Proverbs chapter 4 verses 10 through 27, these are God's words. Hear my son and receive my sayings, and the years of your life will be many. I have taught you in the way of wisdom. I have led you in right paths. When you walk, your steps will not be hindered, and when you run, you will not stumble. Take firm hold of instruction. Do not let go. Keep her, for she is your life. Do not enter the path of the wicked. Do not walk in the way of evil. Avoid it. Do not travel on it. Turn away from it and pass on. For they do not sleep unless they have done evil. And their sleep is taken away unless they make someone fall. For they eat the bread of wickedness and drink the wine of violence. But the path of the just is like the shining sun that shines ever brighter unto the perfect day. The way of the wicked is like darkness. They do not know what makes them stumble. My son, give attention to my words. Incline your ear to my sayings. Do not let them depart from your eyes. Keep them in the midst of your heart, for they are life to those who find them and health to all their flesh. Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life. Put away from you a deceitful mouth. Put perverse lips far from you. Let your eyes look straight ahead and your eyelids look right before you. Ponder the path of your feet and let all your ways be established. Do not turn to the right or the left. Remove your foot from evil. So far the reading of God's inspired and inerrant word. This passage gives us the story of two paths. One is a path that leads to destruction. a path that is in darkness and causes stumbling, a path where we are left to ourselves rather than being controlled by the instruction of God's word, and that's the way of the wicked. The other is the path that is like the shining sun that shines brighter and brighter unto perfect day, the path that, if you walk in it, the years of your life will be many, yes, even infinite, because when you reach the end of that path in this life, it is just coming into the fullness of its brightness, and you shall walk forever. with the Lord. And so there are two ways through life. And one of them then is the one that's instructed by the word. And we have that in a couple of bookend sections in verses 10 through 13, and then verses 20 through 27. And then we have the comparison of the two paths, especially in verses 14 through 17. So he begins again saying, hear my son and receive my sayings and the years of your life will be many. You remember he has been talking to his son about when he was a baby and how God began giving him wisdom at the very beginning of his life in those earliest years when he was his father's son and tender and the only one in the sight of his mother. And as is the case for children, when they hear about when their parents were babies, that sounds like a long time ago, but it is really not that long ago. And the children's future, the way of their life in this world and the end of your life in this world, it seems it's a long time in the future, but it is not that far away in the future. And so you must take great care which path you're on, how it begins, where it ends, and how you're going to walk on it. Because there is a complete difference, complete contrast. between the two paths. And this is why this father is teaching his son. This is why the son should be hearing and learning and taking hold of the instruction of his father. He's teaching him not just wise things, but verse 11, in the way of wisdom. He's leading him in right paths. He's telling him the way to walk through this life, to come to the correct and blessed end, to come to life through this life. Now he compares the path of the just to the path of the wicked in verses 14 through 19. He warns about the path of the wicked. First he warns not to enter it in the first half of verse 14, or if you find yourself As we often do, having made a mistake, or we learn something new, our understanding grows, or maybe by our own backsliding and folly, we have not been watchful. If he finds himself in the way of evil, not to walk on it, but to turn away, to get out of it. Not only to avoid walking in the path of evil, but to avoid being near it, avoid it. Verse 15 says, do not travel on it. And he describes the life of the wicked in terms that they would not acknowledge or be able to perceive. They live days of wickedness. They do not sleep unless they have done evil there. Sleep is taken away unless they make someone full. They eat and drink. wickedness and violence. And you say, well, how can all of that be? Well, because they are walking without the light of the knowledge of God himself. And so they develop a view of this world that may have certain elements of wisdom or understanding to them, but it's missing the main, the basic element. that God is our creator and that we exist for Him and for fellowship with Him and worship of Him, and that everything else that we think or understand or desire or do or feel must be brought into that framework. So when they sit down and they have a meal of bread and wine, you shouldn't desire to have, as it were, table fellowship with the wicked. because you end up in wickedness and violence, and not necessarily violence like the stabbing of a knife, but violence like making someone fall, violence like wondering aloud, has God really said? like sowing the sort of doubt in the heart and the mind that diverts the heart from submitting to and resting upon the Lord and His word. That takes someone who might otherwise have been on a solid and stable foundation and shakes them off of that foundation. This is how people are made to fall. Verse 16, and whether the wicked one is intentionally doing this, and there are those who do so, they love pontificating, it makes them feel wise and great to poke holes in things and to sow doubt, or whether they are just in such darkness and doubt and ignorance themselves that their worldview does this in and of itself. This is the life that they live, their sleep, their meat, their drink is without God and without the knowledge of Him, without repentance, without faith, without spiritual life, without love for God out of which only any true goodness can spring. And so it's not like, well, they're decent people, they're just not saved. No, they are in ignorance and they do their own soul violence and having a shared life with them will do your soul violence too. You may interact with them, you may conduct business with them, you may be a good neighbor to them. that you must not have a shared life with them, must not have fellowship with the wicked, must not have fellowship with the unbeliever. And so he comes now to the other bookend, and it's not just enough to be on the right path with the right words, we need to be assimilating, guarding what enters, considering what enters our mind and heart, guarding what comes out of us, what comes out of our mind and heart, and especially then, guarding our hearts themselves by the word of God. So he repeats some things that we've heard already. My son, give attention to my words. Incline your ear to my sayings. Okay, so you have to listen, but don't just listen. You have to be remembering and meditating upon God's word. Do not let them depart from your eyes. And so you keep the word of God and the truth about God and your interaction with him as a focus of your life. You don't compartmentalize your life where you have the times where you're thinking about God and his word and then you put interacting with him and fellowship with him on the shelf and you put thinking about his word back in its compartment and go on to the rest of your life, no. Do not let them depart from your eyes. Keep them in the midst of your heart, for they are life to those who find them and health to all their flesh. The main part of our life and our health is not how well our soon-to-be worm food bodies are functioning. How well your soon-to-be worm food body is functioning is not life, is not health. Yes, there is a life of the body and a health of the body, but the life and the health of a man is even more with respect to his soul. Living in fellowship with God, knowing God, walking with him, and yes, that means or has an impact upon what you do with your body, how you take care of your body, et cetera. But fellowship with the Lord, that is life. That's what Adam and Eve lost, or Adam and his wife lost, in the day that Adam ate of the fruit. when they surely died. That's how we can say that the majority of the people in this world are dead in their trespasses. We don't mean that their bodies have ceased to function yet. What we mean is that they don't have the life and the health of being someone who walks in fellowship with God, according to the favor of God, through faith in Jesus Christ. And that sort of life that always has interaction with God in Christ, that is always meditating upon his word and keeping it in the heart, that is the path of the righteous. That is the path that is Verse 18, the path of the just that is like the shining sun, but not just like the shining sun, it shines ever brighter unto the perfect day. So whereas the path of the wicked is darkness and death, the path of the righteous is already life, but increasing life. There's no such thing as a Christian life that doesn't grow, that doesn't grow brighter, that doesn't grow more alive, that doesn't grow more healthy. Now, there is such a thing as backsliding and stagnation, but that is not the ordinary way. And if you are in that way, then you are disobeying and you are unhealthy and you need reformation and revival and repentance in your life. The Christian doesn't just have light already, his light should be increasing. Your fellowship with God should be increasing. Your serving him and loving him with all that you do should be increasing. Your receiving everything as good from him should be increasing. And of course, it's increasing in anticipation of the perfect blessedness that we will have, not in this life, but the next. And so we must be responding to the word of God. We must be guarding what is coming into our ear, coming into our eyes, what we're meditating upon with our heart. Why? Verse 23, keep your heart with all diligence for out of it spring the issues of life. Keep your heart with all diligence because from out of your heart, what your lips say is going to come. From out of your heart, what your eyes look at and focus on and desire is going to come. From out of your heart, the way that you walk with your feet is going to come. So in verses 20 to 21, it talks about the way things enter. our mind and our heart. And then in verses 24 through 26 or 27, it talks especially about what comes out of our heart. But the main thing then is the heart. The main thing in your life is how your heart relates to God, and the way to keep it is by his word. And using his word, then you're supposed to pay attention to and rule and guard what comes out of you. So verse 24, put away from you a deceitful mouth, put far from you perverse lips. Verse 25, guarding what you look at and what you desire, let your eyes look straight ahead and your eyelids look right before you. This is, of course, continuing to use the path metaphor, that our focus on life should be that which the Lord is teaching us, how the Lord is growing us, how the Lord is sanctifying us. that we have all these secondary missions or secondary callings in life, but our first calling is the path to glory, the path to the perfected fellowship with God that we have our hope to have when this life is over. So that's what it's especially meaning when it says, let your eyes look straight ahead. Then ponder the path of your feet, let all your ways Be established. Walk intentionally according to God's word. Do not turn to the right or the left. Remove your foot from evil. And so here are these two paths. And every step of our way, every moment of every day, everything we think, everything we do is going in either the one or the other of the two paths. And so we need this heeding God's word, giving our attention to it, meditating upon it, controlling our heart by it, because that is the way that we take our steps in the path of the righteous that shines ever brighter. and avoid the path of the wicked that leads to destruction and is itself darkness. So may the Lord give us to interact with him by his word in this way every day and every moment. of our life, let's pray. Lord, thank you for your word. Thank you for not just telling us to pray that we would not be led into temptation, but instructing us to watch and to pray. And thank you for telling us now about one of the ways of that watching, the chief way of that watching. by listening to your word and keeping it always before our eyes and keeping it in our heart, Grant, that by your Spirit's ministry to us, we would do just that, so that our life would be alive and not dead. so that our life would be a fellowship with you and with other godly, and not a fellowship or a shared life with those who are apart from you and whose lives lead to the fall of those who share life with them. And so help us, O God, to be good friends to one another, to walk together on the path of the righteous, for each of us to guard what is coming into our ears or our eyes or our heart, and each of us to guard what is coming out of our mouth, what we focus on, how we walk. Help us, O Lord, to serve you, to serve one another, to serve your people well, and keep us on this path of the just, until we come into the perfect light of the everlasting day, the everlasting life in Christ. In whose name we ask it. Amen.