Thank you for the assurance we have of your presence with us as we gather before you to hear you speak to us through your word. We thank you that in your word you make yourself known to us, that your word is you speaking to us, speaking in a living and abiding way. It's you present here. It's how you work in us. It's your word that you use to bring us from darkness to light. You beget us again through the word of truth. You bring the gospel that is the power of God to salvation through the word of Christ. You build us up and given us an inheritance. Scripture tells us that your word is living and it is active and it's sharp beyond any two edged sword. We thank you that you're present to us in your word. so that we can know you through it today. We think of the word of Psalm 36. For with you is the fountain of life. In your light, we see light. We pray you'll open our eyes to your light today through your word. In Jesus' name, Amen. This week, we turn to Proverbs chapter four, and please turn your Bibles to Proverbs chapter four. I've translated the first nine verses, which will be our focus today. I'm going to give you a bit of an introduction to the chapter. I want to ask, what is God telling us in Proverbs chapter four? What's the burden of Proverbs chapter four? Why is it there in God's word? As you look at it, even in the way that the English Standard Version lays it out, there are three fairly obvious parts in this chapter. Often a good signal in Proverbs, not absolutely infallible, but pretty consistent in the first nine chapters, when a discourse is started, it's started by the words, my son. And so here you see in verse one, hear, O sons of father's instruction and be attentive that you may gain insight. You run your eyes down to verse 10 and you see again, hear my son and accept my words that the years of your life may be many. Both of those sound like they're starting a discourse, don't they? Hear and attend to my words, sons. Hear and accept my words, my son. And then in verse 20, we see my son be attentive to my words, incline your ear to my sayings. And so you see that each of these has its own beginning and each of these sections has its own characteristic. It has its own unique features. As you read verses 1 through 9, you see something striking about it, that he quotes his father. He's teaching his sons, but in that in the doing of that, he quotes the words of his father teaching him. Then you look at the second section, verses 10 through 19, and a real emphasis of that section is walking the way you see words and verbs and nouns related to path. Way, roadway, walking away, run, stumble, walk. All of those to do with walking a pathway. You see that over and over and over again in that section. Different from the first, different from the third. Then when you look at the third section, You notice 10 body parts mentioned in that, like it's an anatomical listing, like it's a catalog. You see ears, eyes, heart, body, flesh, mouth, lips, eyelid, foot, right hand, left hand, all those mentioned in that section. So each section has its own beginning. Each section has its own emphasis. And so that leads us to wonder, just like we did back in chapter three, if you remember those weeks ago, are we looking at one discourse or are we looking at three discourses? And you could make a good case for either. Many scholars have said that these are three discourses, and if they are, then they're three fairly short ones, a nine verse one, and then verses 10 through 19, and then just 20 through 27. But I think that it's just one discourse divided into three sections, because there is a thought that recurs in each section that I think binds them together. Let me show you. Look first at verse four. And notice that he quotes his father, says, he taught me and said to me, let your heart hold fast my words, keep my commandments and live. And as I'll explain this to you in just a few moments, Lord willing, he's obviously not saying exist, because obviously the Son already exists. And he's not just saying don't die, because that's kind of not even worth saying. What he's saying is, if you learn what I'm teaching you, that's the way to real life. That's the way to find out what life is really about and live what God means life to be. Learn what I teach you and you will really live. So is that echoed in the other sections? Well, indeed it is. Look at verse 10 in the next section, the verse that opens it. Hear my sons and accept my words that the years of your life may be many. And then run your eyes down to verse 13 in that same section. Keep hold of instruction. Do not let go. Guard her, for she is your life. He says that his teaching will add years of life. Now, he means years of life, not as opposed to dying young, but he means years of life as opposed to wasted years, as opposed to foolish years, as opposed to years of death. as opposed to years of living under the fear of the wrath of God, living in fear of God's judgments. That's not life. He wants to add years of life, real life. Life lived in fellowship with God. Life lived walking God's way. Life lived with the fear of God and the assurance of God's blessing. in God's favor. So life and life again in the second section. What about the third section? Same thing. Yes, indeed. Verses 22 and 23. He says, Don't lose what I'm teaching you, for they are life to those who find them. and healing to all their flesh, keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life." Well, there I think in verse 23 we have the cap to the whole chapter. He says, the kind of life you live finds its birth in the kind of heart you have. Our life flows from our heart, so we've got to guard our heart. Anybody should at that point want to ask the question, how do I guard my heart? The answer, this chapter, the whole chapter is about how to have the kind of heart from which flows a life that is real life. That's a life that's a God kind of life that has God's blessing and God's presence in it. It caps the whole thing. So if our heart is foolish and bereft of the fear of God, then we'll live a foolish, wasted life with fear of the judgment of God. But if our heart is right with God, then our life will be a symphony of joy and hope and glory. So if you want real life, you'll find like verse 22 says, you'll find the words of God, hang on to them and live them. So I'm saying that I think this whole chapter is about life. It's about quality of life. Now, it's not about what we Americans might think when we say the words quality of life, or we think of a good, a good house and a good job and a good car. It's not about stuff, stuff, stuff at all. Quality of life in scripture is about a stable, solid, fruitful walk with God. That's what scripture calls life. It's a walk with God. So that's what this chapter is going to show us. And today we're going to focus on the first section of the three verses one through nine. First thing we see in that section as you use your outline is a personal connection. That's what goes in those two blanks. But I hope you don't just fill in the blanks. There's blanks under the blanks. Personal connection. There's a personal connection in that we read in the first verse, here's sons, the discipline of a father. So there's a father there speaking his discipline to sons. There's a personal connection between teacher and student. So here I want to ask first of all about the father's calling. To what is a father called by God? What is the calling of a father in God's eyes? We don't go to Genesis 1 but you know you get the first hint there when God creates the man and the woman in his image and he charges them with filling the earth. Well, filling the earth with children, that is, and subduing it. And if these children, obviously, who aren't present when God's speaking to them, if these children are going to assist in the subduing of the planet, they're going to have to be taught. And who do you suppose is going to have that job of teaching them? It's going to be Adam and it's going to be Eve. It'll be their job to teach them. But the first explicit verse I turn your minds to is Genesis 18-19 where God is speaking aloud. He's thinking out loud in Abraham's hearing. And I'm just catching this one thing he says. He says, I have chosen Abram that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice so that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has promised him. So very literally, the Hebrew says, I've known him. I've entered into a relationship with Him by covenant, is what God is saying. I've made Him my covenant vassal. I've made Him my covenant servant. I've belonged to Him. He belongs to me. And He says, so that He may command His children after Him to do My will. So God entered into a relationship with Abram, not with Abram as the terminus, but with Abram himself then becoming a transmitter of God's word to his children, teaching God's word to his children. His calling was to teach his children in the way of God, lead them, command them, he says, in fact, not just share, take it or leave it, but command them in the way of God. Now, I run your minds to Exodus. You don't need to turn there. I'll summarize these for you. And I do encourage you to look them up. These are just a few of many such verses in the Old Testament. In Exodus 12, they're talking about the Passover. And God moves Moses to say, when your sons say to you, what do you mean by this service? You shall say, it is the sacrifice of the Lord's Passover, for he passed over the houses of the people of Israel. See, in other words, he means that to be a teaching tool to the children. He doesn't say, well, every year just bring them back to Egypt and I'll do this whole thing for you again. He says, you do this ceremony and it'll make your kids want to ask questions. And when they ask questions, here's the answer you give them. God is setting up a teaching situation because that's His intention, that the fathers teach the children His ways. Chapter 13, verse 8, You shall tell your son on that day, it is because of what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt. Me, because I'm an Israelite. He did it for the nation. He did it for me. Just like today we would say that Christ loved the church and gave himself for it, that means that Christ loved me and gave himself for me because I'm part of that church. Verses 14 and 16, same chapter. God envisions, when in time to come your son asks you, what does this mean? You should say to him, by a strong hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt from the house of slavery. And then he goes on to relate the story of the exodus. He sets up a situation that will provoke children to ask questions and then you teach them the ways in the word of God. Now do turn to Deuteronomy 6 with me, please. This is one of these chapters that I really would love if we as a church, all of us who come here regularly, would just know this because this is One of the central points of scripture, if I were to go to just a few absolutely pivotal points of scripture that really every Christian should know, this would be one of them. This would be one of the ones that should be familiar to every growing disciple of Christ. So much in just these few verses. The central confession of Israel's faith, as we studied Deuteronomy Wednesday nights, we saw that Moses expounds the Ten Commandments in the central section of Deuteronomy. And here he's beginning to expound the first commandment, you shall have no gods before me. And how he does that is he says, first of all, there is only one God to have, and that's Yahweh. Verse four, Yahweh our God, Yahweh is one. Or probably you should translate, Yahweh is our God, Yahweh is one. And then here's what grows out of having Yahweh as God. You shall love Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. If we don't love him, we don't have him. If we don't have him, we can't love him. If he's not our God, we won't love him. If we don't love him, he's not our God. But it doesn't end there. Verse six, I like that it starts with an and that tells us that there's a flow of thought here. And this is what happens if you really love God and these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. So it looks like what Jesus says, isn't it? What does he say? If you love me, you will keep my commandments. This says, love the Lord your God and his words will be on your heart. Very same thought. But then there's more verse seven. You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, you lie down, when you rise and it goes on. So in other words, you love God. That means his words will be on your heart. And if his words are on your heart, then that's what you'll teach your children when it comes to teaching them about the world, about him, about life, about themselves. You'll teach them my words because they're on your heart because you love me. So that's the calling of the father to teach diligently, to inscribe the words of God on the minds and hearts of their children. Then we read Psalm 78 earlier in our scripture reading. Did you notice verse four? We will not hide them from their children, but tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord and his might and the wonders he's done. He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers to teach to their children that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and arise and tell them to their children. So, here's God's intent. Once again, as I've pointed out a number of times, contrary to the thought of many Christians today, God doesn't say, well, I'll tell you what, I'll just keep doing miracles over and over and over again, like a reboot. You know, every couple of weeks, we'll just reboot everything like nothing I've ever done ever happened. Instead, He does what He does, and He explains it, and He says, you keep telling about that. You keep telling my words about that. about what my will is and about what my works are. And so here he says the intent is that the fathers who know would teach their children so the children would learn and fear God themselves and that the children themselves would turn and teach their children. And so it is to be transmitted a living and vital faith from generation to generation as each comes back to the same. Well, not not like a game of telephone, but each goes back to the words of God and teaches those words of God to the next generation. And the same thing has sounded a number of times in the New Testament. I just point you to Ephesians six, four, which says rather literally, and fathers do not provoke your children to wrath, but by contrast, nourish them in the discipline and admonition of the Lord, the education, the discipline, the teaching and the admonition, the warning of the Lord. So that's the calling of the Father, the Father The father's calling is obviously himself to know and love God and to have God's words brimming over his heart and then to transmit those words to his children, to teach the words of God to his children. That's the father's calling. So then, coming to Proverbs chapter four, we look at the father's call. What do I give you? What do I, as your father, give you? Verse 1 says, hear, sons, the discipline of a father, and give attention so as to know discernment. First, he says, the discipline of a father. That's what I give you. The discipline of a father. Now, I remind you that word discipline, the Hebrew word musar, means education with pow. It means powerful education. Education, in other words, that is not just, oh, let me share, and then you take it and leave and decide for yourself and follow your heart. But education that says, all right, now you listen up because there will be a test. And if you don't learn this, there are going to be consequences. Whether I impose them or God imposes them, there will be consequences. You've got to learn this. You've got to make this yours. You've got to hang on to this. You've got to live this. It's an authoritative, binding kind of education. That's the discipline of a father. And notice that with that note of authority, there's the note of tenderness. It's not just the discipline of some guy. It's the discipline of a father. It isn't really my discipline. It's the discipline of a father. So since it comes from a father, it comes from someone who knows you. It comes from someone who is committed to you. It comes from someone who cares about you. It's the discipline of a father. But there is, even in saying that, there's still a note of authority, isn't there? Because remember that in the Bible, father isn't code word for clown, like today. Father is a term of honor. Father's not someone to mock and ridicule and make fun of and to be clowned. It's someone to be respected, honored, listened to. So the discipline of a father. And then he says good doctrine. For good doctrine I give you. I give you. It's a gift. That word doctrine is a really interesting word. It's the noun Lekach, which comes from the verb Lekach. You're welcome. But you hear them sound alike, you know, the verb lakach means to receive, and so this comes from that. And it has the idea of something that you receive, something that's given you. Like he says, you're given, in this case, doctrine, and you're meant to receive it and store it up, to have a repository of what you've been given. You've accepted it, and you're keeping it, you're treasuring it. So it enforces, again, the idea that, again, I sadly say is foreign to many Christians, but all over the Bible from start to finish, that believers are students, lifelong students who never graduate, should progress from grade to grade, but never graduate, never get out of school. So we're to see ourselves as students in a position to receive and store up good doctrine. It's good doctrine, by the way. He says it's good doctrine. It would have been enough to say doctrine because it comes from a father, but he says it's good doctrine. Well, you know, what that brings to mind is the fact that the world is constantly giving us doctrine. The world is constantly trying to indoctrinate us. It's constantly transmitting anti-God propaganda. It has to do that because we've got an internal witness to God, because creation witnesses to God, but the world doesn't want us going that way or listening that way. So it's constantly got to beam out its propaganda and its brainwashing to us. It's bad doctrine to us. So, you know, the issue is some people say, oh, I'm not interested in doctrine. Oh, is that your doctrine then? Your doctrine is you're not interested in doctrine. The fact is, we're all involved with doctrine. Every last one of us. We believe things. That's doctrine. We accept teachings as true. That's doctrine. The only issue is, is it good doctrine or is it bad doctrine? Only from the Word of God do we get consistently and only good doctrine. And then he says, thirdly, my law. Verse 2, my law do not abandon. I'll have more to say about that in a moment, but it's interesting to notice many English versions would say my instruction do not abandon, which that's also a valid translation. But I keep it literal so that you can see that he uses for his teaching the same words that scripture uses about God's words. His teaching is law. He teaches commands, commandments. So he sees this as something that needs to be taken authoritatively and hung on to. That's what I give you, it says. Now, number two, why I have it to give. Why is it mine to give you? How did I come by this? Giving, by the way, is a framing thought. Look at verse 2. I've translated all this for you. Verse 2, for good doctrine I give you. And then run your eyes down to verse 9. She will give you a graceful garland. So, give frames verses 2-9. This is the giving. He gives. Wisdom gives. What He gives is wisdom. We learn wisdom through the Father's teaching. That's how we're given what wisdom has to give us. Through the teaching the Father gives us. And he reminds them, reminds us, that he once was just what they are now. You see what he says in verse three. For I was my father's son, tender and an only son before my mother. Then he instructed me and he said to me, dot, dot, dot. He is calling them as sons to hear a father's discipline, and once he was just like them, hearing his father's discipline. A father's discipline. I am your father. I am teaching you. My father taught me. It's the teaching of a father. So, it's worth pausing just to note, it's not the teaching of just some guy, right? This is the teaching of a father. It's not just the teaching of some guy. He received it from his father. He's their father. He's giving it to them. Now, here's the tragedy about too many kids. Tragedy about too many kids is that what some guy says has more weight to them than what their father says. that they give a role to some guy who is on the internet, or some guy who's on TV, or some guy who's in a book they got, or some guy at school. That some guy has more weight to them than what their own father who's teaching them the Word of God says. Or maybe they take a pole. They've got what their father taught them, but they take a pole. idiot, hormone-driven peers. And that has more weight than what their father, who's been around the block a couple of times and learned the Word of God, what he teaches them. That has weight, what their father says. That's a tragedy of some kids. They listen to some guy rather than their father teaching them the Word of God. But I got to turn around and say the tragedy of many parents is they don't cultivate godly wisdom or godly credibility. and what they give their kids. Perhaps these parents know sports and stocks and snacks, but they don't know scripture, so they don't really have it to give. Or is this worse? They do know stuff about scripture, but their life makes it a lie. They see how they they see how this man treats his wife. They see how this woman treats her husband. All that God talk is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, because they don't see it in the choices they make when it comes to living their own life, battling their own demons, struggling with their own flesh. It's their hearts that rule. It's not the word of God like they're telling them to listen to. That will cut the credibility out. So Proverbs is framed as a godly father teaching a son the word of God. And so he says here the discipline of a father and he says he himself once was a son to his father and his mother. You know, kids tend to think that their dads were just born dads, you know. Two or three years old, just a little dad running around. He's just a little dad. He's always been dad. Well, he wasn't always dad. Once he had a dad. And it was long before he was a dad, he had a dad. And so what he's saying is, when I tell you to listen up, I'm saying just what my dad told me. When I tell you to listen to me and take what I say seriously, my dad told me that exact same thing. And what I'm telling you to do, I've already done towards my dad. It's nothing I haven't had to live myself. That's the way it should be. A godly father who listened to his godly father teaching his children what it is to be godly. That's what's supposed to happen. As we saw in our scripture reading, dad's supposed to teach me. I'm supposed to listen and learn and grow and retain. And then I teach my kid and he's supposed to listen and learn and grow and retain. And then he teaches his kid. That's the way it's supposed to be. And now I'm going to, as I promised, ask you to look closely at verse four, something you can't see in the English translation, but as your tour guide, I'm going to point it out to you. Verse four. Then he instructed me. And what's really interesting is that word. Remember, I said a second ago that the word law could be translated instruction. That's because the word for law, you've heard this word Torah, Torah comes from the verb Yara, which means to instruct. So they're related to each other. And so these two words occur side by side here. He says in verse two, don't abandon my law or my instruction. And then verse four, he says, my father laid down the law or he instructed me. In other words, the connection I'm trying to point out to you is he's saying, I have instruction for you because I received instruction from my father. My father instructed me. I instruct you. My father laid down the law for me. I can lay down the law for you. That's where I got it. And so the teaching has more gravity and more weight because it's not something he made up himself, but it's something he learned from his own father. And so his father gets a vote in the teaching. The past gets a vote in this way. So in still other words, what God's saying should happen did happen. His father did learn the word. His father did teach him. He did retain. And now he is teaching his son. So God tells fathers to teach their sons what it is to have real life. God tells fathers to teach their sons what it is to live a real life. What specifically does a son need to do to benefit? As I've observed a number of times in the past, you can read Christian books on parenting, and some of them, I'm not going to say some of them give the impression, actually some of them say in so many words, I know one, I quote one in my book on Proverbs, it says in so many words, if you do this, it'll work. In other words, if you do this with your kids, They'll turn out godly. So it's like, you know, you you take a quarter and you put in that slot and turn that knob, right? A gumball is going to roll out. And so if you do these methods with your kids, then you're going to have little godly kids rolling out that slot if you do these things right. And I point out to you, that's not at all what scripture teaches. If it were true, if I knew that formula, believe me, I'd work it and I'd pass it on and I'd write another book. I'd have to take back some of the stuff I said in the one I did. Right. But I'd be happy to write another book if I found that formula. Believe me. But then you'd have to ask yourself why does Proverbs keep telling the son, listen, retrieve, retain, don't abandon, don't turn aside, write this on your heart, don't forsake it. See, why does he have to do any of that if the formula just works? Well, the formula doesn't work. The son's not an automaton. He's not a hard drive. He's not a cassette or an mp3 recorder. He has to engage himself in order to get the benefit out of what his father is giving him. So we have, Roman numeral two, pointed exhortation. That's what goes in those blanks, pointed exhortation. P-O-I-N-T-E-D-X-H-O-R-T-A-T-I-O-N, pointed exhortation. Exhortation is a call to action. It's an urging to get moving in some way, do something, think something pointed, meaning it's specific. We're going to look at two groupings of the pointed exhortation that we see here. First of all, the practices grouped in two ways grouped first into the words of getting. That's what goes in the blank for number one, words of getting. So what do I do to get what my father is giving me? First, verse one says, hear and give attention. And as we've often noted in the past, to hear means more than just to let your eardrums vibrate, which is involuntary anyway. Why make a command to do something that happens whether you want it to happen or not? Obviously, when you hear, it's like what mom means when she says, listen to me! Because the kid's standing there looking like a erect board, not responding. Obviously, the eardrums are vibrating, but there's something not connected to the brain there. So that's what he's saying. Connect your ears to your brain here. Take in what I'm saying to you. And then he says in the mirroring verse, give attention. Now, notice this is not automatic. You've got to do it. You've got to do it. I've got to do it. We've got to prepare ourselves and give ourselves to it. How many Christians get this? How many Christians would nod piously, but their lives just don't show that they get this? That we've got to prepare ourselves. What do we do? How do we prepare ourselves for church? On Facebook every week we put some things to help prepare. Do you use that? Do we pray for ourselves? Do we look at the scripture we know we're going to study and get ourselves ready to listen? And during the time that either we're reading our Bible privately or hearing some instruction, do we fight? What do I mean fight? I mean, you know, there's always distractions. There's always things. Oh, you need to write this letter. Oh, you've got this big. Oh, you've got this thing Tuesday. You know, you can just go down the path and not get any benefit from what you're reading or from. I mean, I'm sure I'm not the only one here. Right. Who's read his Bible, read a chapter and then had to say and stop and say, what did I just read? What I know is in the Bible. And there were words there. And they said things. I'm sure they did. What were any of them? Well, that's because it's a fight. It's a fight to hear and to give attention. To make sure that we're giving it our all. Secondly, he says, let your heart take hold. Well, the first one tells us to get it. The second one says to keep it. Verse 4, then he instructed me and he said to me, let your heart take hold of my words. The heart, as we've often observed, is the center of our being, not the center of our feelings. It's the center of how we think, how we make decisions, what we cherish and value. So he's saying, you take the very core of your being and you grab a hold. You put a death grip on these things that never lets go. Let your heart take a firm grasp of my words. Verse 5, acquire wisdom, acquire insight. Now that's really interesting. Notice there's no, this is, well, okay, the fancy word is asyndeton. What it means is there's no conjection, conjunction. He doesn't say, therefore acquire wisdom and acquire insight. These are staccato commands. Acquire wisdom, acquire insight, meant to sort of grab us by the lapels and give us a shake. This is what you need to do. You need to acquire wisdom. You need to acquire insight. You do, I do. The meaning of that word is very interesting. The Hebrew word translated acquire, it means to buy. It means to purchase. It means to give something, to get something, to give money or goods, to get goods in return. So there's an investment. And this is a big concept to him. He says it four times in this section. He says acquire, acquire, acquire, acquire. And then he uses the noun form of the verb acquisition. So we are really being impressed with the thought that it costs something to get wisdom and that we're expected to pay the price. We're to pay the price it takes to get wisdom. Now, let me turn this around a little bit. If you and I don't pay the price, we won't get it. That's what that means. If we don't pay the price, we don't get it. And when do you realize whether you've done that or not? Well, it's when you need it, when you need it and you reach for it, is it there or not? Somebody asks you for a dollar and you reach into your pocket and that's empty. Somebody comes and needs something to eat and you look on your cupboard. So there's nothing on the cupboard. Josh gave the kids a little opportunity to see this last Sunday night in the youth group. I got to sit in with Jake out of town. And what he did was he posed as two different people. He posed first as an unbeliever who was kind of sneering at them for being Christians and saying, well, we all know evolution is true. So why do you think I should believe in your little book full of fairy tales? And he just threw that at the kids and told them to answer him. And then he poses another person saying, I believe Jesus died for my sins. I don't see why I need to go to church. So I'm just like you. I believe in Jesus. Why do I need church? And he told these kids to out. Well, you know what? That's when they found out what they'd been doing with their time. That's when they found out whether or not they had paid the price to acquire wisdom or whether they just watch pastors talk and watch their parents talk, but had not made the investment that it took to make it mine. They had an opportunity to reach into their pockets and see if there's anything there or not, or if the pockets just got moths flying out of them, right? Well, you know, you and I, we have the same thing happen. We've got a decision to make. We want to make a godly decision. We go to what we know. We've heard sermons on this. It's nothing there. It's nothing there. We've got a friend enters into a difficult situation, a depression, a marriage problem, a life situation, looks to us for help, and we think, I know I heard a sermon on that. I know there was a series on that. There's nothing there. I'm looking around in the coverage of Bear. Or we're confronted with something at work. We're confronted with something in a conversation at a party somewhere. And there's just nothing there. What does that mean? We haven't made the investment. We didn't acquire it. We didn't pay for it. And so it's not ours. You know, modern Christianity is consumer driven. It's very consumer driven. In fact, we've had people back in the 70s say, why shouldn't the church be run like a business? Sadly, people didn't say, oh, I'll tell you why it shouldn't be run as a business. People said, oh, that sounds like a good idea. Let's approach it like a business. Let's give the consumers what consumers want. Well, what do consumers want today? Consumers want instant things with no investment now. Am I wrong? They want instant things with no investment now. They want microwave spirituality. If you can't push the buttons and it takes longer than a minute, I am not interested. It should just take about a minute. They don't want to invest time. They don't want to invest effort. They don't want to sacrifice. They don't want discomfort. And so consumer driven leaders find a way to give them what they want, because otherwise they won't be popular and the business won't thrive. So if I can't get it in a second or two, no sale, not interested. So we invent teachings that are not in scripture. You don't need, for instance, people are taught today, you don't need to develop a biblically mature mind through study and effort and time, you don't need to develop that kind of mind because God will just whisper directly into your ear what He wants you to know. You don't need to study or memorize or do any of that stuff. He'll just tell you can you can scoot the Bible aside. You get instant direction that way. Or God will zap you spiritually to another level of growth with a slap on the forehead or a spiritual experience or an encounter of some sort. No need to be a disciple. No need to memorize. No need for denial, learning, effort, discipline, or even necessarily going to church at all, being faithful, investing yourself in the yuckiness of fellowship and give and take. No real need for that. There's faster paths. There's faster tracks to spirituality. But you see, Scripture tells us wisdom costs, but Scripture tells us Wisdom is worth it. So the question this poses to us is, what am I giving? What am I giving to get wisdom? Sitting right here listening to this sermon. What am I giving? What am I willing to give to get wisdom? How many would nod piously and say, oh, yes, yes, it's costly, but it's worth it. Yes, yes. But if you suggest a daily Bible reading, if you suggest they open their Bibles and not leave them in their laps while I'm turning the passages, if you suggest taking notes, coming to meetings where scripture is taught. Oh, no, no, no. I'm busy. I got something else. I'm too busy. Well, wisdom costs, but it's worth it. But if we don't pay the price, Pockets are going to be empty. Cupboard's going to be bare. It's going to be a cold winter. Merely getting it isn't the whole story, though, because we also find words of keeping. Number two, there's words of getting and there's words of keeping. He says, do not abandon. Verses two and six, he says it twice. So that's an emphasis. Verse two, my law, do not abandon. Verse six, do not abandon her and she will keep you. When I think of abandoned things, I think of yesterday's toys that a kid just stops playing with and you know he's done with them. Or I think of high school Spanish, you know, that some people learn but now they can't do much better than Buenos Tardes. But they did learn it in high school and they left it in high school. So he's saying don't abandon this. You're going to need this day after day. Don't walk away from it. So many people do abandon it. They leave off church, Bible study, meetings where they can be taught personal reading. And he says, don't do that. That's what not to do. Don't abandon it. So what should I do? Well, number two, he says, keep, keep my commandments and you will live. Keep it like you keep your phone number. What's your phone number? Do you know it? Sure you do. Social security number. You know that? Sure you do. You keep it because it's important. Well, he says this is important. So keep this. Make it yours and keep it. So how would we do this in the spiritual opportunities of our life? How do we keep what we learn? Every time we read the Bible, we're being exposed to God's Word. If we go to a Bible teaching church like this, then every time there's a meeting, we're exposed to the Word of God. Every time there's a Bible study, obviously, we're exposed to the Word of God. So what are practical ways that I can keep it? We all agree. I trust if we're Christians, we need to do it. How would we do it? Well, make some suggestions. You probably have some of your own. Discuss it over lunch. Discuss it over supper. What did you learn? What do you remember? What was that verse? As you review your notes, and this is supposing that you take notes and it's supposing you do more than just fill in the blanks. But as you review your notes, pray over it or cover the notes. See if you can remember what you wrote down is not what we did in college and high school. And we had an important thing to learn. Isn't this important? Review it. If you have a blog, blog about it. If you are on Twitter, tweet about it. If you're on Facebook, share it on Facebook. Write about it. Write what you learned. Share it with a friend. Talk about it. See, that's the best way to learn something. Repeat it. Teach it. Give it out. Chew it over. These are ways to keep commandments and live, to make them ours so that they can give us the life God wants us to have. Thirdly, letter C, do not forget and do not turn aside. Well, one word's kind of passive and one word's kind of active. You can forget passively. What do you have to do to forget something? Nothing. Right. What do you have to do to forget something? Most things. Nothing. Just don't remember it. Don't don't go to the trouble to remember it so we can passively forget just by neglect, just by neglect. We just don't. We heard it in the sermon. We watched the pastor talk, made no measures to keep it. And now it's gone. So I've forgotten it. Read my Bible, but my mind was wandering. So it's just not even there. But then do not turn aside is a little more active. It's more of a decision to put it aside. And he says, don't do either one. Don't forget it. And don't turn aside. So if we're going to give this kind of effort, we're also going to have to align our priorities. Letter B in your outline. Priorities. And I just break them down into two. First, he calls us to focus in verses five and six. Focus. He says, acquire wisdom, acquire insight. Do not forget and do not turn aside from the sayings of my mouth. Do not abandon her and she will keep you. Love her and she will guard you. It's hard to miss the earnestness in these words, isn't it? He's really pleading with us. He's really urging with us. He's getting right up in our face and saying this to us. Acquire, acquire. Don't forget. Don't turn aside. Don't abandon her. Love her and she'll guard you. So this takes a repeated course adjustment to make sure that we're keeping these priorities, that we're remembering what our mission is, that we're remembering what we're after, that we want to get wisdom and we want to keep wisdom. So, you know, like a person, we don't want to get mission creep to take us apart from what God's called us to, so we need periodically to remind ourselves, okay, what's the mission here? I'm in church. I got my Bible here. I'm walking through my day. What's the mission? Mission is to walk by the word of God. It's to walk according to God's way to know what real life is life in God's ways. So acquire, acquire. Don't forget. Love her. Love is a matter of the affections. And so it's not just not merely a barren matter of choices, but cultivating love for God's word. Let's say we need to know. We look to our heart. We don't see that there's a love for God's word. That's not healthy. That is not healthy. It's not something we should shrug and say, oh, well, then that happened, I guess. No, if we don't see a love for God's word, then that's a sign of ill health that should drive us to God in repentance and confession and asking God to help us with the health of our heart. Love her, he says. Don't just pay attention to her, but love her. And then fixate. Verses seven and eight. Well, I had to come with another word that starts with an F and that one worked. Focus and fixate. The starting point of wisdom, acquire wisdom. And with all your acquiring, acquire discernment. I translated this for you on your outline. Cherish her and she will exalt you. She will honor you when you embrace her. You know, the language of verse seven is so unusual, a lot of commentators struggle with it, but I don't think it's all that hard. The starting point of wisdom, acquire wisdom. OK, that's kind of funny. I mean, OK. First thing you got to do if you want to get wisdom is get wisdom. But you know, I don't know how many of you are old enough to remember the comedian Charlie Weaver, and he had kind of a recurring joke. He talked about his recipe for donkey fazool. What was his recipe for donkey fazool? Well, first you take a tender young donkey. Thanks. Well, of course, if it's donkey fazool, you're going to need a donkey. And if you're going to acquire wisdom, well, then wisdom what you need to get. And he says the whole process starts with wisdom, continues in wisdom. Now, this isn't a formula, of course, it's a statement of priorities. If you want how to do it, you need to go back to Proverbs 1.7. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Proverbs 9.10, 1.7 is the beginning of knowledge. 9.10, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. That's formally where we need to start. But if we start with that, well, that's wisdom. To fear God is wisdom. So really the first step to wisdom is a step that is itself wisdom. Every step in gaining wisdom is a step in gaining wisdom. So he's saying, you fix your mind on that goal and determine that nothing's going to stop you. There's going to be obstacles, there's going to be difficulties, but you set your mind that what you're going to get is you're going to get wisdom and nothing's going to stop. So at the start with the fear of the Lord, well, that's wisdom in itself, but then you continue. It takes wisdom to get wisdom. So it is a circle. It starts with wisdom and it leads to further wisdom. The school of wisdom is a school from one degree of wisdom to another degree of wisdom. And then verse 8 moves from the will to the heart. Cherish her. Lift her up is what that Hebrew word means. Prize her highly and she will exalt you. She will honor you when you embrace her. So, wisdom must not merely be chosen and studied. It needs to be loved. It needs to be embraced. It needs to be given a high place in our lives. Finally, promises, letter C. And the promises, first of all, as we've seen the focus of this chapter, life. Verse four. Then he instructed me and he said to me, let your heart take hold of my words. Keep my commandments and you will live. So we're ready to see that life is the culmination of all this instruction. If you learn all of this, you will learn about life. Now, of course, we need to know and remind ourselves, as we frequently do, just from the outset, he's not saying if you obey all these commands, you'll earn life, you'll deserve life. Who's he talking to? He's talking to sons. They're already sons. And as we often observe, being a son is a grace thing. It's a sovereign act of God that we're sons of God. We don't earn our way to be sons of God. We come to stand as righteous before God through faith. And it's always been the only way. Genesis 15, 6, Abram believed the Lord and righteousness was counted to him by faith alone. That's always been the only way God has saved. So he's not saying you're going to earn yourselves life by doing these things right, he's talking to people who are already sons and already fear God. And so what he says is, the way to life, to a rich life, to what God calls life, a God-saturated, God-blessed life, the way to that life is through hearing, heeding, hearkening to the Word of God, learning, retaining, living the wisdom of God. Not through forgetful hearing, but through attention, through grasping and retaining and living it out. So the really alive person is the person who walks with God and God's wisdom. You keep my commands, learn this, and you'll really live. You'll have the life that God wants you to have. And people who won't are kind of like what Paul says in 1 Timothy 5. It talks about women who are dead even while they live. They're living and walking and active, but they're really dead. And that's what we are if we don't believe in God and walk in his word. So first, life. Secondly, honor. Verses eight and nine. Cherish her and she will exalt you. She will honor you when you embrace her. She will give a graceful garland to your head, a crown of beauty. She will present you. Godliness adorns the life. It beautifies the soul. It transforms us. It's true in this life. It's going to be true in eternity. C.S. Lewis wrote something very memorable about this one. C.S. Lewis wrote, It is a serious thing to live in a society of potentially glorious beings. To remember that the dullest, most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship or else A horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. In other words, we're all headed in one direction or another towards the glory that God gives or towards the horror of life under God's wrath. He says all day long we are in some degree helping each other to one or another of these destinations. There are no ordinary people. You've never talked to a mere mortal nations, cultures, art, civilization. These are mortal and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit immortal horrors. or everlasting splendors. Solomon says wisdom is what leads us to becoming everlasting splendors. Walking God's way, living God's life by grace through faith, taking His word in, learning it and living it. That's what beautifies, that's what glorifies. That's the way C.S. Lewis put it, but the way Paul said it, even better in 2 Corinthians 4, he says, we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. As we look not at the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. So all this constant emphasis we're seeing in Proverbs and in Scripture on buying, keeping, remembering, retaining, memorizing, not forsaking, writing on the tablets of our heart, not forgetting, all this, is this actually overblown? Well, let me ask you. Look at the history of England. You see today in England what a viciously anti-Christian country it has become. It's very difficult to be an evangelical Bible-believing Christian in any kind of public life in England today. Would you believe that in the past, England gave birth to some of the greatest preachers, the greatest theologians, the greatest Bible scholars ever? The same country that one day gave birth to them, today despises what they held dear. While you're sneering across the pond at England, you just need to look back at our own country. Look at America's history. Would you believe, looking around today, would you believe that it was first settled by people who came here so they could be free to worship God according to what the Bible taught? that they wanted to bring the gospel to this nation. Would you believe this nation, in fact, the gospel to this continent? Would you believe this nation was born of revival, that it was born of spiritual revival, that this country has seen powerful revivals of the gospel of Jesus Christ in the past? And it itself has produced wonderful preachers, theologians, generations of godly people. But look around today. It is becoming harder and harder. to be a Bible-believing Christian in public, and certainly in public life, or to do business as a Bible-believing Christian. It's a more and more hostile environment. How did that happen? How did that happen in England or America? That once they were there, that now we've fallen to where we are today. Because not heeding this principle in Proverbs, not keeping, not retaining, not keeping it alive and current and vital. Oh, but you say, I'm not a country. What does this have to do with me? I'm just a person. Well, I'll tell you what, I think that if you said that in our hearing, many of us would respond to you with tears in our eyes. Many of us would respond to you because we've known heartbreaking individual cases of people, friends, pastors, parents, spouses, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, At one time, they were bright with promise. They'd been taught the word of God, seemed to be learning it, seemed to be living it, seemed to have good intentions. They received sound teaching. They had good examples. But then something happened. Some weed sprung up, perhaps undetected by anyone else. And as a result, they did not keep. They did not hold fast. They did not retain. They did not cherish. They did not prize, they did not embrace God's words and wisdom. They forgot, they abandoned, they turned aside and their lives made shipwreck. And they forfeited all right to hope of God's blessings. and earn for themselves the right to live in fear of God's judgment because they didn't heed what we're reading today. Well, and if you should say, well, that sounds very sad, but I don't know any of those people. Really, you don't. You don't know Solomon who wrote this book. What was the course of Solomon's life? You know, he wrote this right. You know that at the time he was the wisest man who had ever lived. How did he end up? What was the course of his life when he thought that he was so good evidently that he didn't need to remember, retain, hold fast, that he could afford to swerve aside, forsake, abandon what his father had taught him? You know what a ruin he made of his life. So we need to understand that in these words we have our father's counsel to us because Our Heavenly Father in Christ has given us rich foundations for a life of blessing and joy. He knows the threats and the perils ahead of us. He knows how to steer clear around these things. and to walk in the life that he lays out for us. All this he's laid out for us in a father's teaching in the word. This is our father's plea with us so that we can steer around the shipwreck that otherwise we will surely know. God has given us and opened to us the way to know the blessings of the life that he wants us to live. So God grant that we have ears to hear, hearken, retain, not lose what he's saying to us in his word. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, thank you so much for your word, for what it teaches us. Thank you for its clarity and its power. Father, I pray that the Spirit of God will apply it with power to each heart here today with the result of great fruit to the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. We pray in his name. Amen.