way that seems right to you and that seems best to you. In fact, Proverbs is going to say in 14:12, "There is a way that seems right to a man," It seems right to me, this is a great idea, this is gonna work out, it's gonna be awesome, I've done the math, I've done the planning, I've looked at it from every angle, it seems right to me, "but in the end, it leads to death." Because it may seem right to me, but I never ran it through the wisdom of God. And I didn't take God into account in my decision. So what seems so good to me ends up killing me. Can that happen? And so you can be at folly's house just by doing what seems right, what feels right to you, living for folly, being shaped by folly.

It means you're going to make your choices based on the superficial appearance of things, not based on reality. You're gonna do what feels good at that moment, what offers an immediate reward, not thinking about any kind of long term consequences to follow. You're going to spend a lot of time following the crowd, being swept along by the course of this world, following your feelings and your emotions.

Now this is the way that the world lives, which means Folly's house is super popular, also like Buc-ees, which I'm a fan of for the record, but the exits are jam packed with cars lined up to pull into Folly's house all the time. So if you're just looking at what's popular, it's always gonna look like a good bet to go to Folly's. But there's a way that seems right to a man that leads only to death. You will have lots of company as you go down to the grave, rejecting wisdom, ignoring wisdom, just too busy to pay attention to wisdom.

Now, the way that Proverbs lays all this out, the choice seems obvious. You've got a scary, creepy, haunted house with an axe murderer over here. And you've got the Peabody over there. I mean, it's really easy when you put it like that. In fact, I used to talk to my kids like this. I would say, "OK, quick question and answer time. What do you get at Wisdom's house? A good meal, a good night sleep, a good life. That's right. What do you get at Folly's house? A 357 and buried in the backyard. That's right. It's really easy when you put it in the stark terms. And that's why wisdom literature is so helpful. It's taking this messy, complicated life that seems like such a muddle to us as we're making decisions in real time every day, and it clarifies it, it brings us to a point. It brings us to a binary choice, this or that, one or the other. That's why it's wisdom literature. That's why it helps us. You're either building on the sand or you're building on the rock. You're either planting yourself by streams of living water or you're following the way of the wicked in Psalm 1. And you're either going to Wisdom's house or you're going to Folly's house. It makes everything so clear.

And what Proverbs is trying to help you see is there is no third option. There is no neutral position. We would all love to come to church and just kind of hear some good ideas. We weigh our choices, weigh our opportunities, think about it for a while, maybe kick the can down the road a little bit, and just kind of stay neutral. I don't know that I'm ready to dive in with wisdom. That sounds kind of costly. But I mean folly, that sounds kind of crazy too. So maybe I can just stay like I am. What I need you to understand is you are making a choice in that moment, to not choose wisdom is to choose folly. No one signs up truly to go to Folly's house. No one says, "I want to be buried in the backyard. I wanna be on spiritual Dateline. I want to be the next sap who gets killed because I didn't have enough sense not to listen to the Bible." Nobody says that. Everybody says, "I wanna have a great life." Everybody says, "I wanna be happy." Everybody says, "I wanna make it home." All you have to do to end up at Folly's house is just not choose wisdom. Keep trying to ride like you are in these ruts that are already dug out for you and you will sure enough end up at Folly's house.

But nobody ends up at Wisdom's house on accident. Nobody glides there. Nobody just kind of winds up there. You have to make a choice to say "no" to Folly and "yes" to wisdom. And that's what these middle verses are all about. So you've got the picture of wisdom at the top. You've got the picture of Folly at the bottom. And in between, you've got these verses that describe how you can make sure that you end up at Wisdom's house and you live like God intended you to. There are three realities in these verses for us to embrace and then we're done.

If you want a wise life, if you want a safe life, if you want a happy life, if you want to end up with wisdom, the first reality that you've got to embrace today is repentance. Let me read verses 7-9 for us, "Whoever corrects a scoffer gets himself abuse, and he who reproves a wicked man, incurs injury. Do not reprove a scoffer or he will hate you. Reprove a wise man and he will love you. Give instruction to a wise man and he will be still wiser. Teach a righteous man and he will increase in learning."

Here's the deal. None of us is born wise. None of us is naturally wise. We all need God to correct us deeply, constantly, in a million different ways. That is true across the board. The difference in the wise and the fool is that the fool cannot accept being corrected. The fool refuses to repent of her foolishness, of his foolishness. The fool is confident that she knows what she's doing. She knows exactly where she's going. She's got it all under control. When God tries to bring correction into a fool's life through the word of God, the fool rejects it every single time. The fool gets offended that anyone would question his or her judgment. The fool always has an explanation of why he did what he did and why that was obviously the smart and righteous thing to do. The fool always has an excuse for why her life is in disrepair and disarray and drama and it's never because of anything that she has done. The fool is going to surround himself or herself with flatterers who always tell them that they are just fine the way that they are, that he or she is making all the right decisions. "You don't need to listen to those mean, ugly haters who are just jealous of you." That's what a fool will do. A fool will make sure that he always spins the story in his favor to recruit people to just insulate him from Godly correction so that he can keep trucking right on down the road just like he is. That's why the fool never changes, never learns, never grows, never matures, never gets wise, never lives. And that's sad, isn't it?

And the reason the fool is gonna have such a hard life is not because he's dumb or because he's less talented than anybody else, not because she came from the wrong family, not because life dealt her a bad hand. No, the reason the fool is going to have a hard life is because he or she just refuses to repent, to humbly place yourself under God's correction in the word, to recognize that you need to be told that you're wrong. You need to be told the right way to go from the Lord. And you never stop needing it. That is what makes the wise person wise. The wise person is not any smarter, not any better, not any holier. The wise person just knows, "I'm a wreck on my own. I make really bad choices. I break everything I touch. I need God." And so the wise person opens up the bible, sits under the preaching of God's word, recruits not an echo chamber, but people who will tell you, "You're being stupid right now. You're doing the same thing you did last year, and the year before that, and the year before that, and nothing's gonna change." We need those people.

The wise person knows we need these people. And once the wise person gets a little bit of wisdom, that's not enough. He's gotta have more. She's gotta have more. So they keep pressing into the word, they keep pressing into the Lord. And so they never get stale. They never stall out. They keep growing in every single season. That's wisdom. And they didn't get there because they were so great. They got there because they knew they weren't! And they practiced repentance.

Are you doing that? Would anyone in their right mind describe you as a person who's practicing repentance right now? It's a key to a wise life.

The second key in verse 10 is reverence. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." That's the theme verse of Proverbs. We saw it in Proverbs 1:7, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and the knowledge of the holy one is insight." So the next step after acknowledging that you're not all you should be is acknowledging who God is in his holiness. If you're a wise person, you recognize this is God's world. And I don't have to always understand it. I don't even always have to like it, but I better acknowledge that he sets the terms and nobody gets around him. There are no loopholes. I can either go with the grain of the world God made or I can go against it. I'm not my own God responsible for and in charge of my own life. I am a finite creature made in God's image to know Him and to worship Him. And he will hold me accountable for the choices I make and the life that I live that he gave to me. Reverence means knowing God has spoken to me in his word, he has revealed himself.

And friends, we're responsible to know what He said. It's not just a handy option if you can make the time. God has spoken! He's revealed Himself. We're responsible to listen and to follow and to obey. And in so far as we do, we find that life begins to come together. And as we open this book and we listen to what God has said, we find that in the face of all of our sin, and all of our failure, and all of our brokenness, this God loves me. And he's made atonement for me through his son Jesus Christ. When we were all fools, God himself came down, became a man in Jesus Christ, lived a perfect, wise, and righteous life in our place. He went to the cross, was crucified, paying the price for all of our sin. Then three days later, he rose from the dead. And now by His grace, he offers it in a total exchange for your foolish broken life. He will give you His perfect righteous life before God. And you can be clean. And you can be in fellowship with God. And whether you've got sixty years left, or you got sixty seconds left like that thief on the cross, you will finish this road and this course right with God. That's what God has revealed to us in his word.

And when we see His love in Christ, it moves us to respond with love and faith and obedience. This reverence, it involves recognizing that when I live for my happiness, I only make myself miserable. But when I live for God's glory, I find that I get happiness thrown in with the bargain. And I'm just describing some basics of what old school Christians call "piety," which is living a Godly life, living a reverent life. And friends, when you just get these basics down: the word, the gospel, who God is, my faith, my obedience, when you just get those basics down friends, it's like the puzzle pieces come together, and you can start seeing a picture, and life begins to make sense because you are fitting into the world as God designed you to. But if you cut yourself loose from God in his word, I'm telling you, life is a dark, miserable, scary place. But the light dawns when we fear the Lord and we get under his instruction. If you want to be wise, you need repentance and you need reverence.

You also need responsibility. Let me read this one more time. "For by me, wisdom says your days will be multiplied and years will be added to your life. If you are wise, you are wise for yourself, if you scoff, you alone will bear it." Here's the deal. If you want to blow off God's wisdom and everything that I've been saying from Proverbs for the past three months or so, and you want to do this thing on your own, you know what? You can do it. And there's not a thing in the world I can do to stop you. There's nothing that anyone else can do to stop you. But what you need to know from Jesus is that your life of folly, of rejecting God in his word, it's gonna hurt other people. It's gonna cost other people. It's gonna negatively affect the other people in your life. But the person it will negatively affect the most if you choose folly is yourself. It will hurt you so deep.

Proverbs is so practical. It shoots so straight. There's a strong self-interest component in Proverbs where he says, "I mean, yes, living under God's wisdom, that's what you ought to do. It's the right thing to do. But I'm telling you, it's what you wanna do." It will bless you. It's the way that you want to live. It's the happy way to live. But now, if you reject God's wisdom, and you choose folly, and you try to manage this thing on your own, what you need to know is your life is gonna be extremely frustrating, and you're probably going to whine and moan and blame everybody else for it. But it won't be anybody else's fault. It'll be your fault. It will be because you rejected God's wisdom.

Now, you can embrace wisdom and live for the Lord and your life can be hard for all kinds of reasons, because this is a broken world. That's what Ecclesiastes is all about. But you'll be right with God. And in the end, he'll make all things new. And this light momentary affliction that we experience will be preparing you for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. But if you reject wisdom, your life is gonna be hard, and it's not gonna get any better, and it will be your doing. It's hard words to hear. But words that we need to hear.

If on the other hand, you choose wisdom and very imperfectly just put yourself under the lordship of Jesus Christ, I'm telling you that choice is gonna bless a lot of people. It's gonna spread to your family. That choice for Jesus is gonna spread to this church. It's gonna spread to the people you work with. It's gonna spread to your neighbors. It's gonna spread to everybody that you touch. But the person it will bless the most, If you choose the wisdom of Jesus Christ, is yourself. If you are wise, you are wise for yourself. You're helping yourself. There's no greater choice that you can make. Do yourself a favor. Live for Jesus. What's living apart from Jesus really doing for you? Answer, not much. But if you're wise, you're wise for yourself.

But y'all, this is hard for a dad to say, it's hard for a pastor to say, only you can make this choice. I can't threaten you. I can't scare you. I can't control you. I can't manipulate you. I cannot make you choose Jesus. And I can't make you choose moving from being a nominal follower of Jesus to being someone who's living under the wisdom of Jesus. I cannot make you choose it. Only you can take responsibility for your life before God. Only you. But I'm telling you, life begins when you take responsibility for your choices, your foolishness, the mess that it made and you just dump it all at the foot of the cross of Christ. And you say, "Jesus, if you'll have me, take me." And you start walking with wisdom. That is where life begins. Can somebody say amen? Who knows it? That's where it begins.

I don't think it's any accident that in God's providence, we are talking about the person of wisdom inviting us to a feast, and we end this service with the person of wisdom, Jesus himself, inviting us to the Lord's table where he will give us just a token of what he's done for us, his body given for you and for me at our worst. His blood poured out for you and for me at our most foolish, that we might be made clean, that we might be brought into his wisdom, that we might have a place in the father's house forever and ever and ever. But just like the crossroads in this text is calling us to make a decision, these tables are calling us to a decision. Once a month, you're confronted with it. You can either dine with Jesus and live in fellowship with him or you can dine with the devil and live in fellowship with him. But it's one or the other. You are going to do one or the other and only you can choose. This is a good time to make that choice. Let's get right with Jesus. Let's share this meal together and let's walk in wisdom together. Let's pray.

Sermon by Eric Smith
Senior Pastor, Sharon Baptist Church