Taking Responsibility for You

Introduction

Our society obsesses over questions like:

Where do you plan to go to college?

What do you want to be when you grow up?

We hardly ever hear anyone ask:

What kind of person will you be?

independence, what is it?

As we have already learned, parents who direct their children toward academic and professional pursuits without also providing direction for personal accountability to God along with moral responsibility to parents have failed in their own responsibility of raising their children.

The interplay between the parental responsibility to teach and the child’s responsibility to listen and to respond by building a life based on the Word of God has already been on display.

What we want to watch, in this message, is how listening and giving forethought to your lifestyle will be featured in these passages.

Responsibility #1: Purposeful Listening

We find the speaker, again, making a strong appeal to his son.

This is very personal and caring, but it also functions as a textual marker.

Two parallel imperatives drive home a single, core thought:

Pay attention: to my sayings.

Incline/bend your ear.

Part of our overall application of this text has to be informed by the basic assumption that there are alternative ways and alternative ideas.

These verses (Prov. 4:20-23) bring us back to the responsibility of listening when one has been taught the correct path to go.

The father speaks from a position of exclusivity. While he maintains the possibility that other paths exist, he does not pretend they are right.

Supportive and acceptance?

We must be careful not to confuse choosing your own profession with the false thought that you can choose your own moral right and wrong.

Parents may not select for you how you will earn a living, but they can do something even better. They can teach you the ways of the Lord so that regardless of what profession you choose, you will know the difference between truth and error, and you will know you ought to live. You should live to please the Lord. You should live based upon your word. Parents can prepare you for life.

Notice the admonitions related to guarding or protecting:

Prov. 4:21: the words are not to deviate from the eyes.

They are also to be kept within the mind, or the heart.

Instead of disregarding them, they are to be valued and guarded. This will be reiterated later.

The reason for placing such importance on these words is their life-giving nature.

Evening Introduction

Proverbs has moved, as it has progressed, toward the implication that listening equals moving to action.

Be doers of the word and not hearers only (James 1:22-25).

Repentance

You should live to please the Lord. You should live based upon your word. Parents can prepare you for life.

Not everything has to be undetermined or “up in the air.”

Concrete vs. Unpredictable

The ideas expressed in Prov. 4:22 reinforce teachings already present in Proverbs.

“to the one finding them” = TWOT makes the case that MaZa in the Qal means “to come upon, meet, reach” as well as “to find.” The implication here would seem to be that “they are life to the one finding them” implies the person has actually listened, valued the words of the Lord, and thus have reached the point where they go beyond knowing those teachings. Instead, they have actually based their lives upon those teachings.

That is the point where they give life.

The Word of God can prevent us from shortening our lives, but they cannot help us if we have chosen an alternative and ended up dead.

Ecclesiastes points us toward a life where it is difficult to find joy. We have to learn to find joy in the things God has given us.

Responsibility #2: Protection

Notice how the appeal now places responsibility upon the son for the protection of his own heart.

In Prov. 4:23, the picture of being a jailor or sentry who keeps guard over a prison gets applied to the protection of the heart. Yet again, we see responsibility being passed along. Untruth is real and presents a danger to us all. We must be protect our minds, our hearts from untruth.

Notice the father does not tell his son to seclude himself from the rest of the world. Instead, he prepares him for living in a world of untruth, deceit, seduction, and error by teaching him the truth and placing upon him the responsibility for holding to the truth for protection. You are a guardian over your own life.

Responsibility #3: Purity

Purity of life ought to mark out the person who lives life based upon the Word of God.

The term translated as “put away” in ESV of Prov. 4:24, comes from the Hebrew word for deviation or apostasy. There is a change of life that is called for here, so it seems. Instead of deviating from the truth of the Word of God, the Word of God should cause you to deviate from your natural ways, the ways of the world.

In the Hifil stem, this verb means to remove, as in the Lord calling upon Israel to “remove” the high places.

Crooked or deceptive speech, speech that advocates for the doing of evil should be removed.

So too, should “the deviation of the lips” that is perverted, crooked, or deceptive speech.

We might think here of Eph. 4.

Responsibility #4: Preparation

Living of lifestyle that pleases God has to be planned for and considered in advance.

Remember the assumption is that the world is evil and so are we.

Thus, the only way to be prepared for the bombardment of evil that is found in the world, and to which our rebellious hearts are inclined, is to give forethought to our lifestyle.

Our society has strange ideas, now. Specifically, our lifestyle directs us, we do not direct our lifestyles.

We strangely consider them genetically fixed.

In the midst of an uncertain world, we can live in ways that are guaranteed to be truthful and sure.

The term “ponder” comes from a term referring to “making level, smooth, or easy.”

It can also the meaning of “take regard for, or to examine, to investigate.”

Thought should go into how you are going to live not merely what you are going to do to live.

After pondering, we should not deviate at all.

We should remain in the truth and in that which we know to be right.

We could extend this through the contrast presented at the end of Prov. 5:6.

This is another area where the young can plan ahead.

What kind of spouse will you be?

Will be you an adulterous husband/wife?

Will you be a wife like the one described in Prov. 31.

Our society encourages us to teach our children to delay marriage