Well, I have, of course, been preaching through Luke in the mornings and Proverbs in the evenings. However, because of how striking a connection my passage in Luke was this week with the Lord's Supper this evening, I decided to switch it around so we will be doing Proverbs this morning and Luke this evening. So please do turn in your copies of God's Word to Proverbs chapter one. Proverbs chapter one, and we will pick up with this next section, verses 20 to 33. Well, here now, wisdom's cry. Wisdom cries aloud in the street. In the markets, she raises her voice. At the head of the noisy streets, she cries out. At the entrance of the city gates, she speaks. How long, oh simple ones, will you love being simple? How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge? If you turn at my reproof, behold, I will pour out my spirit to you. I will make my words known to you because I have called you, called and you refused to listen, have stretched out my hand and no one has heeded because you have ignored all my counsel and would have none of my reproof. I also will laugh at your calamity. I will mock when terror strikes you, when terror strikes you like a storm and your calamity comes like a whirlwind, when distress and anguish come upon you. Then they will call upon me, but I will not answer. They will seek me diligently, but will not find me. Because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord, would have none of my counsel and despise all my reproof. Therefore they shall eat the fruit of their way, and have their fill of their own devices. For the simple are killed by their turning away, and the complacency of fools destroys them. But whoever listens to me will dwell secure, and will be at ease without dread of disaster. So in Wisdom's call, let us go to the Lord in prayer once again. Lord, as we have heard from scripture, the call of wisdom, your call to us, and now as we will hear it proclaimed to us through the voice of your messenger, we ask that you would give each and every one of us attentive ears, that now, when wisdom can be attained, when wisdom reaches out to us, that we would reach back out and not reject her or ignore her. Give us ears to hear, give us hearts attentive now to your word and by your spirit, in Jesus' name, amen. One of the reasons why the book of Proverbs is so loved by Christians is because of its vivid imagery. You know, Solomon, as he puts together the Proverbs, he doesn't just sit down and kind of make a sort of a boring list of one principle of wisdom after another. No, instead he deploys a colorful and interesting array of characters and voices. In the first section, we heard from the king himself. In the second section, we heard from the father. Now, in this third section, we're introduced to a new character, Lady Wisdom. The last section had that kind of cozy fireside chat between dad and his son. Well, this is anything but that. Lady Wisdom is depicted as standing at an intersection of a busy street. Think of Times Square New York with the hustle and bustle of people going by. And she is shouting with passion and gusto, calling fools who are on the road to destruction to turn back, to listen to her, to embrace her. Lady Wisdom isn't standing on the street corner with cheap flyers offering advice for a better life or handing out life hacks or something like that. No, she is calling us to a completely different way of life. She is calling the fool to turn from the way of folly and turn to live in the fear of the Lord. And her message is one that carries a sense of urgency and warning, she warns. of the consequences of refusing her call. The end of the fool who rejects her counsel will be calamity and disaster and terror. Like a relentless storm that sweeps in unexpectedly, so will come the calamity on those who reject her call. But that's not all, she says. There is also contained in this largely a passage of warning, there is contained a message of hope. Lady Wisdom extends an invitation to those who would listen to her, to those who would humble themselves before her call and embrace her. She offers to them life and peace and safety. Well, just as Jesus in the Gospel of Luke has many times warned us about the need to listen well and hear well and receive his words in our hearts, so now let us listen to Lady Wisdom's call. We'll do that by first considering the call of Lady Wisdom. Secondly, the consequence of rejecting her call. And then third, the consequence of receiving her call. So first we'll consider the call of Lady Wisdom. Well, in Proverbs now, the speaker shifts from the father to now this woman. this woman who has traditionally been called Lady Wisdom. She is arguably the most important character in the whole book of Proverbs. This is the first of three very important and pivotal speeches she will make to the sun and really to all people. But who is she? Well, she is what is called a personification. A personification is a literary device, you might have to think back to your school days to maybe remember that one, but it is a literary device that makes something that isn't a person into a person. In other words, if the wisdom of God became a person, what would that person look like? How would they act? What would they say? Well, Solomon here in Proverbs shows us that this is God's wisdom. This is what his wisdom says and how it acts. So personification is a wonderful way that takes something that could seem very distant and maybe vague and abstract and something hard for us to get, like wisdom, and it brings us very close. It turns wisdom into a person, a person who speaks to us, who gestures to us with her hand, and who calls us to herself. To take it a step further, and I'll develop this in maybe future sermons in her speeches, since there is no wisdom apart from God, Lady Wisdom, therefore, is a representation or a metaphor for God himself. The only way we can attain wisdom is through communion with God. He is the source of wisdom, as Solomon has told us in the opening seven verses. And so here also with this woman, wisdom can only be had through relationship with her, and thus she is a kind of picture of our relationship to God. That's something we'll develop at another point. That's who she is. Now let's consider where she is. Verses 20 and 21. Wisdom cries aloud in the street. In the markets, she raises her voice. At the head of the noisy streets, she cries out. At the entrance of the city gate, she speaks. So there she is at the street corner, in the marketplace, on highways and byways, the busy kind of foot traffic kind of places where everyone will be around. She's in all the public areas in the ancient world. These were the kinds of places where business was transacted, where you found out the news of the day regarding your local province and beyond. Nowadays, well, we don't really go to a market so often. Nowadays, we can buy so many things online and have them shipped to us or maybe delivered by someone. Nor do we go to the town square in Carlisle if we want to hear what's happening in the borough or even beyond. Well, we can just go online on our phones or our laptops. And if we wanted to make a message, deliver a message to people, and we went to the town square, well, the only person who'd hear us is the guy who twirls the sign, so our message wouldn't get very far. And so maybe to maybe bring this forward, as it were, and maybe into our own day and age, she's speaking in a place where everyone will hear her. Probably today, that's probably social media. So imagine she's putting out this video that will go viral. Everyone's going to hear it. Everyone's going to be talking about it. No one can escape it, as it were. She will be heard by people. And notice that she is no timid wallflower type. She speaks publicly, and she speaks passionately. Verse 22, she begins her message. How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing, and fools hate knowledge? Well, her message is directed towards three kinds of people, the simple ones, the scoffers and the fools. Who are these simple ones? Well, simple ones are not inherently bad people. You know, it isn't wrong to be simple. Simple here means simply someone who is naive or gullible, as it were. To be simple is really an attribute that a lot of young children have because they've come into the world and they're trying to understand the world they live in. So it isn't wrong to be simple. We've all been simple at one point or another. The problem here is that these simple ones are loving their simplicity. They're rejecting knowledge. And thus, they're becoming fools. They would rather stay in that simple, ignorant, naive kind of a way, even as they get older and older. And Lady Wisdom really lays out the problem. The problem is not only that they tolerate their state of simplicity, but they embrace it wholeheartedly. Notice how she says, how long will you love being simple? They love it. The scoffer, how long will you delight in your scoffing? How long will you hate knowledge? These are people who don't want to change. They're happy the way they are. This language of how long, it's something that we see in the Psalms often, isn't it? And it conveys the sense of, well, this is something that's been going on for too long. How long are you gonna act this way? And she's telling these simple and these scoffers to stop, knock it off. They will not listen. They love their folly. They love being what they are and they will not listen to wisdom. And as we'll see through Lady Wisdom's call here, she is frustrated and she is angry with them, but she also offers them some hope. She calls them to turn back to her. Look at verse 23. If you turn at my reproof, behold, I will pour out my spirit to you. I will make my words known to you. Here, Lady Wisdom is offering to them that which they need. They need to grow in wisdom. And she is saying, I have it for you. I will pour it out on you. It's interesting that the offer of giving them her spirit In the Old Testament, Yahweh commissions Bezalel, the chief craftsman of the tabernacle, to build the tabernacle, and he says, I have filled him with the spirit of God, with wisdom, ability, and knowledge. So in other words, she's saying, if you listen to me, if you turn to me, I will give you all that you need to walk in the fear of the Lord. I will turn you from being simple, and I will make you wise, and you will walk before the Lord. Well, this opening section of her call highlights, I think, one of the key attributes of the fool. The fool isn't simply the person who makes mistakes. Rather, it's the person who makes mistakes, refuses to own their mistakes, and refuses to learn from those mistakes. They don't want to change. They are those who are wise in their own eyes. They don't need the counsel of others. They don't need to listen to what other people have to say to them. They don't listen to the fathers of their life or the grandfathers of the faith or those kinds of things. They have it all figured out. And I think it's important that we grasp this because I think in popular culture we have this idea that the fool is kind of like the bumbling clown, right? It's the Mr. Bean kind of guy where he's just so obviously a fool and a clown and just a messer, as we'd say in Ireland. But here we see the fool isn't the person who's necessarily made a mess of their life. It could be, but primarily the fool here is someone who is unwilling to change. It's someone who isn't, in a word, in a phrase, someone who isn't teachable, someone who doesn't want to or doesn't think they need to grow in any kind of way. Think of the account of David and Nabal in 1 Samuel 25. This is a chapter that employs a lot of Proverbs language. The name Nabal literally translates as fool or foolish, so that tells you everything. But Nabal, when you look at him, he wasn't a bumbling clown. He wasn't someone who never made anything of his life. No, actually, the text tells us he was a rich businessman. And in the chapter, David, who's on the run from Saul, he goes out of his way to protect Nabal's shepherds and his flocks. And then David, rightly so, expects some kind of reward from Nabal. But Nabal, very foolishly and not very kindly, refuses to help David, and he even disrespects David. Huh, who's this David guy? I don't even know who his father is. But David decides to meet folly with folly. When Nabal refuses to help David, David responds by telling his men to gird on their swords, and they're ready then to go and to slaughter Nabal and kill his family. But then, Like Lady Wisdom, the gracious and wise Abigail stops David in his tracks and speaks to him and calls him away from folly. And the difference is there, the difference there between David and Abel isn't that one man was foolish and the other man was just perfectly wise. No, the difference is that David listens to Lady Wisdom's call. He relents, he puts back his sword, he takes off his sheath. And then he says to Abigail, blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, who sent you this day to meet me. He doesn't say, who are you to talk to me? I'm the Lord's anointed here. No, he says, blessed be the Lord who sent you to meet me, and blessed be your discretion, and blessed be you. You have kept me this day from blood guilt. David blesses her discretion. Discretion is one of those wisdom words we've seen in Proverbs, haven't we? David has heeded wisdom's call through Abigail, and so he's turned from loving Folly to now loving Abigail and loving the wisdom that she's brought from the Lord. And this illustrates the point that's being made in these opening verses, that wisdom is calling aloud. Wisdom is calling for the simple, the fool, and the scoffer to turn and to embrace her. And the fact that she calls aloud in all places and to all people means that we all must listen to her call. We all need to listen, even for those of us who may be the outwardly successful Naples of this world. And the difference isn't how many mistakes you've made in your past or whether you're successful like Naples or you're a king on the run like David. What makes the difference is that you listen to her call and you turn. and you follow her. That's the call of Lady Wisdom. Secondly, what are the consequences of rejecting her call? That's what we see in verses 24 and following. In verses 24 and 25, we get vivid imagery of how her call has been rejected. She says, because I have called you and you refuse to listen, have stretched out my hand and no one has heeded, because you have ignored all my counsel and would have none of my reproof. So here she is, she's saying, I called to you, you wouldn't listen to me. I reached out for you my hand, you just slapped away my hand. You didn't care to listen. I was warning you that you were going the wrong way. You ignored me. You shut your ears to me. I pretended I wasn't there. Well, this is how the fool has rejected wisdom. She's tried every which way to grab their attention. She's cried aloud. They would not listen. They have rejected her at every turn. And because of this, there are consequences. What is the fate of those who slap away her outstretched hand? We see that in verses 26 and 27. I also will laugh at your calamity. I will mock when terror strikes you, when terror strikes you like a storm and your calamity comes like a whirlwind, when distress and anguish come upon you. The consequence of rejecting Lady Wisdom's call is calamity, terror, distress, anguish, This is the fate of all who love folly. And we all know from experience, whether we've experienced this ourselves or we've seen it in the lives of others, or we've gleaned this knowledge through reading books, we know that how you live has consequences. If we live in a way that is wicked and sinful and bad, we will have the outcome of that life. Now, it isn't always mechanical, a kind of a one-for-one input and output, but this is a generalism that is true. Generally speaking, laziness leads to poverty. I'm not saying that poverty is always the result of laziness, don't hear me saying that, but generally speaking, laziness leads to poverty. Promiscuity and adultery leads to broken relationships, broken bodily functions, and broken hearts. If you're unfaithful to your spouse, you will lose your family. If you are hasty with your words and cruel, you will lose your friends and no one will want to be near you. This is the way the world works. Everything we do has consequences. The wages of foolishness is death. So all of this has application on the temporal kind of life here on earth. But as terrible as those consequences are, STDs, losing friends, all those kinds of things, What Lady Wisdom is talking about is far more terrifying. The stakes are even higher than temporal consequences. The language she uses goes far and beyond this. She says in verse 27, when terror strikes you like a storm, it's vivid imagery. It's the imagery of this storm breaking in and coming in suddenly and unexpectedly. You're not prepared for it. What's interesting is that the word translated as storm is actually the Hebrew word shoah. I'm trying to read faces here. Some of you have heard that word before. Probably most of us have. Shoah is the word that modern Hebrews use to describe the Holocaust. The fact that this word is used to describe one of the worst atrocities in history shows you that this is a word that carries such magnitude and weight. This isn't the word that you use to describe getting a flat tire when you're driving home from work. This isn't the word you use to describe the frustration of spilling a can of soda on your new laptop. No, this is a word that induces terror and fear and dread. What could this word possibly be referring to? It's referring to the final judgment. This is imagery describing what will happen when the Lord Jesus Christ returns on the last day to judge the living and the dead. Judgment, it's judgment. And judgment is what awaits the fool. And in that day, Lady Wisdom says the fool will cry out. He'll say, okay, okay, I get it now. I see what you were saying all that time. I guess you were right. But by then it will be too late. Listen to her chilling words in verse 28. Then they will call upon me, but I will not answer. They will seek me diligently, but they will not find me. The fool ignores her cries today, but on the day of judgment, she will ignore their cries. They have had every opportunity to listen and to hear and receive her call and turn from their ways. She has gone to every avenue and every venue and every place so that they might hear and turn and be saved. But they have rejected her. And now in the day of judgment, as it's pictured, there is no second chances for the fool. Charles Bridges comments on this verse. This is the misery of deserted souls. It is dreadful to be deserted by God at any time, but how much more in the day of trouble to have his face not only turned from us, but turned against us, to have his eternal frown instead of his smile. This, this will be hell instead of heaven. In that day, that day of trouble, she will ignore the fool's cries. And not only ignore their cries, but she will laugh. As she says in verse 26, I will also laugh at your calamity. I will mock when terror strikes you. Now, our initial response to this is, well, that's kind of mean. Isn't this a little bit cruel of Lady Wisdom to laugh and to mock in such a way? We teach our children not to laugh at others or mock. Well, this isn't laughing because something is funny. It's not making light of judgment. It's not mocking in that sense. Rather, it's a laughing in the absurdity of it all. It's just like how we read in Psalm 2. The nations rage, and they all gather themselves together, and they think they can destroy the Christ. It's like Satan on the day of Christ's crucifixion, thinking that he's about to destroy Christ. You just have to laugh. Are you kidding? Do you not know who Christ is? Do you not know who the Lord is? And I think as well in the specific context of here, it's laughing at absurdity, but it's also laughing in the sense that I warned you for so long and you would not listen. You've chosen this against my calling to you. And so you are without excuse. That's the sense of what's behind Lady Wisdom's laughing here. You see that driven home in verses 29 to 31. She says, this is why she laughs, this is, because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord. They would have none of my counsel, despised all my reproof, therefore, They shall eat the fruit of their own way. They shall have the fill of their own devices. The Hadean wisdom says, you've chosen this. You've spent years cultivating, not a wise life and a righteous life, living before the fear of the Lord, but you've been cultivating this fruit that yields death. This is simply the grave you have been digging for yourself. And you are not neutral. Some people struggle with the doctrine of the final judgment. And it certainly ought to be something that should give us a little tingle in our spines, even as we think about it, as Christians. Though we know we are not going to face it. It is a terrifying thing. But here we see that those who are being judged are not good people, They are not neutral people. They are those who have chosen actively the way of folly. As she says, you have not sought out me. You have diligently sought your own folly. You have hated knowledge. You have not chosen to fear the Lord. And so, as C.S. Lewis puts it in The Great Divorce, there are two kinds of people in the world. There are those who say to God, thy will be done, and there are those to whom God will finally say to them, thy will be done. Ultimately, God will judge. He will give us over to what we have chosen, and we will all reap the fruits that we have sown. Wisdom, dear friends, is speaking to all of us. And what is her word to us? It is that the word of God cannot, cannot, cannot be endlessly refused and denied without consequence. Do you remember how Saul, as God sent him prophet after prophet, messenger after messenger, and Saul refused and refused and rejected and went his own way? And then in his day of trouble, he called to the Lord. The Lord would not answer, and he went to his eternal punishment. Dear friend, you may be sitting here this morning, and you may be thinking to yourself that you can put off this call of wisdom. Yes, some of this makes sense, but it's not today. You know, I'm young. I have my whole life ahead of me. I want to have a little bit of fun before I maybe settle down and get serious about this Christianity thing. I'll listen to wisdom tomorrow, but today, let me play the fool. Well, dear friend, you cannot know what tomorrow will bring. You do not know what the next decade will bring. Nor do I, but one thing I do know, and it is that your time is limited, and it is getting shorter with every second that passes. And with each and every breath you take, you are getting closer to your last and final breath. Make no mistake, the day of judgment is coming, and it will come like a storm, sudden, unexpectedly, with terror. And if you wait till then, it will be too late. Well, the consequences of rejecting Lady Wisdom's call are dire. But third, then, there's the consequence of receiving her call. In the final two verses, we see, again, this contrast between those who refuse her call and those who do, in fact, listen to Wisdom's call. Verse 32 speaks of those who refuse to listen once again. For the simple are killed by their turning away, and the complacency of fools destroy them. Again, the fool here is one who has this sense of ease. They don't objectively have safety, but they feel safety. But that's only because they're denying reality. They're complacent. Verse 32 leaves no doubt that the complacent fool will have his feet sweeped from under him and he'll be knocked to the floor. They think they're at peace, but they are not. Well, in contrast, then, to the judgment of the fool, we have the promise for those who will listen and receive Lady Wisdom's call. In verse 33, she says, but whoever listens to me will dwell secure and will be at ease without dread of disaster. The fool doesn't dread disaster because he has convinced himself it's never coming. There are no consequences for how I live. He has his head stuck in the sand. But this is a false sense of ease. However, those who receive Lady Wisdom's call can have true peace and true safety, not just a subjective kind of feeling that might not be true in reality and objectively, but no, Genuine, real peace has been made for those who receive wisdom's call. Now in the immediate context of Proverbs, these words apply to probably the thinking of safety in the land, safety from enemies, dwelling securely. But of course, as we see, the New Covenant unpacks that and shows us more and more of what the promise of dwelling with God will be like. It will be a dwelling in true safety and security, safe from our enemy that is Satan, safe from our own indwelling sin because it will be removed, safe from the wrath of God we deserve because it was taken by Christ. Then we will have no fear. of the storm of God's wrath. There we will have peace in a land without tears or sorrow. Well, friends, we have all played the fool. We have all sinned and acted wickedly. We have all, at one point or another, slapped away Lady Wisdom's hand. And therefore, what we all deserve is the calamity and disaster, that storm of Shoah, as Paul makes the case in Romans 1. So they are all without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him. But they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools." And as Paul goes on to show, the end of the fools is judgment. But the good news, the good news of the gospel is that Christ, the wisdom of God, came and lived the wise and righteous life we have not lived and we can never live. He died. He underwent that terror and anguish and calamity and storm of God's wrath and fury for sin that we deserve. And in doing so, he saved for himself a people that we might be spared, that we might dwell with him. And just like Lady Wisdom, through what the world rejects as foolish through the preaching of the gospel, Christ makes his call. He goes to all places. He is here even now and he is calling you to turn from your wicked ways and to trust in him, to embrace him and not slap away his hand as he extends it to you. The good news is that today is not the day of calamity, at least as we are here under the preaching of the word. Today is the day when there is still time to heed wisdom's call, to heed Christ's call, and to follow him. In verse 23, Lady Wisdom calls us to turn back. This language of turning back is one of the key words of the Bible. It means to repent. It means to turn away from wickedness and turn to the Lord. And we all need to do this. We all need to turn to Christ today. Because as Paul says in Romans 13, besides this, you know the time. that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep, for salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. The night is far gone. The day is at hand. The day is at hand. But for all who have received wisdom's call, who have listened to her, who have followed her and who now walk in the fear of the Lord, You, dear Christian, can rejoice. You can rejoice because you have no reason to fear judgment. Not because you've never been wicked or you've made promises that you won't be wicked in the future or sin or that you'll always be wise. No, you don't have to fear judgment. because Christ faced that for you. And in these baptisms that we will witness in just a moment, we will see a picture of what Christ faced. Baptism is a sign that one has turned from that way of wickedness and is now following Christ. It is a sign that even as Jesus went down into death and went down into the grave and the waters of God's judgment covered him, but so also we are united to him and in his death so that we receive the benefits of his death. And even as he was raised from the place of the dead into life and resurrection and then ascended to the right hand of the Father, so also the one who is baptized as they are raised from the waters are brought into a newness of life, which is a picture of their walking with Christ. Now, in this life, and eventually, eternally, where we will dwell with him in perfect peace. And so, let us all incline our ears and our hearts to wisdom's call, to Christ's call, so that we may all walk before the Lord in wisdom, now and for eternity. Let's pray. Dear Lord, even though for some of us this may be a message, a sermon that has pricked our consciences, may have even offended us, perhaps if we're visiting, Lord, we know that this is a good thing. This is your Spirit's work, and so, Lord, we do ask that your Spirit would work, drawing the simple and the fools and the scoffers to yourself, for in you alone is found life, now and forever. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.