"Wisdom's Satisfaction" Proverbs 4 Sunday Evening Worship Service

I'll read it and we'll begin.

Chapter 4.

Here, O sons, the Father's instruction, and be attentive that you might gain insight, for I give you good precepts, and don't forsake my teaching.

When I was a son with my father, tender, the only one in the side of my mother, he taught me and he said to me, Let your heart hold fast to my words.

Keep my commandments and live and get wisdom.

Get insight.

Don't forget, don't turn away from the words of my mouth.

Don't forsake her, and she'll keep you.

Love her, she'll guard you.

The beginning of wisdom is this get wisdom.

And whatever you get, get insight.

Prize her highly, and she will exalt you.

She will honor you if you embrace her.

She will place on your head a graceful garland, and she will bestow on you a beautiful crown.

Hear my son and accept my words, that the years of your life may be many.

I have taught you the way of wisdom, I have led you in the paths of uprightness.

When you walk, your step will not be hampered, and if you run, you won't stumble.

Keep hold of instruction.

Do not let go.

Guard her, for she is your life.

Do not enter the path of the wicked, don't walk in the way of the evil, avoid it, don't go on it, turn away from it, pass on.

They can't sleep unless they have done wrong.

They are robbed of sleep unless they've made someone stumble, for they eat the bread of wickedness and drink the wine of violence.

But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day.

The way of the wicked is like deep darkness.

They don't even know what they stumble over.

My son, be attentive to my words, incline your ear to my sayings.

Let them not escape from your sight.

Keep them within your heart, for they are life to those who find them, and healing to all their flesh.

Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flows the springs of life.

Put away from you crooked speech, put devious talk far from you, let your eyes look directly forward, and your gaze be straight before you.

Ponder the path of your feet, then all your ways will be sure.

Do not swerve to the right or the left, and turn your foot away from evil.

This is the word of God, and I hope that he seals it in your hearts, even as we've just read it.

It's a long chapter, and it's a chapter of three different little speeches, three different songs that are all woven together.

I read recently about an American composer, Leonard Bernstein, regarded as one of the greatest American composers, and he said that when he was young, his dad kept yelling at him for practicing music in the house.

Told him to stop.

And he lamented in his own biography, There was never a time when my dad said, Strike up the band and let's celebrate around the Bernstein home.

A reporter once asked his dad, Is it true you wouldn't let your son play music in the house?

And he said, I don't know about that, but I was pretty harsh on him.

But in my defense, how did I know that I was raising the great Leonard Bernstein?

You know, there's some things in parenting where you look down the tunnel of time and you don't actually know what's next.

You don't know, despite all the pretenses, how your kids are going to turn out.

And there is this great uh, I think, lie of the worlds that, you know, if you do X, your kids will be Y.

If you do Y, your kids will be Z or whatever.

There's a cause and effect that we like to import on parenting, which is often not really there.

If you knew what the future was, then of course you would act differently than you do now.

That being said, the book of Proverbs exists as a testimony that there are some things parents should do.

There are some appeals they should make to their kids, and yet often kids are hearing the same voice from their parents to tell them, you know, do the dishes, go to bed, also love wisdom and go to school and set your alarm and do your laundry and brush your teeth and also love wisdom.

And the ears of the kids are have a hard time distinguishing between those layers of commands.

They don't know the difference between often the voice that says brush your teeth and the voice that says choose wisdom over folly.

So the two get merged in their minds.

And so that's why it's often helpful to have an outside voice that comes along, a different person that testifies.

This has the exact same thing the parents are saying.

I've had this experience as a soccer coach.

I will be telling a team the same thing over and over and over again for years of their life.

And then I'll bring in some other coach with a British accent, and he'll say the same thing, and all the kids will swoon.

Such insight.

I've been saying this for three years.

Yeah, but he said it with a British accent.

It must be true.

This is what Proverbs 4 is doing in the book of Proverbs.

You've heard speech after speech from the dad, and now the dad summons a different voice to talk to the children.

And this is the voice of the grandfather.

There's a couple little notes in here in the in the chapter that the voice is turning a little bit differently.

Chapter 4, verse 1, Hero Sons, it becomes plural.

So there's a gathering here.

There's a gathering of multiple children.

Of course, Solomon wasn't David's only son, even by Bathsheba.

He had at least four that we know of, if not more.

And of course, there are many, many half-brothers, too many to be named or counted.

But even beyond that, in the voice of Proverbs, which is David talking to the teenage Solomon, so to speak, here the plural lets you know that this is a larger gathering.

The voices in Proverbs 4 expand.

It's no longer the dad who says, Hero sons.

Now the dad is summoning in verse 3 the voice of his own father.

David says, When I was a son with my father, I was tender.

Of course, David was the littlest of all the children in his family.

Too little often to even be numbered among the rest of his brothers.

We know that.

David's reflecting back on that time.

The only one in the side of my mother, of course, this is a uh, you know, the the weakest kid in the family here.

The dad doesn't even count him as one of the kids, but the mother, oh, the mother takes such good care of this one.

The ugly ducking is right under the mother's arm here.

And David's reflecting on that.

You know, my dad wouldn't even number me.

My mom took care of me.

But when my dad did talk to me, this is what he said.

Now, this is a rhetorical device.

This is a now a speech from the grandfather to the grandchildren.

And I think that's how this chapter is supposed to be read.

Of course, when you put all of Proverbs together so far to keep you on track here, remember Proverbs 1 was the father to the Son, one-on-one, father to the Son.

It's time to have a conversation about wisdom and what is out there in the world.

And like I said, Proverbs is targeting here, like a 12 to 15-year-old in that window.

Of course, the truths of this book apply throughout life.

I get that, but some of these truths are a little bit beyond the 11-year-old, and some of these truths when the 17-year-old encounters them is a little bit too late.

You know, so it's that window that David is targeting here.

And the dad speaks to the son, choose wisdom, son, because evil is really, really bad.

That's Proverbs chapter 1.

Proverbs 1 · chapter mention

Choose wisdom because evil is lame and will kill you.

Proverbs chapter 2, the father back to the son.

Proverbs 2 · chapter mention

Choose wisdom.

It has rewards.

So Proverbs 2, the ante is upped.

You know, chapter 1 is wisdom is good, folly leads to death.

Chapter 2 is wisdom has all kinds of rewards.

It rewards you, it's beautiful, it's lovely, and hell is very bad.

That's chapter 2.

Chapter 3 that we looked at last week is wisdom is so beautiful.

It gives rewards, it leads to happiness, rest, peace, honor, and discipline, of course.

Having ended on discipline, now Proverbs 4, the grandfather's voice comes out, adding to the chorus.

And the grandfather has three speeches here.

Proverbs 4 is three different speeches.

1 through 9 is the first speech.

I don't have the ESV in front of me, but I think the headings are in the ESV.

It's 1 through 9, 10 through 19, and then 20 to the end of the chapter.

Those are these three little speeches here, all in the voice of the grandfather to the children.

It's almost like a made-for-TV scene here.

Grandpa on the rocking chair, parents out in the kitchen or out in the field, children gathered around.

Picture the grandpa lighting a pipe and saying, Now it's wisdom time, kids.

Now it's wisdom time.

And again, there's things that the grandpa could say that would be weird coming from the dad or odd and are just better received here coming from grandpa.

And I think that's what the rhetorical advice is doing here in verse 3 as David is hearkening back to the voice of his grandfather to impart wisdom.

It's the voice of the dead.

Chesterton called this passage, quote, the democracy of the dead, listening to wisdom.

Those grandparents that have spoken, though they have died, they've passed on.

Now the parents are kind of resurrecting their voice, and their voice is adding to the chorus.

They get to vote in what is best for their grandkids as well.

And so it's split up into three speeches.

I'm going to give you an outline that says Gramps says.

Gramps says, and he's got three different speeches here for you.

Three different things that your grandfather, if he was a godly man, would want you to know.

And he would want you to know.

The first one is the speech that begins, really, the speech begins in verse in earnest in verse 4 and goes down through verse 9.

It's bracketed.

You can tell this is bracketed with the concept of give, where uh in verse 2, the give, I give you good precepts.

And then in verse 9, she will place on your head, she will give you.

It's the same word in Hebrew, she'll bestow on you.

And so this speech is bracketed with giving.

It's the grandfather giving wisdom.

He will give, and then wisdom will give back.

Here's the how it summarizes this treat wisdom like a lover.

And like I said, this would be a more odd thing for a father to tell, but when it's the grandfather, it takes a different tone, doesn't it?

And you're gonna see this language as you go through this speech.

It has a different tone, knowing that it's from the grandfather, and that's why David brings in the grandfather's voice to deliver it.

This is not do's and don'ts.

That's the thing that jumps out about this chapter.

As the grandfather is sitting the kids down, he's not sharing with them.

Here's six things to never do.

He's not giving do's do's and don'ts.

That falls to the parents, you know.

The grandparents don't tell their kids to brush their teeth, the grandparents don't make sure the kids eat the vegetables, you know, they've moved on from that, right?

Grandparents that you know likely have a sack of candy in their purse and they're handing that out all the time.

The grandparents have a longer perspective on it, a bigger picture.

And that's what's communicated here.

And the interesting thing about this speech here is it's not, like I said, do's and don'ts.

It's not legalism, it's not conformity even.

What this speech is, is the attractiveness of wisdom.

The speech is trying to communicate grandfather to grandchild how beautiful.

And really, you could even use the word seductive in this passage, how seductive wisdom is.

Wisdom wants to be won by you.

She wants to be pursued by you.

She wants you to win her.

That's the speech that the grandfather is giving.

He walks through it here.

Like I said, it's it's less do's and don'ts and more about just how how incredible wisdom is.

It's worth devoting your life.

This whole speech, commentators say the speech has a a little sound to it, like a teenager who's on the fence about whether or not to pursue someone for marriage.

Should I pursue that person or not pursue that person?

I don't really know.

There's pros and cons.

I like her and I don't like her.

And you know, the grandpa has a voice into that, and the grandpa can say, oh, go all in on this one.

I've been around long enough.

I've seen enough of these come and go.

A person like that comes by once in a lifetime.

You better go get her.

Go get her.

It's worth giving everything you have to pursue her.

Quit your job, move to where she is, like Isaac style.

Do whatever you need to do, chase her down and win her heart.

That's this kind of speech.

That coming from the grandfather, again, has a different tone to it and different impact to it than it would even from a parent.

It's introduced in verse two with the good precepts that the grandfather is bringing.

Verse 4, let your heart hold fast to my words.

Keep these commandments and live.

Go after this person, hold on to them, and you will live.

Then this phrase, verse 5, get wisdom, get insight.

It's transactional.

The phrase give, it's a commerce thing, but it implies a massive purchase.

You need to go all in on this.

Everything you have, put into the pursuit of wisdom.

You need, and it's transactional.

Normally in Proverbs, wisdom is a lifelong pursuit.

But the language here in the context of go after her, pursue wisdom like you would a lover.

The language of this, it's more transactional.

You go all in and you win her heart, and when she's won, she's yours.

That's the idea of this first speech.

Pursue wisdom, convince wisdom to marry you.

Convince wisdom that you love her and you get down on a knee and you show wisdom a ring and marry her.

Make wisdom your own above everything else.

Get wisdom, verse five.

Get insight.

Don't forget.

Don't turn away from the woo the words of my mouth.

Don't forsake her, verse six says.

Having wooed wisdom, don't forsake her.

Pursue her the rest of your life.

If you pursue her, one commentator says this implication in verse six is that you're supposed to woo wisdom.

I like that phrase.

Woo wisdom.

If you pursue her and you win her, she, verse six says, will keep her, will keep you.

You win her, she'll keep you.

You win her and you honor her and you pursue her throughout her life, and she will take care of you.

There's a certain dynamic that's less so in the American culture, but now, but was much more common in even our country's past, but certainly common in the ancient Near East, where a wise man could marry a person even more wise than he is, and she by her wisdom will exalt her husband.

Her husband will be known in the gates because of his wife's wisdom.

The wife is influencing the husband, telling him what to do, giving him counsel that makes him look wise.

Now, if the husband's neglecting his marriage, the wife's not giving him good counsel, the husband looks like a fool.

But if the husband is honoring his wife and pursuing his wife, and the wife is giving the husband good counsel that sets him up well in the world.

The husband gets the honor, but it's the wife behind the scenes giving him wisdom.

That's this kind of dynamic that is being described here by the grandfather.

The grandfather is telling the grandchild, this is the one, that woman over there, she's the one for you.

Go get her, win her, pursue her, don't forsake her.

And you know what she will do?

She will inform your life.

She will esteem you.

She will protect you.

She'll put you forward.

Wisdom will make you look like you're the hero.

Wisdom will make you look wise.

And it's not you that's wise, you know that.

It's the person you married, but only if you married wisdom.

Love her, verse six says.

That word love, it's not the typical word for love.

It's more, it's a word in Song of Solomon.

Erotic is what some commentators say, but it's the normal word in Song of Solomon for love.

You're supposed to woo wisdom.

Love her.

She in turn will guard you.

The first part of verse six, she'll keep you.

The second part of verse six, she will guard you.

She'll protect you.

She won't let anything bad happen to you.

She has your back.

Verse 7.

The beginning of wisdom is this.

Get wisdom.

In Hebrew, this is very terse.

Like you, the most important thing about wisdom, alright?

Kids gather around.

Here's the most important thing about wisdom.

Go get her.

There, go.

Speech over.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

Go get wisdom.

I mean, that's where this begins.

You have to decide.

You know what?

I am going to spend my life pursuing wisdom.

I am going to go convince wisdom to marry me.

I'm going all in with wisdom.

That's the most important decision you'll make.

Are you going to be the kind of person that goes after wisdom with your life?

That is the beginning of wisdom.

The language of Proverbs chapter 2, remember, spoke of that as conversion.

Proverbs 2 · chapter mention

The kid at the top of the street looking the streets of folly and looking at the voice of wisdom saying, don't go down that street, go this way.

And the kid who's getting sucked into wisdom decides, you know, or sucked into folly, decides, you know what, I'm not going that way, I'm going to go this way.

That's conversion.

That's why I think Proverbs has in mind here, you know, this kind of teenager experience.

I know we often, I'm not doubting childhood conversions or anything, but there's no way to really navigate the confession of faith of a five, six, seven, eight, nine-year-old, even.

You want five, six, seven, eight, nine-year-olds to place their faith in God.

Of course you do.

And you always encourage that as a parent.

You would never cast doubt on that.

You always fan any flame of obedience or any flame of love in a child's heart towards the Lord.

You wouldn't get them to question that.

You would just encourage them towards Jesus at every step of the way.

But there is something in the book of Proverbs that around this age, like 12 to 15, 16, in that window, there's now the kid has enough sense of the world to decide which road am I going to walk on.

The five-year-old doesn't know that.

He hasn't looked down the highway of wisdom, vanity fair.

They haven't experienced that.

But the older kid, maybe the early teenager, he's at the point where he can look down those two paths and legitimately say, I'm renouncing all those ladies over there, and I'm going after that one.

That's the one I want.

Wisdom.

And I'm going to marry her.

That's verse seven.

Get wisdom.

Go get her.

And whatever you do, no matter how it costs, whatever it costs.

It costs seven years of labor, go for it.

Another seven on top of that, sign up for it.

What's 14 years?

It's about a moment.

If you love the person, that's this kind of language.

It doesn't matter what the cost is.

I'm getting that.

I'm winning her.

Verse 8 prize her highly.

In Song of Solomon, this word means cuddle or caress.

Stroke the hair of.

That's this word.

You can see why it's translated prize here, but it's the word for cuddle or caress.

Put your arm around wisdom in a romantic way.

Treat her well.

You're pursuing her.

You're winning her.

You're cherishing her.

Prize her highly.

What will she do to you if you pursue her and cherish her and cuddle her?

What will she do to you?

She'll prize you.

She'll esteem you.

She'll put you for it.

She in verse eight will exalt you.

She'll give you the right direction in life.

She'll inform you.

Second part of verse eight, she'll honor you if you embrace her.

That's another word from, and I say I keep referencing Song of Solomon because that's part of the wisdom literature.

Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, these are all you know written around the same time under Solomon here, and the same kind of words have different color through all of them.

And in Song of Solomon, that word that's translated here, embrace, that is the word in Song of Solomon for romantically embracing someone.

Here, Solomon, the grandfather, is saying, Go after wisdom like a woman, pursue her, win her over, cuddle her, embrace her.

And when you do that, verse 9, she will place on your head a graceful garland.

We heard this phrase last week to kind of a necklace, a graceful garland.

This is not something ostentatious.

She's just gonna make you look tactful and delicate and wise.

She's gonna make you look gracious.

Not like an obnoxious jerk.

Not like Raya Bohem.

You're not gonna look like Ray Aboam.

But you look like Solomon in his wisdom, gracefully adorned.

She'll bestow on you such a beautiful crown.

Well, that's the first part of the speech.

Treat wisdom like a lover.

Go after her, and she will reward you.

Marry wisdom and love her well, and you marry well.

The second speech.

Treat wisdom like a lover.

Secondly, view wisdom as a light.

View wisdom as a light.

And now it's the voice of the father back again, but the grandfather is still on his shoulder, so to speak.

It's father here speaking like a coach to the kids.

Hear my son, accept my words.

Years of your life will maybe may be many.

I've taught you the way of wisdom, I've led you in the passive of righteousness.

Now, through the rest of the second song here, the rest of the second speech, there's this tension between light and darkness.

So the first one was very romantic.

The second speech is less about romance and more about life and death.

Darkness and light.

There is a darkness that is growing in the world, and it's lethal.

But there is a path of light in the world, and it leads to life.

Wisdom helps you find that path.

Wisdom is the light.

Look at the path in verse 11.

That's the recurring phrase in the second speech, by the way.

I've led you in the paths of uprightness.

Path is the normal habit over and over again.

You walk in it every day, every day, every day, every day you're walking in it.

Over and over again.

This path leads to life, verse 10 says.

If you don't walk on this path, you don't Die.

Verse 12 says, You can walk and you won't be hindered.

You can run and you won't stumble.

See the feet kind of language here?

There's a path that leads to light, and the path is light and it leads to life.

And there's a path that leads to darkness, and it is darkness and it leads to death.

The path of darkness, look at verse 14, don't go down that path.

Don't walk on that path.

That is evil.

It is wicked.

Verse 18, but the path of the righteous is the light of dawn.

You see the contrast?

Paths are made by repeated walking.

You know this in your own yard.

You should cut across the grass to get to the mailbox.

Well, how many days do you have to do it for there's a path there?

What six?

Ten?

Ten days maybe?

You make a path through your grass.

It's so easy to do.

So easy.

But you have to do it repeatedly.

A few days in a row, maybe a week or two in a row, and then you have a path.

So here's the dad talking to the teenager here, saying, This is the path.

I have led you in this path over and over and over and over again.

So you know where the path is.

The dad is not saying, okay, given all that you've learned, good luck out there.

The dad is saying, I have walked you on this path holding your hands every day for years.

So you know how to work.

You know how to live.

Wisdom is that rope.

Keep hold of that rope.

Verse 13, look, keep hold of instruction.

Do not let go.

Guard her.

This dad is not saying, hey, I want you to make your own decisions.

Good luck out there.

He's saying, This is the way of wisdom.

I'm teaching you.

You almost have the image of the dad picking up the feet and placing them in front of you.

Like I'm teaching you where to walk.

Foot there, foot there, foot there.

And you're holding on to the rope.

And you've done that for a few years.

Now don't, the dad says, I'm gonna let go of the feet, but do not let go of that rope.

You know the picture of the kids in the hallway where they're going from the little kids during school.

The little kids are going out to recess or whatever, and they have the rope.

You like the kindergartners, have you seen that?

I'm sure.

I love seeing that in DC.

There's like these long lines, like longer lines than ants, like these massive daycares with hundreds of kids, it seems, and they've got one rope and it winds around the block, all the kids.

Last kid sometimes being pulled in his wagon.

Who gets to be that kid?

That's the rope.

You know, it's it's kind of humorous when you see them walking through the hallways of the church.

They're going from, you know, C 102 to the gym.

It's like 30 feet away, and they're on this rope.

It's kind of funny there.

But transport that into the world, put that on a cliff.

There's darkness all around.

You can't see in the darkness.

That's the point of darkness.

There's a cliff that leads to death, and there's a rope.

You better hold on to that rope.

How do you know to hold on to that rope?

Because you were taught in the hallway at kindergarten to hold on to the rope.

I mean, that holding on the rope is a metaphor, if there ever was one.

It's not for their safety from C 102 to the gym.

It's a metaphor.

You hold on to where you're being led.

You better hold on because you're gonna grow older.

Hey and the rope will no longer be an actual rope.

But you better have that muscle memory of you hold on to whatever instruction God has given you.

The dad can legitimately say, I showed you where to put your feet.

I showed you where to put your feet.

Dan Phillips in his commentary on Proverbs says that, which is a wonderful commentary, by the way, says an assault on parenting, the undermining of the American family is taking place in parenting by teaching parents that what their kids need to learn is autonomy.

That the best thing parents can teach their kids at a young age is autonomy, the ability to make decisions for themselves.

So, son, you choose what to eat, you choose what to wear, you choose where we're gonna go on vacation, you choose what we're gonna watch for TV tonight, you choose this, you choose that.

Because they have to know their opinion matters even as a little child, Dan Phillips writes.

And Dan Phillips says with the voice of a grandfather, believe me, having raised many kids and seen many other kids raised, I've never seen someone raised that lacks their own autonomy.

They're gonna learn how to make decisions just fine.

The problem is not the capacity to decide foolish things, believe me, kids know that.

The problem is the capacity to learn the right thing.

You don't want the parent that says, I'll tell you which you choose which path to walk on.

There's lots of paths out there, you choose, because it's important to me that you have a sense of autonomy.

C.

S.

Lewis, of course, mocks the idea of the nine-year-old choosing vacation.

Where does the nine-year-old want to go?

Into the mud in his yard.

That's where the nine-year-old wants to go.

As a parent, you're not gonna say, oh, the nine-year-old wants to stay in the mud.

I'm sorry, we're landlocked this summer.

No.

You tell the nine-year-old to grow up and get in the car.

I don't know if C.S.

Lewis drove a station wagon, but if he did, get in the back.

You know if the child choose what to eat.

You know, parents say, Oh, my kids don't like this food or don't like that food.

Who gave them the vote?

You tell the kids where you walk, what you wear, what you eat, because you're teaching them to walk in wisdom.

Parents know the right clothes to wear outside.

Six-year-olds don't know the weather.

I don't even know the weather.

I asked Ida what I should wear.

Although she vetoed this shirt, but whatever.

Little kids have to be directed.

So much so that when they get older, the dad can say this.

And you have to ask yourself, can you say this as a parent?

I have showed you where to put your feet for the last 12 years of your life.

I have taught you to hold on to the rope for the last 12 years of your life.

The next step is yours.

Hold on to that rope.

Because what's on the side of the cliff here, look at the side of the cliff, verse 14.

It is the way of evil.

You let go of that rope, you will stumble, verse 12 says, you'll be hampered, verse 12 says, you'll fall into evil.

Verse 16, what does the evil look like?

Those people on that and the path of darkness, they don't even have a path of darkness, by the way, it's just the field of darkness.

Those people in the fields of darkness, they can't even sleep unless they've done wrong.

They have an addiction to this.

They can't close their eyes and go to sleep unless they have done evil.

One commentator describes them as evil holics.

They're addicted to evil, so they can't fall asleep at night unless they have sinned.

They drink the wine of violence.

Lots of little wine is a great analogy for that.

Lots of little acts of violence go in to make one drink of violence.

That's what they're doing.

What a contrast.

The path of the righteous is like the light of dawn.

And it's the light of dawn because the sun increases all day long.

The sun comes up.

If you see the sun at sunrise, which sometimes high schoolers have a hard time with, but if you see the sun at sunrise, it's only going to increase.

It's only going to go up for the first half of the day.

It's just going to keep increasing.

If your first sight of the sun is afternoon, it's only going down.

So the contrast here is not between the first half of the day and the second half of the day.

The contrast here, wisdom, is being alive while the sun is going up.

Folly is at night.

It's not even the second half of the day.

That's the kind of dichotomy here.

There's no afternoon wisdom dwellers here.

No, it's morning as the sun increases in verse 18.

Or evening, verse 19, in deep darkness.

People that are flung so far into sin they don't even know what they're tripping over, verse 19.

They trip on something in their life and they don't even know what it is.

That's how wicked they are.

Third speech.

Oh.

We'll do that later.

Third speech.

To grow in wisdom from head to toe.

The third speech is all about head to toe wisdom.

Third speech is all about body parts.

So the first one, romance.

The second one, light versus darkness, the third one, head to toe.

The most common refrain in the third speech is well, your ear in verse 20, your eyes in verse 21, your heart in verse 21, your flesh in verse 22, your heart in verse 23, your mouth in verse 24, your eyes in verse 25, your feet in verse 26, and your feet in verse 27.

Did you notice the geographic progression here?

It goes literally from head to toe.

It starts with the top of your head, and by the end of this third song, you're at the feet.

And the transitional organ here is the heart.

And the eyes at the first part of this are very passive.

So the eyes and the ears are a passive in verse 20.

It starts with the ears.

Listen to my saying.

So ears are passive.

In other words, the ears aren't actively seeking things out, the ears are receiving sound waves from somebody else.

And the kid here is at the fork of two roads, the path of light or the highway of darkness.

He's at two roads, and two voices, the voice of wisdom saying, choose light and hold on to the rope, and the voice of the sinful friends back from chapter one and two saying, choose darkness, both voices.

The ear is receiving the voices.

The ear is not seeking but receiving.

It's passive.

So incline your ears to my sayings.

Turn your head a little bit to the side.

Don't let them escape your sight.

Now it's the eyes and this idea of escaping sight.

The eyes here are still passive.

The eyes aren't seeking things out like they were in the previous song.

The previous song, the eyes were focused on the path.

Now the eyes are still passive.

Something's being put in front of the eyes.

And whatever is hitting the ears and the eyes, if it's from the voice of wisdom, verse 21 says, ends up in the heart.

So keep that truth in your heart, verse 21 says.

And here is the transition from passivity to activeness.

Because the feet aren't passive.

The feet don't accidentally go somewhere.

You can't, you know, unless you're sleepwalking, your feet don't just meander somewhere.

You can't say, I didn't know where I was going.

I just ended up in the kitchen with the cookies in my hands.

No, your feet brought you here, my friends.

You can say, I didn't mean to hear that, I didn't mean to see that.

That was an accident, but you can't say I didn't mean to walk across the street to that person's house.

What's the transition between the eyes and ears and the feet?

In this passage, the transition is the heart.

What you love.

The heart becomes the focal point of the body.

The heart determines what you love, which determines from the eyes and the ears.

They inform the heart.

The heart doesn't have its own eyes and ears.

The heart can't hear things, the heart can't see things.

The heart is fed by what you see and by what you hear.

What you feed your heart ends up informing what you love.

Now, this word heart, Americans always use heart with this, and that's fine.

The Hebrew word doesn't actually mean heart.

It's not the organ that pumps blood.

The Hebrew word is used, I chased it down this week all over the Old Testament.

It is translated in so many different ways, but the bottom line with this word is whatever you're, whatever on your mind you could say, or whatever you're worried about, or whatever you're passionate about, that's your heart.

There's one word for that.

It's like this ethereal concept, a component of your life.

It's just there in you.

And it means in the Bible, it's translated different things, like Ecclesiastes 7 says, don't take to heart what people say.

Like don't worry about what people tell you.

Or in Job, Yahweh tells Satan, Job is upright in his heart, meaning the things he loves are fine.

It's the word used there in Proverbs.

Drink wine and let your heart be merry.

The Hebrew word sometimes means mind, like Saul tells, or Samuel tells Saul, hey, stop worrying about your donkeys.

Don't have them on your mind.

They've already been found.

And that's the English idiom there is you have them on your mind.

That's how it's translated there in 1 Samuel.

But it's the same word.

The donkeys were on Saul's mind.

You remember he was looking for the missing donkeys when God found them.

And Samuel says, Don't worry about them.

That's this word.

So you've got your eyes and your ears are feeding your heart, and your heart is what you think about and what you love, and you are what you love.

Your parents may have told you you are what you eat, and there's some truth to that, but the bigger truth is you are what you love.

You can tell the worth of a person by the objects of their affection.

A person who loves silly things is a silly person.

A person who loves immature things is an immature person.

It's one thing for a 12 or a 14-year-old to like video games, that's okay.

They're 12 and 14.

It's another thing for a 25-year-old or a 35-year-old to like video games.

It's odd at that point.

You're growing in maturity, and your growth and maturity should reflect yourself in the kinds of things that you love.

Mature people love mature things.

And so the speech here to the sun, like Paul says to the Corinthians, I'm putting childish things behind me.

The speech here to the sun is you've got your ears listening to wisdom, you got your eyes on the path in front of you.

Now feed your heart what you love.

What kind of person do you want to be?

That's why it matches with the first speech.

Decide you're gonna woo love, uh, woo wisdom.

Decide you're gonna go all in on wisdom.

That's what you should love.

Verse 23, keep your heart with all vigilance.

From it flows the springs of life.

Everything you do in life is coming out of your heart.

Everything else, it comes out of your heart.

Jesus says this, Luke 6, 45, the good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good.

The evil person out of the evil treasure produces evil.

For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.

And you understand the way the heart works, the heart doesn't create its own treasure, the heart is fed treasure.

Jesus' language is the heart is a storehouse.

It's fed.

So don't swerve to the right or the left.

Treasure these things in your heart.

It is the wellspring of life.

Part of that, verse 24, put away from yourself crooked speech.

Don't let the evil come out of your heart into your mouth.

Put that away.

Put devious talk away from you.

Set your eyes, verse 25, directly on the path in front of you.

Let your gaze be straight.

The wicked people zigzag left and right like the snake.

Your eyes are straight ahead.

Ponder, verse 26 says, the path of your feet.

Remember in the second stanza, the dad said, I'm lifting your feet.

I'm walking you on the path.

I'm showing you where to walk.

Now on graduation day, the dad says, I want you to think it before you take another step.

Stop and think.

What path did I teach you to walk on?

Where should your next step be?

Ponder it, verse 26 says.

Very active word, ponder it.

Don't swerve to the left or the right.

Turn your foot away from evil.

You find the foot stepping into darkness, pull it away.

Darkness over there.

Nope.

Bring it back.

Ponder your path.

Of course, the crux of this is the middle part.

From your heart flows the wellsprings of life.

This shows you that eternal life, life with wisdom, wiz with wisdom is not a static experience.

You don't just have wisdom there, check, just like eternal life in the New Testament.

You don't have eternal life with Jesus.

Check now what's next.

Eternal life with Jesus is an ongoing, vibrant experience, constantly growing, constantly maturing.

That's the way your life is with wisdom.

That's because wisdom in Proverbs parallels Jesus in the New Testament.

You can have a relationship in that sense with both.

They both make you wise.

It is a lifelong relationship where you grow in the love and knowledge of the Lord.

You have rivers of living water flow from you as you place your faith in the Lord.

The heart is active in receiving what your eyes and ears are feeding it.

It's active in deciding what to love.

As it decides what to love, that determines where you walk and what you do.

Where you walk and what you do determines what kind of person you are.

And you can reverse engineer it.

What kind of person you are is determined by what you're doing, which is determined by what you're loving, which is determined by what you're feeding your eyes and your ears.

It's a full-body discipleship, head to toe.

So you take all of these three things together.

The grandfather's speech to the kid, listen, treat wisdom like a woman to be one.

Go all in.

Move wherever she goes, do whatever she wants, buy whatever kind of ring she wants.

Doesn't matter.

You better go win her because you're not going to see another woman like that.

That's speech one.

Speech two, wisdom is your GPS.

Follow it.

Follow it.

Some of you would get lost going to the grocery store if you didn't have your phone on your GPS.

That's wisdom for you.

Great.

Take that principle in your driving and apply it to life.

If the word of God is an open and active in your life, you will get lost.

And that's the point.

Hold on to that rope for all your life.

And thirdly, when you follow the Lord, you're going to grow from head to toe.

You're going to grow into a mature Christian, a mature follower of the Lord.

That's what your grandfather wants for you.

He cares less about the MMs and more about what path you're walking on, as all good grandfathers do.

Praise God for them.

Let's uh let's pray.

And I'm going to take uh maybe a question or two, and then I'm going to send you away with a benediction.

We'll do music next week.

Lord, we are grateful for tonight for the call of wisdom to walk in righteousness and to pursue you with all of our life.

We're grateful for that.

We're grateful for what wisdom offers us.

We give you thanks for it in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.