"Wisdom's Invitation" Proverbs 1:8-32 Sunday Evening Worship Service

We invite you now to open your Bibles to the book of Proverbs.

Proverbs chapter one is where we jump in tonight, continuing where we started last week.

I'm gonna read from verse eight all the way to the end of the chapter.

So bear with me.

Listen to wisdom as the word of God is read.

Proverbs 1, verse 8, hear, my son, your father's instruction.

Proverbs 1:8

Forsake not your mother's teaching.

For they are a graceful garland for your head and pendants for your neck.

My son, if sinners entice you, don't consent.

If they say, Come with us, let us lie in wait for blood, let us ambush the innocent without reason, like Sheol, let us swallow them alive and a hole, like those who go down to the pit.

We shall find all precious goods, will fill our house with plunder.

Throw in your lot among us, and we will have one purse.

My son, don't walk in the way with them.

Hold back your foot from their paths, for their feet run to do evil, and they make haste to shed blood.

For in vain is a net spread in the sight of any bird, but these men lie in wait for their own blood.

They set an ambush for their own lives.

Such are the ways of everyone who's greedy for unjust gain.

It takes away the life of its possessors.

Wisdom cries in the street.

In the market she raises her voice.

At the head of the noisy streets she cries out.

At the entrance of the city gates she speaks.

How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple?

How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge?

If you turn at my reproof, behold, I'll pour out my spirit to you.

I'll make my words known to you, because I have called and you refuse to listen.

I've stretched out my hand and no one is heeded, because you've ignored all my counsel and would have none of my reproof, I also will laugh at your calamity.

I'll mock when terror strikes you, when terror strikes you like a storm, and your calamity comes like a whirlwind, when distress and anguish come upon you.

Then they'll call upon me, but I won't answer.

They'll seek me diligently, but will not find me, because they hated knowledge and didn't choose to fear Yahweh.

They'd have none of my counsel and despised all my reproof.

Therefore they shall eat the fruit of their way and have their fill of their own devices.

For the simple are killed by turning away, and the complacency of fools destroys them.

But whoever listens to me will dwell secure and will be at ease without dread or disaster.

That is the word of God, and that is how the book of Proverbs begins.

There's a couple different speeches in there that I'm sure you heard.

There is the speech of Lady Wisdom who cries out, and there is the speech of the sinners, the enticers, who likewise cry out.

They both tried to build their audience and their followings.

They both have competing voices in the marketplace.

I did not grow up playing the board game life, although I'm sure many of you have.

It was recently discovered by my kids, and they uh do indeed like it.

And I was skeptical about it.

Uh, you roll dice to figure out how many kids you have.

I'm out.

But there is a choice you make at the beginning of the game that has been ingrained in my head.

Uh the choice there, you choose are you going to go to college or are you going to get a career right away?

And I'm sure for you parents, or if you recall the game of life when you were younger, I'm sure you remember that choice.

If you choose a career right away, you get a certain kind of jobs and you get paid and you can start making money.

You start your life right now.

If you choose to go to college, you like have to sit on the sideline for like four turns or something.

You're sitting there pouting while everybody else is playing and making money.

But then, of course, you get a different category of job.

And you know, it takes several turns to catch up.

Then I like that choice it makes kids reason because it's not a kind of thinking that is natural to kids.

It forces them to draw out in their mind what is this, the choice I make right now, what's going to happen with this choice in four turns or eight turns, or when I'm 40 or 60 or 80.

The choice you make now then has long-term implications.

That's not a normal way children think.

That's not a normal way a young person thinks.

Young people tend to gravitate towards more instant gratification.

They tend to gravitate towards what's in front of them now and what can they get the most of now.

They tend to play video games over studying for the test tomorrow, so to speak.

They uh tend for sugar over substance.

They're not concerned about long-term health, but short-term satisfaction.

Now, that is just the normal way young people think.

And when you start to think about the book of Proverbs encouraging you to grow in wisdom and to become mature, you understand that a huge part of maturity is awareness of who you are in the world now with a forward and moral element to it.

Looking forward and thinking, where will I be?

Given who I am now, given where I am now, where will I be in five, ten, twenty, forty years?

Where will I be when I die?

That is part of maturity.

It's charting out, if I go down this road, where does this road actually take me?

You could say it this way that wisdom is anticipatory.

Wisdom is anticipatory.

Wisdom and maturity, maturity being the ability to apply wisdom in a given situation.

Wisdom, the knowledge of God's word and God's world.

Remember, last week we looked at this.

Wisdom being the study of God's Word and God's world, drawing principles from there for a life that fits in God's world.

Maturity, then, is the ability to recognize how you are laid out in this world.

Yeah, how you fit in with those around you, what your surroundings are like, how you actually are in this world.

That's maturity.

And the maturity has the ability to take wisdom and apply it.

Now, part of wisdom is anticipatory.

Part of a basic foundation of wisdom is the ability to look ahead and see what is going to happen if I go left.

Where does this road actually go?

That's the main point of Proverbs chapter one is to get you to think in those anticipatory terms.

Now, it begins in verse 8.

Verses 1 through 7 was the introduction.

Verse 8 is kind of where the book in earnest begins with this first speech of wisdom.

There will be several speeches of wisdom in Proverbs 1 all the way through chapter 9, several different speeches of wisdom, but here is one.

And it begins with, Hear my son, your father instructions, and forsake not your mother's teaching.

This word here, it's Shema in Hebrew, it's listen here.

And I tell you the Hebrew word just because maybe it might connect with you in your mind to what's called the Shema of Deuteronomy 6, hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, Yahweh, your God is one.

That's the great call of God's law, to put your ear to God's law, to listen to God's law.

And of course, Deuteronomy 6 goes on to instruct parents to raise their kids in the law of God.

This is the chapter where you're supposed to hear the law of Yahweh, that He is one, that you're supposed to serve Him and follow Him.

And parents are to teach their kids how to walk in God's law.

This is the passage that says, if you teach your kids to walk in God's law, they will not depart from it when they're older.

You understand how that is not a guarantee, but it is itself a wisdom principle that as you look to law and teaching your kids how to apply it, they will recognize the road that's in front of them, and through instruction, they'll learn how to walk in the world that God made them.

I don't think it's coincidental that Solomon takes that phrase and uses it to open the beginning of the book of Proverbs.

He's Proverbs here becomes instructions about how to live a wise life in the world.

It's not law, like I said last week, it is instructions.

But Solomon borrows the phrase that introduces the law to likewise introduce these instructions.

Listen to God's word.

Only here it's not God's word.

Here it's the instruction from your father and mother.

And then in verse 20, it's going to be listened to wisdom.

And these two are paired together.

Why is the voice of parents paired with the voice of wisdom?

This is a hard thing for young people to understand.

It is a great mystery.

But could it be that in fact your parents have wisdom?

And that's what's on the page here.

There is this idea that parents, if nobody else has, if a child's friends have not walked around the block, the parents have walked around the block.

It's a very common conversation with young people.

Like, why shouldn't I do that?

And sometimes you can help teenagers especially by explaining to them why what they were about to do is, in fact, a bad choice.

You can walk them through the reasoning behind it and you can help them understand.

But oftentimes it's just as simple and as effective to simply tell the teenager it's a bad choice because I've seen other people make it before and I know how it turns out.

I've seen this TV show before, I know how it ends.

Like there's only so many plots in movies.

I know where this one is going, I've watched it before.

Well, that is true in life.

Children make the same mistake.

Teenagers make these choices.

They think you're gonna end up one way, but you're watching it as a parent, and you said, I've seen this before.

So wisdom is the ability to see how that choice plays out.

A young person doesn't have wisdom, and that's not a diss on the young person.

That's just a statement of their life.

They have not, in fact, walked around that street before.

They have not shopped at that store before.

They haven't seen somebody take that job before.

They haven't been friends with those people before.

They don't know, it's not a diss on them.

They don't know what being friends with these rascals will turn out like because they've ever been friends with those rascals before.

But the parents look at those rascals and they're like, oh, I've seen all kinds of people be friends with rascals before, and it always ends badly.

And now the children are in the point where they can decide, do I heed my parents' advice on this or do I reject it?

The fool rejects it.

The wise person listens to it.

And it's amazing that the children of the teenagers will listen to their parents' direction and wisdom, maybe reluctantly at first.

And six months later or a year later, they see what happens with those rascals, and they're like, oh, mom, dad, thank you.

How did you know?

You're so wise, you know the future.

It's less about knowing the future and more that you've just lived the future.

That's wisdom in Proverbs.

It is anticipatory.

It's knowing what's going to happen next in life.

It's not about being a prophet, it's not supernatural revelation.

It's just you've had more time to watch the world.

And so you understand.

And that's where this begins with an appeal.

Children, listen to your parents and it's fathers and mothers here, both of them.

Listen to their teaching.

Now, what exactly are you supposed to anticipate about the world that you're in?

What are you supposed to anticipate about what wisdom has to say?

I'm going to give you four categories here that you anticipate.

The first is the reward.

Part of wisdom is anticipating the reward of wisdom.

Verse 9, there are a graceful garland for your head.

A pendants for your neck.

A graceful garland here, it's a crown that goes on your head.

Very common in the Egyptian world.

Solomon would have known that.

It's not an ostentatious thing.

It's something that you would wear.

It generally is associated with victory.

Sometimes athletes would would get them.

It's associated with triumph, but it's not blingy.

It doesn't sparkle.

It's not gold or metal.

It's made from trees and bushes.

But they're fashioned in such a way there it's understated.

It's tactful and tasteful, and it shows victory.

But it's understated.

That is not the kind of thing that an immature person is going to be drawn toward.

That's not something that would intrigue them.

An immature person wouldn't want a wreath for their head.

My goodness.

An immature person would be drawn towards something bigger and splashier.

And you get some ideas of what they might be drawn to if you look down in verse 13.

They might be drawn to precious goods.

All kinds of precious goods, verse 13 says.

They might be drawn to plunder in verse 13.

So an immature person is given the choice here.

And it's in a very real conversation where wisdom is saying, choose wisdom, and the reward might be a garland for your head or for your neck, some kind of wreath that shows dignity and honor and victory and tranquility.

Or a house full of plunder.

The immature person gravitates towards the plunder.

After all, it's worth more, it seems.

A small necklace, a small jewel.

It's not a string of pearls or a string of diamonds.

It's not something ostentatious or flamboyant.

It's a little locket.

It's tasteful.

It's reserved.

And an immature person looks at that and says, That's not really my style.

I'd rather have all the riches of the world.

And so they have a choice to make.

Now, if you have lived any number of years in this world, you recognize what the better choice is.

Part of wisdom is saying if somebody is choosing between the garland that is delicate and shows peace and tranquility and a house full of sp of plunder, like that's bad.

There's all kinds of dangers associated with that.

Wisdom understands that.

The immature person doesn't understand that.

Now you can attach this to a thousand different sins.

Gluttony likes the way the food tastes at the moment, but is not capable of gaming this out.

What is this going to be like to die of heart disease?

What is this gonna be like to have my legs go out later on in life because I can't stop eating now?

The immature person doesn't think like that.

The immature person thinks food, face, go.

Right?

Sexual immorality.

The immature person thinks I want to do what feels good and what pleases me now, and is not capable of thinking out what kind of life that leads to in five years or ten years.

It affects the kind of person you're drawn to in marriage.

The book of Proverbs makes that very clear later on.

The book is gonna end with that.

And you think, why would the book end with a declaration about marriage when there's so much else in the world?

Because that is really gonna define the kind of life you're gonna have if you're gonna be happy or wish you were on the corner of a roof.

And the immature person is drawn to superficial things, beauty that will fade tomorrow.

The mature person is drawn to character because the mature person is able to game this out a little bit and say, what kind of what is my life gonna be like in 20 years or 40 years?

Who's gonna be holding my hand on my deathbed?

Is it the kind of things I was drawn to when I was 16?

Are they gonna matter?

70 years later?

The mature person is able to think that way, the immature person is not.

And so wisdom anticipates the reward in life.

And so many proverbs are about that wisdom is forward thinking by nature.

Secondly, wisdom anticipates the temptation.

There is always the temptation towards immaturity.

Always.

The siren song never goes away.

You can resist the siren song for a while, and it may ebb and flow throughout your life, but temptation is always in this world.

The more mature you are, the more conniving temptation has to be.

I certainly you outgrow certain temptations in your life.

You might be tempted to sin one way when you're 16 and a totally different way, hopefully, when you're 26 and 36 and 46.

Hopefully the 46-year-old is not tempted by the same things the 16-year-old is.

Hopefully you've grown out of it.

But there's a whole new category of temptations awaiting you.

And so Proverbs 1 starts with the most basic form of temptation.

You don't get a form of temptation more transparent and more basic than this, do you?

People coming up to you and saying, Let's go sin.

Alright, that's the kind of temptation we're dealing with here in Proverbs 1.

The friends come up, the friends put their arms around you and say, Let's go murder some people and take their stuff.

They won't know what hit them.

Alright, so this is not a very refined temptation here.

This is a very immature conversation because it's it's putting this out in the most basic terms.

Now the sinner is gonna entice you, verse 10.

My son's sinners will entice you.

Don't listen to them.

That's the voice of wisdom, that's the voice of parents.

Do not listen.

What kind of things might they say?

Well, here in verse 11, they say, Come, let's go kill people.

For no reason.

You know, after all, look at verse, look at verse 12.

They're gonna die anyway.

Sheol's gonna gobble them up anyway.

We're just gonna speed them along.

This is the way murders rationalize things.

Nothing happens to that person that wasn't gonna happen anyway.

Let's just help them along to the grave.

After all, if we kill them, we get their stuff, verse 13 says.

I've already talked about that.

Verse 14, throw in your lot among us, we'll all have one purse.

We'll all go in this together, we'll all split the loot.

Even Stephen.

Now, again, a mature person hears this and says, they're probably not gonna split the loot that accurately.

Here's a band of thieves that is drawing you in.

I mean, you're gonna get the short end of the stick.

Their numbers are gonna round up, yours are gonna round down, or they'll kill you, right?

The the mature person says, if they're gonna go kill a bunch of people to take their stuff, how soon until they kill you to take your stuff?

But the immature person doesn't think like that.

Immature person, here's the plan, a house full of stuff, let's roll.

Now, that's not to say every temptation is to go murder people and take their stuff.

Of course not.

Solomon's describing this to you in the starkest terms possible, but the conversations will all be the same.

Uh the teenagers that you know, their friends might not come to them and say, let's go kill our classmates and steal their laptop.

Their conversations will look differently.

But the bottom line is this let's go sin and enjoy life now.

Let's get what we want.

Verse 15, my son, don't walk with them.

This is Psalm 1 kind of language.

Don't go down the road with them.

It doesn't end well.

I've seen the movie before.

It does not end well.

Verse 16, their feet run to evil.

They make haste to shed blood.

There's a little play in words there.

Their feet run to evil.

Well, they are running to evil.

And they're running to their own death.

They're running to their own judgment.

They're running to shield themselves.

The road leads to the grave.

This is why part of maturity is knowing to resist temptation.

Here's the thing about sinners: sinners lie and sinners tempt.

Sinners lie to you about what they're gonna go do, they lie to you about what the reward will be, and then they tempt you to join them.

It's not a coincidence that Satan, as soon as Satan became a sinner, became a tempter.

Have you made that connection before?

The moment Satan became a sinner, he became a tempter.

Convinces other angels to go with him, comes to earth, goes after Eve.

Satan is a tempter.

People are always tempted to sin.

How does it play out?

Well, Eve gave in to the devil's temptation and plunged the world into sin.

Joseph, in contrast, resisted the temptation of Potiphar's wife, ran away, had short-term embarrassment.

And I'm not even talking about the running away naked.

I'm talking about thrown in the jail.

Called a liar, thrown in prison.

Better to spend a decade in prison than to commit adultery.

Joseph understood that.

2 Timothy 2, 22.

What a good Bible verse.

All twos.

Flee youthful passions.

Pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace, along with those who call upon the Lord from a pure heart.

Flee youthful passions.

That's a verse to remind yourself of.

Well, first, anticipate the reward.

Second, anticipate the temptation.

It's not going to go away.

The sinners are whispering in your ear all the time.

Third, anticipate the end of temptation.

Play out what happens if you give in to temptation.

Their feet run to do evil as they make haste to shed blood.

There's a massive irony here.

They're so fast to go sin, they're so fast to go shed blood, but it will end with their own deaths.

They will die.

They will be judged by God.

Look at verse 19.

So is the way of everyone who's greedy for unjust gain.

So now we've toned down the murdering, and now we've just got to unjust gain.

Somebody who is greedy for money or things that aren't theirs.

How does the story end?

Sometimes you watch videos of all the people looting stores, and you get mad at them, and you think that's not right, and of course it isn't right.

And some people give in to temptation with that then and say, if everybody else is stealing, then I would be the fool if I also didn't steal.

After all, the stores deserve it because they're not policing it, and you justify it, and then people are tempted to steal themselves.

That is the immature thinking, that is short-term thinking.

It's all fun and games until you get killed looting a store.

And you get shot.

Or you go to jail.

Or God just judges you.

You lose your life.

The wages of sin is death.

Of course it is.

But that's not what you think of at the time.

At the time of temptation, you don't think that, hey, this ends in death.

This ends in death.

Verse 17 is kind of a humorous verse about calling the immature person stupid or a fool.

In vain is a net spread in the sight of any bird.

This isn't a common American thing.

So the idea here is you want to catch a bird, you can put a net on the ground with a trap in it, and the bird lands and the net collapses on it.

Picture how they all got trapped in the Star Wars movie, Return of the Jedi, right?

And the net won't.

Okay, that's not gonna work if they're watching you lay the net out.

A bird is not gonna fall for that.

If the bird is sitting at the tree and he watches you lay the net out, the bird is not going to fly into the net.

He's watching you.

This is what the immature fool is like when it comes to temptation.

The net is spread and they're watching it be spread in front of them, and they run into it.

Like they just watched it.

These men wait, lie in wait for their own blood, Solomon says.

They set an ambush for their own life.

They lay the net thinking they're gonna catch plunder in it, they're only gonna catch themselves.

That's the end of temptation.

Why would somebody give into that?

Why would somebody choose to lead that kind of sinful, immature life?

Because they want short-term gain.

Because they don't love wisdom, is why.

They don't love wisdom.

They love whatever the short-term gain is.

They just don't believe their parents when their parents warn them.

They don't believe the voice of the father in verse 8 or the mother in verse 8.

They don't believe it.

They do believe the voice of the sinners enticing them.

And so it's helpful then, you know temptation is gonna exist, but at the moment you're confronted with it, it's helpful to telegraph this out in the future.

How does the story end?

Is the choice you're making now going to lead to wisdom and fruit and blessing, or suffering and hardships and heartbreak?

Fourthly, wisdom anticipates the storm.

And I'm gonna end tonight by looking at the final passage here, verse 20 down to the end of the chapter.

When we're done, now we've dispensed with the parents' advice, verses 10 now down through 19 was the parents' advice.

So Solomon in verses 8 and 9 says, hey, listen to your parents.

But 10 through verse 19 was the parents describing the enticers and what happens to them.

Now wisdom's gonna speak up, verse 20.

Wisdom cries aloud in the street.

Your parents are saying, listen, and now here's the voice to listen.

So that's the flow of this chapter.

Listen, your mom and dad say, not to those sinners.

You think, who should I listen to then?

And hark in the background, the voice of wisdom.

It's crying in the street.

In the markets, verse 20 says, she's raising her voice.

Wisdom wants to be listened to.

Wisdom is not hidden, it is on display.

Remember, so much of wisdom is watching how the world works.

You it's not hidden, it's out there for everybody to see.

So wisdom's crying out in the street, raising her voice in the markets.

She's going where the people are.

At the head of the noisy street, she cries out.

I think it's important that she's crying out the head of the street.

So you've got the long street.

Perhaps you've you you know that kind of uh street, you know, a street that's filled with shops and the stores like Old Ten Alexandria.

And if you start at the water, you're not gonna miss anything.

You can walk up and go by all the shops you want to.

If you start at like, you know, or that whatever that is, Prince Av or whatever, and you walk down, same thing, you're not gonna miss anything.

But if you start in the middle at the plaza there, you have to choose do I go left or right?

You'll miss half of the stuff.

Wisdom positions herself at the start of the street.

So everybody who's going to lead their life, everybody who's gonna walk up and down the street, everybody who's gonna go shopping has to pass her.

And she is calling out.

So there are no excuses.

Everybody sees her.

She's at the entrance to the city gate.

So everybody in there, verse 21, says.

Her voice goes over the noisy streets.

Yeah, there's a lot going on in the world.

Yes, there's a lot of noise, a lot of shops that are all open, selling great great things, but her voice is louder than all of them.

What does she say?

How long, you fools?

She's not very winsome, is she?

How long, you simple ones?

How long will you love being simple?

You stubborn people, how long will you love being stubborn?

The word for simple air, it's the word for naive, it's the word for being a fool, it's the word for just having little in the mind.

How long will you like that?

Do you want to be ignorant and immature your whole life?

That's how wisdom starts your speech in Proverbs.

I love it.

How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge?

If you turn at my reproof, behold, I will pour my spirit to you.

I will make my words known to you.

This is a statement of conversion.

This is a statement of repentance from sin and turning from death to life, blindness to sight.

It's a statement of being converted to saving faith in God.

That's the doorway to wisdom here.

You can't become wise in God's world or God's way unless you're converted because sin makes you stupid.

And the person who's living for sin wants to keep being stupid.

And so they hear wisdom's voice.

Hey, why are you doing this?

Why are you sleeping with your girlfriend?

Why are you stealing from the store?

Why are you cheating on your test?

Why are you doing all of these things?

They end badly.

And the sinner hears that and goes, I actually like them and I don't care if they end badly.

And so the voice of wisdom says, Why are you being so recalcitrant?

Do you want to be dumb your whole life?

Now, the heart then needs to be corrected and confronted by God's law.

And here it's called reproof.

The heart needs to be reproved by the law.

The heart needs to be shown, know what you're doing is sinful and bad.

And when the heart is shown that, the person can convert and turn from loving sin to loving God.

I know we're studying the Sermon on the Mount, so I interpret everything through the lens of the Sermon on the Mount, but this is Matthew 5 right here.

It's I'm broken over my sin, I'm a fool.

Yes, Lady Wisdom, I am foolish, and so I turn from my sin and I believe you.

Please make me wise.

Now that takes a supernatural event.

You wouldn't do this on your own.

You have to be regenerated by the Holy Spirit to put your faith in God.

And that's what's described here in Proverbs of all places.

If you repent, God regenerates you.

It's two sides of the same coin.

It's the Holy Spirit that gives you life and you turn from your sin.

Your repentance doesn't cause regeneration.

Regeneration brings you the faith and the new life and the new eyes, the Holy Spirit who opens your heart.

And God gives the Spirit to you liberally.

If you turn when you are confronted with your sin, you will be saved.

This is the key verse of chapter one, I think.

You'll be saved.

And once you're saved, you have your eyes open to the Word of God, don't you?

Like before, the Lady Wisdom was just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

You have something about not sinning, I don't know.

But once you put your faith in God, you hear Lady Wisdom's voice.

Her words are made known to you.

But not everybody who hears the outward call of the Word of God receives the inward call of the Spirit.

Many people hear the outward call of the gospel or the outward call of wisdom, and they're recalcitrants.

They don't turn to God.

They're described in verse 24.

Because wisdom called and you refuse to listen.

I stretch out my hand and no one heeded.

Wisdom says, I called you, you wouldn't listen to me, because you ignored all my counsel, you would have none of my reproof.

I will laugh at your calamity.

This is what I mean by anticipate the storm.

The person who resists wisdom, who does not give their life to the Lord, what's going to happen to them?

Well, bad things are going to happen to them.

Some of them as a result of their own sin, but some of them, just because they live in a fallen world, eventually you get cancer, eventually you get hit by a car, eventually you get fired, bad things will happen to you.

And the immature person who's in it for a short-term game doesn't know how to respond.

They might even cry out to God for help at that moment, and God will say, No, thank you.

I offered you wisdom, you rejected it.

Now you want wisdom?

It's too late.

God says.

I'll mock.

I'll laugh at your calamity.

This is my people say, Oh, God would never laugh at sinners.

This is Psalm 2.

Why do the nations rage and people plot a vain thing?

The one enthroned in heaven laughs.

This is this in Proverbs.

God will laugh at you.

Because you rejected him, and now bad things happen to you.

When terror strikes you like a storm, and it will come, by the way, verse 27, terror strikes you like a storm.

Your calamity comes like a whirlwind.

Whirlwind in the Old Testament is often used for finality.

This is the calamity that takes you out of this world.

Distress and anguish will come upon you at the end of your life, maybe even.

Then you'll call upon me, and God says, I will not answer you.

You can seek me diligently, then you will not find me.

Esau sought repentance with tears, and God withheld it from him.

Said, No, you had the you had the soup to begin with, and you traded it.

Why wouldn't God listen to their prayers?

Why wouldn't God come to them when they call on him?

Because God's not going to be a partner with their evil.

That's why.

Perhaps you saw in the news this past week about the guy who uh carjacked a high school girl at Tyson's Mall.

Did you see the story?

He had stolen$2,500 worth of jewelry from uh Tyson's Mall, ran to the parking lot.

He's being chased by police.

Uh there was a 16-year-old girl driving her car.

He grabbed the door and tried to get out of the car, and she wisely drove away and dragged the guy.

And then she saw the police running out, so she stopped and got out the passenger side of the car.

She's like, There's police, I'm going to them.

I don't care about the car.

Very, I don't know who this girl was, but she made wise choices.

The guy then gets in the car, drives her car away, crashes the car into a gas station.

There's phenomenal pictures in the news about the car on like top of a pile of gas pumps.

It's incredible.

And the police arrest him.

And turns out he had been arrested just a few days earlier for theft and carjacking and all the same stuff in DC.

And they let him go, they let him go.

Can you be surprised when he does two days later?

Or three days later, however long ago?

Can you really be surprised?

No, he just did this.

Of course he's gonna do it again.

Does he get you angry at the judge who let him go?

Right?

A little bit?

Come on, Judge.

You got a carjacking thief, and you let him go and he goes and does it again, it's on you, Judge.

That would be natural in the human heart.

So when the sinner who rejects wisdom and says, I don't care what God says, rejects wisdom and then crashes into gas pumps and steals money and all the other things, and then suddenly is like, oh Lord, help me, what does the Lord help them and just let them go plunder again?

No, when the storm comes and you cry out to the Lord, it's not the cry of repentance, it's not the cry of a genuine contrite heart.

No, when the storm comes and blows the house down, that's that cry is a cry of, oh, I wish I would have listened when I'm young.

God closes his ears.

Verse 29 explains why.

They hated knowledge and they did not choose the fear of Yahweh.

The choice was out there.

Remember at the top of the street, the choice was there.

You drove seven blocks in foolishness and then you crashed.

You're like, why didn't anybody warn you?

Yeah, you ran the red light to get into the city block.

God warned you, lady wisdom was there calling, but you hated her.

You despised her.

Verse 30, you despised her.

It's not just that you ignored her, although you did.

It's that verse 29 says you hated her.

Verse 30 says you despised her.

Therefore, verse 31, God will let you sow what you reap.

This is the reap-sow dynamic.

You planted the seeds, you plant wheat.

Don't be surprised when wheat grows.

You plant strawberry bushes in your yard and then strawberry bushes grow.

You can't walk out and be like, oh my goodness, it's a miracle.

I planted carrots, and now we have carrots.

Who could have imagined?

Who did this to me?

Oh, you labored for that.

So it is with the person who rejects the voice of wisdom to live their own life for short-term game, to follow sin, to live like they want to live.

They tell their parents to be quiet, they tell wisdom to be quiet, they ignore the word of God and live how they want to live, and then bad things happen, they're like, I didn't see that coming.

Why doesn't the Lord help me?

And the Lord will say, you know what, I will help you.

I'll help you reap exactly what you sowed.

We'll put that in the category of life lessons.

Verse 32, the simple are killed by their turning away.

The complacency of fools destroys them.

That's a critical verse, verse 32.

Why do these people die?

Because they are complacent.

It's easier to listen to the voice of the hoodlums around you than it is to listen to the voice of God's word.

It's just complacent.

It's all these people are caught up in this that are just saying, you know what?

I don't care.

I don't really care.

I don't care about God's word.

I don't care about right and wrong.

I don't care about even my friend.

It's just ambiguity, apathy.

I'm complacent.

Well, complacency kills.

But whoever listens in contrast to me, wisdom says, will dwell secure, will be at ease without dread of disaster.

So the storm will still come.

Wisdom tells you the storm will come.

But listen, when the storm comes, your house is secure, verse 33 says, if you built it on wisdom, your house is secure.

Your house is built on wisdom, it is secure.

Wisdom is no respecter of persons, she gives her invitation to all.

But if you refuse correction, like in verse 24 says, there's nothing further that can be done for you.

Proverbs 29, verse 9.

Proverbs 29:9

If a wise man has an argument with a fool, the fool rages and laughs, and there is no quiet.

The wise man listens to the voice of God, the fool argues with the voice of God and rages and laughs, and so God will in turn laugh at them.

Proverbs 13, verse 1: A wise son hears his father's instruction, but a scoffer does not listen to the rebuke of wisdom.

Wisdom calls, and some people refuse to answer, and they get turned over to their own desires, and this leads to death.

There's an odd change in the grammar in verse 33 I want to draw your attention to as we close here.

The simple in verse 32, that's plural.

Simple, it's harder to tell in English, but in Hebrew it's very clear.

It's simple or plural, they're killed by their turning away.

It's all plural.

The noun there for killed is pluraled.

The complacency of fools, you see it in English there with fools, plural.

Verse 33 switches to the singular.

Whoever singular listens to me will dwell as a singular verb secure.

They will be singular verb at ease without dread of disaster.

Wide is the way of destruction, and there's so many people on it.

Narrow is the way to life, and you find it one at a time.

Even in the details of wisdom, you see that on display.

An invitation for wisdom is out there, everybody can hear it.

The young people need to turn their ears to it, listen to it, project out to the future.

If you listen to these friends and live in this way, where does that go?

Your parents can't make you walk the way of wisdom.

It's called a choice here in this passage.

It's a choice.

They ignored the choice, they rejected the choice.

Verse 39, they did not choose the fear of Yahweh.

That's how Proverbs presents wisdom.

It's a choice you make.

You can choose to walk on the right wide road with sinners, or you can choose to walk on the narrow road with lady wisdom.

God, we're grateful that you have made the choice so clear in your word.

Wide is the path that leads to destruction, narrow is the path that leads to life.

We're thankful here even for the message of conversion.

A wise person must turn to you.

It's sweet, sweeter than honey from the honeycomb.

The word of God brings us life.

And so I pray tonight for the congregation that is here, Lord, I pray that their hearts would be soft towards your word.

And that if there's anyone here tonight who has never trusted you, that tonight they would put their faith in you and would believe you for wisdom and for life.

We know that you hear the prayers of those who come to you through your Son Jesus Christ.

He died for the immature, he died for the weak, he died for the sinners, bearing our penalty of sin.

He lives, resurrecting from the grave, that we can have life through him.

We're thankful that our our sin, our foolishness deserves hell, deserves Sheol, and yet you rescue us from that by giving it to your son instead.

We're thankful for him and his life.

In his name we pray.

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 both of us.