Proverbs - Wisdom For Troubled Times

Okay. We are now going to have our bible reading. So if you'd like to open up your bibles to Proverbs chapter 19, Pro chapter 19 beginning in verse 1. Better the poor whose way of life is blameless than a fool whose lips are perverse.

Desire without knowledge is not good. How much more will hasty feet Miss the way, a person's own folly leads to their ruin, yet the heart rages against the Lord. Wealth attracts many friends, but even the closest friend of the poor person deserts them. A false witness will not go unpunished, and whoever pours out lies will not go free. Many carry favor with a ruler, and everyone is the friend of 1 who gives gifts.

The poor are shunned by all their relatives. How much more do their friends avoid them? Though the poor pursue them with pleading, they are nowhere to be found. The 1 who gets wisdom loves life, the 1 who cherishes understanding will soon prosper. A false witness will not go unpunished, and whoever pours out lies will perish.

It is not fitting for a fool to live in luxury. How much worse for a slave to rule over princes? Person's wisdom yields patience. It is to one's glory to overlook an offense. A king's rage is like the roar of a lion, but his favor is like dew on the grass.

A foolish child is a father's ruin. And a quarrelsome wife is like the constant dripping of a leaky roof. Houses and wealth are inherited from parents, but a prudent wife is from the lord. Laziness brings on deep sleep, and the shiftless go hungry. Whoever keeps commandments, keeps their life.

But whoever shows contempt for their ways will die. Whoever is kind to the poor, lends to the lord, and he will reward them for what they have done. Discipline your children. For in that, there is hope. Do not be a willing party to their death.

A hot tempered person must pay the penalty, rescue them, and you'll have to do it again. Listen to advice and accept And at the end, you will be counted among the wise. Many are the plans in a person's heart, but it is the lord's purpose that prevails. What a person desires is unfailing love, but it's to be poor than a liar. The fear of the Lord leads to life.

Then 1 rests content untouched by trouble. A sluggard buries his head, his hand in the dish, He will not even bring it back to his mouth. FLog a mocker, and the simple will learn prudence, rebuke the discerning, and they will gain knowledge. Whoever robs their father and drives out their mother is a child who brings shame and disgrace. Stop listening to instruction, my son, and you will stray from the words of knowledge.

A corrupt witness mocks at justice, and the mouth of the wicked gulps down evil. Penalties are prepared for mockers and beatings for the backs of fools. Tom? Alright. Thank you, Ben.

And good morning for me. My name is Tom. I'm 1 of the pastors here at the church and as ever if you could keep that chapter open in front of you, that would be really good. We won't be looking at all of those proverbs, even though we had the whole chapter read, but we will be having quite a few of them and I'll explain why that is in just a moment. So let's -- let's as we begin, pray together and ask for the Lord's help.

Father, we thank you that you are the only wise God, and we thank you for this book proverbs and for how it reveals to us what the life of wisdom looks like and what the life of foolishness looks like and not just in this life, but where wisdom and foolishness ultimately take us. And we pray that as we think about that theme from this to this morning that you would speak to us. We pray that if there's any here who are who are slumbering spiritually, that you would please awaken them by power of the Holy Spirit. We pray for those who already know and love wisdom that you would only increase their passion to live rightly for your glory. And we pray that you would help us to see our great savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who has become for us.

Wisdom and righteousness and sanctification, help us to see and marvel at his grace this morning, we pray in Jesus' name. Our men. Now, I fear that this opening illustration may alienate 98 percent of you, For the 2 percent, I think it will be really hooking and interesting. But if you belong in the 98 percent, can I persuade you just to stay with me for for a minute and hopefully you'll see why? When I was a teenager, there was a computer game that I used to play, and it made quite an impression on me, and it was called Star Wars, knights of the old republic.

So, there we are. That's 98 percent gone. Computer game Star Wars. That's the way to alienate most people, I think. But it was actually a really good game.

You were given this character and you were set within the Star Wars universe and there were a number of different campaigns that you could play out, and depending on what you did and how you lived and the decisions that you took, you would either become slightly more light or slightly more dark. And eventually, you would become the ultimate dark or the ultimate light. And so for instance, you would be playing with your character and you would come across a man and you'd have a bit of dialogue with him and he would tell you that he'd lost his son. And then at that point, the computer game presented you with some options. You could either choose to accept this distraction, help the man to find his son and restore his family.

And if you chose that, you would just move a few points to the light side. So your bar would go slightly bluer. Your screen would be a bit lighter and you become a slightly better person. You could If you didn't want to do that, you could choose to ignore him completely and just get on with what you were doing, and you would remain as you were before you enter that conversation, or you could choose to rob him, and take what little he had and spend it on your own weapons and spaceship. Which I think is what most teenage boys leaned into, that sort of way of life.

And there would be loads of decisions like that, throughout the game. And in isolation, of course, they made very little difference. You know, just do 1, do the other, few points to the left, few points to the right. But if you played out that lifestyle over the course of the game, you would either at the end become the sort of demonic horror that perhaps you've never imagined you would turn into a ruler of the dark side or you would become a type of angel of light SAVI figure. So as I say, that's that's what you were presented with.

All these choices that kind of bought on a destiny. Now, there is something that is quite anti gospel about that, because we know if we know the Christian message that we don't become angels of light just by helping people in this life and doing kind things. But there is also something profoundly true about that game. In that the things that we do in this life not just the 4 or 5 big decisions that we might make, but the hundreds of little decisions that we make, day by day, we by week, month by month, do confirm in us a kind of character. They do lead us to a destination.

They invite a kind of future upon us. Through the little everyday choices that we make, we become either 1 thing or the other. In his essay, the weight of glory, CS Lewis, wrote the narnia stories. He gets us or he wants you to imagine the most dull and uninteresting person you can think of. So maybe just give you a few seconds to do that.

The most dull and uninteresting person that you can think of. And then he says, yes, but if that person is a Christian, They will 1 day be a creature of such glory and magnificence. That if you could see them now as they will be then, you would be very well tempted to worship them and fall at their feet. But then he says, yes. And also imagine a person who is very good and very upstanding and quite moral But if they have said no to the Lord Jesus Christ, then they will 1 day become a creature so horrible that you would only meet them in this life in the worst of your nightmares.

And then he says, in every day, Decision by decision, we are moving towards 1 of these destinations. The choices that we make in this life have consequences both in this life and the next The things that we choose to do day by day, kind of firm in us, a kind of character. And that is all over this chapter. Here in Proverbs 19 and and the book in general. You see, when we read Proverbs, there is there is a kind of light side to it, I think.

I don't know if you've experienced that in your home groups if you've been going through it. There is like a light side to it in the sense that they they're quite easy to read. The applications are often quite some of them are just plain funny, and they're just very easy to just discuss on a sort of light level, which I think is part of their genius. But we mustn't miss there is a weighty, serious side to the book of proverbs that deals with our eternal state. It deals with where we are going to spend forever, and it wants us to know that wisdom and folly have very serious consequences both in this life and the next.

And nowhere is that clearer than in Proverbs chapter 19. It's just all over the place. And so what we're gonna do is just to take that as our main theme this morning, that wisdom and folly have consequences both in this life and the next. And we're gonna rattle through a few proverbs, and I've just tried to show you that from Proverbs 19, and then we'll spend a bit longer thinking about the final destinations to which these choices lead us, and we're gonna start with foolishness, the consequences of foolishness. So that's the first heading, the consequences of foolishness.

And have a look at verse 3. Let's have a look at a few of them together. A person's own folly leads to their ruin Yet their heart rages against the Lord. A person's own folly leads to their ruin, yet their heart rages against the Lord. Now that's literally a foolish man perverts his ways.

A foolish man perverts his ways. It means to twist up. A foolish person twists up their ways perverts their ways, upends their ways. It was often used in the law about those who would accept bribes. You know, do not take a bribe, do not pervert justice.

That's what a bribe allows you to do, isn't it? It perverts what is right and wrong. It makes you see things differently. In Isaiah 5, the Lord says about his people, that they change good for evil and evil for good. They called bitter, sweet, and sweet bitter.

They call light dark and dark light. It's that kind of perversion that sin brings. It causes us to view everything wrongly. You might imagine putting a magnet next to a compass and turning north to south and south to north, east to west and west to east. It perverts how we view things and how we look at things.

That's what foolishness does. And yet, whose fault is it in this proverb, their heart rages against the Lord. It's their own foolishness that twists them up. And yet, whose fault is it when things go wrong? It's not their fault.

They rage against the Lord for their own perversion. See the consequences, progressively foolishness twists up our morality and the way we view things. Verse 15, laziness brings on deep sleep, and the shiftless go hungry. Now, the first bit of that sounds quite nice, doesn't it? A deep sleep?

It's what everybody longs for at the end of the day, isn't it? You can even get these apps, these wristwatches that you wear, that measure just how deep your sleep has been. You know, your rhythms and all that sort of thing. We love a deep sleep. But there is nothing attractive about this deep sleep.

This is the sort of deep sleep which brings ruin upon a person. It's a sort of spiritual sleep, which means we have turned off and switched off and can't be bothered to think about or invest in our souls. This is like sleeping through harvest. You've got that time of opportunity, the time to go into the fields and to get the food for your family. This person sleeps through the age of opportunity, and it's deadly.

This is a deadly sleep. 1 old commentator Matthew Henry says of them, their souls are idle and lulled asleep. Their rational powers are chilled and frozen. Rational powers their ability to think to understand what is worthwhile to do, they are frozen and chilled. The NIV uses this word shiftless, which I love and I think we should bring back into circulation.

You know, a shiftless person. It doesn't just mean 1 without shifts. It means 1 who has no sources, no ambition, no desire, no energy, no work, no concern, no understanding of what's important. They are shiftless. And the consequences are that they die in their deep sleep.

Pretty serious. Verse 19, a hot tempered person must pay the penalty. Rest you them and you will have to do it again. Now, in proverbs, we know that out of control anger costs people a lot. If you are a sort person who flies off the handle easily, who goes into a rage quickly, it costs you and it costs those around you.

But the proverbs would also say that the person who suffers most is the person with that temper. They're the ones who suffer most for being like that. You see, those around them might feel the consequences of their temper, but at least they don't have to be with them all the time. At least they get a bit of a break from that, but the person who is that in their soul must go to bed with it and wake up with it and take it to the office and take it on holiday and drive with it all the time. They are hot tempered, out of control, and they are the ones who suffer most because of their temper.

And this proverb would say, there are times When you meet a person like that, the best thing to do is to not intervene at all. Do not rescue them. Because what they need is not rescue, they need repentance. And if you rescue them, they will just end up doing it again, so better sometimes to leave them to the effects of their temper. Let them go.

Let them self destruct in a sense in the hope that they would come to repentance. You see the consequences of sin in this life? A hot temper, verse 26. Whoever robs their father and drives out their mother is a child who brings shame and disgrace. Whoever robs their father and drives out their mother is a child who brings shame and disgrace.

And of course, to do the first of those things is to do the second. If you rob your father you do drive out your mother. You see, in this culture when the father would have been the main breadwinner would have mean that the kind of Lord of the manor, so to speak, the 1 who looked after the estate and the fields and the cattle and whatever they whatever you had. If you robbed your father you would condemn your mother in the same action. You would ruin him, you would make her vulnerable and you would drive her out.

These are the people who have given everything for you. These are the people who have given themselves, and they've invested in you because they want you to become a kind of woman or a kind of man. You're going to rob your father, you're going to drive your mother out. That is to bring shame and disgrace it is to break their heart and disgrace yourself. See the consequences of sin?

And notice how these are all flowing these consequences in between this life and the next. 9 times out of 10, You might feel the effects in this life, but 1 time out of 10 you might not, but Proverbs deals not just with this life, but how these things lead us to the next life well. Have a look at verses 5 and 9. A false witness will not go unpunished, and whoever pours out lies will not go free. Verse 9, a false witness will not go unpunished and whoever pours out lies will perish It's interesting.

It's 2 proverbs there that are almost exactly the same except for the last word. And you notice how they explain each other. Verse 5, they will not go free or they will not escape, escape what, verse 9, perishing. They will perish. He who testifies falsely.

He who lives by lies might get away with it for a few decades but ultimately, they will perish. There's an old Jewish translation of this, which says, he who testifies falsely is doomed. They're doomed. There is a doom coming upon the 1 who testifies falsely. So you know in Proverbs, there are all kinds of reasons why it's good news to tell the truth, but here the opposite motivation is given.

Testify falsely, and you are doomed. The consequences of sin. Both in this life and the next. And it seems to all culminate right at the end of the chapter in verse 29. Have a look at verse 29.

Penalties are prepared for mockers and beatings for the backs of fools. The ESV has condemnation is prepared for mockers. And so you see here that penalties are not just given to mockers. There are penalties prepared for mockers. There is a condemnation prepared for them.

We know that from the new testament. There is a day of wrath that has been prepared, that has been set aside in the Lord's diary. And it will come upon all who live in foolishness and all who reject wisdom, a penalty, a condemnation prepared, for the foolish. And when you take that line through the bible story, you see that that penalty prepared, that day of wrath, is hell, is hell itself. The bible uses lots of different metaphors to describe hell.

It's a place of darkness, we're told. What does that mean? A place of darkness is a place without warmth, It is a place without light, it is a place without truth. Throughout the ages, 1 of the most common phobias has been what? Darkness.

It is a place of fear. The bible describes it as a place of fire or a lake of fire. And what does that tell us? Well, it tells us that hell is a place where things collapse and fall in on themselves. You've ever seen things in the fire, buildings, and things like that.

When they've been set ablaze, they are always less than what they were before. They have fallen in on themselves. They have collapsed in. They have decayed and shrunk in on themselves. We told it's a place of tears.

Why? Because tears are to do with sadness and regret. We told it's a place of gnashing of teeth. Now, what does that tell us? When you grind and gnash your teeth, it's an expression of anger, isn't it?

It's what you do when you're really angry, you gnash your teeth. There is this rage that is directed both at self and at the Lord. And worst of all, the very worst thing about this place of wrath. Is that the Lord God himself is there. You have a look at chapter 12.

Sorry verse verse 12. A king's rage is like the raw of a lion. But his favor is like Jew on the grass. The king's rage is like the roar of a lion, but his favor is like dew on the grass. That is the very worst thing about hell that the king himself is present and his wrath is there.

You see, hell is sometimes described as a place where God is absent. And there's a sense in which that's true because his goodness and his truth and warmth have been withdrawn, but there is nowhere in all of the world where God is absent. He is present everywhere and in hell, he is present only ever in judgment forever. And so verse 29, that's really what it's getting at. A beating can serve to correct a person if they're wise, but a penalty is prepared.

A penalty is God's final say on the matter, it is a falling of judgement. And you know Jesus Christ who spoke about this place more than any other person was absolutely convinced that it was real, that it was serious and that people who rejected him would go there forever to live under his wrath. These are the consequences of foolishness. This is the reality for all who reject Christ in this life. And you know, when we first hear that, or maybe even when we hear it again this morning.

That can be hard for us to take in for for a number of reasons. Firstly, because it's impossible for us to think about that just as an abstract doctrine. You know, we immediately think of people that we know and love and that we cherish, who may be going there who may already be there. And although when we read the bible, we know that praising God for his just and true judgments is what we should do. There's a sense in which this side of heaven that is always going to be mingled with sadness and confusion.

And that is as it should be. You know, when Paul says about his own kinsmen, I have unceasing sorrow and great anguish in my heart. I wish and I'm crying and I wish that I myself could be cut off. For the sake of my people. I know it's not possible, but if it was, I'd be willing to be cut off for the sake of them.

He's not singing the hallelujah chorus in that moment. That's not a Revelation 19 praising God for his ultimate justice moment. He's mingled with sadness and can fusion, this side of heaven because he he would even throw himself into hell if he could in order to save his people. There's a sense in which God himself is like that. As he looks across his unrepentant people, he says, would why would you die?

I would much rather that you turn and live. That's like his main heart, if you can put it that way, that people would turn and live. A second reason this thing can be hard is because we sometimes have this idea that people in hell are now desperate to be with Jesus. That they're knocking on the door, that they're repentant for all that they've done, that they wish they hadn't done that, and they just wanna be with the lord of life. But there is no indication at all that people in hell feel like that.

In fact, it's quite the opposite. If you have a look again at verse 3, a person's own folly leads to their ruin. Yet their heart rages against the Lord. That I think is 1 of the most accurate descriptions of what hell is like. A person's own folly has led them there.

It is their own foolishness that has taken them there Yet, who does their heart rage against? The Lord is his fault. If only he'd made himself clearer, Only given me more time. I hate the fact that he didn't do that. The own foolishness lead there yet the heart rages against the Lord.

There's no indication of real repentance there. CS Lewis, In his book, The Great Divorce, I think gets this so clearly. And in the book, he describes a bus journey from hell to heaven. And on the bus, there are these souls in hell who have had the opportunity to go up in a bus to this heavenly country to see what it's like. Now, Lewis doesn't think that that's what will happen.

He's not trying to describe what life is really like. He's just telling this story. And what happens is when the bus pulls up in the heavenly country and the souls who have been in hell get out, they are all in different ways, furious at the lord of the country. They step out onto the grass and the grass in that place refuses to submit to their feet. It stands there like needles.

And they walk across it, and it's painful to walk on. There's fruit under the trees, they try to lift up because they but they can't because the fruit in that place weighs 20 tons. In other words, Nothing of the heavenly country will submit to them. Only to the children of the country. Does the place bow?

And how do they feel about that? They rage against the Lord of the place. They're angry that the grass won't submit to them. And they're angry that God won't submit to them too. That is a description of what it's like.

The other reason, perhaps the main reason, I think this is hard for us to take. It's because of our sin. Our sin makes this hard to take. You see, when we hear what the bible says about hell, we might feel truth be told that it's all just a bit over the top. You know, we read these proverbs and we think, well, you know, I've done quite well really.

You know, I've told the old lie, the old lie who hasn't, but I've never testified falsely. I've never bought shame and grace upon my family. I'm not a lazy person. In fact, I work most of the hours the Lord sends. Okay.

Look, I don't have much to do with Jesus. I don't think he's that good and I I don't really follow him and the fear of the Lord is not the compass which I wanna orientate my life too, I I don't really do any of that, but hell for this? Is that right? Is this right? But you see the problem with that argument is this, That person is saying, I know the extent of evil done when somebody turns away from Christ, And guess what?

It's not that bad. It's not that bad, is it? But the Bible would say no, that's the most serious crime that any person could commit. And therefore worthy of the greatest punishment imaginable. The Lord Jesus Christ is such a glorious splendid, wonderful, holy kind savior, that to reject him as an irrelevance or an optional extra something worse is the greatest single crime imaginable, and therefore worthy of a condemnation like this.

It's our own sin which makes this hard to grasp because we just don't think Jesus is that good and we don't think sin is that serious. But proverbs would say, these are the consequences of foolishness. This is where it ultimately leads, both in this life and in the life to come. And so how much better to walk with wisdom. So let's look at that now.

We've seen the consequences of foolishness. Now, let's see the ways and the fruit of wisdom. And what you see here is that the wise life is a life that just gets brighter and brighter and brighter It is like the morning sun which comes out at dawn and moves to the noon. It gets brighter and brighter and brighter. As their life continues.

It is a life of constant, give and gain and gain and give, giving of oneself and being repaid. It is a whole life. See that with me in verse 17. Whoever is kind to the poor lends to the lord. And he will reward them for what they've done.

You see the result? They are rewarded by the lords for their kindness. And so in Proverbs, this is how the wise person relates to the poor. They do more than just avoid oppressing them, They are actively kind and looking to help those who have less and are more vulnerable than themselves. And why do they do that?

Well, because of love, but they also know that in doing that, they're giving a loan to the lord. And the question is, does the Lord God repay his loans? He does repay his loans. He but doesn't give cash rewards, but he does repay. In fact, this word repay is from the root word shalom.

He will shalom them. He will make them whole. He will see that they are restored, and they will understand that anything they gave was not lost but gain. That's what the wise person is like. They've given they gain from the Lord all the way throughout.

But what about verse 8? The 1 who gets wisdom loves life, the 1 who cherishes understanding will soon prosper. Now that's literally, he who gets wisdom loves his own soul. He who gets wisdom loves his own soul. And that's a great word for our culture, isn't it?

You know, it's about as important a doctrine as we've got at the moment that we need to love love ourselves. We need to accept ourselves. We need to be faithful to ourselves, true to ourselves, and then we'll be free. Proverbs would say, you've got it all the wrong way round. Get wisdom.

Love wisdom. Set your eyes on wisdom because in so doing, you're loving yourself. You wanna love yourself, forget yourself and lay hold of wisdom. You wanna be your own best friend. You wanna do yourself the biggest favor, get wisdom.

Love yourself. Because if you do, what's the promise here? You will soon prosper. That's a promise. Your life will be 1 of ongoing ever increasing prospering.

Because you've loved yourself enough to forget yourself and love wisdom instead. And again, see how all of this is flowing in between this life and the next life. Verse 20. Have a look at verse 20. Listen to advice and accept discipline.

And at the end, you will be counted among the wise. See, discipline and taking advice is very rarely pleasant in the short to medium term. In fact, it's the opposite. It's actually quite painful, but this proverb says, in the end, it will be seen brother or sister that you learnt the right lessons. In the end, you will be counted among the wise because you loved yourself enough.

To accept discipline and correction and move towards wisdom. See the fruit of a wise life? Don't you want that in the end? To be counted among the wise, except discipline the proverb says. And perhaps ultimately, verse 23, The fear of the Lord leads to life.

The 1 then 1 rests content untouched by trouble. The fear of the Lord leads to life. And what is this life? Well, it's a word that's used very, very often in the old testament And 1 of the first times it's used is Genesis 2 7 where God takes Adam and he forms him from the dust of the ground and he breathes a God life into him. That's what this word means, something that is animated by God.

Something that is with God enjoying the life of God forever. The fear of the Lord leads ultimately there. To being in the presence of life itself. You know when the Lord Jesus says I have come that they may have life and life to the full? That's what he's promising.

He's promising this life with him forever fully satisfied forevermore. You know those psalms which say, in your presence is fullness of joy, at your right hand are pleasures forevermore. It is a fullness of life with God. You see, any view of heaven Any view of the new creation which is anything less than this is just so woefully wrong. And if it's easy for us to get hell wrong, it's probably even easier for us to get heaven and the new creation wrong.

Thoughts of it is just a spirit world, Well, just thoughts of it as anything less than life here than than this life. Just less as if this is better. CS Lewis gets this so well again in the great divorce. He talks about he talks about this heavenly country And in this place, he says, that everything is just more real than it was on this earth. So grass is still grass, and fruit is still fruit, and trees are still trees, and water is still water, but it is somehow more real and more glorious and more splendid than ever it was here.

These are like the shadow lands and that's the reality world where we're really gonna see what the glory of an oak tree was all about. And the people are like that too. They're described as the solid ones. The ones who are weighty and shining and altogether more real than they were in this life. And the reason those images chime with us is because they do pick up on bible descriptions.

You know, we're told it's a new creation. We're told it's a city. We're told that God's people are a bride. This is real language that you can wrap your fingers around even in this life. And the very best thing about it again is that the Lord God himself is there.

Verse 12, a king's rage is like the roar of a lion, but his favor is like due on the grass. Of all the errors that we could make about both heaven and hell, it's to remove Jesus from them both. The worst thing about hell is that Christ is present in judgement. The very best thing about heaven is that Christ is there in blessing for his people forever. His favor is like due on the grass.

And what a word that must have been? Because in these old cultures, if you lived in a desert or something like that, you know, you may get the Jew first thing in the morning just for a little bit. But as soon as the sun would come up, it would evaporate. Well, here is a Jew, here is a refreshment that is gonna last forever. In the presence of the living God.

That is the ultimate end of wisdom with Jesus. In the new creation, enjoying a God life forever. So you see, foolishness, and wisdom have great consequences, both in this life and the next. And the third thing as we finish is to ask you Which way are you walking? Which way are you walking?

Which life are you living? An old American writer called Ralph Emerson said this and we've used this quote here before a number of times He says, so a thought and you reap an action. So an act and you reap a habit. So a habit and you reap a character, so a character and you reap a destiny. So a thought, reap an action, So an act reaper habit, so a habit reaper character, reaper so a character and you reap a destiny.

In other words, the choices that we make now in this life, the thoughts that become habits, the habits that become actions, the actions that turn to a character, the character that invites a destiny, those little thoughts have consequences that echo on into eternity. And so the question is what are you investing in? What are you living for? What future are you storing for yourself. Paul says, doesn't he to the Galatians.

Do not be deceived. God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Whoeverever sows to please their flesh from the flesh will reap destruction, whoever sows to please the spirit from spirit will reap eternal life. There is a day of sowing and there is a day of reaping.

What are you sowing? And what will you reap? As life goes on, are you becoming more and more twisted? More and more foolish as you continue to reject Christ the wisdom of God, or is your life this 1 of ever increasing brightness, giving and gain as you wait to be with Christ forever. Those are the only 2 options.

And so as I said, there is this light side to the book of Proverbs, but there is this weighty serious side to it. What are you sowing? And what are you reaping? What's coming to you? And this book of proverbs would say whoever we are but particularly to those who don't know Christ, then you must come to him.

You must love your own soul enough. To come to Christ. This is the 1 who came into this world, the wisdom of God. And who lived the perfect life for you. He never brought disgrace upon his parents.

He never testified falsely. He never was lazy when he should have been working. He lived this perfect wise life and yet on the cross He swaps places with people like you and me. And he takes all of our foolishness, all of our disgrace, all of our shame and he bears it on himself, the penalty that has been prepared for mockers like you and me was laid upon Christ, who never mocked his father once. It was put on him so that if we trust in him, we can be saved.

And then 3 days later, we know that God raised him up from the dead. And when God raised the Lord Jesus, he said 2 things to the world He said, that sin has been paid for. There is now no more payment that needs to be made. It's all done. Christ has paid for it and he's risen again.

And that payment was sufficient and he also said to the world, now there is a day of judgment coming and I have appointed this man to do it. This is the 1 appointed. This risen 1. There is a day coming when God is gonna judge men's secrets through Jesus Christ as the gospel declares. And that whole call of this Bible is to say, repent of that foolishness and trust in this wise 1, so that your sins can be forgiven, that your soul can be saved.

And so you can be 1 for a life with God forever. That's how the wise person loves him or herself. They love themselves enough to look to Christ and to be led to life. So I'm just going to give you a moment now. It might be that you're here and you're not a Christian.

You wouldn't call yourself a Christian. I'm just going to give you a moment where you can just ask the Lord if you want to. Lord, be my life, my righteousness, forgive my sins, give me Jesus, the lover of my And if you already know him, then this is a chance to ask that you would keep investing in this bright, wise life. So let's have a moment to to pray together. Father, we thank you for your word that you have spoken to us this morning.

Father, we confess that we are Foolish people so often. We are lazy. We do pervert our ways. We can be hot templars. You can rob people of things.

Father, we are these foolish ones so often described here in this passage. And we thank you, Lord, that in your kindness, you don't leave us in the dark in regards to where that will lead us. But in your kindness, though it hurts, though it's hard to hear, you reveal to us the reality of the destination. Of that kind of life. And father, we thank you, Anne, praise you for the Lord Jesus Christ.

Who is the very wisdom of God, the 1 who is the antidote, the savior, the 1 who was able to take foolish people and make them wise. And father, we thank you that the 1 who gets wisdom loves life, the fear of the Lord leads to life, then 1 rests content Thank you father there. In the lord Jesus Christ, you snatch us from the fire, you breathe life into us, you animate us, You bring us into that eternal kingdom, that city of heaven, where everything is more real, everything is more wonderful, where we're with the king forever, where his favor rests like dew on the grass. Lord, we can barely begin to understand or comprehend these things. And yet we're so grateful, Lord, that you have done it, that we don't have to work hard for this.

We don't have to live a life that's worthy of it before you you give it to us. In the lord Jesus Christ, you've done the work for us. And by grace, we've been saved through faith. And do pray for us that you'd give us this faith that saves. Help us to look to Christ as our savior, not as the king that we despise and hate, but as the king that we love and we call upon.

Fyla, thank you for him. Thank you for this message. Thank you for the encouragement that we can have, as we remind ourselves of these things in Jesus' name, amen.