Please turn in your copies of God's word to the book of Proverbs as we enter into Proverbs chapter four. Let's read together God's word from Proverbs chapter four verses one to nine. Hear, O sons, a father's instruction, and be attentive that you may gain insight. For I give you good precepts, and do not forsake my teaching. When I was a son with my father, tender, the only one in the sight of my mother, he taught me and said to me, Let your heart hold fast my words. Keep my commandments and live. Get wisdom, get insight. Do not forget and do not turn away from the words of my mouth. Do not forsake her and she will keep you. Love her and she will guard you. The beginning of wisdom is this, get wisdom and whatever you get, get insight. Prize her highly and she will exalt you. She will honor you if you embrace her. She will place on your head a graceful garland. She will bestow on you a beautiful crown. So ends the reading of God's word. Let us pray and ask the Lord's illumination to his word. Dear Lord, we once again thank you for your word that endures forever. Despite living in a world that fades with flowers fading and now trees having changed colors and falling from the trees, we have before us this evening a flower, a word that is unchanging in its significance, unchanging in its power, for it is not the words of man, but the words of you, O Lord. And so, Lord, please work through the preaching of that word to the good of our souls. In Jesus' name, amen. Well, as we have been following the leading of Lady Wisdom, she has taken us to a number of different venues and situations and places. We've been brought along to join the father-son fireside chat, to listen to the father impart wisdom to his son, and for us as well to listen and gain insight. We followed Lady Wisdom to the marketplace, to the town square, and to the city gate. She's called young and the naive to herself to learn and to gain wisdom in order to avoid the coming destruction. Well, now in Proverbs chapter four, verses one to nine, we are once again back in the family home. And we see the father take his son by the hand and bring him into his study. Dad's study is filled shelf to shelf with all kinds of books on every topic you could imagine. Some books are newer, but most books on the shelves are very, very old and perhaps even a little dusty. As they sit down, the son watches curiously as dad opens the drawer of his old oak desk and he pulls out a letter that by now the son knows must be very old because it's weathered and crinkled and slightly yellowed. And as the father unfolds this aged parchment, he explains to his son that this letter was written by his father, the boy's grandfather. And as he clears his throat and with deep reverence in his voice, he begins to read aloud the words that were penned by his father, now reading them to his own son. Well, this is the very scene that unfolds before us this evening in Proverbs chapter four. As the father tells his son, when I was a son with my father, tender, the only one in the sight of my mother, he taught me and said to me. And as the father is instructing his son in this way by teaching him his father's instruction, we are shown in vivid color the importance of passing on tradition from one generation to the next. Wisdom is something that is to be passed on. What this shows us is that wisdom has an abiding relevance for every generation. Although sons grow older and eventually themselves become fathers and, Lord willing, someday grandfathers, and yet the wisdom that is passed on from generation to generation never dies. never ages, never changes, it is timeless. And therefore wisdom is to be passed down from one generation to the next. Now the so-called wisdom of man that is nothing more than man leaning on his own understanding, well that is not wisdom and that deserves to die. Dead traditionalism must die. But wisdom that is from above is wisdom that is from the Heavenly Father, and that must be passed on from one generation to the next. And in doing so, we demonstrate our love for wisdom and ultimately for wisdom's source. Well, this evening, let's consider the following three points that we find in our passage. First, that wisdom is to be taught. Second, that wisdom is to be heard. And then third, that wisdom is to be loved. And let us, like the faithful son who is there before his father, let us sit in the presence of our father and learn what he has to teach us. And in doing so, let us love wisdom and love the one who gives us wisdom. Well, the first principle that we draw from these verses is that wisdom is to be taught. This passage opens with this beautiful picture of the father teaching his son, and the mother then supporting that instruction with loving care. The very first words are words of the father instructing his son. Hear, oh sons, a father's instruction, and be attentive that you may gain insight, for I give you good precepts. Do not forsake my teaching. God has given fathers the responsibility of training their children in the ways of wisdom. And this father takes that job very seriously. Notice how he begins by first gaining his son's attention, making sure he's listening so that he can pass on these insights and good precepts that should not be forsaken. And what's interesting is how the father recalls how he was taught wisdom by his father. Verse three, when I was a son with my father, he taught me and said to me, let your heart hold fast my words. So the father recalls the time when the boy's grandfather taught him. And notice when grandpa began teaching his son. Well, he didn't wait until the boy had become a teenager. He didn't wait until he was coming home from parties drunk. He didn't wait until there were police knocking at the door, bringing him home in their cruisers. No. What we're told is that... He is taught and trained from the earliest of ages. He says, when I was a son with my father, tender, the only one in the sight of my mother. He was tender, meaning he was young. He was weak. He was sensitive. He was like a sapling at that point. And it's then, not when he's grown up and all become twisted and gnarled by the world and weather and things around, but it's then when he's a sapling that the father sits him down when he's just a little guy. He sits him on his knee and he teaches him and he guides him. And that's when training begins, as early as possible. And notice also how it's not just dad, but mom equally has an important role in the training of the son. He describes himself as tender and the only one in the sight of my mother. His mother sees only him. These, of course, are poetic words that give to us or portray to us language of great affection. The mother deeply cares for her son, and she also is tenderly and lovingly training her son. It is equally the mother's role to train children in the household. Mothers play an important role, a vital role in the training of children in the ways of wisdom. And thus, both sons and daughters must equally respect both mom and dad. It isn't that one is to be feared and one is to be loved, but no, both mother and father are to be respected and loved. And both father and mother train and love and care for their children. And isn't this such a lovely scene, where we see the son being carefully taught by his father, and then to have the mother with her tender, loving care as the canopy around all of which this happens. Well, for some, this is not a lovely picture at all. For some, the training of children is not a popular idea or practice. On the one hand, children have the voice of the world telling them and counseling them to throw off the antiquated voices of a bygone era. It's common for young people today to think that their parents have it backwards, so they turn to their peers. As one person described it, we live in the age of the peer, where children and young people, teenagers, are both counseled, and in practice they tend to ignore and throw off the counsel of parents, and instead go to their peers for counsel and wisdom. But a peer is a poor substitute for a parent. All things being equal, a peer cannot provide the loving, wise counsel that a parent can. nor do they have the authority to rebuke and correct and discipline the way a parent does. So on the one hand, young people are encouraged to throw off the counsel of their out-of-touch parents, but they do so to their own detriment. On the other hand, parents are encouraged to have more of a hands-off approach with their children and teens. Parents are encouraged to, well, just let them figure it out for themselves. Let them make their own choices, and then your job is simply to support the choices that they do make. So we're told. I've said it before from the pulpit, but that's fine when it comes to them choosing ice cream flavors or what kinds of things they want to wear, but not when it comes to making the choice between the path of folly that leads to destruction and the path of life and wisdom and the way of righteousness. It may sound nice, just let them find their own way and then support them. But children, teens, even adults, need instruction and correction and training. Children left to themselves will choose the way that is the road to folly. As Proverbs 22, 15 says, folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him. So much of our culture looks down on the traditional family as a relic of the past. However, here we're shown in vivid color the roles that mother and father are to play in the passing down of wisdom from one generation to the next. Now it's very true that for many of us in this room, we did not have perhaps this picture of an ideal family with a caring, wise father and a loving, tender mother. Perhaps many of us grew up in homes that were not like this at all. Perhaps we had very difficult family circumstances. Perhaps even now, as we're sitting here, we have difficult homes. But even so, if you are a father or you're a mother, be encouraged in your God-given role, because God has placed you in this role to serve Him and to serve your children. is not some kind of patriarchal Western social construct. This isn't even something that is distinctly Christian, that is belonging to the church and to church members. No, this is a truth that is known by nature. This is how God in wisdom has created the world to work. And you've been given this role by God to pass along wisdom. to bear this responsibility of passing wisdom from one generation to the next. One man said to me one time, excusing his own passivity and inaction as a father, his own failure as a father. He said, I was never meant to be a father. Sorry, you are a father. And now you have the responsibility to be a father. That's what God has called you to. Yes, parenting is a lot of work. But it's also a great privilege when we look at this and we see the important life-shaping role that parents have in raising their children. No, we're not determined by how we were raised as children, but it does impact us. And as parents, on the one hand, yes, there's a fear and trembling that comes with that. But in another way, knowing that God has equipped us and given us grace to parent ought to be a great encouragement and motivation to train our children. May God give us the grace as parents to see those times of training less as an inconvenience and less of a necessary evil and a bother and more as an opportunity to mimic and copy our Heavenly Father who passes down wisdom to us that we might in turn instill that wisdom that's from above to our children. May God give us the grace to do this. So wisdom is to be taught. It's to be passed on. Secondly, wisdom is also to be heard. Not only are we responsible for passing wisdom along, we're also responsible for hearing and receiving the wisdom of our fathers. That's exactly what's happening in this passage. Verse one, the father says, hear, oh sons, a father's instruction. Notice that sons is plural, so there are multiple sons in view. But more than likely what is meant by this is not that the father has assembled a number of his sons in his presence before him, but rather the father here is speaking to a successive number of generations. Before him sits his own son, but as he imparts wisdom to his son, he's also aiming that his son will pass it on to his son, and so on and so forth. And so in that sense, he's addressing not only his son before him, but his generation of sons. And in case the son perhaps thinks that all this is just dad pontificating or this is dad on the soapbox or something, no, dad makes it very clear that he's not the source of all wisdom. In fact, what he has, he has because he's received it from his father. And thus he speaks of that time when I was a son with my father. Sometimes children have a very hard time imagining that their own parents at one point were children just like them. But children, believe it or not, your parents were children just like you. You might find it hard to believe, but your pastor was a child at one time. And we needed instruction too, and we received instruction in different ways. And that's what the father goes on to explain. Essentially, he says, son, when I was a boy just like you, Your grandfather, he took me to the same place and he sat me on his knee and he told me these words. He said to me, verse four, and he taught me and he said to me these things. What we learn from this is that wisdom is intergenerational. The father here is not creating wisdom out of thin air, so to speak. He's not speaking as if he were the fount of all knowledge and understanding. No, rather he, the father, that is, is placing himself within a tradition or a line of those who are passing on this wise understanding. He listened to his father, and now his son must listen to him. The father learned from the past, and now the son must learn also from that same past. There is wisdom in learning from the past. That is what God is teaching us here. So not only are we to teach those under our care, but we ourselves must have humble hearts and unplugged ears so that we are listening to the voices of those who have come before us. Again, this kind of thinking has fallen on hard times. We live in a time of the casting off of any kind of tradition. Basic institutions that are rooted in nature, like the family, are being deconstructed. History itself is being erased as statues are being torn down and destroyed. And you might have seen bases are being renamed. And whatever one might think of the people whom those statues represent and the people behind those names, we cannot deny that there is an antipathy towards the past. There is a rejection of the past. And this is just one more manifestation of that. And this can even happen in the church. C.S. Lewis described this as chronological snobbery, which is thinking that the new is always better than the old, and that the old is always worse than the new. And it really is a very arrogant position to take, to say that, well, every other generation throughout either a world history or even church history, well, they got it wrong, but finally, I or we are the ones who got it right. Or to say that, well, because this person is removed by space and time, they lived 100 years ago, that's so long ago, they have no right to speak into our lives today. Again, that's folly, that's a mistake. Now certainly we don't blindly follow tradition, that itself would be an error, but we nonetheless ought to have the humility to learn from the wisdom of past generations. The principle of listening to the voices of the past is especially relevant to the church, and to fail to do so will be to our own detriment. What would you say is the greatest danger to the church today? Well, in an article on church history, The church historian Carl Truman argues that, quote, one of the most significant threats to the reformed faith is that of the tendency of the modern world to be anti-historical. By this, I mean the aversion of modern men and women to tradition and history as a source of wisdom and even authority. I think he's right, I think he's right. to reject tradition as a source of wisdom and authority has led so-called evangelicals and the evangelical church into all manners of error, false doctrine, and bad practice, mischief, and mayhem. Or put positively, what are the ways we are to listen to the voices of the past. How does their wisdom from so long ago and passed down through the ages protect us and benefit us today? Well, creeds and confessions protect us from theological error, what Paul calls the pattern of sound words. So that even when there are big name evangelicals, big names even in the reformed world who are altering and changing some doctrine that the church has held for literally thousands of years. Rather than wondering what we should do, should we follow them? Rather than trying to reinvent the wheel, no one said we can go back to that carefully crafted pattern of sound words that we find in our confession and our catechisms and in the creeds of the ancient church. When we see and hear certain big name individuals, even like Wayne Grudem, trying to redefine the Trinity by introducing a hierarchy into God and the Trinity, it's then that we say no. We confess that God is triune, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and that these three are one God, the same in substance, equal in power and glory. And what we find, even with our confessions, is that they themselves weren't created out of thin air. No, they too relied on the voices of fathers before them. Of course, our confession All the 1689, actually written in 1687, of course, relied on the Savoy Declaration of the Congregationalists and upon the Westminster Confession of the Presbyterians. And even in those documents, you have words taken from the ancient creeds of the Church, like the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed and the Creed of Chalcedon. So those on whose shoulders we stand, they themselves are standing on shoulders of others before them. They too are listening to the voices of the past. And we do well to continue to listen to those voices. Tradition also has an important part to play in our liturgy. Why is our worship the way it is? Certainly in all of the things, everything I'm saying, scripture is our final authority. Please don't mishear me. But why is our worship the way it is? Why is it different from other churches? Well, it's not. I repeat, not. Because we're just into the traditional style of worship. That's just kind of our thing, as opposed to all of the modern stuff. And maybe one day the fellowship hall can be turned into the modern service or something, and there'll be all sorts of things. No, that's not our position. We don't worship the way we do because, well, that's the traditional way, and it makes us feel safe. No, we worship the way we do because First of all, principally, the regulative principle of worship is founded on scripture. But the reason we sing older hymns is because those are hymns that have stood the test of time. They weren't written two weeks ago by a guy sitting in pajamas in his basement strumming a guitar. No, we sing hymns that have been carefully chosen by the church over the ages. That's one of the problems with a lot of modern music. It's not that we don't sing contemporary hymns, we do, but a lot of the problem with contemporary Christian music is that the way it becomes accepted by the church in large is because it rises up the ranks of the popular hits. Whereas the hymns that we have today in our hymnal have stood the test of time. Generation after generation of believer has said this hymn is good enough to pass on to my children in the faith. And so I shall. So we sing hymns that have been forged in the fires, as it were, the crucible of the Christian community of faith. Many of her hymns are from the medieval church or even the ancient church, something we spent some time considering when I taught the class on the medieval church. And generation after generation has passed along these hymns. Again, our tradition, we're not bound to tradition. Ultimately, we're bound to scripture. But we would be very foolish not to listen to the voices of those who have gone before us in the faith, who have walked through persecution and fire and trial and come out the other side. Yes, maybe with a scar on their face, maybe with an eye missing, with many martyred, and yet they still hold fast to Christ. Let us also then, as their sons and daughters in the faith, sit before them as our fathers and listen to their voices that cloud of witnesses with humble and teachable hearts. Wisdom is to be taught. Wisdom is to be heard. Finally, wisdom is to be loved. The thing that ought to motivate us, both as we pass on wisdom to others and as we receive wisdom from others, is love, a love for wisdom. In verses four to nine, we finally get to the grandfather's words themselves. So at this point, the dad is recalling to his son what he has been taught by his father. So this is grandpa's letter. And the repeated command in grandpa's letter is to get wisdom. He says, let your heart hold fast to my words, keep my commandments and live. Get wisdom, get insight. Do not forget, do not turn away from the words of my mouth. In verse seven, the beginning of wisdom is this, get wisdom and whatever you get, get insight. I think the father or the grandfather couldn't be clearer at this point. What are we to do? We're to get wisdom. We're to acquire it. This word for get has the sense of perhaps to buy, to sell what one has in order to purchase it. This is the idea that the son must do whatever it takes to get wisdom, to lay hold of it, no matter what the cost. This may have been in the mind of Jesus when he compared the kingdom to a pearl of great price, and of the merchant who on finding one pearl of great value went and sold all that he had and bought it. That's the idea here, though the wording is almost identical. When you find wisdom, get it, lay hold of it, don't let it go. Next, the grandfather strengthens his appeal to his son by personifying wisdom as an attractive young woman. Look at verse 6. Do not forsake her, and she will keep you. Love her, and she will guard you. The imagery here is that of the son falling in love with wisdom as if she were a young woman. He says, treat wisdom like you would treat your sweetheart, your wife. You're not going to forget about your wife. You're smitten with her. You can't take your eyes off your sweetheart. And so it should be with wisdom. Don't let her out of your sight. Don't neglect her, but love her. In verse eight he says, prize her highly and she will exalt you. She will honor you if you embrace her. So he's to prize and value wisdom as a man should value and prize his wife. And there as well we see the language of embrace, embrace her. That's language of intimacy within marriage. You're to hold her, you're to care for her, you're to love her. That is to be your view of wisdom. You are to love wisdom, my son. There are also blessings. as we love wisdom and as we cling to her. The grandfather basically continues the metaphor, such that if you were as a faithful husband to wisdom, she will be like a faithful wife to you. If you prize her, she will honor you. If you guard her and keep her close, she will be loyal to you, she'll protect you. And the icing and cherry on top is verse nine, she will place on your head a graceful garland. She will bestow on you a beautiful crown. I think one of the overall points we're to see here is that wisdom is something lovely, and wisdom is to be loved. The father here, and in this case the grandfather, is not driving the son towards wisdom or to a particular lifestyle by beating him with a stick. No, instead he's wooing the son to wisdom, literally dressing wisdom as a woman and saying, pursue her. She's beautiful, and she'll care for you. Love is the motivation. Love and wisdom go together. And where one is present, both will be present. But where one is absent, both will be absent. And sadly, this idea and this practice and strategy of the grandfather tends to be missed by so many Christians. Instead of encouraging and training Christians to develop and cultivate wisdom, and a love for wisdom so often, and you see it all the time. Churches and church leaders, instead of training people in wisdom, why don't they just make a list of do's and don'ts, and here's your list. If ever you need to know what to do in the Christian life, well, just go back to that list of do's and don'ts. What do you need wisdom for? And this, of course, is the effect of sucking the life and joy out of service to the Lord and to his people. And when wisdom is exiled, then love is exiled. So that instead of being moved to freely serve God by love, we begin to serve the empty rules and empty traditions of man, driven by fear of man. And this is what crushes a Christian soul. This is what destroys our Christian witness. It destroys our witness to the outside world. It destroys our witness in the church. And sadly, it especially destroys our witness to our own children. In a book called Faith of Our Fathers, The author demonstrates how many, many key atheists and philosophers and thinkers had very negative encounters with Christianity at a very young age, usually by their fathers. One example is the atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell. Well, he had both of his parents die very sadly when he was only six years old. He was then sent to live with his grandparents and was raised by his grandmother, who was a Scottish Presbyterian. And she is described as being a strict and heartless authoritarian. Her joyless Christianity was the only faith Russell was exposed to, and so he rejected it. All he knew were the loveless and joyless do's and don'ts of her rules and her laws. There was no love of wisdom, and there was no love of Christ. And so as we Beloved, seek to pass on wisdom and the baton of wisdom and the faith to the next generation. We need to be aware of this cautionary tale of a loveless and wisdomless kind of empty traditionalism. Parents, as you teach your children, do you only try to lead them with the stick, so to speak. Do you only show them the negative consequences of folly, the prohibitions and the commands, or do you also seek to cultivate in them a heart of love, a love for God and thus a love to follow his ways in wisdom? Do you give them the freedom to exercise their God-given wisdom? As they see your life, and they do see your life, do they see love? Is your witness to them a mere conformity to bare externals? Or do they see a love that does not neglect wisdom, but embraces her and cherishes her and will not let her go? A loving wisdom must permeate the life of the parent if we hope to pass that on to our children. Put bluntly, you cannot give what you do not have. The same application applies to the church, and especially for those of us who are leaders in the church and teachers in the church, whether we are elders or we're gifted brothers who teach Sunday school or other venues, whether it's times of formal training and public training or it's times of private counsel. Are we passing on that wisdom from above? Or do we slip into that wisdom that simply leans on our own understanding? Do we promote a bare duty to externals and threaten the stick to those who don't meet that standard? Are we winning people to these things with love? Here's why you want to serve. Love for Christ. Are we seeking to present everyone under our care, mature in Christ, the one who is the very storehouse of wisdom itself? And as we look at this list and this application, all of us should say, what was me? We all fall short of these things. How often as parents we fail to love with the kind of love Christ has shown us. And what we all need is hearts that are changed and made more like the heart of Christ, the one who loved perfectly, the one who is perfectly wise. And that heart change can only come by his grace. And as we exalt him, as we treasure him, he is that pearl of great price for which we must sell all that we have to obtain. And when we've obtained him, we must hold him dear and keep him and love him and never forget him. Christ is the true and only son who has fully listened to the voice of his father. He was the obedient son. quite literally, he is the greater son of David and he's the greater, wiser grandson of Solomon who's writing these words. And he comes to us as the true wisdom of God who leads us in wisdom's ways, who forgives us for our many follies. He is the one to whom we must cling. He is the one who is given to us freely by the Father in the gospel. And so may God grant us this wisdom from above that we may, in humility, receive the wise counsel of previous generations, be diligent in passing on that wisdom to the next generation, and in all things, love wisdom, and in doing so, love wisdom's source. Let's pray. Oh Heavenly Father, our Father in heaven, we ask that you would do for us that which we cannot do for ourselves. Change our hearts, drive away the folly that remains, lead us in paths of life, teach us your ways, help us to be not only those who hear well but also teach well. as we pass on this wisdom from above to following generations. And in all things, stir in our hearts a love for Christ, the one who is wisdom itself, wisdom from on high. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.