Sermon Tone Analysis

NOTE:

This is a manuscript, and not a transcript of this message.

The actual presentation of the message differed from the manuscript through the leading of the Holy Spirit.

Therefore, it is possible, and even likely that there is material in this manuscript that was not included in the live presentation and that there was additional material in the live presentation that is not included in this manuscript.

Engagement

I read this week about a reporter that was interviewing a 104 year old woman.

He asked her, “What is the best thing about being 104 years old?”

She answered, “No peer pressure”.

I suppose that is probably the best way to avoid peer pressure, isn’t it?

Just outlive all your peers.

Tension

But for the rest of us who aren’t quite there yet, peer pressure is something we all have to deal with.

That is true if you’re in elementary school, or junior high, or high school, or college or even an adult.

As a student, you might face peer pressure to dress a certain way, or to cheat on a test, or to drink alcohol under the bleachers at a football game.

As an adult, you might face peer pressure to cut corners in your job or to do something immoral or unethical in order to make some more money.

But that is really nothing new.

When Solomon wrote the book of Proverbs nearly 3,000 years ago, it appears that peer pressure was a problem then, too, because it is one of the first things he is going to address in this book.

Truth

Last week we looked at the first seven verses of the book of Proverbs which ended with the verse that is essentially the theme verse for the entire book.

We learned that there are two ways we can live our lives.

We can live wisely by recognizing that God is God and I am not and follow His purposes, plans and ways, or we can be fools by living as if we are our own gods.

Today, we’ll pick up in verse 8 of chapter 1.

That verse begins a long prologue to the book that will extend all the way to the end of chapter 9.

That prologue consists of 12 separate poems that set the stage for the part of the Proverbs that most of us are familiar with - the pithy sayings about how to live wisely.

This morning we’ll cover the first of those poems, which picks up where we left off this week and extends all the way to verse 19:

This section begins with the first of 22 appeals that Solomon will make to his son in the book of Proverbs.

Likely the recipient of Solomon’s teaching was his son Rehoboam, but if that is the case, this wise instruction unfortunately fell on deaf ears based on what we know about him from the Bible.

Let’s not let that happen in our lives.

Before we start digging into this passage, it’s important to note that not all peer pressure is negative.

Often peer pressure can actually be a good thing when it encourages us to live according to God’s plan for our lives.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that one of the important benefits of the church is that it should be a place where we can find that kind of positive peer pressure.

But as you’ve probably already figured out, the passage we’re looking at this morning deals with negative peer pressure.

And here is the big idea we’re going to develop today:

I overcome peer pressure by living to please God instead of living to please people.

But how exactly do I do that?

This passage provides us with some very practical advice and I’m going to break that down into two main sections:

First, I want to talk about how to figure out when someone is “pulling my strings”.

Then I want to discuss how we are to respond to that peer pressure in a way that will help us live to please God rather than to please people.

So as long as you’re under 104 - and I’m pretty sure that is all of you - this message is relevant for your life.

HOW TO FIGURE OUT WHEN SOMEONE IS “PULLING MY STRINGS”

Have you ever watched someone control a puppet?

They do that by pulling on the strings attached to the puppet.

Do you ever feel like others are trying to control you like that - like they are pulling your strings?

Sometimes that can be a good thing.

Like we talked about last week, when we’re young, we need our parents to do that in order to protect us.

As I said earlier, some kinds of peer pressure are good for us.

But sometimes people are pulling our strings in a way that is going to harm us.

And we don’t always see that.

There are three words that all begin with the letter “H” that will help us to identify when someone is pulling our strings like that.

You probably already know these intuitively but it won’t hurt for us to talk about them for a few minutes.

Hide

We see this primarily in verse 11:

Most of the time peer pressure lures us into hiding.

Notice here that the sinners who are trying to entice others are lying in wait.

They are ready to ambush others.

In other words, they are not doing this out in the open, but they are hiding their actions from others.

Negative peer pressure will almost always ask you to hide something from others.

Kids, you will be asked to hide things from your parents or your teachers.

In your job, a co-worker might ask you to hide something from the boss or your boss might ask you to deceive a customer.

Or it might be a friend who shares a juicy tidbit of gossip and asks you not to tell anyone where you heard it.

In the New Testament we frequently see the contrast between dark and light.

And one of the functions of light is to expose sin:

So whenever anyone asks us to hide something they are essentially asking us to choose darkness over light.

And that not only harms us, it impacts our relationship with God and with others, too.

Hurt

In verse 11, as well as throughout the rest of the passage, we see that those who are exerting the negative peer pressure are intending on hurting others - even to the point of killing them.

So when I’m pressured to go along with what someone else wants to do, I need to ask, “Is someone going to get hurt if I do this?”

Here in Proverbs the hurt is pretty obvious because it involves physical harm.

And sometimes we might be asked to do something like that.

But more likely we’re going to be urged to harm someone in a much more subtle way - maybe to damage their reputation by spreading gossip or to hurt someone emotionally by going along with others as they make fun of a classmate.

It might be doing financial harm to someone by swindling them out of their money with a pyramid scheme.

Or it could be exploiting someone else for our own pleasure.

Have

We see this idea primarily in verse 13:

The sinner is enticing others to join in as they take from others what does not belong to them.

They are asking others to be part of their efforts to plunder others rather than rely on the fruits of their own labor.

Again this is an obvious example.

I think we all know that it is wrong to steal from others.

But there are a lot of other ways we can take that which does not belong to us.

Cheating on a test means that we might get a grade we didn’t work for or don’t deserve.

Cheating on our income taxes is essentially stealing money that belongs to our government.

Any kind of get rich quick scheme, including the lottery and other forms of gambling, promise to give us something we didn’t earn.

Even sex outside the commitment of marriage is essentially taking something from others that we don’t have a right to.

So the next time someone tries to pressure you into going along with something they are planning to do, you need to ask:

Will this require me to hide something?

Will this harm someone?

Will this allow me to have something that I’m not entitled to?

And if the answer to any of those questions is “yes”, then you can be sure that someone is trying to pull your strings - and not in a beneficial way.

When that happens, how am I to respond?

Application

HOW TO RESPOND TO NEGATIVE PEER PRESSURE

The basic principle is found in the command in verse 10:

That seems pretty obvious.

But what are some practical things that I can do that will help me to not give in to those who try to pressure me into doing things that I shouldn’t do?

There are four other commands in this passage that give us that practical guidance.

The first two are things we need to do well before anyone ever attempts to pull our strings.

And the last two are the actions we should take once that occurs.

Know God’s heart

Last week we defined wisdom as “God-enabled skill for living”.

So that means that long before these temptations come along, we need to be actively seeking to know God’s heart and His principles for living.