“Choose Wisdom, Choose Life”

There is a voice.

It has been calling from the heights of the city for a very long time. Long before this church existed. Long before Midland existed. Long before there was a city or a road or a crossroads. Long before there was a listener to hear or a language to be heard in.

This voice was calling.

(brief pause)

For nine weeks we have been asking a question.

What kind of person am I becoming?

And every Sunday we have said the same thing. The voices you welcome shape the person you become.

We have listened for those voices. Sometimes we have named them. Sometimes we have tried to guard against them. Sometimes we have found ourselves at doors we never meant to walk toward, at tables we never meant to sit down at, hearing voices we should have refused.

But underneath every voice we have examined this summer, one voice has been calling. Steady. Unhurried. From the same height where she stood before the world began.

This morning she comes into view.

Solomon does not introduce her gently. He does not explain her. He simply lets her speak — and then, when the moment is right, he tells us where she was before she stood at the city gate.

She was with God. Before creation. Before the mountains. Before the deep.

Before there was a listener anywhere in the universe.

And this morning, she is going to invite us to a table.

Come and hear her.

The Voice That Has Been Calling All Along

Proverbs 8:1–6 CSB

Doesn’t wisdom call out? Doesn’t understanding make her voice heard? At the heights overlooking the road, at the crossroads, she takes her stand. Beside the gates leading into the city, at the main entrance, she cries out: “People, I call out to you; my cry is to the children of Adam. Learn to be shrewd, you who are inexperienced; develop common sense, you who are foolish. Listen, for I speak of noble things, and what my lips say is right.

Notice where she is standing.

Not in a hidden place. Not in a temple. Not in a place you have to be qualified to reach. At the heights of the road. At the crossroads. At the gate of the city. Where the traffic of every ordinary life passes through.

Every one of you has walked past her voice. Not once. Constantly. Every day of your life she has been there, at the height overlooking the road you were taking, calling to whoever would slow down long enough to hear.

Some of you have heard her without knowing what you were hearing. A moment of clarity in a hard season. A conviction that came from somewhere outside yourself. A restlessness in the middle of a life that looked fine on paper. That was her voice. She has been calling the whole time.

(brief pause)

And listen to what she offers.

Proverbs 8:10–11 CSB

Accept my instruction instead of silver, and knowledge rather than pure gold. For wisdom is better than jewels, and nothing desirable can equal it.

Now, loved ones, that is a direct word to a city like ours.

Midland measures a person by what they can acquire. That is in the water here. We respect the person who built something, who closed the deal, who read the play and made the money. And there is nothing wrong with hard work or good business. But somewhere along the way, most of us have quietly come to believe that the acquiring is the point — that if we could just get enough, secure enough, achieve enough, the deep hunger in us would finally be answered.

And Wisdom stands at the gate of the city and says: what I offer is better than gold.

Not gold-adjacent. Not a spiritual bonus on top of your real portfolio. Better than gold. Better than the thing you have organized your whole life around acquiring.

And here is the part that should stop a Wildcatter cold. You cannot buy it. There is no deal to close, no play to read, no amount you can accumulate that purchases it. Wisdom does not sell herself at the gate. She offers herself. You can only receive her the way you receive a gift — with an open hand, admitting you did not earn it and could not.

For a culture built on self-reliance, that is the hardest word and the best word. The best thing in the universe is not for sale. It is being given away. To whoever will stop trying to buy it and simply come.

(brief pause)

But now Solomon tells us where she came from. And what he says next is one of the most extraordinary passages in the whole Old Testament.

Proverbs 8:22–31 CSB

“The Lord acquired me at the beginning of his creation, before his works of long ago. I was formed before ancient times, from the beginning, before the earth began. I was born when there were no watery depths and no springs filled with water. Before the mountains were established, prior to the hills, I was given birth—before he made the land, the fields, or the first soil on earth. I was there when he established the heavens, when he laid out the horizon on the surface of the ocean, when he placed the skies above, when the fountains of the ocean gushed out, when he set a limit for the sea so that the waters would not violate his command, when he laid out the foundations of the earth. I was a skilled craftsman beside him. I was his delight every day, always rejoicing before him. I was rejoicing in his inhabited world, delighting in the children of Adam.

(brief pause — let it sit)

Loved ones, sit with those words for a moment.

Wisdom was with God before creation. She was with him when the mountains were set in their place. She was with him when the ocean was told where it could and could not go. She was with him when the horizon was drawn on the surface of the water. She was there, at his side, when the world was being made.

And she was his delight.

Every day. Always rejoicing. Not sometimes. Not on the good days. Every day, from eternity, the joy of the Father was in her, and her joy was in him.

And then Solomon adds one more line. And this is the line that stops me every time I read this chapter.

Proverbs 8:31 CSB

I was rejoicing in his inhabited world, delighting in the children of Adam.

Her delight was in you. Before there was a you to be delighted in.

Before your mother knew your name. Before Midland was a city. Before anyone had ever heard of West Texas. She was already rejoicing over you.

(brief pause)

Who is she?

Solomon did not fully know. He wrote what the Spirit gave him and he described a Wisdom too great to be a mere personification, too personal to be a mere attribute, too eternal to be a mere creature.

But we know.

Because when the fullness of time came, this same Wisdom took on flesh and walked among us. John opens his Gospel with the very words Solomon had already written: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were created through him. Paul writes to the Colossians: He is the image of the invisible God. Everything was created by him, in heaven and on earth. He is before all things, and by him all things hold together. Hebrews says of him: He is the radiance of God's glory and the exact expression of his nature, sustaining all things by his powerful word.

That is Proverbs 8.

Read by the light of an empty tomb.

The Wisdom calling from the heights of the road is the Son of God. The one who was with the Father before creation. The one who was the Father's daily delight. The one who was rejoicing over you before the world was made.

The voice that has been calling all summer is the voice of Christ.

He was at the height overlooking every road you have taken. He was at every crossroads of your life. He was standing at the gate of your city, at the entrance of your ordinary Wednesday, calling to you. And you did not know.

(brief pause)

But he did.

He knew every voice you welcomed instead of his. He knew every table you sat at that was not his. He knew every wrong door and every drift and every hollow season. And he kept calling.

Because his delight was in you. Before the world began.

The Two Tables

Now come to chapter 9. Because Wisdom does not just call from a distance. She does something with her call. She prepares a place. She sets a table.

Proverbs 9:1–6 CSB

Wisdom has built her house; she has carved out her seven pillars. She has prepared her meat; she has mixed her wine; she has also set her table. She has sent out her female servants; she calls out from the highest points of the city: “Whoever is inexperienced, enter here!” To the one who lacks sense, she says, “Come, eat my bread, and drink the wine I have mixed. Leave inexperience behind, and you will live; pursue the way of understanding.

Wisdom has set a table.

The one who was daily God's delight, who was rejoicing over you before the foundation of the world, has prepared a meal. She has slaughtered the meat. She has mixed the wine. She has set the places. And she has sent out her servants into the city — not to sell tickets, not to filter guests, but to call. Anyone. Everyone. Whoever will come.

Come. Eat. Drink. Live.

Four verbs. That is the whole gospel in four words.

(brief pause)

But now watch what Solomon does. Because he does not let us sit at Wisdom's table without showing us the other table too.

Proverbs 9:13–18 CSB

Folly is a rowdy woman; she is gullible and knows nothing. She sits by the doorway of her house, on a seat at the highest point of the city, calling to those who pass by, who go straight ahead on their paths: “Whoever is inexperienced, enter here!” To the one who lacks sense, she says, “Stolen water is sweet, and bread eaten secretly is tasty!” But he doesn’t know that the departed spirits are there, that her guests are in the depths of Sheol.

Notice what Folly does.

She sets up shop in the same city. She takes the same highest point. She calls out to the same people. She uses the same words. Come. Enter. Eat.

Folly does not announce herself as folly. She copies Wisdom's invitation. She sits in the same neighborhood. She calls to the same passersby. And she says almost exactly what Wisdom says.

Almost.

Because Wisdom says: eat my bread, drink my wine, and live.

Folly says: stolen water is sweet, and bread eaten secretly is tasty.

The difference is not in the volume. The difference is in what is on the table. Wisdom's table is her own bread. Her own wine. Prepared by her, set by her, offered to whoever will come. Folly's table is stolen. Secret. Something taken rather than given. Something that must be eaten quickly, in the shadows, before the true owner discovers what has been taken.

And Solomon adds the line that stops every honest reader in his tracks.

Proverbs 9:18 CSB

But he doesn’t know that the departed spirits are there, that her guests are in the depths of Sheol.

The people at Folly's table do not know they are already dead.

They are eating. They are enjoying the meal. The bread tastes sweet. The water tastes good. And underneath the meal, they are seated among the departed — everyone who sat at this table before them and never got up. Folly's house is not just a house. It is a graveyard with a table set in it. And the guests do not know.

That is the anatomy of every wrong table you have ever sat at. It is the anatomy of every appetite that promised satisfaction and delivered emptiness. Every relationship that offered belonging and left you more alone. Every ambition that promised significance and swallowed the years of your life. Every voice that called from the heights of the city with words that sounded like Wisdom but delivered you to a table set among the dead.

(brief pause)

Loved ones, we have been talking about this all summer.

The seduction of folly is that she sits at the same city gate as Wisdom. She uses the same word: come. The person walking toward the wrong table does not know he is walking toward a graveyard. He hears the invitation. He smells the meal. He sees the light in the doorway. And he goes in.

Every voice we have examined this summer was calling from a table set somewhere in Sheol. The seducer's bed. The drifter's rationalization. The workaholic's numb ambition. The whisperer's discord. The vacant heart's counterfeit intimacy. All of it — every table — with the same fine linen and the same fragrant meal and the same call at the door. And every one of them full of the departed.

That is one table.

And there is another table.

(brief pause)

The voice that has been calling from the heights of Proverbs 8 — Wisdom, who is Christ — has set a real table. And what is on it is not stolen. It is given. Freely. At infinite cost.

The bread is his body. The wine is his blood.

(brief pause)

I want you to hold two pictures together for a moment. Because the whole gospel lives in the distance between them.

The first picture is the one we saw in Proverbs 8. The Son of God, before the world was made, at the Father's side. Rejoicing. His delight in the children of Adam. The joy of the Father poured into the Son and the joy of the Son poured back, from all eternity, before there was a single shadow anywhere in the universe.

That is where he started.

Now hold the second picture beside it. That same Son — the eternal delight of the Father — hanging on a Roman cross outside the city gate. Beaten. Abandoned. The joy of heaven drained out of his face. And in the deepest moment of it, crying out that even the Father had turned away.

The one who was rejoicing over you before the world began was crushed for you at the end of it.

Why?

Because there was no other way to set the table.

Every wrong table you have ever eaten at — every appetite you fed with something that was not his, every meal you took in the graveyard without knowing the departed were there — someone had to answer for that. The bill for every stolen meal came due. And rather than hand it to you, he paid it himself. He got up from the table of eternal delight and walked to the place of the departed spirits, and he sat down in your seat, and he drank the cup you had poured for yourself.

That is what it cost to prepare this meal.

He did not set the table by speaking a word from a safe distance. He set it by dying. He gathered the bread by letting his body be broken. He mixed the wine by letting his blood be poured out. And then — on the third day — he walked out of the grave, out of the very house of the departed that Folly's table leads to, alive.

Which means Wisdom's table is not a symbol. It is a real table. Hosted by a real Christ who is really alive. Set for real people who will really live because they came.

Come. Eat. Drink. Live.

That was Solomon's poetry three thousand years ago. And it is Christ's invitation this morning.

(brief pause)

Some of you have been sitting at a wrong table for a long time. You did not know you were sitting among the departed. The meal seemed fine. The bread seemed sweet. But something in you has been dying for years, and this morning you are beginning to recognize what has been happening.

Get up from that table.

You do not have to keep eating what is killing you.

And some of you have never sat at any table. You have been walking past Wisdom's voice at the city gate for years. You heard the invitation. You have not answered it. Today is the day.

Come.

Not tomorrow. Not after you clean yourself up. Not after you feel worthy. Wisdom did not build her house for the qualified. She built it for the inexperienced. She set her table for whoever will come. That is you. That is everyone in this room. That is the whole invitation.

And receiving that invitation is not complicated. You repent — you get up from the wrong table. You trust — you take your place at his. That is what faith is. A rising and a coming. A leaving and an arriving. The one who is Wisdom, the one who was rejoicing over you before the world began, is calling you to his table right now.

(brief pause)

In a moment, we are going to do exactly what this text describes.

We are going to rise from these seats and come forward to a table. This table right here in this room. It is the same table Wisdom has been setting since Proverbs 9. It is the same table Jesus set on the night before he was betrayed, when he took bread and said this is my body, broken for you. It is the same table the church has been coming to for two thousand years. And it is the same table you are being invited to this morning.

And I want you to hear what you are actually coming to.

You are not coming to a ritual. You are not coming to a religious obligation you check off once a month. You are coming home to the delight we read about in Proverbs 8. The same Son who was rejoicing over you before the mountains were made is the one who set this table. The delight that was in him before the world began is the delight that walked to a cross to make you a place. And when you rise from your seat and come forward this morning, you are answering the voice that has been calling you from the heights your whole life — and finally coming home to the one whose joy you have been the whole time.

That is what this table is. It is the delight of God, made edible. It is the joy the Son has had in you since before creation, held out in bread and cup, and offered to you by name.

(brief pause)

I want to speak specifically to the people who were baptized three weeks ago. This is your table now. You are part of the family. You come, along with everyone else who has trusted Christ, to receive what he gave for you.

And I want to speak to the person who has never trusted Christ. The Lord's Table is not for you yet — but the invitation is. The gospel call is for you right now. Get up from the wrong table. Come to First Steps at the back of this room and tell someone: I want to trust Christ today. Do that this morning, and one Sunday soon you will walk down the aisle of this room to a table that has been calling you your whole life.

Whoever you are this morning, Wisdom is calling.

Come.

(brief pause)

Here is the bottom line I want you to carry out of this room today:

Every voice calls you to a table. Only one of them is Christ's.

Come to his.