Proverbs 2:God Protects

God’s Wisdom Offers Protection

Intro: Our lives are filled with choices. Have you ever played he would you rather game? It’s something that is fun, especially if you are on a road trip. If you never heard them or played the game, Here are a few: Would you rather have one eyebrow or no eyebrows? Would you rather be bald forever or have terrible haircuts forever? Or would you rather be an astronaut or a race car driver? Or would you rather know where you are going after you die or know when you are going to die?

Some choices have immediate consequences and others have delayed ones. If we choose to grab the pie out of the oven without oven mitts, we burn our hand. We know it was a bad choice. If we know our oven mitts need replaced, but we don’t buy them when we go to Walmart, the outcome is still the same, we burn our hands.

The same can be said for How we use God’s Wisdom. If we know it but don’t use it, it is worse than not knowing it and the outcome is the same. We get burned.

This is what Solomon is presenting in this proverb, because there are a few If/Then statements to help guide his son, or the hearer of how to make choices when they are confronted with situations while they are on the path of life

Read Verses: 1-12

MP: God’s Wisdom offers You Protection

I. God’s Wisdom Protects You Where you Go (1-12)

The idea of being on a path repeats several times in this proverb, Particularly verse 8 that says God may guard the paths of justice and protect the way of his faithful followers or His saints.

In the first 12 verses Solomon is presenting to his son the positives to listening or obeying God’s wisdom. Solomon gives three If statements in 1,3, and 4

Each statement is two halves that says basically the same thing in slightly different ways in a poetic nature.

“If you accept my words and store up my commands within you, listening closely”

If you call out to insight

And if you Seek it like silver.

If you 1) Accept the wisdom, 2) Ask for it or cry out for it and 3) Seek for it,

Then a few things will happen, you will understand the fear of the Lord, and you will also discover the knowledge of God

Life is made up of If/Then statements. If I eat a tub for Ice cream, then I will get a stomach ache. If I go to work for 40 hours, then I get paid my salary

The interesting thing is that Solomon tells us that God gives us wisdom, he is our shield, and he guards the paths of His followers or his faithful ones. So we see this application of our free will and how it interacts with God’s sovereignty.

“We soon discover that wisdom is a product of both intense personal discipline (vv. 1–5) and God’s grace (v. 6). God’s wisdom comes only as a gift, but He does not give it if we will not seek it. When we seek God’s wisdom and He extends it to us, we enjoy the benefit of protection from the evil” on the path of life and those people we meet along the road.

Accept or Receive

What does it look like to accept or receive as some versions translate the phase someone’s word? When I joined the Air Force, I signed a contract for four years that said, they would train me, clothe me, and pay me and in return, I would do whatever they say, within the Law and they could send me wherever their needs saw fit. I had to accept the Air Forces word that thy would fulfill their end of the deal. I also had to fulfill my end of the deal. I had to graduate technical school and not get in to too much trouble so I didn’t get kicked out. I had No idea how this worked or where I would end up. I had to take it on faith that I wouldn’t end up in Minot North Dakota.

When you trust God, you are exercising your faith in Him that he is going to take care of you. God Gives you the faith to believe in Him.

Ask

Asking God for knowledge and guidance is the indication that you have accepted or received God’s word and you need help. When you pray you put your faith into action. This is why prayer should be the first step and not a last resort.

Seek

You have to go looking for God. He will not just come up to you and announce who he is. You have to be constantly looking and watching for Him. Watching for his word and answers to your prayers. Miners that go look for silver or Godl expect to find it where they look.

ESV

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.

And seeking is something that appears in about 100 verses in the Bible.

ESV “Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near;

ESV Seek the Lord and his strength; seek his presence continually!

ESV For thus says the Lord to the house of Israel: “Seek me and live”

God offer protection in you life and the road you are on. The protection you have is not only from evil people but more importantly it is from his wrath. On the cross, Jesus bore God’s wrath for his faithful ones so that they would be able to stand in God’s presence blameless. This is the ultimate protection he offers the believer. If you believe then God protects you, he saves you from his wrath. In verse 12 the wisdom will rescue you from the evil way. Jesus rescues you from the fate of the unbeliever. We can delight and be joyful knowing that we are saved.

TS: In the meantime, while we are on this earth, walking on your path, you will meet people, they are going to tell you things and you have to decide whether that are they there to help you or harm

II. God’s Wisdom Protects you from Deceivers (12-22)

In the second half, Solomon transitions from the positive outcome of following God to the negative aspect of the world around us. He warns his son of the deciding man and the tempting woman. Both of them use their words, but the mans words are perverse and the woman’s words are flattering, but both are used to deceive you to follow them on their wicked paths that lead to evil or sinks down to death.

The people we are warned about delight or rejoice in doing the exact opposite of God’s instruction. These people have taken the wrong path and are currently outside of God’s protection. Not because God is unable to protect them, but because they are unwilling to accept His words or seek his guidance.

The adulterous woman refers to someone outside of your marriage covenant if you are married.

Have you seen or heard of escape rooms? They are kind of latest craze that tests people's skills ,and knowledge and maybe the Iliad to work as a team to get out of. A locked room by following clues and solving puzzles that are hidden all over the room. There is usually a time limit to get out and if you beat it then you win. But you can choose to go into this room, but after an hour someone lets you out.

Likewise, The person who is unfaithful to God locks themselves out of the Kingdom of heaven. “The pull of immorality’s vortex is nearly inescapable. When you walk through the door of any kind of sin, it slams behind you and you soon discover that it is a door with a knob on only one side. While the possibility of repentance is always held out to the penitent, the nature of sin is such that it blinds to that possibility.

And so before you are saved, you can get so wrapped up in the sin, and so deep, that you may feel like there is no way out. You stop trying to open the door and just give in to the sin.

But there is a way. There is someone to open the door for you to let you escape. We go back to the beginning where you accept God’s Wisdom and the need for salvation. That you can’t get out of the locked room that is sin.

If you are one of his faithful ones, then God is giving you All of the clues to solve the mystery and point you to Him. The answer to the clues is Jesus. He is the one that holds the key to your freedom he s the one that guides you on the road to Heaven. Jesus is the beacon that we follow the path of righteous.

Conclusion:

Solomon End’s on another choice in the least two verses. Be upright and Follow the righteous path or be wicked and be cutoff from the land.

The same goes for us; the path we choose to walk determines our destination.

Action: You can Accept God’s word as truth because he is truth and what he says can be trusted.

You stay upright by constantly Asking God for wisdom because the information we can learn about him is inexhaustible.

You can continuously Seek Him in your life to learn about him, and like a miner looking for silver and gold, you have to keep digging, and then move to the next creek or hole to keep looking.

And when you find him, you know you have found the most valuable item in the universe

ESV

“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it.

So we will end how we started: Would you rather walk the broad, inviting road that may seem like a never ending carnival ride, fun at first, but then it becomes terrifying because you cannot get off the ride. Or would you rather walk the narrow path of the righteous knowing that God is protecting you that may be considered boring or plain by many, but end up in the Kingdom of God.

ESV

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it.