Please open your Bibles to Proverbs chapter 9. We'll be looking at this whole chapter, Proverbs 9, today. And this will be a conclusion for a little while in the study of Proverbs, and so next week we'll be back in Isaiah, Isaiah 36, next week. And so today, Conclude this introduction to Proverbs with chapter nine. Let's read beginning in verse one. Wisdom has built her house. She has hewn her seven pillars. She has slaughtered her beasts. She has mixed her wine. She has also set her table. She has sent out her young women to call from the highest places in the town. Whoever is simple, let him turn in here. To him who lacks sense, she says, come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. Leave your simple ways and live and walk in the way of insight. Whoever corrects a scoffer gets himself abuse and he who reproves a wicked man incurs injury. Do not reprove a scoffer or he will hate you. Reprove a wise man and he will love you. Give instruction to a wise man and he will still be. He will be still wiser. Teach a righteous man and he will increase in learning. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight. For by me, your days will be multiplied and years will be added to your life. If you are wise, you are wise for yourself. If you scoff, you alone will bear it. The woman folly is loud. She is seductive and knows nothing. She sits at the door of her house. She takes a seat on the highest places of the town, calling to those who pass by, who are going straight on their way. Whoever is simple, let him turn in here. And to him who lacks sense, she says, stolen water is sweet and bread eaten in secret is pleasant. But he does not know that the dead are there, that her guests are in the depths of shale. This is God's holy word. Now let's pray for his help as we come to study. Our God, we thank you that you have revealed your truth to us. And we acknowledge the need of your Holy Spirit to not only understand what these words say, but especially to know their meaning and what they are teaching us about you in this world that you have created and about eternity and how we might walk in a way that glorifies you. We pray that you would give us the spirit to give us all joy and peace in believing that the spirit might create in us faith, faith for those who have none and for those who have faith but are weak. May your spirit increase it for us as we look to your word. And so we ask this in Jesus name. Amen. You've probably faced a situation where you had an agonizing conflict in your schedule. You had two things that were being proposed to you, two commitments perhaps that were before you. Maybe there's an important work meeting, an important conference that you have to go to, or a meeting with your boss, but it falls on the same day as your son's championship baseball game, or your daughter's recital. Or maybe you have tickets. You buy tickets, and it might even be something that's like, it only happens every four years, like the Olympics, or the World Cup, and the World Cup is in the United States. And so you buy these tickets, but then your wife gets pregnant and she's due with the baby the same week within just a few days. What are you going to do? I think you know the answer to that one. Sell the tickets. Or maybe your granddaughter is turning 16. It's her sweet 16 party or it's your parents 50th anniversary and perhaps your family is not believers or they just have different convictions than you. And so the party is scheduled for noon and it's the Lord's day. So what are you going to do? Well, deep down inside, you know what the right answer is to all of these. You know that family is more important than sports. Family is more important than money or your job. And you know that the Lord is more important than family. But within you, there's this wrestling. What should I do? Is there any way to make this work? And of course, the best answer is to try to go to both in the sense that maybe you can rearrange something. Maybe you can rearrange the party for a different day. You try to make it work so that you don't have to sacrifice one for the other. But then you're still perhaps faced with this decision. You have to choose one. Well, it's this kind of scenario that this young man is facing in Proverbs. He has two invitations. Two women are calling out to him and giving him invitation to come over for dinner. And he can't go to both. He has to pick one or the other. And this is a scenario where the stakes are high. It's a matter of life and death. It's like those stories where there's a tiger behind the door. And if you choose that door, the tiger comes out and it's the end of your life. That's how it is for this young man. If he makes the wrong choice, it's his death. So two invitations, which one is he going to choose? Well, chapter 9 is the father continuing to teach his young son, his son who is becoming a man of his own now. He's been teaching him about especially the forbidden woman that he began teaching in chapter 5 about. And 5, 6, and 7 were about this forbidden woman that he is to avoid. But perhaps you remember that chapter 7 began a new lecture, the final lecture about this woman to avoid, and he was continuing that with chapter 8, providing an alternative. The alternative was lady wisdom. He needed to pick lady wisdom to have a relationship with rather than the forbidden woman. Well, chapter 9 continues that same lecture that began in chapter 7, verse 1. And now he is bringing it all to a conclusion. He's bringing the whole first nine chapters to a conclusion. And it's as if he's presenting this to his son, and he's gonna begin the Proverbs in chapter 10, chapters 10 to 31. He's presenting before his son a choice that he has to make. Son, are you gonna walk the path of wisdom? Are you going to start now in chapter 10 to begin to learn how to be wise? Or are you going to choose folly? And he's been using this metaphor of these two women, Lady Wisdom and Lady Folly. The forbidden woman or the adulterous woman, she represents Lady Folly and her way leads to death. But instead, the father says to his son, he needs to choose Lady Wisdom. Well, he continues this metaphor, but now it's the metaphor with an invitation, with dinner invitations, with a feast that is proposed by each woman. And so this is what the father is saying to the young men. This is what the father is saying to young people here today. He says to you, You can only say yes to one invitation. You can only go to one dinner. Which one will you choose? Well, let's begin looking then at chapter nine, and first we're gonna see the choice that is presented in the middle of the chapter, verses seven through 12, and then we'll look at these two invitations that are given. Well, we're gonna start in the middle, Because the way that the Father presents this is he presents wisdom's invitation in the first six verses and then folly's invitation in the last six verses. And then he explains the metaphor in the middle. What is the invitation? What is this all about? So verses 7 to 12 are the choices that are before the man. The young man can choose to either become a scoffer or become a wise man. Now in the center of this center is verse 10. So in the middle of these 18 verses is verse 10, which tells us really what the choice is. It's the choice of wisdom. Are you going to choose to be wise? And how do you become wise? What is wisdom? We have it in verse 10. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Knowledge of the Holy One is Insight. He started Proverbs this way at the very beginning in Chapter one, he told us that the fear of the Lord is wisdom, and now as he concludes his introduction right in the center of it, he wants to tell his young son again, if you truly want to be wise, then you need to fear the Lord and you need to have knowledge of the Holy One. And this knowledge of the Holy One is not just the intellectual knowledge, but it's the personal knowledge. This is what the father desperately wants for his son. This is what we desperately want for those of you here who are younger, that you would choose the path that will lead you to truly know the Lord, that you would yourself have a personal relationship with him. You would know him as God and as your God, and you would be one of his people. that you would know the true God, the Lord, that you would know the Holy One. The Holy God wants to have a relationship with you. He wants you to know him. So how do you know him? You fear him. You fear him, you trust him, you are in awe of him, and you fear disobeying his commands. This is a relationship that you can have with the Holy One that's like the relationship of a child to a father, where a child fears punishment from a father. And so there's a proper fear that we don't want to sin against God because we know he's holy and he will punish us. But it's also a fear where the child also wants to please his father. So the child knows that there will be punishment, and he's afraid of the punishment of the holy God in this instance, but also he fears displeasing. And so he wants to live a life of pleasing the Lord. This is the Christian life. This is the Christian life is that we love and are in awe of the holy God and we trust the holy God and we want to please him. And we know he's a judge and he's holy and he can punish us for our sins and we don't want to come under his condemnation. And so we live in awe of him. This is what we want for those of you who do not know the Lord and especially for those of you who are younger. And as we come to talk here about wisdom, you need to understand that our desire for you is not that you would just be good people. It's not that you would be like Gandhi, who can do some nice things and can talk about peace and be nonviolent or whatever it is. It's not just about moralism. When we use the word wisdom here in Proverbs, our desire is not to just create a bunch of moral people, but that that morality would come from a person whose heart is in awe of God, a person who truly knows God for themselves. So the fear of the Lord is wisdom. Now here are the two choices before the young man. It's to be a scoffer or to be wise. And so first he says in verses seven to eight, whoever corrects a scoffer gets himself abuse. He who reproves a wicked man incurs injury. Do not reprove a scoffer or he will hate you. Reprove a wise man and he will love you. And then in verse 12 you see again the contrast of the wise and the scoffer. So remember that this young man, he is neither of these at this point. He is at the age and stage of his life where he's gonna have to make a choice of whether he will pursue being wise, and if he doesn't, he's going to end up a scoffer. So he can become a scoffer, which is essentially the person who knows what is right, but yet rejects it. And that's the case for this young man who would be taught within the context of the covenant people, taught by his own father what the right way is. He can't plead his ignorance. He's been taught. He's been trained up in the way he should go. And so now there's even this extra burden of responsibility of him. Is he going to know the right thing in his head and still reject it? Well, then he becomes a scoffer. A mocker. The one who says, yeah, I know all that, but it's all silliness, it's all fairy tales. It doesn't work. The scoffer is one who, in New Testament words, we would say has become hardened in heart. A scoffer is one who, like Hebrews six, might describe in the new covenant as someone who has tasted of the age to come, who has been enlightened, who has received knowledge, tasted of the heavenly gift, and yet rejects it. And Hebrews 6 says, that's like crucifying the son of God afresh. It's like hearing about Jesus and knowing about Jesus and then deciding, yeah, I know all about what you said about Christ, but I'm going to take the nails and the hammer and I'm going to add my own blows to Christ on the cross. And that's why Hebrews says it's impossible for such a one to come to repentance. Because he knows it all. And yet willfully hardens his heart and rejects it. And so does the scoffer in Proverbs. And so the scoffer is portrayed here as an angry man and as one who, when you try to correct him, he's incorrigible. He's not correctable. And so he responds with abuse. Stop telling me all that stuff. I know all that stuff. It's all stupid. I don't want to hear it anymore. And so he abuses you and he injures you. He doesn't want to hear it because he's so hardened his heart. And so this proverb tells us, don't correct such a person. They're just going to abuse you and injure you. They're going to hate you. It's only the wise who will receive correction and love you. And this is an important lesson for us, that sometimes there are relationships and people where you just need to walk away. There are some people that you just can't help. And some of you, some of us may be the type of personality where we just love people and we feel empathy for them, we feel bad for them, and we wish that we could help them, and so you might try to help them. help them and you help them, but then they just respond with ignoring what you say or then even attacking you, abusing you. And so maybe you're the type of person who says, well, if I could just, if I could just get one more word in, if I could just say it the right way this time, if I could just do one more thing that shows them that I really love them, Then their eyes will be open. They will finally come to see the truth. Well, this proverb says that there are cases where that's just not going to happen. Someone has just decided to be a scoffer and you need to walk away lest you become injured. Some people are not going to change. Paul says that we should always correct our opponents with gentleness. And so we should always be willing to speak the truth. But he also says that there are people where you have nothing more to do with them. So you can imagine a scenario where Paul is correcting and correcting and he's gentle. He doesn't get angry at them. And he says, okay, look, you just don't want to listen. I'm moving on. You don't cast your pearls before swine. You just move on. So this is a lesson for us in evangelism. It's a lesson that could be in many kinds of relationships. It's a lesson for parenting. As children get older and as they are, you're no longer their boss, but they are older and they are adults. And sometimes if you just keep correcting and correcting and correcting, they're going to get sick of it. Perhaps there are times where you just need to stop the correcting and you pray for them. And so he gives the young man these two choices. You're going to continue to reject my teaching, become a scoffer, or are you going to listen to my correction and reproof? Cause he's still young, right? He's still in the home and he's still at the state where he's about to enter into manhood, but he's not there yet. Young man, you can choose wisdom and you can grow from receiving correction. And so verse 12 is basically saying that if you are wise, you are wise for yourself. If you scoff, you alone will bear it. That's saying that you, young person, you will come to a point in your life where you are now an adult and you will have to pay the consequences for your decisions. He's not saying, oh, you know, your actions don't affect anybody. They just affect you. No, they're just saying the consequences will ultimately be paid by you, not your parents. It's basically like he's saying, look, if you, if you're going to be a scoffer, you're not going to be a scoffer in my house. You're going to pay the consequences yourself for being a scoffer. I'm not going to bail you out of jail. That's basically the kind of thing that he's saying. And so this is a warning to the young people. You are yourself going to have to pay lifelong consequences, and your parents aren't gonna be able to just make them magically go away. So be wise. Be wise, if for nothing else, because it's good for you. If you're wise, you're wise for yourself. Well, this is the choice then. And now he presents it in these metaphors. Metaphors with these two invitations that are given. And the way we're gonna look at it, the first six verses, the last six verses, is we're gonna be always comparing and contrasting. And you put these two women side by side, as it is in the table there in your bulletin, you can see how they are the same and different. So let's begin now with this invitation. First, we hear about Lady Wisdom. Verse one says, Wisdom has built her house. Now, the first thing we notice is that as Wisdom is named, there's no personality or traits described about her. It's just her activity, which we'll get to in a second. But then in verse 13, when he names Folly, woman Folly, he just has to stick some things in there to describe what she's like. Clearly, the father is biased. And so it's like he's describing this other lady like, you don't want her. She's loud and seductive and she doesn't know anything. And so he describes Folly in this way. She's indiscreet. Proverbs 11, 22, like a ring and a pig snout, a gold ring and a pig snout is a beautiful woman without discretion. Rings don't go in pig snouts and people, women without discretion, they are not beautiful. That's what the proverb is saying. So this woman is described like a pig snout here in verse 13. She's loud and seductive and she knows nothing. The knowing nothing part is a moral statement. It's not intellectual statement. Morally, she doesn't have a compass. She doesn't know what's right and what's wrong. She's just kind of does whatever she wants. And she's, oh, I'm going to try this. This is a fool's thing. Oh, let's just try it and see what happens. They don't know anything. We see this all the time in our world, even people that seems like on one hand, well, they sort of got it right, but they don't really know anything. There's a famous wealthy person, his last name rhymes with Tusk, and he is pro-natalist, he is pro-children. He wants there to be lots of children in the world, but he doesn't know anything about the family. He doesn't realize that children don't just need to exist, but they need fathers and mothers, and they need a stable family. And so he doesn't have a Christian biblical morality. You can really say he knows nothing. He gets one thing right, that children are good, but he doesn't get a lot of other things right. And this is the world that we live in. People who morally know nothing. Well, let's go on to then the activity. We have wisdom in verse one, building her house. and hewing seven pillars. These are foundation pillars for the house and a house would normally have four pillars as a foundation, but this is a number of perfection and it is showing the stability of her house and her skill in being able to build this house. So we have wisdom building, but what about folly? Verse 14 says she sits at the door of her house. Now, how did she get that house? How did that house get there? We don't know. But there's clearly meant to be a contrast that she's not one who builds her house, she's lazy. She's the sluggard of Proverbs. Proverbs equates being a sluggard and being lazy with foolishness. So here she is sitting, doing nothing. A wise woman, though, builds her house. Proverbs 14.1 says, the wisest of women builds her house and a foolish woman tears it down with her own hands. Now, this isn't saying that women should be construction workers and literally building up bricks of a physical house, but it's saying that women should seek after and pray and in God's providence, God would direct them to be, to have a family and to be wives and mothers and that they would have children according to God's will and his blessing. And that women should see this as valuable and a good thing. This is you living out a wise life of building your home. And the foolish woman tears it down. And we see this in our society today, how women tear down their homes in the pursuit of a high income or in the pursuit of having a successful career. And so they don't want children. Well, this is foolishness. According to the Bible, a wise woman built her house. So in general, wisdom is hard work, working hard. Now as we go on, we see then also in verse two, wisdom has slaughtered her beasts and mixed her wine and she has set her table. She's doing more work here. She's being hospitable. She is giving and sacrificing and offers up goodness to those who would come into her house. She's a blessing to others, but she is providing a banquet. We'll get to that more later, but here she is against, here she is working, and then here we have woman folly again in verse 14. And it says again that she's sitting. You see in verse 14, it says twice that she sits. So the second half says she takes a seat on the highest places of the town. And we might read that in our modern culture and not think much of that. But the thing is that back then, chairs were actually a pretty rare thing. In ancient times, the way that people would eat would be they would have a low table and they would recline on the floor at the table. They didn't sit in chairs at a dining table. And so a chair was reserved for very wealthy people and it's reserved for people who are royalty like kings or queens. And so the image that you should think of in verse 14 is of a queen sitting on her throne. Whereas wisdom is here to serve others, preparing a banquet to bless others, here's folly sitting on her throne like a queen. Queens don't serve others. Queens are served by others. So she sits there on her throne, Next, we find out where they are. Verse 14b says Folly is seated on the highest places of the town. Verse 3 says that Wisdom sends out her young women to call from the highest places in the town. And so Wisdom is also at the highest place. Now here's another hint in this metaphor that what's going on here is not simply a moralistic life that the father wants his son to choose, but this is a religious choice. This is a choice between worshiping the Lord and worshiping idols because you see on the highest places of the town is where they would put the temple. And the word for house could be a dwelling place, but it's often in the Old Testament also a reference to the temples. It's the house of God, God's dwelling place. It's just the word for house. And so there's probably behind this metaphor a temple for the true God, and there's competition where Lady Folly is trying to have her temple up there to idols. And maybe even verse two in the banquet and the sacrifice that could all also be a reference to the sacrifices that people would offer when they would come to worship their God. And so this is a religious choice. This is a choice of which God you will serve the Lord. or idols. And so it's in this light that I believe Jesus is making some reference to this or alluding to this. And he has this somehow in the back of his mind when he ends his own sermon, just as the Father here is ending his series of lectures. Jesus had a series of sermons called the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5 through 7. Turn with me and let's see in Matthew 7 how he ends that sermon. Matthew 7 24. Matthew 7 24. Jesus ends by saying everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it. And so we have a contrast here between the wise man and the foolish man. What does the wise man do? He builds his house on the rock. He hues out the foundation of the house. Woman wisdom hues out her foundation of seven pillars. She's building on a rock. Lady Folly isn't building on the rock. She's building on sand. She has no foundation. The wise man builds his house on the rock. And then Jesus explains to us Who is the wise man? What is this all about? He says, it's everyone who hears these words of mine and does them. Living a wise life is about choosing to follow Jesus Christ. It's about choosing the true God, choosing Christ. If you want your house hewn on seven pillars, if you want your house stable, if you want a life that is built upon the rock, then you have to be wise. And what is wisdom? To hear the words of Christ. And do them. So Proverbs nine is presenting you. Two invitations to worship one of two gods. You will either fear the true Lord and worship Jesus Christ and follow him or you will worship some sort of false God and some idol and you will choose a life of folly that is built on sand. This is what the father presents to his son. Now back in Proverbs then he continues this comparison and he says that both wisdom and folly are crying out to the same person. Whoever is simple, let him turn in here to him who lacks sense. So this is the same as what he's saying in the middle that he's calling out. Wisdom is calling out to young people, young men especially, who are moldable, who can be influenced. but on the negative side, who are also gullible. If you lack sense, you are gullible. And so Lady Folly is trying to get you to turn into her house, but Lady Wisdom is calling to you and saying, you don't have to be simple anymore. You don't have to continue to be senseless and gullible. Choose wisdom. They're both inviting basically the same kinds of people, but then notice also how this invitation goes out. In verse three, Lady Wisdom sends out her young women to call. So she is actively going out and actively pursuing people to invite in. But in verse 15, Lady Folly calls to those who pass by, who are going straight on their way. Think of a company. Maybe a company wants to invest some money in advertising. They don't advertise because they're insecure about their product and they think, you know, we really got to make our product look good. No, they advertise because they believe in their product. They want their product to be used. Of course they want to make money, but they want their product to help people and benefit people. They think they have a good product, so they want to advertise it. They want people to know about it. Think about another company that might say, no, we're not gonna do any advertisement. Our product is so good that if people want it, they'll find it. They'll just come to us and they'll find out about it. Well, that second company is not gonna sell many products. It's the company that believes in what they have and advertise it because they want other people to come and get it. Well, that's Lady Wisdom. She's the first company she's sending out. She wants people to know about this feast that she has, and as we're going to come back to in a few minutes, the Lord is openly inviting and offering for anybody to come. And partake of this feast, and he sends out his messengers to invite you to come. Lady Folly knows she has a bad product. And it's interesting that in the last few chapters, the father, he made Lady Folly sound like she had a lot to offer. Her words are sweet as honey. There's lots of honey, there's lots of sweetness that would be trying to attract the young man. But now he makes Lady Folly look really bad. All she has is water and bread. And she doesn't have much that she can go out and advertise. She just calls to whoever is passing by. She's calling to young people who are going on the straight way is what verse 15 is saying. They are going on the right path and she's just trying to get them off of the right path. And this is the decision that you young people face too. Your parents have trained you up in this way that you should go. They've taken you on the straight way. Are you going to be so foolish that you'll just hear some lady saying, Hey, I've got water and bread. You're going to turn off that path to go in. When messengers are being sent out to you to invite you to a banquet. What Lady Wisdom has to offer is a feast. What Lady Folly simply offers is bread and water. The only thing appealing from Lady Folly is, as she says in verse 17, it's stolen water and secret bread. And that's what's appealing to the youth. Well, my parents raised me on this way, but I've never tried the other way. Let's just see what happens. How do I really know that everything they've told me is right? Aren't I supposed to think for myself and question these things myself? Why don't I just see what happens if I turn off the power? So part of what this father is saying to his son is that this woman has nothing to offer. It's just stale bread. It's just blah water. Don't go after it just because it's secret and stolen. Novelty is not what you should seek after. Stay on the path of the straight way. And so then we get to the end and we find out again what these two are offering. As the invitation ends in verses five and six, Lady Wisdom says, Come eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. Leave your simple ways and live and walk in the way of insight. She offers bread and mixed wine, wine that would be mixed with spices that would have all sorts of flavors and sweetness. And she offers life. Lady Folly offers death. So again, here are your two options, life or death. Good wine, sweet wine, meat and a feast, or bread and water. As we conclude, I want to look at one more parable that Jesus tells. So let's turn to Matthew 22. And we see the same sort of invitation that Jesus speaks in a parable. And I think, again, Jesus partly has in mind the Proverbs, especially chapter nine, because the father is essentially telling his son in chapter nine a parable, and Jesus has a similar parable. And we'll just read the first five verses. Again, Jesus spoke to them in parables saying, the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son and sent his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding feast, but they would not come. Again, he sent other servants saying, tell those who are invited, see, I have prepared my dinner. My oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered and everything is ready. Come to the wedding feast. but they paid no attention and went off one to his farm, another to his business. The story continues in the parable. Here's just the basic point that I want to bring out is that here we again see the king inviting to a feast, The king sending out his messengers like Lady Wisdom sent out her messengers, inviting people to a banquet. The king provides a banquet. And here he says it's a banquet for his son. This is God talking about how he invites everyone to come and celebrate his son and his son's work. But we see that people had a conflict in their schedules. They paid no attention, it says, and they went off one to his farm, another to his business. They went off and pursued the life of folly and ignored the life of wisdom because they had other things to do. And you see, you could only make one choice. You can only choose to give your life to the farm and business or to give all of your life to the Lord. You can't make it to both. And so the king had an invitation. He had his banquet prepared to celebrate his son. And they turned it away. And so, like the father in Proverbs, he presents to each of us this banquet, this invitation to you to come. Maybe you're not a Christian. Maybe you are yet to give your life to following Jesus. Maybe you don't know much about what it means to be a Christian and to feast as a banquet. Well, God has made the way through His Son, Jesus Christ, and the Son's work on the cross, dying in the place of sinners, so that we could come and know God, to know the Holy One, and to eat at His table, to be a part of His family, And so God sends the invitation out to each one of you and says, I have a banquet for you. Maybe you think Christianity is about following a bunch of rules and doing a bunch of things. But Christianity ultimately is about knowing God through Jesus Christ and feasting with him. Song of Solomon, too, says he brought me to the banqueting house or to the house of wine. This is salvation is to be brought to God so that you might feast and have delight and joy in knowing him. It's he it's Jesus who brings us to this house. Do you know what it's like to come to the house and to come and feast with the king and to be part of his family? And I would say to you, if you have not yet given your life to following Christ, that the world can only offer you stale bread and boring water. The world cannot offer you this great feast, and here you are, perhaps even today with messengers sent out to call to you today, and here is the invitation and here is the choice and you have to choose now, choose today. Are you going to reject an invitation to the feast and the banquet? For stolen bread. And secret water. And this is a reminder to us as Christians. The life of a Christian is a life of feasting. The bridegroom has come. And we feast spiritually, we feast. Maybe you feel like your life as a Christian is stale bread, boring water. Christians, remember, he brings you to the banqueting house and his banner over you is love. He brings you into the house of wine. Why don't you feast with the king? Why don't you remember what you have in Christ? Why don't you have the communion with God, with father, son and spirit that you can have because of the work of Christ? No, your Christian life is not meant to be just a bunch of doing the right things. It's not meant to just be an intellectual knowledge of, yes, I believe the right things about God. But Christian, your life is that your soul and your heart would be filled with joy, love, and peace because of God and what he's done through Jesus Christ. So as you live the Christian life, as you look upon his word, as you look at the Proverbs that are set before you, do you see them? has these different foods, different drinks that never run out. There is always more variety. There's always more richness to be had. There's more richness to glean from the word of God and from knowing God through Jesus Christ. Oh, may God by his spirit draw us into his banqueting house. Let's pray. Our Lord, we thank you. For the great feast that is spread before us. That you, Father, have given us through your son, Jesus Christ. We thank you, Holy Spirit. That you drew us. To respond to the invitation and to enter into that house. And so we thank you because we can only say, Lord, why was I a guest when thousands make the wretched choice to rather starve than come? And we pray that there would not be those today who choose to starve. Oh, Lord, by your spirit, we pray, draw to yourself Those who have heard the invitation. We ask it through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.