turn with me in your scriptures to Proverbs chapter 2. We have in chapter 2 a beautiful poem where Solomon takes up the language of a loving father, speaking to his dear son, guiding him in the ways of wisdom, assuring him that he must seek wisdom on God's terms and seeking on God's terms. Meeting those conditions, God will abundantly bring about beautiful consequences. There will be an abundance of blessing and wisdom. And we have worked through those conditions and those consequences through verse 11. And we take up this week verses 12 through 15. Stand together with me in honor of God's Word, and I'll read in your hearing these verses, and take up this week from this beautiful poem, Chapter 2 of the Book of Proverbs. This is God's very Word, holy, infallible, inerrant in all its parts. Let us hear and heed. To deliver you from the way of evil, from the man who speaks perverse things, from those who leave the paths of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness, who rejoice in doing evil and delight in the perversity of the wicked, whose ways are crooked and who are devious in their paths. Let us beseech God's blessing on this His holy word. Great God and merciful Father, bless the hearing and the preaching of your word We ask that Christ may be manifest in his revelation. We pray this in his name. Amen. You may be seated. Guided by the loving words of a father to his son, Solomon's poem here in chapter two sets out those conditions that we mentioned for the fruitful pursuit of wisdom and the beneficial consequences that will abound to those who pursue wisdom on God's terms. God will bless with inward and outward transformation. First inwardly, as we see in verses five and following, the Lord will prepare us for growing in wisdom. He will nurture us as a saving relationship with him. And He will bring out wisdom to us in abundance from His storehouse as He reveals Himself to us. And continuing on, we see that that inward nurturing and wisdom has an outward result. The Lord will give us ethical clarity. We'll understand true righteousness, justice, and equity. This will give us insight in choices we make in life so that we can choose what is best in accordance with God's designs and His moral purposes. And as we grow in the training of God's wisdom, we internalize and understand God's ways as He protects us We begin to discern and understand how to avoid evil and destruction. As Solomon says, discretion will preserve us. Discretion being a fruit of the nurturing of wisdom within us. Understanding will keep us as we grow in the nurture of wisdom. God protecting us as he trains us will teach us how to walk with discretion and understanding to avoid the destruction that awaits the simple, the fool, the bucker. This week, we look at the benefits of that protection as it is worked out in discretion and understanding, we are given deliverance. And here at verse 12, He describes that deliverance from the way of evil and all those that are walkers in the way of evil. And he describes them. We need to unpack what he teaches us there. And then second, deliverance is provided, verse 16 and following, from sexual immorality. The deliverance described, first, from the way of the evil, and second, particularly from sexual immorality. These things are soul destroyers. Solomon unfolds to us what the danger is and how it is apparent in its grave danger. And that is the thing from which we are marvelously delivered in the work of wisdom in our soul. So first, we'll consider this week, deliverance. from the way of evil. At first, as we consider being delivered from the path of the way of evil, that seems like it should be pretty straightforward. After all, we might summarize that deliverance as simply as, don't do stupid things and don't sin. That seems pretty secure. That seems like it's a simple way of being rescued, if you will. from the way of evil. But Solomon shows that this is not as easy as we might think, that the way of evil is a snare. We are not so simply delivered from it. We really do need the Lord's gracious training, the help of wisdom. In fact, we are easily trapped in the way of evil and held fast by those who love that path. It is as that, any of you who are familiar with social media will catch the popular memes. One recently kind of strikes a chord here. This way of evil is like what we would have expected quicksand to be like. I thought it was going to be a whole lot more of a problem, given all the movies I saw back from the 50s and 60s, and even into the 70s. Everybody was struggling with quicksand everywhere. Doesn't seem to be that big a deal after all. It turns out that that funny model is a lot like what the Way of Evil is like. It is a tricky snare frown everywhere, and one that readily, easily traps us and holds us. So it's not for nothing that Solomon unfolds the warnings packed into this deliverance as he describes it. It is God's wisdom that brings the deliverance from the way of evil. The word used here for deliverance, this delivering, has the idea of snatching away, freeing, or liberating from captivity. The way of evil really is like that kind of sticky snare, something that is easy to fall into, hard to be removed from. Wisdom from God is powerful enough to deliver us, to snatch us from the snare that so easily would drag us in to the way of evil. The implication here in that snatching away, that liberating from the snare, is that we're not really in a neutral or safe physician by default. We are naturally simple and untrained. We start out with foolishness bound up. In our heart, we're easy prey. Our natural condition makes us easy prey for those who populate the way of evil. We are easily persuaded to stop listening or to abandon the guidance of the loving Father. in the way of wisdom, and to follow the enticements of those on the path of evil. So Solomon describes, in very important ways, those who populate that path, that evil path. Let's work through his description, starting at verse 12b, from the man who speaks perverse things. The deliverance from that path is a deliverance, first of all, from the one marketing the path. One, a man who is speaking to you the twisted ways. The perverse path being presented as he markets the evil path. He's broadcasting the way of wickedness. The world is full of such marketing. And it works. We mustn't think we're immune to it. It is powerful, and we need to be warned. We need wisdom's protection. We need to be snatched away from the hearing and persuasion of the one who speaks perversely. Those then leaving the path of uprightness for paths of darkness are described in verse 13. From those who leave the paths of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness. Here we see a progression Some hear and are persuaded by the marketer, the one speaking perversely. He's successful in drawing away those who, not just hearing, but also being persuaded, turn to that path of wickedness. This particularly points to those who abandon their heritage. Notice they turn from the path of uprightness. What Solomon's warning about here is that those of us who were nurtured in the Christian path from earliest days are not immune to being drawn away by the marketing of perversity that's all around us. Let us be warned. Those are the ones he's zeroing in on. Indeed, that makes sense as Solomon is speaking up, the language of the father to his son. This is not a stranger. who's already on that path who wisdom is calling. No, in this context, in this part, in this poem, Solomon is saying, the son who's under all the abundant intentional nurture of the father, training him in the ways of wisdom, cultivating the relationship with God in salvation, wherein alone we may have the knowledge of God that brings wisdom, in that context, There's still the marketer reaching out, and there's still the danger of those being persuaded who were, as it were, on a path that led in the right way. The marketer succeeds, and those on that path left the path of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness. We mustn't think, then, that Christian kids in a Christian home are safe by default. They're not. We have every reason to hope in God's covenant, but never a reason for laxness or carelessness. We must always be intentional like Solomon sets out the father. Intentional, persistent, loving, instructing in the way of wisdom. Solomon provides us the warning here. And are these not sometimes the most aggressive marketers, those who left the path of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness? We hear all sorts of it in our day. There's been a little bit of a fad at those deconstructing their evangelical faith. And now they're given The microphone. They're given the broadcast capacity, right? Tell us all about the virtues of abandoning the ignorance that held you before. These who left the path of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness are sometimes turned into the most powerful marketers of the path of evil. Solomon goes on. those who rejoice in doing evil and delight in perversity. We see the progression. There's the one marketing, calling, and some who are drawn away. And they're not just drawn away to walk that path. Now they rejoice in the evil of that path. It becomes their delight. The perversity that was marketed now delights the soul. What a crushing and sorrowful thing. This can be viewed as the increasing destruction of the one who has been taken captive and snared by the way of evil. A transformation is taking place on that path, just like the transformation is supposed to take place on the path of uprightness. As we grow in wisdom, nurtured in godliness, a transformation takes place. We started there. There's a transformation that takes place for those who are drawn away. They increase in the depth of the snare. They love the evil now. They delight. They rejoice in evil and perversity. Pursuit of darkness has progressed to rejoicing in evil and delighting in perversity. We need to be aware of this enticement to corruption. I want to highlight a subtle way that may escape our attention that is exactly like this. I heard this week something that rang a bell. I remembered thinking about the methods of this man when I heard his name this week. And many of you may recognize him. He was a powerful mogul in the entertainment industry. Norman Lear turned 100 this week. Al Mowat commented on this, brought it to the attention of those who are his readers and hearers. And I want to share a couple of things that he describes here, because this is spot on what we're talking about. In delighting in evil, rejoicing in evil, and delighting in perversity, this is a technique of ensnaring souls. Norman Lear understood it. He was a master of doing it. Here what Al Mohler says in part, Norman Lear reached his 100th birthday this week, happily surrounded by his large family. It's a remarkable achievement, but the real story here is not that Lear turned 100, but that he changed the world. He ranks among the most significant forces of moral change in modern times. He might well have been the most influential liberal figure in American life at a time when this country was turning left, hard left, on many moral issues. How did Lear drive American morality to the left? He did so by creating the stories that made America laugh and sometimes cringe. In any event, Americans watched Lear's television by the millions. They could hardly avoid his productions. Though at one time, Lear had several leading television programs, All in the Family, which debuted in 1971, was the most important weapon of mass cultural influence that he wielded. Based on a winning British comedy, All in the Family became one of the most iconic cultural forces of its time. The comedy broke barrier after barrier, touching explosive issue after issue with a comedic twist that was irresistible. Archie Bunker became Lear's anti-hero, the white conservative male unwilling to go along with the cultural revolution. His wife Edith's cousin, Maud, became a heroine, She would later become the title character in a spin-off series that would, predictably, feature Maude deciding to have an abortion. Lear understood that television had the powerful capacity to change minds, laugh line by laugh line. As Benjamin Rolski rightly observed, Quote, what distinguished Lear from other entertainers and writers, however, was that he wanted to make people laugh about something. End quote. Lear stated himself that, quote, comedy with something serious on its mind works as a kind of intravenous to the mind and spirit. End quote. Powerful intravenous indeed. And Lear knew exactly what he was doing. He had many serious things on his mind, such as pushing abortion, feminism, homosexual rights, and much more. Rolski, who wrote on this in the rise and fall of the religious left, politics, television, and popular culture in the 70s and beyond. Rolski's most important insight is that Lear was not just a man of the left, he was a major figure on the religious left. While minimizing any personal religious beliefs, Lear staunchly opposed conservative Christian influence in the public square and saw evangelicals on the religious right as a threat to his liberal vision for America. He founded the activist group known as People for the American Way and forged an alliance with religious liberals. Lear was a champion of the so-called new morality and he used the powerful medium of television to change American hearts and minds. what Rolski calls Lear's liberal faith, was translated into stories that captured the American mind, and powerfully so. Lear is now 100 years old, and whether today's Americans know it or not, he changed America and drove a liberal revolution in morality. We are all living in Norman Lear's world now. How did he do it? Laugh line by laugh line. It's very important to understand the manipulation, the intentional manipulation, ministered to us intravenously to the mind and spirit by those with an agenda that get you to laugh about what they want you to delight in, to rejoice in. If we laugh at evil as amusing and entertaining, we will easily learn to rejoice in it. And finally, to pursue it and defend it as a delight. Lear knew that. He did a great job of accomplishing that. He was very instrumental, powerful in transforming the morality of America from the 70s forward. getting us to laugh at the right things to meet his agenda. Do you see how that touches on what's described here? It's not described as those who turn from the path of a brightness to the ways of darkness, becoming angry and destroyed. That's not the place Solomon goes first. He first shows that they begin to delight in evil. They rejoice. in perversity. We should be warned. There's a mission on the part of those who have an intentionality in their entertainment. And they're ministering their vision to the soul by what they get us to delight in, to rejoice in. So Solomon warns us of those who have turned aside and now delight rejoice in doing evil and delight in perversity. Next, he describes those progressing still further, whose ways are crooked and devious. Now the delights have been put into practice. The marketing of perversity at the outset by the one at the beginning, who is broadcasting, marketing the perversity, of the way of evil, that marketing of perversity at the outset has been fully embraced and put into practice by those who turned aside. It's being lived out. Again, the language here of the one who is described as crooked, it is language implying that the Hebrew implies something that was straight that's now bent out of shape. Again, Solomon's warning. Those who started well may not end well, be warned. There is a way of uprightness. It takes diligence to walk it and stay on it. You are an easy prey, an easy one to fall into the snare if you are not warned away and remaining diligent in the path of uprightness. Here, those in the end of the description were once straight, They were on the path of uprightness. And now, they're wholly misshapen into the ways of perversity. They have completely been transformed, whose ways are now crooked, and who are devious in their paths. There's a sinister implication in their devious paths. As they live out fully, that which has ensnared them in the paths of evil. We need to consider them and be warned away from laxness, passivity. Solomon, in the words of the father encouraging the son, is warning there must be diligence. We must apply ourselves. This portion of the poetry helps us recognize that wisdom not only desirable in itself as provided by God, but it's something we need because we are vulnerable without it. We need the protective work that God is doing through wisdom and working in us by wisdom precisely because without it, we are easy prey. We are very vulnerable to the ways of evil. Do we sense the easy vulnerability? that Solomon describes, the enticements, the subtle enticements and transformations of the path of Eden, are we lax in relation to that path? We should be warned by Solomon, by the loving words of the Father, And in the description of the Way of Evil, let us guard against the marketing, against the subtlety of that marketing to ensnare the soul. We want wisdom. to be there always checking us, so that as we put a foot into the snare, wisdom is right there to snatch us away, as the language describes at the beginning, to liberate us from what would otherwise end us in a twisted, crooked perversion. Let us beseech God's mercy that we'll be diligent in the pursuit of wisdom to avoid the snares, of the path of evil, to be delivered by wisdom from that path. Let's pray. Holy Father, we are warned. We hear in the beautiful words of the poetry inspired by the Holy Spirit through Solomon. We ask that wisdom should keep us, that the training you give in that loving, and saving relationship where you reveal yourself to us, and you transform our souls, and you embed in us the knowledge and understanding of yourself that brings about that wisdom that protects. Oh, Father, may we be diligent. May wisdom be so cultivated in us by your grace and by your work that we are quickly liberated, quickly delivered from the snares of the way of evil. May we be richly warned. May we heed your warnings as they are recorded for us here. And may we be delivered from the way of evil. Pray this for the glory of the one who embodies all wisdom, even Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.