“How to Safe Guard against Wicked Ways”
Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 1:24:34
0 ratings
· 18 viewsFiles
Notes
Transcript
Good Morning. Grab your Bibles and turn with me to Proverbs chapter 2. The title of our message this morning is how to safe guard against wicked ways.
1 My son, if you receive my words
and treasure up my commandments with you,
2 making your ear attentive to wisdom
and inclining your heart to understanding;
3 yes, if you call out for insight
and raise your voice for understanding,
4 if you seek it like silver
and search for it as for hidden treasures,
5 then you will understand the fear of the Lord
and find the knowledge of God.
6 For the Lord gives wisdom;
from his mouth come knowledge and understanding;
7 he stores up sound wisdom for the upright;
he is a shield to those who walk in integrity,
8 guarding the paths of justice
and watching over the way of his saints.
9 Then you will understand righteousness and justice
and equity, every good path;
10 for wisdom will come into your heart,
and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul;
11 discretion will watch over you,
understanding will guard you,
12 delivering you from the way of evil,
from men of perverted speech,
13 who forsake the paths of uprightness
to walk in the ways of darkness,
14 who rejoice in doing evil
and delight in the perverseness of evil,
15 men whose paths are crooked,
and who are devious in their ways.
16 So you will be delivered from the forbidden woman,
from the adulteress with her smooth words,
17 who forsakes the companion of her youth
and forgets the covenant of her God;
18 for her house sinks down to death,
and her paths to the departed;
19 none who go to her come back,
nor do they regain the paths of life.
20 So you will walk in the way of the good
and keep to the paths of the righteous.
21 For the upright will inhabit the land,
and those with integrity will remain in it,
22 but the wicked will be cut off from the land,
and the treacherous will be rooted out of it.
1. The Conditions.
1. The Conditions.
1 My son, if you receive my words
and treasure up my commandments with you,
2 making your ear attentive to wisdom
and inclining your heart to understanding;
3 yes, if you call out for insight
and raise your voice for understanding,
4 if you seek it like silver
and search for it as for hidden treasures,
We begin with 3 Conditions that have been given from the teacher in order that we may find wisdom. Notice here in our passage of verses 1-4 that there are 3 “If’s. The first if is found in verse one and the next in verse 3 and finally the last if statement is in verse 4.
1. If you receive. The author of Proverbs tells us that if we receive and treasure his words and commands. The teacher or parent here expresses the importance of paying attention to his words or commands. When we look for wisdom and find in in God’s commands He will help us to walk wisely.
5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
and do not lean on your own understanding.
6 In all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make straight your paths.
Don’t lean unto your own wisdom or understanding, but let God and His Word direct your paths.
2. The Second Condition here is If you will pray. The author tells us to call out for insight or raise your voice. This is asking or seeking God through prayer for wisdom.
5 If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.
There will comes times in this life where we will not know what to do. We will not understand the direction we should head or a decision we should make. So, we should call out to God and ask Him to direct our paths. Ask God to give you wisdom in your relationships, finances, business dealings and so forth. Here in verse 3 we see a young man raise up his voice and calls out for understanding he does so expecting an answer. When you pray and seek God. Know that he hears your prayers and will answer you.
29 The Lord is far from the wicked,
but he hears the prayer of the righteous.
15 When he calls to me, I will answer him;
I will be with him in trouble;
I will rescue him and honor him.
3. The third condition is this. If you will follow. OBEY.
Notice here that the author tells us to seek and search for wisdom and you would for a hidden treasure. There are many people who have followed after the treasures of this world as if their lives depended on it and some have even lost their lives searching for great treasures. Will we as believers follow God and His Word to that extent? Turn your ear, your heart, your life to following God and His wise ways and you will have everything that you need for this life. Those who are foolish turn away from God and His wise words only to live with guilt and regret. For those of us who desire to live wisely we will have a life of peace and joy because this comes from living righteously for God.
2. The Understanding.
2. The Understanding.
5 then you will understand the fear of the Lord
and find the knowledge of God.
6 For the Lord gives wisdom;
from his mouth come knowledge and understanding;
7 he stores up sound wisdom for the upright;
he is a shield to those who walk in integrity,
8 guarding the paths of justice
and watching over the way of his saints.
9 Then you will understand righteousness and justice
and equity, every good path;
10 for wisdom will come into your heart,
and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul;
11 discretion will watch over you,
understanding will guard you,
As we come to verse 5 here we see the answer to the 3 “If You” Conditions. If we find wisdom, pray for wisdom, and follow wisdom we will get understanding. The author of Proverbs helps us to see 2 important things we come to understand through following the wisdom of God’s ways.
1. Knowledge of God. The first thing that we come to understand is not wisdom as we might think, but it is God. When we come to understanding and insight it brings us to fear God and have a knowledge of who He is. You may be here today and say well who is God? What do we know to be true about God and His attributes? Well to start with God has no beginning or end. He is eternal. God is also all-powerful. God is also supreme which means that He is in control of this world and over all things. God is also all-knowing and He is present everywhere. God is holy and righteous and loving. These are just a few things that we know to be true about God.
The author tells us here that from knowing and understanding God comes wisdom. Wisdom is a gift from God and it shows us that God is our good and all-knowing teacher and He speaks to us through His Word.
In verses 7 and 8 we see that God is our shield and He guards our paths. Here we see a wonderful picture of God’s protection. When we as believers walk in right living the Lord watches over us his saints.
11 For the Lord God is a sun and shield;
the Lord bestows favor and honor.
No good thing does he withhold
from those who walk uprightly.
7 The Lord is my strength and my shield;
in him my heart trusts, and I am helped;
my heart exults,
and with my song I give thanks to him.
When we rightly understand who God is and what His Word tells us that we can walk in a righteous manner and know that God is with us and guides and protects are every way.
2. The Second thing we will come to understand is this. Discernment for Right Living. When we come to verse 9, we also see here the second understanding. Here in this passage not only have we come to understand fearing God and the beginning of wisdom which leads us to truly understand who God is but we also come to understand what is right and just and fair. When we come to a right understanding of God and a knowledge of God this goes hand in hand with discernment for right living. We will know what is true and what is not as we look to God’s Word. We will come to understand the difference between wise living and foolish living and how to think and act and speak. Discernment and wisdom are so desperately needed in this world and we are going to see just why this is so important in the verses to come.
3. The Deliverance.
3. The Deliverance.
12 delivering you from the way of evil,
from men of perverted speech,
13 who forsake the paths of uprightness
to walk in the ways of darkness,
14 who rejoice in doing evil
and delight in the perverseness of evil,
15 men whose paths are crooked,
and who are devious in their ways.
16 So you will be delivered from the forbidden woman,
from the adulteress with her smooth words,
17 who forsakes the companion of her youth
and forgets the covenant of her God;
18 for her house sinks down to death,
and her paths to the departed;
19 none who go to her come back,
nor do they regain the paths of life.
The author of Proverbs now explains to us just how important wisdom and discernment truly are, and here is we see why. There are 2 important reasons that should stand out to us. The author here mentions two specific groups or types of people.
The Deliverance from Wicked Men. Evil men and evil people have several qualities that are known about them. Their speech is perverted. They walk in darkness or sinful ways. The celebrate sin and they are known by being crooked. Notice here that they young man is delivered or saved from the ways of the wicked men. The dangerous issue here church is not what the wicked and sinful men will do to the young man, but in their invitation to come join them in their evil ways. When wicked men use perverse or twisted words it can cause others to be stirred up to do evil things. These evil men have left the straight path or have never walked down it and they love the wicked and sinful path they are on. The opposite side of this path is the path of wisdom that leaves the young man and us as believers to rejoice in wisdom that protects us from sinful ways.
2. The Second way that we are delivered or saved is found in verse 16. The Deliverance from the Adulterous Woman.
Not only is there the influence of the wicked men that can bring us down, but danger is also found or represented by the adulteress woman. The adulteress woman is known by her smooth words or her perverse words just like the wicked men. She has left the pathway of right behavior and has chased after the pleasures of this world. Once again the major problem that stands out to us here is that of influence. This adulterous woman has gone down the path of immoral behavior and sexual sin and she desires to take the young man along with her. She has not only left the companion of her youth which would have meant her husband here, but sadly she has also ignored and completely forgotten the covenant of her God. The word covenant here in verse 17 refers to the covenant of marriage and not the covenant God made with Israel. However we cannot help but remember that when Israel broke it’s covenant with God, the prophets likened Israel to an unfaithful wife.
6 The Lord said to me in the days of King Josiah: “Have you seen what she did, that faithless one, Israel, how she went up on every high hill and under every green tree, and there played the whore?
The strange or adulterous woman appears four different times throughout the book of Proverbs, and each time she is mentioned we see the false and seductive nature of her words.
3 For the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey,
and her speech is smoother than oil,
24 to preserve you from the evil woman,
from the smooth tongue of the adulteress.
When young men or any man for that matter follow her ways they ultimately lead to a deadly end. Just as the violent men will meet a violent end, so the path of adultery is a path of folly that leads to death. This type of death is not just a physical death but an eternal death in hell. If adultery is a continual part of your life and there has never been any turning from your sin here is what the Bible says.
9 Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, 10 nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.
When those who are wise listen to the good instruction from God’s Word it protects us and delivers us from the wicked and sinful invitations to a path that leads to hell.
4. The Reward.
4. The Reward.
20 So you will walk in the way of the good
and keep to the paths of the righteous.
21 For the upright will inhabit the land,
and those with integrity will remain in it,
22 but the wicked will be cut off from the land,
and the treacherous will be rooted out of it.
The reward for seeking after godly wisdom is walking together on the path of righteousness.
Staying on the Righteous Path Leads to Eternal Life.
As we come to these final verses here in chapter 2 we can say that righteousness has its own rewards. Verse 21 tells us that the upright will inhabit the land.
For ancient Israel land was a huge deal and the possession of it was a great honor. God gave His people a promised land and they lived in it as stewards. Those wicked and faithless people of the time did not enjoy the same benefits as Israel did. When we as believers live life according to his wise and righteous rules their will be blessings and when we live life outside of those boundaries we will be cut off from the land. This is once again speaking of death.
I am not suggesting that we can work our way to heaven or that one can lose their salvation, however we often see that there are many believers who wonder off the right path never to return to following Christ. Therefore we would say that they were never truly saved to begin with.
As Christians we continue to follow God and persevere in our faith until the Lord calls us home or returns for us. My point is that following Christ costs us everything. It will cost you the pleasures of this life. It may cost turning from sin and your old way of life and picking up your cross to follow God. It may cost you your friendships. It may cost you suffering and persecution.
It is God who helps us and accomplishes the deliverance and protection that we so desperately need. May we be thankful today for the wisdom that God gives us to live for Him church.
(Pray)
(Lead into Communion)