So I have a member, Tom Hawker, 21, age 12, 15, I'll go through. I'm going to read those passages from the 21st chapter of Proverbs. The focus of our study today is going to be more on the rewards of conduct, more so than on the problems of pride. And so I ask right now, if you turn there or listen and hear God's word as I read it, So we begin in chapter 21, Proverbs, verse 8. The way of the guilty is crooked, but the conduct of the pure is upright. Verse 12. The righteous one observes the house of the wicked. He throws the wicked down to ruin. Verse 15. When justice is done, innocence will rest in the assembly of the dead. 18. The wicked is a ransom for the righteous and the traitor for the upright. 29. Whoever pursues righteousness and kindness will find life, righteousness, and honor. A wise man scales the city of the mighty and brings down the stronghold in which they trust. And then lastly, 24, Scoffer is the name of the arrogant high man who acts with arrogant pride. Heavenly Father, we thank you for these proverbs that you've put before us and the others we'll be referencing along the way. We thank you that this is your word given to us that you have Inspire us. Breathe through the men who have written them, so that we may have your word and understanding of life. We may hear, receive, and embark on that. Help us to be men and women, children of wisdom. In doing so, may you be glorified. Help me as I proclaim your word. that together we would receive all glory and praise and honor. And it's through Christ that we pray, amen. You may be seated. As I mentioned, we'll read those Proverbs and we will reference a few others along the way. You have in your bulletin the insert. Those are all of the Proverbs that we'll reference in our passage. I will not read all of them as I found that it takes a little bit too much of our time to do in that way. So let's consider now the wars of conduct, particularly in the local proverbs. As you probably heard in at least one of the proverbs that I read, and maybe a few of the others, the concept of using a path, a path of life, a path of death. this kind of use of it. This metaphor, it's biblical for sure, we see it in Psalms and Proverbs, but it's common as well, other entities, philosophies and such use something similar to that. So it's a well-known and understood metaphor that before us lies that is wicked. And the Proverbs explain to us not simply the ultimate goals of life and death, but it puts before us both temporal and also eternal rewards for our conduct, that is, how it is that we live. And part of what we want to do today is to recognize and see, and you'll see those listed on your paper there, that there are temporal rewards, or to put it in the negative, losses as a result of poor conduct. And the proverbs put these things to us not only in the positive, but in the negative. And we'll see them here in the negative this morning. Certainly, it is the case that if you're older, You're mature, you're wiser, and you look back over your life that one young person would expect that an older person would say to him or to her, choose this particular path, choose the wise path, and to hear that instruction. That's kind of what we're getting from Proverbs. I think Proverbs itself even recognizes and understands that when we're in the midst of living, when we're in the midst of making choices, that it is not always self-evident that certain choices are right or wrong. Or, to think of it this way, we don't always see or understand the rewards or losses that might come as a result. Or, to maybe add another layer, we don't always recognize that certain things are actually rewards or are actually losses. So just for example, there is at least one of these, the first... or in the community in which you reside. Now those things may not always mean the same to you, but the Bible puts emphasis on these things as being good and worth the reward. And so we need to recognize that things even that we may not think are rewarding are, and things that are losses that we don't care about, sometimes can be detrimental to us. In the midst of this broken-up and making these choices, it is sometimes hard for us. We are sinful by nature, that sin is deceptive to us, and of course we have outside temptations as well, and all of that combined together really makes it hard for folks to make good and proper choices. And so the Proverbs help us. to gain the wisdom that gives us the instruction that we may make wise choices along the way, both for temporal rewards and for the eternal reward of life eternal. So in training believers to be wise, the book of Proverbs then not only emphasizes the need for There are rewards, or to put it in the negative, they are losses. And so today we want to turn our attention to, particularly the rewards of conduct, or as you can see in the bulletin there, the risks of folly. Now I want to call your attention to, because I'm reminded of, the Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 19, paragraph 6, where it speaks of the law of God. and its effect upon the regenerate particularly. What effect does it have? Why is it still useful to us? And so it tells us two things at least that are beneficial to us here. One is that the threatening that we hear in it, that loss of life, the ultimate curse, death, is for all believers simply that, a threatening. It is not something that will come to pass. So in other words, a believer will not suddenly become an unbeliever. But yet it still warns us that we need to persevere in our faith. Secondly, it also says to us, that is in chapter 19, that there are certain afflictions that are seen as the laws when we disobey God's law, temporally speaking. And that they should serve us that these are the kinds of things that we might expect in this life should we disobey God and walk in ways of unrighteousness. So in other words, temporally, we may still receive some of these afflictions, even though we may not expect eternal death. Nonetheless, they both serve the purpose of warning us. Stay on the straight and the narrow. Keep the faith. Persevere to the end. So we're going to hear these things as we walk our way through. So we don't want to slough off the idea that there are risks involved. That is, that we risk the loss of certain things. God values these things, and he pronounces blessing upon these things, and we want to be wise and obey, and we want to then receive, in God's good pleasure, these blessings that would come to us. Ultimately, we're going to work our way around to Jesus. And so we want to think about it this way. We want us, we want to let us enter into the narrow gate and walk the hard path that brings to us life. So let's begin with the risks of falling, and there's seven things I believe here that I've listed as losses. I'm going to begin just introducing it this way, that to me sometimes I stand in amazement, I'm a little bit perplexed, you know, of myself, but of other believers as well. loss in an age of abundance. And what I mean by that is this, that given the age in which we live, that is, as believers in the New Testament who have God's full word and the spirit dwelling within us, the exhortations in all of the scripture, that yet we still suffer the afflictions because of our disobedience. It perplexes me. I recognize why it happens, but it still perplexes me. But yet we can have such loss in an age of abundance. And so I find that ignoring the wise prompts that are given throughout the scriptures, in the book of Proverbs, causes us to, with a certain amount of hubris, to live life on our own, ignoring God, or at least acting as if God doesn't exist, And then wondering why we suffer the temporal afflictions that we were warned would happen if we engaged in this kind of temporal rebellion. So Proverbs, for our part, and for their part, does not sugarcoat any of the losses that we might experience should we decide to ignore God's law and walk in our own way. loss of personal satisfaction. We may not care about that, but the proverb, particularly, but the whole of scripture, if you are to love your neighbor as you love yourself, and you recognize that entails, among other things, nurturing yourself to understand the nurture of others, then you recognize that a loss of personal satisfaction is, in fact, quite important. One measure that we have of the lure of falling that comes our way, our keenness to chase it, is the fact that with incredible tenacity that the book of Proverbs, the rest of the scripture too, but the book of Proverbs tries over and over again to head us off from heading down the wrong path. So in other words, it doesn't give us one warning, it gives us hundreds of warnings. It doesn't tell us one time, hey, don't be foolish, It tells us over and over and over and over, don't be foolish. And then it puts out there the motivation. Here's the loss that you'll experience. And so today we want to think about it this way. We might think about it every day this way, I suppose, but we want to choose wisdom's way and gain the blessing, rather than walking down the path of folly and receiving the tragedy or the afflictions that might come our way. So let's look at these seven losses that we have before us. You can see them there. I'm not going to read all of those passages, but in this particular order, we'll be considering them topically. There's a loss of personal satisfaction. There's a loss of social reputation. There's a loss of mental divine favor, and then ultimately a loss of life. I say ultimately, it puts it in two terms, but ultimately it is that way. So there's a loss of personal satisfaction. In Proverbs 14, 14, it speaks of the backslider. The backslider is this one who is moving away from God, while the good person, the wise man, is the one who is moving towards him. But it further tells us that the wise person feeds upon righteousness. That's what he feeds upon, and that's what his life yields. Wow, and we can use colloquialism for it today, so it's anachronistic, but the foolish person feeds upon junk food, and his junk food yields a life of wickedness. So the idea is the eating, and then what is the result of that eating? Fools have no shot of this kind of So one has to think about that, that the wise person is leading a life towards righteousness. Wicked is leading a life of folly. As general categories, we would probably want to avoid them, but the point of it is that there's a personal satisfaction that comes along with being one who's obedient and receiving the approval of our Lord and Master, God, who says, well done, good and faithful servant. There's a personal satisfaction that comes along with that, not a hubris that would come along with it, but to say that we have done as our Heavenly Father has commanded us. so that the one who gets wisdom and keeps his understanding will gain a lackish measure of self-worth. That the keeping of God's law and being wise about it and leading to a life of righteousness leads to a life of satisfaction. Why? Because then you would be living out and in and under God's will for you. You will be doing as He commands you to do, and you will be not doing as He tells you not to do. Now oftentimes for the world that seems impressive, but for those of us who are believers, that should enter That's why we sang, for example, Jehovah's Perfect Law today. It's the second part of Psalm 19 that describes to us all of the wonderful things that come with knowing and working and acting out on God's law. That it brings to us purity. It brings to us clarity. It brings to us a whole lot of things that say that our life is well lived. if we lived this way. And the Proverbs make approval of that. This is what the wise person does. And it provides for us, maybe what we would call, a certain amount of satisfaction, personal satisfaction, in a life well lived. You notice there that the Proverbs do not approve of the life well lived, and that is the life that is necessarily lavish, or extravagant, or famous, or all kind of other things that we could think of, but it's a life well lived. according to God's way of living. So we have a loss if we are foolish in this way of feeding ourselves with junk food. There's also a loss of social reputation. Now in each of the Proverbs that's listed there, there's a whole lot of them, there is a social outcome of either good or bad. Now the social outcome begins with one's expectations or desires. It's interesting that it would place before us that what we expect to happen often is that which does happen. So in other words, if we expect that our lives would be properly fitted into our social situations, and for our purposes, I think it would be fine to at least recognize minimally this fitting into the body of Christ, into the particular local congregation in which you have, that is a social entity for us, one in which we are brought together, not by a virtue of our own desire to be here, but by virtue of being made part of the body of Christ. So in other words, You may or may not have chosen to be participating with this lovely group of people that are sitting around you, but nonetheless, as believers, we have been brought together by the Spirit, and we have been fitted together. And so because of that, we want to have good social standing among one another. We want to have a good social reputation. But there are reasons for that. On the one hand, we would expect it to happen, because we are gaining lives well-lived, right? We are living lives that are in accord with God's law. So that should be driving us to the idea of a life well-lived. But also, the idea of personal shame or embarrassment for committing sins, you know, heinous, in a public way that brings personal shame or embarrassment to us in the midst of community. The Proverbs also tells us that there's the outcome of the adornment of riches and public admiration. It's interesting how it puts it there, that there's this turban or headdress, this crown upon which would be on our heads when there's a certain standing upon which we are raised because of our wisdom. Now it's not necessarily saying that that's what we're driving towards, but certainly we can turn that around and recognize that we know among us men or women of good social reputation, and we admire them, and so there's a sense in which they are adorned with these kinds of admiration, in a good and positive way, people that we should emulate. But the social outcome is not only personal, but it may be national. 1434 addresses a covenant community. The idea here in Proverbs is, yes, it's a nation state, but it's a theocratically designed nation state. We see that Israel from the Old Testament into the New Testament, that the Israel of God is the people of God. And so if we are thinking about it this way, you and I, again, just in the strict teaching of the New Testament, We are a part of a holy nation. We are that holy nation. So the holy nation is us. And if we are that holy nation, then we are that covenant community to which we belong. Righteousness here is our covenant loyalty or our right living within that holy nation. It should be demonstrable for the world to see. But it's also apparent that your conduct is by and large observable within and without the church. In the general populace, so within and without. and in both character and its consequence. So it's interesting that Proverbs would put forward that what we do is observed by others, and either emulated or considered folly. Again, not being wise also leads us to loss of mental discernment. Choosing the path of folly makes you less discerning and less mentally aware, particularly or especially of spiritual things. It speaks about revolutions. which are hard to work through and should not be relied upon as one that will make decisions. So it points out that even in our grief, we don't always understand all of that entails. And so it provides for us a mixed idea of what our emotions are, how to understand that. And as proverbs often do, they point out things that we relish, that is sometimes things that we undervalue, Yet the Proverbs count as magnificent reward. Like this idea of mental discernment. Like the idea of social reputation. Like the idea of personal satisfaction. Sometimes we may undervalue one or more of these things. Where the Proverbs tell us they are good and we should be wise and pursue them or allow them to motivate us towards the ends of the rewards that we might get temporarily, we often undervalue them. And so it does the usual switching around in the Proverbs so that we can recognize that we need to value the things that God values. And in doing that, we would reap the rewards that He would like to give us. So that we would want to demonstrate good mental discernment when we're wise. This is our project for the summer is obtaining the wisdom that God has for us so that we may live our lives well and properly. And so to demonstrate good mental discernment, we're going to rise, because the outcomes in this life are sometimes bad and anonymous. The Proverbs tell us things like wealth and a depth of understanding. And sometimes they are benefits for the next life. Life or death. Eternally speaking. Certainly there's a cost to obtaining this wisdom, and we need to be willing to pay that cost, as the last part of 1724 tells us there. So we want to obtain the wisdom that we have. There's a loss of self-control. Also, because self-control comes in all forms, you know, addictions, anger, sexual passions, drunkenness, gluttony, there's all forms of things in which we engage in from time to time, or that people engage in, And yet, in expressing a loss of self-control, one of the things it is telling us is that we are people who are not wise. That we have not enough ability to control ourselves and to reap the rewards of what self-control does. In fact, that's the idea of the fool in his folly. Meeting a man as a fool in his folly, like meeting a bear, rob, or cubs. is viciously unpredictable in his lack of self-control. Now, we may immediately associate that with anger. The point of it is to tell us that there is an unpredictability to the person who has no self-control. And the scriptures see that as personal loss for you, not personal gain. It may be that sometimes those things may be admired, I don't know, but if they are, we're not admiring them for the right reasons. On the other hand, we're told that the calm, collected tactics of a wise person can penetrate the defenses of a city even banned by the best troops. And so those two are set side by side, 1711 and 1821. I'm sorry, that was the wrong, I didn't know the wrong references. 1712 and 2122. That's set side by side, you see the distinction between where Falling takes you in its lack of self-control, where wisdom takes you in its using of self-control. Where wisdom takes you versus where falling takes you. And as a reminder, self-control is a free spirit. And so as the Spirit is working in us, it is not simply that it is the result of Godly wisdom, but it is the result of the Spirit as well. That part of being sanctified is exhibiting self-control in all the areas of our lives. There's a loss of political freedom. when we are foolish. 1711, 1929. Rebellion, and this is what's driving it, and if we think of political freedom, we can just simply think of it as the loss of any kind of freedom that we might have in any kind of a city, whether it's, you know, again, in a community like this one, or out there in the world. But it again, it points to rebellion as a bad thing. That whatever God-ordained authorities are there, that we are not to be rebelling against them. This is kind of a theme that we've been running through with Romans 13 and a few other places. But rebellion disturbs the peace of the community and the leaders that have the God-given authority to bring judgment against such a person. And in fact, often we don't like to hear that, but the idea is that the foolish person and brings disruption to the peace of the community, actually causes a lot of problems. There are repercussions of that. Oftentimes, we can see that when we make a disturbance, just think of something simple like throwing a rock into a calm body of water, So you can imagine how much more when you stir up a bunch of people and bring them to points of rebellion, and then the aftermath of that rebellion in their lives. Now, particularly within the church, we are strived for peace in all respects. That's what we've been looking at on Sunday nights in Romans. We've been talking about how it is that we interact between the weak and the strong brothers. And the overriding principle is love coming to unity and peace. And so we are to love one another and we are to get along. And within the church, if someone disturbs the peace of the church, of course the elders have the authority to exercise that authority against that person who disturbs the peace of the church. That's what the two Proverbs are saying, that there are judgments that come against the one, and that should be obvious. We should expect that the disturber of the peace would actually have judgments brought against him. Acting rebelliously is following the church. as it serves our own peace and our unity. Those are two things that Christ has enjoined upon the Church. There's a spiritual aspect to that, of course, that through and by the Spirit, we have peace and unity. But that has to be manifested in the material world in which we live, that we are enjoined to get along. And then in that sense, on one side, we are not to be rebellious against one another or against the peace that exists within our community. That's an act of faulting the scriptures to us. There's also a loss of divine favor. So these here actually bring us to a place where we're thinking now not so much of just the temporal rewards of living in this world and the disturbances that our falling might cause, But here, we want to recognize what the Proverbs are telling us about receiving God's favor upon us. And why that loss of divine favor is such a terrible thing. Why it's a loss. In fact, it's the biggest loss, really, of all. Throughout Proverbs, righteousness generally emphasizes following God's commands, obtaining the wisdom to live properly. God, we're told, justly judges the wise and the fool. So he brings blessing and love to the righteous, and he condemns those who cross the wicked. The proverbs are pretty clear and straightforward about that. But in 14.9, we are told that the fool, or the mocker, and maybe this one we should just simply read, if you turn backwards a page or two, you're still there. It takes us in a little bit of a different direction. It says, fools mock at the guilt offerings Then we have something that is actually much more theologically sound. Here, Full's look at the guilt offering. This was the offering that was made in the Old Testament that would make atonement for the sins of people. Now, you can think of it as either the individual coming and saying, here's my guilt offering and making that offering as a personal family sacrifice, or you can think of the Day of Atonement, where the same thing would happen for the whole people of Israel, but a sacrifice was made and it was an offering And here, what we're being told is that in the middle of public formal worship, and it's the making of an offering, that a fool would mock the very thing that brings atonement between God and them. But we're told not only that a fool mocks at something like that, we're told that the upright enjoy acceptance. And so when it points out, it uses a technical word there. So it uses a technical word for the guilt offering, that very offering is made, but it uses a technical word for acceptance. That is, it's the same word that's used when God's favor is upon the person, whom he does not count sin against. So think of David in Psalm 32. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord does not count his iniquity. That was God's favor, or, if you will, his acceptance. Now that word is not going to be fair, but that's the idea behind it. That God accepts the offering, and thus he accepts the offerer. So that the atonement is properly made. so that God's favor then is towards those whose sin is atoned for. That probably is the ultimate and the biggest theological grounding that we have in the Book of Proverbs to tell us where the wise path is leading and where the foolish path is leading. So if you think about the idea of the foolish conduct and where he leads, that at the very place of worship where your sins would be atoned for, the fool mocks. But in that same place, the one who is righteous, who does not want the sacrifice, but makes it in faith, his sacrifice is accepted. And thus, he's accepted as a proper and true worshipper. But then that leads us then to the last one, which is the loss of life. And there's a whole bunch of these, but they actually are summarized in this way, that the foolish behavior has temporal repercussions. Shame and embarrassment, personally. like the devastation of your house, and the haunting of your foolishness all the days of your life. The foolish behavior, and here we're thinking of the rejection of truth, has internal consequences as well. The foolish finds himself, if you will, on the highway to hell, where the wise find long life and prosperity and honor. In fact, we're reminded here in this section of Jesus' words in Beatitudes where he says that there's a blessing of those who hunger and thirst for righteousness because they will be satisfied. Now let me bring us over to the Word of Jesus Christ in a minute. Think of the Beatitudes, but further along in the Sermon on the Mount, chapter 7, verses 13 and 14. Jesus says that there's a narrow gate. And we have a hint about the narrow gate. We walk the narrow way. It leads to life. There's a wide gate with a wide path. And that path leads to destruction. Reminiscent of Psalm 1. Also reminiscent of all that we've been saying here in the Proverbs. Two gates, two roads, two crowds, two destinations. And Jesus says you're to enter One of the two gates. He calls us to enter the narrow gate and to avoid the wide gate. But the wide gate obviously always seems more inviting. It's more spacious. It can accommodate a crowd, maybe with their baggage along the way. It's just more accommodating because it's wider. It's more comfortable. But we're told it's a way that leads to destruction. And that, Jesus says, is not just temporal, it's eternal. But there's a narrow way as well. It's not necessarily straight, but it's narrow. But this way includes affliction. In fact, Jesus uses the word for affliction the second time in that passage when he talks about the narrow gate. So that walking the narrow path is making those same tough choices. It's a taming of wisdom that gives temporal blessing and eternal life. And so, if you will, what we can do is say something like this. We're called to the narrow gate and the narrow path. The narrow gate of the path provides for us wisdom to obtain God's favor, atonement for sin, the blessing from God, and His acceptance of the offerer, because what we have is the true and perfect offering of the Lord Jesus Christ. He made the offering, we receive that offering, and offer it to God. Amen. Would you receive the Lord Jesus Christ, and of course, are in the fellowships? So we've entered the narrow way. But you know, we recognize that along the way of walking the narrow path, we still make foolish choices. And so in our sanctification, we're called to make wise choices, to be wise, and to follow after God's law. So we recognize that our life in Christ is secure, but there are temporal threats and curses that we have to endure because of our own foolishness. So the problems in this section enlighten us, and hopefully they motivate us. That we would see the temporal losses, and that we would want to avoid them, in terms of our motivation. It's not the only motivation, but certainly that is a motivation. That we would see how reckless and foolish our behavior can be. We want to avoid that, and we want to walk continuously on the narrow path. Let me pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your grace to us in the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you for your word to us, and we ask that you would help us to be wise once more, as we consider our own conduct in this life. May it be pleasing to you, because we're walking, certainly, in the way of wisdom, the way that pleases you. I'm very serious.