Proverbs - Wisdom For Troubled Times

Father God, we thank you, that you are a gracious God, we acknowledge that our sins are many, more than we can number, more than we know. We are truly weak and vile and poor, and yet we thank you that these are the very ones. People like us who you want to welcome, who you love, who your mercy covers every day. And we pray that as we look at your word now and as Ben comes to preach to us, that by your spirit, you would welcome us again to Jesus through your word, and we ask it in his name. Our men.

Our men. If you bought your bibles, then do open them and turn to Proverbs chapter 1. And we are going to be reading verse 20 to the end of the chapter to verse 33, and then Ben is gonna come and preach God's word to us. Out in the open, wisdom calls aloud. She raises her voice in the public square.

On top of the wall she cries out. At the city gates, she makes her speech. How long will you who are simple, love your simple ways. How long will mockers delight in mockery and fools hate knowledge? Repent at my rebuke.

Then I will pour out my thoughts to you. I will make known to you my teachings. But since you refuse to listen when I call, and no 1 pays attention when I stretch out my hand since you disregard all my advice and do not accept my rebuke. I, in turn, will laugh when disaster strikes you. I will mock when calamity overtakes you when calamity overtakes you like a storm, when disaster sweeps over you like a whirlwind, when distress and trouble overwhelm you.

Then they will call to me, but I will not answer. They will look for me but will not find me since they hated knowledge and did not choose to fear the Lord. Since they would not accept my advice and spurned my rebuke. They will eat the fruit of their ways and be filled with the fruit of their schemes. For the waywardness of the simple will kill them, and complacency of fools will destroy them.

But whoever listens to me will live in safety and be at ease without fear of harm. Well, good morning, everyone. And welcome from me. My name is Ben. I'm a training pastor at the church.

This is the first time I've been up here, so I'm just going to get my my bearings. There's a little platform, which is not Well, it's very little. So hopefully, I don't just collapse halfway through this. Yeah. Let's get into into this into this passage.

I wonder if you've ever wondered why sort of safety manuals for products are sometimes 6 foot long when you unfold them fully, and they're in every language imaginable. The reason they're quite long is because people, I guess, have found ways to do things with a product that they should never have done. And that's why things are as long as they are. I used to work for a company that made body cameras for police officers and security guards. And these cameras would come with a range of harnesses and clips to mount on sort of stabvest of the offices in lots of different ways.

And it was my responsibility to design the user and safety manuals for these products. And so, I was responsible for saying, if you want this clip, you need to put this screw with this clip. And if you want this clip, which is slightly thicker, you need to use this a longer screw. And I thought I'd made it quite clear in in the manual. If you want this clip, you use that screw, and if you want this clip, then you use that.

Slightly longest screw. But obviously, what I didn't make clear enough was that you shouldn't use that clip with that screw. Or that screw with that clip because what happened in the end was someone took the longest screw with the smaller clip. And as they were screwing it in, It obviously only got so far in. And instead of thinking, hang on a minute, I've got the wrong screw here, which I hope most of us here, which comes to conclusion of.

They carried on screwing and twisting and turning this thing all the way through the back of the product into the battery itself which then sparked and set on fire. In comes a new line. Please do not use that clip with that screw. Hopefully, that's clear enough. The trouble is we don't really read signs or manuals, do we?

We have noticed that IKEA and Lego have mastered the instruction manual. Because they don't use words. It's amazing. When we're trying to put something together or create something, if there are any word instructions reading suddenly becomes the most arduous and difficult thing to do, doesn't it? And we try and skim real certainly for me anyway.

I'm sort of an 80 percent sort of guy and I I try and read it and I go right. Yeah. Let me have a go at this now. Even signs and instructions that are for our own good, we often completely ignore, don't we? There's not a lot of love in the hub office for parking wardens.

You may know that. Sometimes the council, I think, should put better signs up, or we were talking the other day of putting different color markings on the road to make it even clearer. But there's a particular there's a sign just outside of a hub window. And and more often than you'd think, a car comes and parks there and gets slapped with a yellow sticker, right underneath the sign that says when you can and cannot park there. And we have a good laugh at those people.

Here's a couple other examples. Oh, is this working? Here we go. Here's a sign that we may not pay attention to. I don't know if you can see that over there.

If you're on holiday and you're by a cliff or somewhere where you shouldn't be, there's normally a sign that says, do not proceed any further. And obviously, we like to go and have a look over the edge of the cliff. How about this 1? Who would enter the water after seeing that sign? Shark, sighted today, enter water at your own risk, and there's people casually walking in and out.

If we see a jellyfish, I think most of us scream. So not sure we would be in the water there. How about this 1? That person didn't pay attention to the signs. This guy has paid attention to the signs and is doing it anyway.

And respect to him, and then this 1, my only conclusion is that the owner put them there for a joke. And you can just see the dog's left claw gripping the side, looking terrified. Why have you done this to me? And then this 1, do we need this sign at all? Do not breathe under the water.

Hopefully, you pay attention to that. Well, look, why am I telling you all of this? Well, it's because I want to tell you that in this world, God has spoken his gospel loud and clear. And if you do not know it, or if you do not live by it, then it is not for lack of God speaking loudly or clearly to us. We'll see that from today's passage.

But as we've just observed, it's from our fallen human condition to ignore him. And ignore signs. We so easily treat the miraculous life sustaining world and gal and universe around us, and the rich history of the Christian Gospel and the influence of the scriptures in this society that we just saturated it. Even the breath in our lungs at this very moment, we so easily treat all of that as safety manuals or signs. Not worth paying any attention to.

I mean even the date that we look at in our phones, we take our phones out so often. It's got the date at the top. For for many people, that means nothing more, that number than just keeping track of what year we're in. 2021 years, Though he has spoken, we so easily ignore God and His Word. The good news is that if you're here this morning, It's been made very clear already.

God has brought you under his very word to be especially heard by him today. And we'll see that when he speaks, he speaks loudly and he speaks pretty clearly. And that's my first point, this morning. Wisdom speaks loudly take a look at verses 20 to 21 from Proverbs chapter 1. Out in the open, wisdom calls allowed.

She raises her voice in the public square. On top of the wall she cries out, at the city gate, She makes her speech. So we're here in chapter 1 of Proverbs. We had a week off to celebrate being back here. And a couple of weeks ago, we had the voice of the father to the son, my son listened to me.

But now we're introduced to wisdom who is personified here Whisdom has a voice. She speaks, and she's speaking the wisdom of God. And she's also revealed as the savior. We see that in chapter 2 verse 12, if you have a have a bible, you can flick the page. In chapter 2 verse 12, we read wisdom will save you from the ways of wicked men.

And then in verse 16, wisdom will save you also from the adulterous women. So it's it's not hard to hear this savior. Is it? She's out in the open. She's calling aloud.

She's raising her voice in the public square. She's on top of the wall. She's crying out. She's making a speech at the city gates. So wisdom is not just for the elite in their lecture halls.

Where they don't talk like, you know, very wise and sort of wise things. Wisdom is not just reserved for people like that. It's not just reserved for people in the temples either or the religious buildings to be discussed logically. Wisdom is democratized to be heard loudly by all the people. Rich and poor, male and female, young and old, intelligent and simple, religious and non religious She's out in the open we're told.

There's nothing hidden or murky about her. You don't have to go sort of to find a special code to unlock her meaning or gain access to what she's saying. And she's in the public square, which is where the masses are. Public Square is just where you'll find everyone and anyone. You don't have to go to a special fancy building or go through a special person or try and get a meeting and she's crying out from the top of the wall, we're told.

She's getting as high as she can, wisdom. If you're not going to listen to her in the public square, she'll go onto the wall and shout down at you to get your attention to be heard clearly. It's almost like a war cry, a rallying cry from the top of the wall. And she's at the city gates, which is where people come in and out. So if you were coming in here, you you would see how she'd be shouting at you as you entered today.

And there's the gates are where people who are part of the town come in, but also where visitors come in. This message is for everyone. And she's got a speech we're told. She's not just shouting angrily, or randomly, or just shouting condemnation upon the people, like in sort of sandwich board and a megaphone. She's reasoning with people withhold.

She's speaking coherently logically, rationally. She's trying to persuade you of something. She wants you to listen to what she's got to say. And what is the main point of her impassioned speech? What is the main thing that she's driving at that she desperately wants you to hear?

It's in verse 23. Repent at my rebuke. The loud and clear message from God in Scripture is turn back to me. That's what repent means. Turn away from a life of of sin.

Return back to God. And that is the call of wisdom. So wisdom is the wisdom of God. Speaking openly in the public places, she's deaf really pleading that people would turn back to God, and is the only 1 who can save you from wicked men and adulterous women. Now, who on earth does all that sound like to you?

Wisdom is the voice of Jesus. This could have been my last point this this morning. I was wondering whether I do it now or at the end, you know, to sort of do the tada. But I was actually I couldn't face the prospect of talking about wisdom, this whole sermon, and not attributing the words of wisdom to the wise person who is saying them. 1 Corinthians chapter 1 verse 24 calls Jesus the power of God and the wisdom of God.

As I chapter 11 foretells Jesus, and it and it says, the spirit of the lord will rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the spirit of counsel and of might, the spirit of the knowledge and fear of the lord, which we know is the beginning of Wisdom. Jesus is talking about himself in Luke chapter 7 when he says wisdom is proved right by all her children. And what is the opening call from Jesus in Mark's Gospel as he begins his ministry? He says the time has come, The kingdom of God has come near, repent and believe the good news. The call of wisdom here in Proverbs is the cool of Jesus, repent at my rebuke.

Wisdom is the voice of Jesus. So it's the main point of wisdom speech, repent at my rebuke. So what is this rebuke? What are we repenting of? What is it that we have to turn away from in order to turn back to God?

What are we being called to repent from in a sense problem is, it's not just a list of things, but we should be here a very long time. It's not just things that we are trying to aim at in life, All of that would just be religion at the end of the day, just sort of ticking boxes Making sure you aren't doing that, making sure you are doing this. It's just religion, that's just an outward solution, which actually doesn't deal with the inward problem, and it's not what God's really interested in. At the end of the day. The call of Jesus is radical because it is ultimately a call to turn away from ourselves.

Look at verse 22. How long will you who are simple? Love your simple ways. How long will mockers delight in mockery and fools hate knowledge, repented my rebuke. Here's a question from Jesus, not about what these people do.

It's not just that they are simple, or just that they mock, or just that they're foolish, It's a question about who these people are. Why is it you love your simple ways? Why is it you delight in mockery. Why do you hate knowledge? In other words, the simple You love your simple ways.

It's not that you don't know much about God, but you're happy not to know much about him. They'll take the world he's made, these simple people, they'll take the laws that God has given, that govern people quite nicely around us, mean we have a quite safe and ordered life, will take the life that he's actually given us, but actually we'll refuse to think much about spiritual things. Or grow in understanding of the 1 who has given all of these great things to us. The simple people love their simple ways. Maybe there are even people who've been coming to church for a while now.

Who listen to sermon after sermon, maybe sing songs. Perhaps enjoy doing those things, but as soon as they get home, they kind of shrug or throw the harder teaching off. They sort of want to remain baby Christians with this sort of very baby basic understanding. Maybe they think, oh, do you know it's too much to be a Christian the way these guys are describing? It actually involves way too much of me.

It's asking too much from my life. Doesn't God love me? Isn't that the Christian message? Isn't that enough? Why should I have to change who I am?

What I love to do? Why do I have to grow in understanding and maturity? Jesus faced these very people himself in John chapter 6 after he taught in the synagogue in Capernium. He stood up Jesus and he said that he was the bread of life, that he was the source of eternal life, and that we have to partake in him if we wanna live forever. And on hearing this, his disciples said, this is a hard teaching.

Who can accept it? And we read that after that, many people turned away from Jesus and no longer followed him. They were happy to go along for the ride while it demanded not that much of them. You know, he's the Savior, He's in town. Look at him.

He's healing people. He's going up to anyone speaking to anyone. God has come to rescue us. God accepts all of us. Hang on a minute.

I have to depend on him for eternal life. I've got to throw my old self off. I've got to die to myself. I've got to follow and trust him for everything in my life. No way, that's too hard.

I'm not doing that. I'm happy with the Jesus who doesn't demand. Everything from me. I'm pretty happy with my life as it is. How long will you who love your simple ways remain simple.

So the simple will walk away from Jesus. That's what we see. So Jesus says, walk away from your simpleness. Turn away from yourself. It's the same with the mockers, Jesus is talking about here.

It's not just the mockery that's the issue. I think, unfortunately, all of us will at some point mock something or someone and hopefully to our to our shame when we realize what we've done. But the people Jesus is talking about here are those who delight in mockery. They're happy to put others down around them to raise themselves up, to make themselves look better. And they're quick to write people off as useless ago, yeah, rubbish they talked to them.

They get some kind of gratification from whispering about people with someone else. Smurking about them. The way they talk about God, they relish the opportunity to talk about God. It's just a fairy tale. Christians who believe in them believe in fairy tales, they're brainwashed, and they're the only people intelligent enough to see that.

Someone who delights in mockery is so far gone, I think, from listening and being changed by Jesus' words, that Jesus is not saying walk away from your mockery. Stop mocking people. He's saying walk away from yourself. Look how poisoned you are, that you think you have any ground whatsoever to mock God And not just to do that, but to delight in it, you don't need to stop mocking people. You're way too far gone from there.

You need a heart transplant. You need to die and be born again. How long will mockers delight in mockery? The mockers will condemn Jesus, so Jesus says condemn yourself. See yourself for what you are.

There's a verse in the song how deep the father's love for us, which we're going to finish with today, actually, which which goes like this. To hold the man upon across, my sin upon his shoulders, ashamed, I hear my mocking voice call out among the scoffers. See yourself for what you are, Jesus says. Turn away from yourself. And finally, fools, he addresses.

And look, it's not that people don't have access to the knowledge of God. I mean, certainly not in this country. Not in this part of the world. I mean, churches are open all over the country. Even in lockdown when churches closed, Google reported that people were searching for prayer and churches and meaning and God in those kind of search terms just exploded.

Because people were trying to get some kind of meaning, and they were looking for answers to what was going on. And actually, church services had never been easier to access online. If you're watching this from home, you're the example. The bible is the most printed book in the history of the world. I think every year it's the international best seller, I think that's right, but they don't count it in the best sellers because otherwise it would eclipse everything.

And though his words are printed clearly for everyone to see, I think Jesus has to be the most misquoted person in history, doesn't he? Access to God is not the problem. The problem is that fools hate knowledge. They're happy again to have this sort of Sunday school Jesus who doesn't require that much of them in their back pocket ready to bring him out when they need him, when they're feeling a bit sad. But don't teach me about the sermon on the mount.

Don't tell me about my sin or judgment or hell, don't argue with me what I already think. I hate being corrected. And certainly, they tell me that you have the knowledge. How could you ever change a fool's mind when they hate correction? They hate the very thing that you need to change their mind.

They hate knowledge, they hate what you're telling them. Their minds and their ideas aren't the issue. With foolish people. The issue again is their heart. How long will fools hate knowledge.

So foolish person. Don't turn away from your ideas. Don't just read another book or go on a course. It's not gonna work. You have to turn away from yourself first of all.

And it has to be that way around. Did you notice that? The simple will never stop loving their simple ways unless they first turn to Jesus. The mockers aren't going to stop delighting in mockery unless they first turn to Jesus. The fool is not going to stop hating knowledge randomly 1 day, wake up and go, oh, I feel like knowledge today.

I knew a Christian once, he was trying to tell me something. That doesn't happen. They need to first turn to Jesus because that's the order that we're shown here in verse 23. Take a look at it. Repent at my rebuke Then I will pour out my thoughts to you.

I will make known to you my teachings. You see that? First repentance, then blessing. Actually, that word there, thoughts, I will pour my thoughts out to you, means so much more than just thoughts. You're not just downloading a conscious stream from God.

And actually in a lot of translations, it's translated as spirit I will pour my spirit out to you. And the Hebrew word means breath, life, spirit, meaning. So if you repent at the rubric of Jesus, then he pours out life into you by his holy spirit so that you can understand the scriptures, so that you can understand spiritual realities, so that you can have the mind of Christ as the new testament puts it. If you repent of your old self and your old ways and you turn to Jesus, then Jesus makes known to you his teachings. And is life giving thoughts, the life giving word.

It's not the way around you expect, is it? You might think I could never become a Christian because I don't understand it. I love my old life too much. I'm in way too deep with all sorts of things. God would never have me as I am.

But the teaching of wisdom is that first you repent then you are changed. You don't come to Christ as the finished article. Every Christian in this room will vouch for that. You come as a sick person who needs a doctor. Imagine thinking you can only see a doctor.

Well, actually nowadays, you can only see a doctor if you have a negative test, I think. Is that right? So actually, my analogy falls flat on his face. Imagine a world without corona where you could only see a doctor when you were well. Or you only could dial 9 9 9 when you're not having an emergency.

That would sort of completely defeat the object, wouldn't it? Jesus said himself, it's not the healthy he need a doctor. I've not come to call the righteous. I've come to call sinners. The call of wisdom, in proverbs, the call of Jesus, is to sinners, it's to the simple.

If you're simply speaking to you, It's to the mockers, if you're a mockery speaking to you, to the fools, if you're fully speaking to you. You can't change your ways. But if you leave your life of sin and you repent and you follow Jesus, he pours out his spirit onto you, who will change you. And he will give you eyes to see and understand the scriptures which sanctify you, which cleanse you, which transform you, as you live under them. He says, I will make known to you my teachings in verse 23 there.

Jesus will make his teachings known to you. You will have eyes to see the glories of Christ. That is the blessed life Jesus is calling you to. If you aren't a follower already. Even if you are, it still calls you.

The blessed life is this holy spirit poured out on you. I has given to you to understand the thoughts and the teachings of God and to be sanctified, to be cleansed, to be transformed daily, more into his likeness. And yes, it demands all of you. It means walking totally away from your old self. Not just some of the things we do, not just stopping some stuff, our very selves, but I hope you can see there's no comparison with what Christ is calling us to.

A life of simpleness of mockery, foolishness that's not worth comparing, but worth putting on the same scale. As the glories that are revealed in us, as Christ opens our eyes and pulls his spirit out on us. So have you repented at Jesus' rebuke? At Wisdom's rebuke? Have you turned away from yourself?

And back to God, perhaps not just once, either. The whole Christian life is 1 of daily repentance and daily turning back to him because God is absolutely desperate that you do. He's so desperate. You got that from those first couple of verses. He's clear, isn't he?

He's shouting from the rooftops out in the open trying to make it plain and obvious and clear. Repent and be changed by his spirit and his word. But there's something even clearer here. That wisdom is saying in her speech, in Proverbs chapter 1. So 2 verses are given to explain what happens to those who listen, to those who heed this repent, this rebuke.

9 verses are given to explain what happens to those who don't. So my next point, if you do not listen. Take a look at verse 24. But since you refuse to listen when I call, and no 1 pays attention when I stretch out my hand. Since you disregard all my advice, you do not accept my rebuke.

I in turn will laugh when disaster strikes you. I will mock when calamity overtakes you. When calamity overtakes you like a storm, when disaster sweeps over you like a whirlwind, when distress and trouble overwhelm you. And that, by the way, is not a God who enjoys disaster calamity, distress, or trouble. He doesn't eagerly long for those things to happen, but look at who they happen to.

They happen to people who in equal measure to God's patient efforts to speak to us cover their ears. Ignore the signs, disregard the advice, and do not accept the rebuke. These people are not people who just simply haven't heard the gospel these are people who repeatedly, decidedly and ultimately do not wanna hear it. 4 times wisdom speaks in verses 20 to 21. Out in the open in the public square, On top of the wall at the city gate, and 4 times these people reject the words of Christ in verses 24 to 25.

And since they've worked so hard not to know God, it's obvious, isn't it? They won't know who to turn to when the calamity of death comes. Versus 28 to 29 are haunting, aren't they? Then they will call to me but I will not answer. They will look for me but will not find me.

Since they hated knowledge and did not choose to fear the lord. How can they call on the 1 that they've spent their whole lives running away from? Trying not to know. How can they look and find the 1 that they have closed their eyes to? They won't know where to find him And look, there is something, if you if you feel like God's chasing you around, by the way, and not letting off, and constantly in your ear.

There is something much worse than a God who won't shut up to get your attention. And that is a God who has finally closed his mouth. And will not answer you when you need him. You see that in verse 30. Since they would not accept my advice, spurned my rebuke.

They will eat the fruit of their ways, be filled with the fruit of their schemes. For the waywardness of the simple will kill them. Complacency of fools will destroy them. God doesn't bring judgments on people as much as he hands them over to themselves, think, because what we see here. CS Lewis once said that either we will say to God, thy will be done, or he will say to us, thy will be done.

And that is why we must turn away from ourselves. It is our own ways that will destroy us in the end. The waywardness of the simple, the complacency of fools, the fruit of the mockers. If you remember a couple of weeks ago, we looked at those men in verse 18 of chapter 1 of Proverbs, we're setting out traps to try and catch other people. But who do they catch in the end?

They catch themselves. They're digging their own graves. They bring ruin on themselves. But there is hope in verse 33 for those who listen to the call of Jesus. He says, but whoever listens to me will live in safety, and be at ease without fear of harm.

Those who listen to the words of Jesus who put their trust in him, who repent of their old selves, who turn back to God. They have eternal life because of the spirit that's poured out in them. If you wanna see someone raised from the dead with the Holy Spirit, look at Jesus. That same spirit is in you, if you believe. You will have eternal life because of that same spirit.

That is why the Christian lives in safety, according to Jesus here. At ease and without fear of harm because there's nothing that can separate them from the love of Jesus. Not even death. How can anyone truly harm a Christian if even death has been defeated? By Jesus Christ.

Not only will no ultimate harm come to us, but Jesus says, actually, we don't even need to fear harm if we listen to him. Ben Shaw was the pastor of the Boathouse Church in Putney and passed away a couple of weeks ago, sadly. Fighting cancer. I had the privilege to meet him a couple of times. I preached once at his church when he was there.

And his best friend said in a short podcast released recently, that if there was a best Christian award to which he knew Ben would be like, no, stop it. There is no such thing as a best Christian award. Of course, there isn't. But he said, if there was, then it would be for the person who most trusts Christ. And he said, because Ben had listened to the words of Jesus, he had no fear in death.

As he saw it approaching. He had only trust in Christ. And though physically he was suffering, He had a book release, Ben Shordid, a couple of weeks before he died, and he's interviewed, and you can hear him, and he's clearly suffering. Though physically he suffered, he lived and died in absolute safety totally at ease. And without any fear of harm because of his faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

So do you hear the loud and cool message from Proverbs. Do you hear Jesus' impassioned speech in the Scriptures for your soul? Hebrews chapter 3 says today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. Don't let this be another time when you refuse to listen, Pay no attention, disregard his advice and don't accept his rebuke. Let's pray.

Father, we we thank and praise you for the Lord Jesus Christ, who's who's the wisdom of God. We thank you that you sent him into this world and he in the open places at the city gates called and cried aloud. Repent and believe the good news. I pray father that you would cause us to do that. We cannot change ourselves We must throw our old selves off.

Trust in the Lord Jesus Christ and by your Holy Spirit you will breathe new life into us. So I pray that for people here. Who do not know you, would they repent of themselves, see themselves what they are before you, come and turn to Jesus. I pray for us who are believers. I pray that you would help us to continually be repentant, to continually turn away from our old self.

And to have that blessed life where we're at ease. And we fear no harm. We just thank you and praise you for Jesus again in his name, amen.