Well, it's been a while, but this evening we will be continuing in the book of Proverbs. So please turn to Proverbs chapter four, and we will read together verses 10 to 19. Proverbs chapter four, beginning in verse 10. Again, the father speaks. Hear my son and accept my words, that the years of your life may be many. I have taught you the way of wisdom. I have led you in paths of uprightness. When you walk, your step will not be hampered, and if you run, you will not stumble. Keep hold of instruction. Do not let it go. Guard her, for she is your life. Do not enter the path of the wicked, and do not walk in the way of evil. Avoid it, do not go on it, turn away from it, and pass on. For they cannot sleep unless they have done wrong. They are robbed of sleep unless they have made someone stumble. For they eat the bread of wickedness and drink the wine of violence. But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day. The way of the wicked is like deep darkness. They do not know over what they stumble. So ends the reading of God's word. Let's pray and ask for the Lord's blessing. Our great God and King, we do ask that even as we sit under your word now, that you would cause your light to shine upon the word, that you would illuminate the text to our hearts so that we may read and feed upon your word and thus feed even upon Christ. Show us more of your light that we might be led well along this path of eternal life. We pray in Jesus name, amen. Well, in Lewis Carroll's famous story, Alice in Wonderland, after falling through the rabbit hole, the young girl, Alice, comes to a set of crossroads. She comes to a fork in the road. She has decisions to make. And there at this fork, she meets, of course, the Cheshire cat. And she asks the cat, would you please tell me which way I ought to go from here? The cat says, that depends a good deal on where you want to get to. Alice responds, I don't much care where. And that's when the Cheshire Cat famously says, then it doesn't matter much which way you go. And many people today, sadly, are wandering through life much like Alice, not knowing where they're going. And so when they come to a fork in the road, they're indifferent to which path to take. Well, much like Alice in this story, the sun in Proverbs is on a road. And as he's traveling along it, he runs into a series of many different intersections. He has many opportunities to veer from the road that he's on and take some other path or some other detour. And it raises the question, with all of the directions he could go, is there a right way to go? or are they all the same? Does it even matter? Well, that's where the father in Proverbs, in a way that is much more loving than this smug Cheshire cat, encourages his son to take the right path. The way of wisdom is the pathway of eternal life. And therefore he calls the son to keep his feet on this path. He also warns of the dangers of getting off this path and following the way of evil that ultimately leads to death. You see, there is a right path, and there is every other path that leads to ruin. There is a way of wisdom, and then there is a way of folly. And if we belong to Christ, then we should not be indifferent to the path that we take. When we come to an intersection in life, when we have decisions to make, when it comes to how we behave and how we treat others, well, the Christian isn't wandering aimlessly through life. We're not all just trying to find our own way and blaze our own paths. Well, Scripture is clear that there is a way of righteousness and there is a way of wickedness. There's a way of wisdom and there's a way of folly. And while it might sound nice for all of us to say that, well, you know, you choose your way, you do you, find what works for you, every way is valid. Well, those statements aren't actually nice at all because they will lead to ruin. And the father loves his son far, far too much to simply allow his son to forge his own path in life and figure things out for himself. Instead, the father has such a noble and loving desire. The father wants to lead his son to know more greatly the wonders of communion with God and the life that is found with God and the joy that one can know along this path, this path that is the way to eternal life. And so the father carefully instructs his son about three things. He instructs the son first on the pathway of life, verses 10 to 13. Second, on the pathway of evil, verses 14 to 17. And third, on the promise of life, verses 18 and 19. So the first thing that the father teaches the son and us about is the pathway of life in verses 10 to 13. And as we've seen many times before, the father's speech begins with these calls for the son to listen and to receive his teaching. Verse 10, the father says, hear my son, accept my words, that the years of your life may be many. Why must the son hear and listen and receive the father's words? Well, it's because the Father's words are words of life. They are the way to life. And so life is found, first of all, by listening to the wisdom that comes from the Father. That is the wisdom that comes from God. Listening to God and receiving his word leads to life. And that's vital because there are not many ways to life. There is but one way to life. And the father says, listen to me, receive my word, and I will take you by the hand, my son, and I will lead you to this way of life. Look at verse 11, he says, I have taught you the way of wisdom, and I have led you in the paths of uprightness. Notice how he says, I have taught you, I have led you. The father has already begun to take his son by the hand and lead him along this path. But the father also knows that the son needs continual instruction. He needs that continual taking by the hand and leading him in the way of uprightness. And so although the son has begun on a good path, he needs that continual encouragement and guidance to lead him on. The son needs a voice that he doesn't find within his own heart or within his own mind. He needs a voice that comes from outside of himself to guide him. And doesn't this run so counter to the very common thinking of our day that says we all need to just find our own way. And we find our own way by looking within ourself and closing our ears and shutting our ears to the voices that come from outside. We all need to blaze our own path, not listen to the voices of others. Certainly not the voices of individuals who lived hundreds or even thousands of years ago. And you see that today, don't you? How many voices from the past are being silenced with the removal of monuments, the tearing down of statues, the burning of books? Now what's interesting is that this is not only a phenomenon that's happening here in the United States, it's actually happening in Ireland as well, of all places. Just recently, a church in Ireland that's almost 1,000 years old was set on fire with the intent of destroying certain Christian historical artifacts inside. Voices of the past, in many cases voices of wisdom, are being ignored and silenced. Now there are times when voices of others are a hindrance. There are voices that are foolish from the past and in the present that need to be ignored. But this voice, this voice that comes from outside of us, this voice of the father must not be ignored. No, the son would ignore this voice to his own peril and detriment. And just as the son needs this guiding voice to teach him and lead him, so do we. Well, the father then begins to tell him something more of the nature of the path he's leading him along. It's a path of safety. That's what he fills out in verse 12. He says, when you walk, your step will not be hampered, and if you run, you will not stumble. The path that the father is leading us on is a safe path, isn't it? It's safe to walk on. When you walk on this path, your steps won't be hampered or hindered. Now, of course, this is poetry. The language of steps here refers to the choices we make in life, the decisions we make, our behavior, and so on, all as we go along the pathway of life. And when is it when you most need to be careful about your steps? Well, it's when your path is unsafe. Now we're presently in the heat of the summer, and so the thought of snow and ice is thankfully very far removed from most of our minds. But certainly here in Carlisle, of all places, in the dead of winter, when it begins to snow and there's ice on the ground, it can be tricky. Even coming into church sometimes, it can be a little bit icy. And we say that, don't we? We say, watch your step. And we say that because the ground at times is unsafe. One has to be careful. Or maybe if you've done some hiking over the summer, you might have come to a steep decline where there's some loose scree or pebbles, and you have to be careful as you descend, lest you slip and slide and fall and hurt yourself. So you need to be careful. Well, in those examples, Why do we need to be so careful? We need to be careful because the ground is not stable. It's treacherous, it's slippy, it's dangerous. But notice that the way of wisdom is not a dangerous path. No, it's a careful, steady kind of path. When you walk in wisdom's way, you walk on solid ground. It's safe ground. Well, then he intensifies the language. He says, not only can you walk on this path, in fact, you can even run on this path. Now, for those of us who might be runners, and I don't necessarily include myself in that sometimes, but I don't wanna give a false impression. For those who are runners, you know that not all ground is safe to run on. You go running through a forest and there's gonna be all sorts of trees and Other things that you find in forests, rocks and roots, roots is the word I was looking for, that will jut out of the ground and will catch your foot and you could fall flat on your face. It's not safe to run in the middle of a road. People do that around here anyway, but it's not terribly safe. There are many places where it's not safe to run, and yet the father says, the way of wisdom is so safe for your footing, you can not only walk in it, you can actually run, you can sprint, and not be worried about tripping over something. It's a safe path, and it's such a safe path, and it's a path that the father wants his son to remain on, that now he begins these imperatives. He wants to keep the Son on the path. Look at verse 13. He says, keep hold of instruction. Do not let go. Guard her, for she is your life. He says, keep hold of the instruction on this path. So commit yourself to this path. Don't let it go. This language of do not let go could also be translated as do not stop. When you're walking on this path or when you're running, don't stop and go off to the side and catch your breath. No, just keep going on this path. Guard her and don't allow yourself to be taken from it. And the motivating promise comes at the end of verse 13. For she is your life. So the Father has moved from saying it's a path that gives life now to saying it is life itself. She is your life. Sometimes we go for walks, not necessarily to get anywhere, but simply to stretch our legs. Well, this path is not a path that we walk on just to stretch our legs. No, it is a path that is leading somewhere. It has a destination, a terminus, and that terminus is eternal life, is the reward of life. But what is this life that's promised? We've just been told that this path is life. In verse 10, we were told that receiving wisdom leads to many years of life on the earth. We read in our call to worship that God gives to the righteous. Many years with steadfast life will I bless them. And so the question that may be raised in our minds is, If those who walk on wisdom's path are promised many years in this life, what about those believers who die in the prime of their life? In the nearly seven years that I've been your pastor, I've had the joy of holding hands with and praying with many of our dear beloved brothers and sisters, moments before they go to glory. We've seen many of our older saints, after living long, full lives, go to be with the Lord, and there's something, yes, we miss them, and we mourn their absence, and yes, death is still the enemy in that sense, and yet there's something right about this, and appropriate, and we rejoice to see their suffering end, and for them to go to glory. We've seen this even in the last two weeks, with Les, and now more recently with Louise. But as a pastor, I've also experienced the heartache of getting a call in the middle of the night and ministering to a family who lost someone relatively young with no warning. Unexpectedly, they died. We would say they died long before their time. They died not having had many years behind them. And some of you know that heartache. Some of you have known the pain of losing perhaps children, believing friends, relatives, Those who die young without length of days or without many years under their belt, as it were. Well, how do we make sense of this? How do we make sense of these short lifespans of some believers when here in Proverbs and in other places in scripture, the righteous are promised length of days? Are we to think that believers who die at a young age did not receive length of days because they were not walking on wisdom's path? Well, that's where the life promised and the years promised and described here isn't life and years as the world defines it. Here, the father is describing a life that's defined by God. This is life that is in fellowship with God. This is life before God's face and in his favor. This is life before the fear of the Lord. This is the life that the father speaks about. And this life, this side of eternity, might be very long or it might be very short. Calvin says something that I think is so helpful. Calvin is commenting specifically on Psalm 91 verse 16, which we read earlier, again, which promises, with long life I will satisfy him and show him my salvation. Calvin says this. It's a little bit of a longer quote, but trust me, it's worth it. Soundness of body and good health are blessings from God, but we must not conceive on this account that he regards with disapproval the weak and the infirm. Long life is to be classed among benefits of this kind and would be bestowed by God upon all his children were it not for their advantage that they should be taken early out of the world. They are more satisfied with the short period during which they live than the wicked, though their life should be extended for thousands of years. It is a privilege, peculiarly belonging to the Lord's people, that they are satisfied with life. The brief appointed term is reckoned by them to be sufficient, abundantly sufficient. Besides, Calvin says, longevity is never to be compared with eternity. The salvation of God extends far beyond the narrow boundary of earthly existence. And it is to this, whether we live or come to die, that we should principally look. Well, isn't that so helpful? How prone are we to simply seeing life in this narrow worldly view that life only consists in this present age and that death is the great period or full stop that puts an end to our entire existence? Calvin says, yes, health and even many years, these are blessings from God. And God is free to give to whom he wills these blessings. He can give it to the righteous, he can give it to the wicked, the blessing of health and prosperity and many years. But even the short life of a believer is more satisfactory to them than the wicked, even if they were to live for a thousand years. I think particularly helpful is Calvin's statement that longevity is never to be compared with eternity. The salvation of God extends far beyond the narrow boundary of earthly existence. We must never compare longevity with eternity. We must never be envious of the wicked who may have longevity now, when we in Christ and those who have gone before us, whose rest is already won, may not have had longevity, but who do certainly have eternity. And how can those two things ever, ever be compared? And this is what the father in Proverbs wants us to see. He wants us to see that this path of life is so important because it extends beyond the boundaries of this present evil age, and it extends into eternity. This is the life that the Father lays before us. This is the life that we have through Christ, a life that extends beyond death. A life over which death itself, as awful and hideous and terrifying as it may be, holds no power. This is what Jesus came to accomplish for us. Eternal life. And thus the path that we walk is not ultimately one of works, but it is one of faith. A faith that trusts and clings to God's revelation that comes to us in Christ. And when we see life and the promise of life in these terms, it's then that we realize that the voice of the Father sounds like another familiar voice. It sounds to us like the voice of Christ our Savior. It is the voice of Christ our Savior who is calling us and leading us by His voice into eternal life. As he himself said in John 10, my sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand. This is the life that's found through faith in Christ. This is the life that Jesus tells us and Paul tells us, that even if we were to die in this life and this age, even if you were to lose your life and all that the world considers dear, yet you will gain because you have eternal life. And so regardless of the lengths or the brevity of the believer's temporary life now, remember, dear believer, Through Christ, you have a life and glory which no man, no illness, and no tragedy can take from you. This is what the father wants his son to find out, and this is the life that God promises you as you continue along his path of life. So there's the pathway of life in verses 10 to 13. Well, secondly, the father warns the son of the pathway of evil. in verses 14 to 17. He says in verses 14 and 15, do not enter the path of the wicked and do not walk in the way of evil. Avoid it, do not go on it, turn away from it, and pass on. While there is only one path that leads to life, There are many paths that lead to destruction. Along Wisdom's Way, you can imagine it as a kind of a long road or highway, and all along the sides of this road are all sorts of avenues and alleyways and off-ramps. There are all sorts of opportunities and enticements and neon lights calling the sun to leave the path, if even for a moment and even for a detour. Just, it won't take long. You can slip off, slip back on anytime. All of these voices call the sun to take a detour on evil avenue or to avoid a difficult stretch of wisdom's way by taking El Camino del Diablo, an actual street in Escondido where we lived. As one commentator notes, in verses 14 and 15, the father is so serious that he doesn't even give the son reasons. At this point, he simply bombards him with imperatives. Do not enter, do not walk, avoid it, do not go on it, turn away, pass on. Well, the father's clear, isn't he? He's clear in what he means. Well, finally, the father does give his son some reasons in verses 16 and 17. The father shows his son a picture of what life is like when one follows the path of wickedness. He says in verse 16, for they cannot sleep unless they've done wrong. They are robbed of sleep unless they have made someone stumble. The Father says that those who walk the path of evil can't sleep without doing evil. Evil and violence is their sedative. It's their glass of warm milk. It's their hot cocoa. It's their Ovaltine at night before bed. It's maybe their nightcap. It's what they need to sleep well. And sometimes, as you know, there's something about hitting your head on the pillow after a hard day's work and having a good night's sleep. And maybe after looking back in the day and saying, you know, I got a lot accomplished. I did a lot of work. I can sleep well tonight. You feel, yeah, it was a good day. And so you sleep well. Well, this is the flip side. The flip side for the wicked, the Father says, is that they cannot sleep unless they're able to look back on their day and know that they have fulfilled all of their wicked desires. Wickedness is not only their sleep by night, but it is also their food by day. Look at verse 17. For they eat the bread of wickedness, and they drink the wine of violence. Of course, bread and wine were the common staple diet of the ancient world, particularly around the Mediterranean at that time. It's still very popular today, of course. But the point being that this is the ordinary stuff of life, bread and wine, sleep. These are the ordinary things that every person needs just to exist and to get by. And the point is that the wicked cannot live without sustaining themselves with these kinds of things, with their own wickedness. The language here, we might say, is a little bit intense, isn't it? It's emphatic, but it also raises the question, how does someone end up this way? To where evil is their sleep by night, and it's their food and drink by day. Well, the answer that's implied is that you don't end up there, not all at once. but rather by degrees. It doesn't happen overnight, rather it happens as you take one step after another along evil's way. I think what the Father is describing sounds a lot like addiction, doesn't it? The inability to sleep, the inability to live without fulfilling one's cravings. It speaks to habits. I think it's important, therefore, that we recognize the very powerful nature of habits in our lives. What are habits? Habits are tendencies or patterns of behavior formed through repeated and successive action. Now we can form good habits, can't we? We can develop habits that are beneficial to our health, like the habit of eating well and saying no to foods that we know aren't healthy for us. We can engage in an exercise regime and we can have a habit of exercise that we know will be good for our heart and our body. And there are habits of the soul. Daily prayer, daily meditation on the word, reading scripture, and of course the most important, being the weekly routine of the Lord's Day and worshiping morning and evening and hearing the word and having our souls fed. And the more that we do those things, the more that we are shaped and changed for the better. In one sense, how much can one sermon affect us or change us? Okay. What about sermon after sermon, week after week, year after year, decade after decade? It all has a compounding effect. It's the habitual effect of praying to the Lord and reading his word and being in the word. It's the compounding effect that often we fail to recognize its power. And yet, just as there are good habits, there are also bad habits. and likewise these have a compounding effect over time. You know, I think it's so easy for us to think that we can simply sin and to see that sin as a one-time action that has no strings attached, certainly no strings attaching us to it, and thinking we can sin and then wash our hands of that and have it not affect us at all. It's easy to think that we can get off wisdom's highway and take a detour and maybe bypass some difficult stretch of wisdom's way and we can get back on whenever we want. But the father warning the son tells him that no, these choices build upon each other. At first, you take that step off the path, and then it's a couple of steps, and then you're taking a day trip, and then you're going for a weekend's vacation, and on and on and on. The more and more that we tread these detours and these paths off of wisdom's way, the more they become familiar to us, and the easier and easier it gets to tread those paths again. Actions, the father warns, become habits. I think the English poet, Alexander Pope, captured this so well in one of his poems. He said, vice is a monster of so frightful mean or appearance as to be hated needs but to be seen. But seeing too oft too familiar that face, we must first endure, then pity, then embrace. I'll read it again. Vice is a monster of so frightful mean. So as to be hated needs but to be seen, but seen too oft, too familiar that face, we must first endure, then pity, then embrace. The point being that at first you can't even look at that sin. It's hideous, it's frightful, it's disgusting. But then you go back for another glance. You dip your toes in the water and what was first a frightful and hated thing now becomes something you can endure. And then once again you come and you take another look and what was once hatred turns to pity and on and on and on and eventually pity turns to embrace. And how true is this? How true is this in relation to so many sins, in relation to pornography, and the effects that retreading those same paths has on one's minds and on one's practices? What about lying? You think that you'll detour off of wisdom's way. Well, there's a difficult stretch ahead. I lie and get out of this situation, but I'll only do it the one time. And then you do it, and then it becomes a pattern. And then it becomes the detour you take to get out of every tricky situation. It's true of slander, it's true of stealing, it's true of anger, it's true of all sorts of sins. Repeated sins. These repeated choices form habits. And these habits shape us and change us over time. These habits then become addictions that the Father describes as something that we can't sleep well at night unless we've indulged in them. And we can't live by day unless they have been our food and our drink. That's the warning of the Father. Don't walk in the way of evil. Don't step there, don't even look there. Why? Sinful choices have the danger of becoming sinful habits. And so, beloved, let us heed the Father's warning by avoiding the path of the wicked. Excuse me. Well, the Father has contrasted both paths, one that leads to life, where you can walk without stumbling, And the other is a path of habitual wickedness. And the son must make every effort to stay on the path of wisdom and life. Well, now in this final section in verses 18 and 19, he gives a final contrast between the perils of darkness, but the promise of light. How is the way of wickedness described? Well, it's described as a way of perilous darkness. Look at verse 19. The way of the wicked is like deep darkness. They do not know over what they stumble. The path of the wicked is a dark path. They walk in darkness and they stumble. Notice how it's the opposite of the path of the righteous, who will not stumble, who can even run on their path. And yet the path of the darkness is a path on which one stumbles. But it's worse than that. You know, it's one thing to stumble on something and look back and realize what it was. Parents know this, you know, you step and you slip on a child's toy or a car and you look back and you say, ah, I've got to get the kids to clean up that stuff. But that's not the case here. The case here is that the wicked are stumbling and they're looking back and they're not seeing what's causing them to stumble. They have no idea what's causing them to stumble. They have no idea because the darkness has concealed the obstacles in their way. It sounds a lot like what Paul writes in the opening of Romans, doesn't it? how they have rejected the light of nature and the light of God's revelation, and they have had their foolish hearts darkened. Such is the way of the wicked, because their minds are darkened. And therefore, they continually stumble, they continually feel the effects of sin and the consequences of sin, without ever seeing or understanding the cause, which is the sin itself. And we see that all around us today, don't we? There are horrible, awful, deadly diseases that are spread primarily as a result of sexual immorality. But the response when people contract these diseases is not to see their sin and to repent of the cause of their calamity. No, instead it's a desire to remove to find cures to remove the consequences of their sins so that they can go on sinning. Now, this isn't to make light of those who suffer, even unbelievers who make wicked choices. We never delight in the suffering, even of the wicked. But it is to say that the way of the wicked has serious consequences, not only in the next life, but even in this life. And the sad thing about what the Father describes about the way of the wicked is that they will continue and they will go on falling over the same sins over and over again, and no matter how hard they fall and hit their head on the ground, it will never knock the sense or the repentance into them to change. No, instead they will go on groping like the men of Sodom in Genesis 19, groping and groping in the darkness. Such is the path of the wicked. But notice how the path of wisdom is not in the shadows, but is a well-lit path. Verse 18, but the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day. Scripture often uses this imagery of light and darkness to contrast sin and righteousness. And isn't it often the case that it's in the dead of night that the worst kinds of sins occur? Well, scripture here is picking up on those patterns. As you know, I was a police officer for six years, and I typically worked the night shift. And you knew that whenever the sun went down and the darkness took over, bad things were going to happen, things that didn't happen by day. domestic violence in homes, fights in alleyways, stabbings on public street corners, things that just wouldn't happen during the day, at least not too often. Working as a police officer at night, you see horrendous evil and sometimes very gory things. And so you can imagine the joy of every police officer who's working at night when the sun begins to rise and the day begins to dawn, and the night is slowly being beaten back by the day and the light. And as one would see that, one would be happy not only to know that one could go home to their beds and rest after a long, hard night, but also to know that the darkness was being beaten back. And the light was coming. And this is the promise that's given to believers in Christ, that we walk in paths of life. And though there is darkness on either side of us, ahead of us, we can see a bright shining light, a light that the Father says is the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until the full day. And all over scripture, this imagery of the dawn breaking in the morning and the darkness of night being driven back is applied to who? It's applied to Christ, who is the light of the world. In Luke chapter one, Zechariah spoke of how the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death to guide our feet into the way of peace. Jesus came as the light of the world. He came as that sunrise into the world to save those who sit in darkness. And we are those who sat in darkness. But by God's grace, we have been transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of the sun, which is one of light. And this is where there is hope for you, dear friend, if you are one who is currently walking on this path of wickedness and darkness. There is grace for you, dear friend. There is hope for you, and it's found in Christ, so that you can go to Him, you can trust in Him, and you can have your sins covered, removed, paid for by Christ. Dear believer, if you feel as though you have become overcome by the darkness, if you would describe yourself as someone who has one foot in the path of life and one foot in the world, you need to repent. I need to turn to Christ, but doing so knowing that there is not only sufficient grace in Christ, but there is sufficient light in Christ to guide you and to help you and to lead you along his path. So look to Christ and trust in him and follow his light. For Christ has come, the one who is the true light, who gives light. His light now shines as that dawn that's breaking and that's shining brighter and brighter with every step that we take towards the end of life. His light has dawned now. But what we look forward to is this full brightness of the day which the Father speaks about. And when will that full brightness come? Well, it will come when we go to be with Christ. or when Christ returns. It is then, finally, that our road will reach its terminus, as we reach that eternal city, which knows no darkness, and needs no sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. Let's pray. O Lord, we thank you for the confidence we have in Christ. We thank you for his light that shines even now, even as we have sat under the word, leading us and guiding us. Lord, would you help us to cast off every evil way, that you would weaken the enticement and pull of the detours along the intersections, along wisdom's way. Would you help us to keep off those ways? And would you help us to keep on and hold fast to the way that is life? Help us to heed the Father's voice. Help us to heed Christ's voice and thus remain in Him, in the one who will never let us go. We pray these things in Jesus' name, amen.