Well, please turn with me, if you would, to the book of Proverbs. Today we will be considering chapter 2 in its entirety. Proverbs 2, verses 1 through 22. Read it, and then we'll spend a few moments meditating on these rich verses. Proverbs 2, beginning at verse 1. My son, if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you, making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding, yes, if you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding, if you seek it like silver and search for it, ask for hidden treasures, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. For the Lord gives wisdom. From his mouth come knowledge and understanding. He stores up sound wisdom for the upright. He is a shield to those who walk in integrity, guarding the paths of justice and watching over the way of his saints. Then you will understand righteousness and justice and equity, every good path, for wisdom will come into your heart and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul. discretion will watch over you, understanding will guard you, delivering you from the way of evil, from men of perverted speech who forsake the paths of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness, who rejoice in doing evil and delight in the perverseness of evil, men whose paths are crooked and who are devious in their ways. So you will be delivered from the forbidden woman, from the adulteress with her smooth words, who forsakes the companion of her youth and forgets the covenant of her God. For her house sinks down to death and her paths to the departed. None who go to her come back, nor do they regain the paths of life. So you will walk in the way of the good and keep to the paths of the righteous, for the upright will inhabit the land and those with integrity will remain in it, but the wicked will be cut off from the land and the treacherous will be rooted out of it. Let's pray. Lord, what a treasure your word is. It's true, it's trustworthy, it's clear, and it's powerfully capable of doing everything you intend for it to do, so much so that the prophets of old have said that this word, your word, will not return void, but will accomplish exactly what you have sent it out to accomplish. And so with confidence this morning, we ask that you would take this rich treasure and work it into our minds and hearts and lives in such a way that this word bears much fruit in our lives. We pray all these things for your glory and for our good. And in Jesus name, amen. Well, today's text contains the parents second speech to their son. The first speech was back in chapter one, verses eight through 19. We've already mentioned the repetitive nature of the book of Proverbs, and hence the need to ask of each new section what the unique points of emphasis are. Otherwise, we just have 31 chapters of a general admonition to be wise. So how is this second parental speech distinct from the first one? Well, for one, the first speech focused on the son's bias towards foolishness. It exposed the fact that the son's affections, if left to themselves, naturally want to run toward evil, not towards wisdom. In the second speech, then, the parent's emphasis is on the need for the son to intentionally and conscientiously direct his heart toward wisdom, towards godliness. We could say the first speech is maybe the negative warning and the second speech is the positive exhortation. Also, I think we could say that the first speech focuses on the son's behavior and compliance or lack thereof. It's a call to do what is right, to do as you're told by those who care about you. The second speech focuses on the son's affections, what he loves, what he desires, what he wants. If the first speech is saying, listen and heed wise counsel, the second speech is saying, listen and love wise counsel. It's an appeal to the affections. So today's speech from the parent to the son is a very positive exhortation to not only receive godly instruction and wise counsel, but also to love that godly instruction and wise counsel. And then it explains all the incredibly beneficial consequences that will come to the son as he heeds and loves godliness. Having told the son to avoid the bad path, he now tells him to walk down the good path and to delight in that good path because there is protection and joy in the good path. could perhaps say the proposition of this second speech is that pursuing godliness will result in godliness that gladdens and guards. Pursuing godliness will result in godliness that both gladdens and guards. What you pursue is is what you get. If you pursue godliness, truly and wholeheartedly, you will get godliness. And that godliness will gladden. It will fill your life with lasting joy. and it will also guard, it will keep you from the pitfalls that foolish, simple-minded people commonly fall into. So verses 1-4 of Proverbs 2 outline for us the conditions for growing in godliness. Verses 5-19 describe the consequences then of growing in godliness. And then the last three verses of the chapter summarize the conclusion of the chapter. So conditions, consequences, and conclusion. With that structure in mind, let's consider first the conditions for growing in godliness. Verses one through four, you'll notice, contain three conditional statements, three if statements. These are the things that a person who is choosing the right path, the good path, will do. Verse one, If you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you, making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding. Yes, if you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding, if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures." Now notice the verbs, the action words in these conditional statements. They're words like receive, treasure, make attentive, incline, call out, raise your voice, seek, search. These are all words that pertain to our affections. What are our affections? Well, our affections are those inclinations or passions, the desires that captivate our imagination, the passions that interest our mind, that stir our emotions, that drive our will to action. In short, an affection is the love you have for a particular object. That object may be a good thing, may be a bad thing. The point we need to notice is that Proverbs 2 assumes that our affections can be steered. They aren't in the driver's seat, or at least they don't have to be in the driver's seat. They can be governed. directed and inclined in a certain direction. In fact, Proverbs 2 is telling us that our affections ought to be steered in a particular direction. It's saying that we ought to treasure this thing and not that thing. We ought to be attentive to this voice and not that voice. We ought to, in essence, love one thing and not the other. The grossly overused conventional wisdom of our day is follow your heart, listen to your affections, and do what they tell you to do. The voice of wisdom in Proverbs 2 is saying the exact opposite. It's saying stop following your heart and start leading your heart. Start subjecting the desires and passions of your mind, will, and emotions to something besides your mind, will, and emotions. Start taking control of these passions, these affections, and steer them towards wisdom. towards the sensible commandments of a parent, towards the intelligent thought processes of God's truth, God's morality, God's estimation of what is good and beautiful and true. Stop following your heart and start governing your heart so that it will go where it ought to go, so that it will be inclined towards wisdom and godliness. So the million dollar question then is, how does a person incline their heart towards a certain affection? The word incline literally means to stretch towards, to bend in a certain direction. It's the word used to describe Moses stretching out his hands over the Red Sea during the Exodus. It's the word used of God when his arms are outstretched towards his children in mercy and grace. It implies moving one's attention and focus toward a particular object. It's the word used to describe Abram pitching his tent toward the promised land, inclining his tent toward the promised land, while Lot, on the other hand, pitched his tent toward Sodom. Abram's heart was following God, and that commitment, that inclination, was visibly demonstrated in the fact that he set up his tent where God told him to set up his tent. on the other hand, pitched his tent or inclined his heart towards Sodom, and we all know how that ended. So the idea of inclining the heart works in both directions. We can incline our heart towards good and towards evil. Isaiah 3 describes unfaithful Israel as a prostitute who stretches out her neck, inclines her neck in such a way as to attract all the wrong kind of attention from all the wrong kinds of people. The fact is we can put ourselves in the way of foolishness just as we can put ourselves in the way of wisdom. To incline my heart towards wisdom and godliness then is to set a trajectory for my life and for my heart that moves away from those loves and passions that will diminish or obscure godliness and start steering my heart with its passions and interests and loyalties towards those things that my wise counselors including my parents, godly teachers, God's Word, the indwelling Holy Spirit, according to the things that those counselors say are good and right and beneficial. Now understand that the way we steer our affections is not by focusing on our affections. We steer our affections by focusing on the object of our affections. I don't increase my love for God by dwelling on my love for God. I increase my love for God by dwelling on God, the object of my love. I don't learn to love wisdom by focusing on my keen interest in wisdom. No, I train myself to love wisdom by focusing on wisdom. We love what we think about. We love what we invest time in. The more we understand something, the more we appreciate and love it. And so these conditional statements of verses one through four are going to involve conscious effort to think about and meditate on and delight in and enjoy those things that wisdom says I ought to be thinking about and meditating on and delighting in and enjoying. So the condition for growing in godliness is that I actively incline my heart towards godliness. But notice then what happens as I do this. As this condition is met, and this brings us secondly to the consequences of growing in godliness, verses five through 19 describe three incredibly good consequences that come about as we incline our hearts towards godly wisdom. The first of these three consequences is that we obtain a good theology, a good theology. Look with me at verse five. then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. That's a great definition of theology, isn't it? Finding the knowledge of God. And that's what you get when you incline your heart to know God. You get the knowledge of God. You understand him better. You come to know his word, his truth better. And in knowing God and his word better, you come to better understand what it means to fear the Lord. Now if we go back to Proverbs 1-7 and remind ourselves of the cardinal truth of the whole book of Proverbs, namely that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, we realize that fearing God is the basis, it's the foundation, the grounds of having a right knowledge in every facet of life. And so as a result of inclining one's heart, one's affections towards godliness, A person, in turn, attains a robust understanding of God and His truth, which leads to a righteous fear of God, which opens the door for gaining a useful and right grasp of truth in any area that pertains to life, and the world, and fulfillment, and happiness. This is one of the consequences of inclining my heart to wisdom. It yields a good theology. which in turn increases my fear of the Lord and then produces the good fruit of right thinking, right understanding about a host of things, about everything. Now before we look at the second consequence that's mentioned, let me point out something that's very crucial for us to understand. Verses 6 and 7 tell us what, or rather who, is causing this sequence of events. It tells us how a shift in the trajectory of the affections leads to a right knowledge about God, which leads to Fearing God, which opens the door to a right knowledge in all of life. How does this sequence work? What's causing it to function the way it does? Look at verse six. For the Lord gives wisdom. From his mouth come knowledge and understanding. He stores up sound wisdom for the upright. He is a shield to those who walk in integrity. You see, God is the reason this works the way it does. God is behind it all. This is God's world. He ordains the means and the ends. He governs the secondary causes and effects because he himself is the first cause of all things, the unmoved mover. He is God. If I have wisdom, it is because, verse six, the Lord has given me wisdom. Well, someone might ask, well then, why does it matter whether I incline my heart toward wisdom? If God sovereignly gives or withholds wisdom at his will, then que sera sera, whatever will be will be. I'll just eat, drink, and be merry because my lot in life is already predetermined by the immutable providence of God. You can live your life that way, but it would be the height of foolishness to do so. Why? Because the same God who ordains the end result also ordains the means by which those end results come about. And the divinely ordained means by which wisdom and godliness are attained in this life is the seeking of these virtues in the fear of the Lord. Yes, you can only attain wisdom if God gives it to you, but he has said, I will give wisdom to the one who seeks it and asks for it and inclines his heart toward it. So beloved, run hard after wisdom, incline your hearts towards godliness, knowing all the while that we are absolutely and utterly dependent on God for the attainment of it. Why? Because it is the Lord who gives wisdom. Well, the wisdom God gives begins with the gift of good theology. We will come to know God and understand him rightly, but there's a second consequence or blessing that we obtain as we incline our hearts towards godliness, and it's that we, number two, obtain good morals, good morality. Verse nine, then you will understand righteousness and justice and equity, in fact, every good path. So not only will we come to understand God rightly, we'll come to understand God's ways rightly. God's world works the way it does because God designed it to work the way it does. The other day I was trying to videotape my son's basketball game and live stream it for the parents who couldn't be there. I was using my cell phone, but my tripod that I had on hand was not designed to work with a cell phone. So I grabbed a couple of ponytail holders from Laura's purse, and I tried to strap the phone perilously on the tripod with these ponytail holders. Needless to say, it didn't work very well. The phone kept going sideways or popping out from off the tripod. I couldn't see the screen well enough to know if I was even capturing the game or not. It was frustrating. I'm sure it was annoying to the parents watching the live stream feed that night. because that's not how my tripod was designed to function. When it comes to right living in God's creation, God designed his world to function a certain way. When we alter that design or distort God's intention, it's simply not going to work right. We may have a semblance of life as it was intended, but it's going to eventually fall apart and crumble because it's not what the designer had in mind. The last several years of life in America have been an absolute parade of people trying to live life by their own rules instead of according to the designer's rules. And it's been a moral and cultural mess. It's like trying to use ponytail holders for a tripod. It just doesn't work. When on the other hand, our lives and morality and values conform to the intention of the designer, things go as they ought to go. When we conform to the wisdom of our creator, we begin to understand how justice works. We begin to understand why right living is best. We begin to notice and enjoy every good path. With wisdom comes good morals. The third consequence of inclining our hearts towards godliness then is protection. And this blessing of protection is alluded to throughout chapter two, verse seven, it shields us. Verse eight, it guards our paths and watches over the saints. Verse 11, it watches over us and guards us. Verse 12, it delivers us. There is protection to be found in a godly life. Now Solomon goes on for many verses describing what exactly we are being protected from. So let's consider this for a moment. First, the one who inclines his heart towards godliness receives protection from the evil man. Verse 12, from men of perverted speech. And what is the defining characteristic of this evil man, verse 13? He forsakes the path of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness. This implies that the evil man was once on the right path, but he chose to forsake it. This isn't merely an atheist. It's an atheist who was once a professing Christian. He knows better, but has consciously chosen the evil path over the righteous path. And not only has this evil man chosen the evil path, he, verse 14, delights in the evil path. Evil brings him joy. This is perverse. This is disturbing. This evil man is devious and deceptive. He's trying to trick others into following him down this awful path of misery. How frightening, how terrible. And yet the person who simply inclines his heart towards godliness receives from the Lord protection, guardianship, watch care, deliverance from this very sort of fellow. You won't be blindly deceived by him. You won't be naive and vulnerable to his cunning devices if you make your ear attentive to wisdom and incline your heart to the right things, to godly affections. But not only is there protection from the evil man, there's also protection from the forbidden woman. Look with me at verse 16. So you will be delivered from the forbidden woman, from the adulteress with her smooth words. The evil man spoke perverted words, verse 12. The forbidden woman speaks smooth words, verse 16. Words that sound plausible and good, but they sting and they devour and they destroy. The evil man, verse 13, forsook the paths of uprightness. The forbidden woman, verse 17, forsakes the companion of her youth, that is her husband. She's an adulteress, unfaithful in her marriage covenant. So the protection being afforded here from the forbidden woman is a protection from sexual sin. Why bring up sexual sin? This seems rather specific when we're talking generally about wisdom. Well, I think Solomon brings it up because sexual sin was the predominant impetus in his own downfall and falling away from grace. You'll remember the history of King Solomon. But also this category of sin is common among youth, and so it's relevant in a discussion between a wise father and a vulnerable son. But I think there's more going on than perhaps we see at first glance. You see, sexual sin throughout Scripture is frequently employed as a metaphor of spiritual apostasy. walking away from the faith. Israel is often described in her unfaithfulness to Yahweh as an adulteress. She goes whoring after other gods. She has exposed her nakedness in perverse places. It's all a metaphor of her spiritual, covenantal unfaithfulness to the Lord. Verse 17 even makes this explicit. It says that the nature of her offense is that she forgets the covenant of her God. These verses then are maybe immediately about sexual sin, which is bad, but ultimately it's about apostasy, walking away from the faith, which is really bad, irreversibly bad. The ultimate danger for a youth, in fact, the ultimate danger for anyone is infidelity to the Lord, to break covenant with God. is to sin against all reason and solidifies one's place in fire and outer darkness forever." In fact, notice how verses 18 and following describe the destruction that ensues if one were to follow the forbidden woman. Verse 18, her house sinks down to death and her path Her paths sink down to the departed. Verse 19 describes the finality of following her. It says, none who go to her come back, nor do they regain the paths of life. It's a chilling pronouncement of final judgment. But the person who inclines their heart towards wisdom, towards the ways of the Lord, receives a good theology, good morals, and protection from the perilous dangers of apostasy. What incredibly wonderful blessings. Well, this brings us then to the conclusion of the matter. Verses 20 through 22 offer a summary of the parent's second speech. It says, so you will walk in the way of good and keep to the paths of the righteous. And I like how the tone shifts from exhortation to declaration. Did you notice it? It's like when a parent says, you will clean your room. Grammatically, it's not a command, it's a declaration, it's a pronouncement. It will happen, but there is most certainly an implied command in that pronouncement. You will walk in the way of good and keep to the paths of the righteous. Verse 21, for the upright will inhabit the land and remain in it, but the wicked will be cut off. And that's covenant language there. Being cut off from the land means to be excluded from the covenant blessings. If you pursue godly faithfulness by listening to the voice of wisdom, by loving that voice, inclining your heart to it, you will remain in God's promised land of blessing. You will ultimately reside in the new heavens and the new earth for all eternity. But if you refuse, you will be removed, cut off from that sweet land, cut off from happiness forever. Brothers and sisters, the intent of Proverbs 2 is to motivate us to be purposeful and eager in our pursuit of godliness. To the degree that we eagerly pursue the right things, we will be happy and we will be protected from all sorts of destructive and deceptive paths that will destroy us. So what do we do? How do we set our course so as to avoid the destructive path and enjoy the good path? Well, we begin where Proverbs 2 begins by asking ourselves where our affections are. What do you love? What holds sway over your desires and passions? What do you spend your time thinking about? What enjoyments do you cultivate? Are you a slave to your affections or are you a governor of your affections? The battle for godliness begins in the realm of one's affections. James 1.14 says, Each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. That's affection talk. Then desire, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is fully grown, brings forth death. That's Proverbs 2 in a nutshell, isn't it? The affections, when given permission to do whatever they want, will inevitably lead to sin and ultimately to death. The alternative then is described by Paul in 2 Corinthians 10, 5, where we're told to cast down imaginations, and there are the affections again, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and to bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. Don't follow your heart. Lead your heart in the way it should go. Church, pursuing godliness will get you godliness. And that godliness will bring gladness to your soul and will guard your life from a thousand griefs. So incline your heart towards wisdom. Let's pray. Lord, because you have stretched out your hands towards us, we can stretch out our hands towards you. Would you incline our hearts to seek you and love you and delight in you, Lord, so that the final word of our lives will not be a shipwrecked faith, but will instead be the sweet, sweet joys of Zion. Thank you that Christ overcomes our foolish and blind pursuits of evil men and forbidden women and credits us with pristine, unswerving devotion to our covenant-keeping God. May that imputed righteousness become more and more the characteristic of our choices and actions and thoughts and affections. It is only through the name of Jesus Christ that we make this bold request. Amen.