Ear Training

Make your way in your Bible to Proverbs chapter 1. I do have a plan at some point in the not so distant future to go through the London Baptist Confession of Faith. I taught that years ago, like 10 years ago or more. And it's already— the material is prepared, but I have learned something over the years that it doesn't matter that I did something before. If I do it again, it seems like almost more work than if I start from scratch. To get caught up on it and review it all and see if everything still holds up. So I have that ready, but I just wanted to put it off for a while while we get used to the new schedule. And I have a few Proverbs to preach, and I think the Proverbs are really valuable. And this is a really good meat and potatoes proverb we're looking at today.

That's why I just looked at the clock and it's 10 minutes to 3, so I have no idea when I'm supposed to be done. But you know the old saying. Some of you are new. You might not know the old saying. Do you know what it means when a Baptist preacher looks at the clock or at his watch? Absolutely nothing. Yeah. So it doesn't matter what that clock says. I'm preaching till 6:30. That's our 7 o'clock.

Proverbs 1. Proverbs are written by Solomon, at least most of them are as far as we know. This context of Proverbs 1— well, the Proverbs in general are wisdom, essentially wisdom literature at its most fundamental, the idea of it being about wisdom. And our context in Proverbs 1 sort of introduces that subject to the whole book of Proverbs. And you see things like, "Hear, my son." So it's very patriarchal language. It's Solomon talking to his son.

There's a shift that happens in our text that can be a little confusing. I might remember to say it, but if I don't, he'll say in a little while that the woman of wisdom will be shouting in the streets. So you'll see the personal first-person pronoun as we unpack, and that will be "I" or "me," and that will be from the perspective of wisdom, the woman. But I think we all understand that it's the Word of God, it's God speaking. So you could rightly interpret it as God saying "I" or "me." That will come into play later when there's some real strong language.

So interpretively, I just don't want you to get lost. If you didn't know, I said it this morning, but I'm gonna say it again today. I want to say tonight. The Hebrew of the Old Testament is very patriarchal language. The Greek of the New Testament is very mathematical, wooden, more concrete, more literal, more linear. Greek is a lot more like English than Hebrew is.

And the things happen where this— Proverbs in particular, as you start unpacking Proverbs, you can get lost really easy if you try to use your Western New Testament mathematical, logical, theological, linguistic brain and try to interpret the Old Testament. You can get in big trouble doing that. So be careful when you're in the Old Testament not to try to jam too much of the New Testament hermeneutic onto the Old Testament because the Old Testament doesn't— I'm not saying it's— I don't want you to think that the Old Testament is up for interpretation or free to do with whatever you want. That's not what I'm saying because the Hebrew also is a very technical language. But it's more like we're doctrinal. We come from the Protestant background and the Reformation. We're theological as Baptists and as people who believe what we do. And so sometimes we'll take that theological brain and try to apply it to more familial or tribal language, and we can mess up when we do that.

This is a case in point where just because he's personifying wisdom as a woman, it doesn't mean wisdom is a woman. That's not the idea. He's speaking proverbially because it's a proverb. So you would expect it to be proverbially, right? I mean, that seems to make sense.

So shifting at verse 20, from verse 8 to 19, there's the instructions to the son. And some warnings. And then from verse 20, moving forward to what we look at tonight, there's two competing voices for the hearer, for the reader of the proverb, for the son of whoever, in this case, Solomon is talking. The two voices are Woman Wisdom and Lady Folly. I stole those titles. They're not in the text, but they seem to work to help us keep separate in our minds that there are going to be two voices in this text. Shouting for the attention of the son that Solomon's speaking to. One voice is the woman called Wisdom. The other voice you'll see is the world and Lady Folly. That's who we're calling Lady Folly. And we're going to see this set in a context of city.

Now usually when we think of city, you and I probably think of like San Francisco or Los Angeles or New York. City doesn't mean big city. It doesn't mean metropolis. It just means the place where market happens, the place where commerce happens. So you can think of Modesto or Ceres or whatever as city, okay? You don't need to think of city as big city. So when that comes up, I want you to see it. I also want you to know that the idea of busyness, bustling, movement, commerce— that is all in line here. In other words, what we might call the world. Everything going on out in the world is busy and hectic, and there's a lot of things happening, a lot of voices happening.

This text is about being able to listen through all that noise and hear the word of wisdom. That's the idea. So that's the context of our text. There's a busy, hectic life out there with lots of voices competing for our attention, and the proverb writer here, Solomon, is telling us we should be not caught— taken away by all of those things. It's providential that the next 1 John message is, "Do not love the things of the world." This whole idea that there's a lot out there trying to get your attention.

When you hear somebody with a Southern accent, Are you like everybody else? Do you stereotype people as not smart if they have a Southern accent? Because I'll tell you that, I don't know if you know this, but Southern people are smart. They might not be the same kind of smart as somebody with 14 degrees, but there's wisdom in somebody who has a Southern accent. The reason I bring that up to you, because it might be that you hear somebody talking and they might sound simple, they might sound Southern or uneducated or unsophisticated. And you might make the mistake— or somebody that might have an accent. Let's say you're talking to somebody who English isn't their first language or something like that. And you might hear somebody that sounds different than you and think, well, maybe they're not as smart because they sound different.

You know what people do to somebody who speaks with an accent? They talk louder to them like that'll fix it. Like, can you tell me where the off-ramp is? Like that helps. I bring that up to you because that's kind of like what's happening in this text. It's kind of like what's happening here, that you might not catch— wisdom's voice isn't as loud or sophisticated or as exciting or as engaging as the world around you. And you might think, well, this sounds pretty simplistic or basic, what I'm hearing from wisdom. So maybe it's not as cool. Maybe it's not as relevant to me. Maybe it's not as meaningful to me. But you have to have good enough ears, like I do, that when I hear somebody with a bit of a Southern accent, my ears perk up because I think, ah, this is going to be one of those actually smart people, not one of those book smart people, right? Not that there's anything wrong with book smarts, but I just— I want us to ask you to perk up your ears.

Last thing I'll say, the title of the sermon is Ear Training. If you don't know what that means, that's something that you learn in music. In music, you learn ear training, which is the ability with your ears to be able to hear things that are happening in music theory. Music theory is the actual language of music. So, for example, the difference between a major and a minor chord, the distance between the notes. Like, you might think that the distance between A and B is one step, but no, it's two steps. But the difference between B and C is only one step. So you need to learn those things to know music, right? But part of learning music isn't just learning the language of music, learning how to read it, learning how to understand it, It's also being able to hear it, to be able to hear minor versus major, to be able to hear where the next chord and the resolve is, to be able to hear.

So that's why I'm calling this ear training. My goal would be like a musician learning music to where if something is played, they would know, okay, that's the I chord. Okay, that's the minor VI chord. Okay, I see there he played a suspended chord. It needs to resolve here. And once they learn that and they know that and they know the language, they can hear it. And they don't just hear it. They know what's happening when they hear it. They have the ability to discern what's happening with it.

I don't have that, by the way. My daughter does. And she teased me about it this week that she knows what Phrygian dominant is. So my daughter is my music teacher, and that's a little humbling. But she has the ability— if I were to say, what is that chord? She would know. I should ask her, Abraham, that chord you were playing earlier. She would know that chord by name. Because not only would she know it by seeing it, but she has perfect pitch. So she can hear it. So she has the ear and the knowledge, right? That's what I would want for you in wisdom.

I would want you to be able to hear easily without a lot of thought, without a ton of work and discernment and maybe I need to get 6 other opinions. When you hear voices out there, you would know the Word and know God's wisdom so well that you would immediately know, ah, that's not it. That's not— they're singing out of key. They're saying things that are against God's Word. He's talking about psychology. They're saying something that is the wisdom of men, but that doesn't sound like it was born out of God's Word. And that's what it means to get good ears when it comes to wisdom, to be able to hear when wisdom is talking, the wisdom of the Word, rather than the voices of the world.

So that's what I'm talking about when I say ear training. Like a musician can know, I know what those chords are, I know what music that is, I can recognize the piece of music, I know the timing of it, I know all those things because I've been trained, my ears are trained. I want you to have ear training when it comes to the Word of God.

Let's pray. Father, this passage is pretty clear. But the question isn't whether it is clear. The question is whether we are able to hear it, that we— do we have ears to hear? Do we understand? The Proverbs can be so simple sometimes, and maybe that's what trips us up, is they're so simple and basic that we maybe want it to be more complicated. We can be that way. We just ask, Father, that the simple lessons of this passage tonight would go home with us, that we would be listening and train our ears to hear your word over and above any other voice. We want to hear you. We want to make sure we're obedient to you when we hear you. So please help us with that, in Jesus' name. Amen.

Granted, by the way, when Jesus says, "Whoever has ears to hear, let him hear," you all know that what that means is not everybody has ears, right? That you have to have spiritual awareness and spiritual life to understand the Word of God. So I need to say that as I'm starting this. This lesson is for Christians. This sermon is for believers. It's for the the people who understand that there is a God and He's speaking through wisdom.

So look at verse 20 with me. "Wisdom calls out aloud." This is Woman Wisdom. You see it? Now you're going to see where she's called a she. "Wisdom calls aloud outside. She raises her voice in the open squares. She cries out in the chief concourses. At the openings of the gates in the city, she speaks her words." Do you see this is why I was saying city? This is the idea. The idea, if you want to use the language that we would use, she's out in public. That's the idea, the way we would use public. She's out there. She's out there speaking. She raises her voice. Do you see it? You got the picture, right, of a marketplace or— I don't know where you shop these days. We don't shop anymore. I buy everything online. I turned into that guy.

But if you shop, let's imagine you're at the flea market. You're at the mall. You're at a store. You're at Walmart or whatever. And you hear a voice shouting in the place, right? That's like, "Who is this crazy person yelling out here in public?" Well, that's the idea. This person, this woman Wisdom, is shouting. That's the picture out in the city. There's a lot of clatter. There's a lot of noise. There's a lot of stuff going on. And then out in all that noise and all the chaos is the voice of Wisdom crying. That's the idea. And I think it's pretty obvious, but it is important to see that all those voices are shouting And she's not just another voice. This text isn't telling us that Wisdom is just another person to vote on, another person that we might give our attention to, another option of many options. Wisdom doesn't have peers, but she's out there. She's out there crying.

Look at verse 22, "How long, you simple ones, will you love simplicity? For scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge." Just so you know, simple here is an insult. This is not a compliment. This is not saying you are simple and that's good, you're basic, you're pretty simple, that's good that you're not a complicated person. No, no, no. This is saying you're simple in the idea that you're a simpleton, that you're ignorant, you're uneducated, you don't know things. And so there's wisdom out there, knowledge and wisdom in the Word of God out there crying in the street. And the Proverb writer is asking, how long are you going to stay Dumb. Why would you stay ignorant? How long, you simple ones? Why will you love simplicity?

How long will you love simplicity? Then it says, "Scorners." These are people that are maligning the things of God and maligning. They're out there saying bad things. So out there in the city, in the public, you have voices out there crying and clamoring and business and influencing and everything else that's more relevant today than it's ever been, all the noise out there and voices.

I did a thing the other day where I, just to test myself, I searched— because I'm going to teach a little bit on annihilationism next week in Sunday school. And so I just thought, what would happen if I went to YouTube, because that's where everybody gets all their good information, right? And I type the word annihilationism and just search. And I just started scrolling. It's just all the opinions on it. Like all the people. You have the opinion, then you have a guy countering the opinion, then you have a guy countering the counter of the opinion. And they're just nonstop voices out there, just noise out there. And wisdom's out there crying, "Hey, here I am. Listen to me." And what the writer is saying, "But the foolish people won't listen." They won't listen. They don't want to hear. Do you see it? It says they hate knowledge. These are people that question everything that anybody says.

And I think you probably know this, that the one that gets the most questioning is God, isn't it? Like people will accept any conspiracy theory, any political theory, any thought out there. They'll accept anything going on on Twitter or whatever else. Sorry, X, I'm supposed to be up to date. They'll know all the things going on in the world and they'll know all the questions and all the conspiracies and all the doubts and all the things they're for and all the things they're against. And then you come along and say, hey, I have eternal truth, the Word of God. And they say, nah, I'm not going to listen to that. But I'll listen to every other voice. Every other news person, every other podcaster. I listen to everybody else's opinion, but not God's. And that's exactly what he's saying. Like, how can you be like that?

When you're out there with scorners, you're going to become a scorner. You're going to become like them. The old saying is true. Here's something with a Southern accent. If you lay down with dogs, you get up with fleas. If you hang around scorners, you will become one of them. If you hang around people who are ignorant, you will become ignorant. You don't go into a group of ignorant people and raise them all up to your intelligence. You go to a group of ignorant people and go down to their lack of intelligence. Bad company corrupts good morals. So he's saying, how long? Why are you doing this? Why are you staying simple?

Now it's time to get involved and to be actually in the training process. Look at the beginning of verse 23. Turn at my rebuke, the proverb writer is saying. Listen. And the my here, I believe, is woman wisdom. She's already speaking and she's saying those things. And that's what she's saying. She's saying, how long? That's what wisdom is yelling those things. How long will you stay simple? Why would you? Hate knowledge, and now wisdom is saying, "Turn at my rebuke." That's strong language. It's hard to do that when there's all those competing voices out there. You have to quiet the noise. You have to be willing to say, "Wait a second, everybody, quiet down. Pipe down, everybody. Wisdom's talking. And wisdom is telling me to turn back toward wisdom. Wisdom is shouting for my attention. And I need to filter out all the foolishness. I need to turn off all the noise." and listen to wisdom.

So I do want you to see first, because in a second, the proverb is going to get strong, like strong like you might not be ready for. It's going to have language in it that I think a lot of people who think that God loves everybody would be surprised at, okay, the kind of things that are said here. But for now, I do want us to see that at least there's some offer of grace here. There's an offer. Turn at my rebuke, come unto me. Like the author is saying, you still have a chance. You can listen to wisdom. You don't have to listen to the world out there. You don't have to listen to the noise. Then he says, "Turn at my rebuke." Then the rest of the verse, "Surely I will pour out my Spirit on you. I will make my words known to you." Do you see the offer is there? Remember this offer later when the language gets strong, because the language gets real strong in a minute.

"Surely I will pour out my Spirit on you. I'll make my words known to you." Did you see it? It doesn't say, "Come and turn at my rebuke so I can make you happy and you can think whatever you want, but I'll— as long as you're close to me." What's the difference? The difference is my words, the words of wisdom. This is the idea, is to train your ears to hear wisdom talking. And wisdom is saying, get over here instead of being out there in the world. Get over here and listen to me instead of listening to all the voices out there and your own opinions and walking with the scornful people. Stay away from them and hear me and come where I'm at. And he's saying, turn at my rebuke and and I will pour out my Spirit on you.

So God promises to be good to the people who turn to him. He promises that if you seek wisdom, you'll find it. If you train your ears to hear when Woman Wisdom is talking, if you're listening and you turn to him and you repent and you get close to him, he will pour out his Spirit on you. He doesn't say, come here so I can yell at you some more. Come here so I can make you feel bad. Come here so I can crush you. No, if you'll listen, if you'll listen to wisdom, I will pour out my Spirit on you. I'll make my words known to you. I'll give you the truth. I'll give you what you really need instead of all the other voices. I'll give my words to you, not the words of the countless opinions and garbage out there that are changing from week to week.

Here's a quick question. Other than you carnivore people, are eggs good for you or bad for you right now? Good. Good. Now is the time. Okay. Okay. We'll see what happens in a few months because it changes. It goes up and down, right? So those people who tell you— You're eating too many eggs, your cholesterol is going through the roof, and now they're telling you you don't eat enough eggs. You should only be eating eggs. Only ever eat eggs, right? It's like the way that things work out there, it goes from this is good for you to now this is bad for you. You go from keto, no, that's terrible for you, now you do keto all the time. Or just the world that we live in, that voices change. But the author of the proverb is saying, not if you listen to me. The wisdom, the Lady Wisdom, Woman Wisdom is saying, listen to me. I'll pour out my Spirit on you and I'll take care of you. You'll be okay. You'll have my knowledge, not the world's knowledge.

Now, continuing on, if you don't listen, there are consequences. Look at verse 24. Because I have called you— and listen carefully to this, please. This goes even back to our discussion from Sunday school about why God would ever judge anybody and why doesn't he love everybody. Look carefully at what it says. Because I have called and you refused, I have stretched out my hand and no one regarded. 'Because you disdained all my counsel and would have none of my rebuke.' So he said— she says, 'I invited you. I would have poured out my Spirit on you, but instead of receiving the instruction and letting your ears be trained to hear my word, instead of that you refused it. You would have none of it. You didn't like the rebuke of the Lord.'

Remember when you read in Hebrews— we just talked about that today— that no one loves the chastening of the Lord. I've never heard a child say, 'Thank you for the spanking, Father.' They're supposed to say that. They should be thanking you for it. But nobody ever says that, right? Nobody ever says, "Thank you for the spanking." But that's what he's saying right here. "You disdained all my counsel and would have none of my rebuke." If they had received the rebuke, the audience here, the son in the proverb, if they had listened, they would have been chastened, but they would have also been restored, right? They would have been restored. But they weren't restored because they disdained his counsel. They did not want to hear from God. They wanted to hear all the other voices. They wanted to hear what was going on out there in the world. They wanted their friends to be in the world. Wisdom was out there crying, but Folly was their buddy and their friend. It was cooler to hang around with Folly and to hang around with the enemies of God, the scorners and the scoffers.

You know what FOMO is? It's fear of missing out. If I'm not out there with them, I'm gonna miss out on what they're doing. I have something to say about that too in a moment.

Now here's that strong language I told you was coming. I hope you're ready for it because it's pretty strong.

And maybe I'll ask you, instead of reading it first, I'll prime you first. What do you do, or what do you think, if somebody says, my God is not a God that would 'condemn anybody' or 'my God loves everybody' or 'God loves everybody equally even if they don't believe or they don't repent.' If you have that idea, where would you turn in Scripture? Because I'm suggesting to you, you have a great passage for it right here. That if you have the idea that there's some sort of obligation of God to love everybody, if you ever think that, when you hear that language or even if it comes from within, like God has to love everybody or it isn't fair, If you ever have that going on, look at verse 26.

I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your terror comes, when your terror comes like a storm and your destruction comes like a whirlwind, when distress and anguish come upon you. Now, I know we're not all reading the Hebrew Bible right now, and I know we're not all reading the New King James right now, but I'm almost sure none of your Bibles or your translations say something a whole lot different than what I just read. I'm almost sure that none of your passages from 26 and 27 say that God loves everybody and that he never wants anybody to suffer and that he never wants anybody to experience pain. I think all of your Bibles say something along the lines of, "I will laugh at your calamity. I will mock your terror when your terror comes."

I almost want to just sit in that for a second. I almost just want to ask you, how do you feel about that? What do you think of that when you read it? And maybe there's— with a group this size, there might be both sides of what you feel. There might be somebody in the room saying, "Yeah, get them. Talk about that imprecatory stuff, right? There it is. That's the stuff I like. Get them. Sick them. Get them, God. Bite them. Destroy them. Oh yeah, God loves to see them suffer." And there's the other side that says, "Wait a second, maybe I can find my way out of this. Maybe I can wiggle my way out of this. Maybe it's not God speaking. Maybe it's somebody else. Maybe it's a proverb speaking." And try to squirm and wiggle because it sure sounds like God is saying he mocks when people have terror.

But that's why I emphasized what I said before. He tried to give them wisdom. He offered them grace. He offered them his Spirit. He said to them, "If you come, I will give you my Spirit. And they didn't come. They refused it. They disdained it. And that's them taking the sides of the world that hates God. And what would you expect God to do with people who take sides against him? What do you expect him to do when people shake their fist at God and they hate him? You can go further. You can fast forward into the future a few hundred years from when Solomon's writing. And I would ask, what do you do? What do you expect God to do with people who kill his son? And have no desire to hear from him.

I know you might not like it. You might be guilty of what other people do, and they think they love people more than God can, as though God has to love everybody. But it says what it says. When your terror comes like a storm— what do you mean, a storm, Solomon? Jesus calms the storm of life. No, no, no, not in this text. God brings the storm of life. And it shows you that there's dire consequences for refusing God's wisdom. If God is talking to you, don't close your ears. In fact, you might want to go get some Q-tips, even though you're not supposed to put those all the way in your ear. Clean your ears out. Clean your ears out if God is talking.

There's Lady Wisdom, Woman Wisdom, out in the streets saying, "I have the words of God. Listen to me. Listen to me. I know why you were made." I know what God wants to do with you. I know what your life is supposed to be. I know why you were born. Listen to me. I'll take you. I'll take you to the Lord. I'm trying to give you his knowledge and his wisdom. Listen. And if you listen to my rebuke, he will put his arms around you. He'll pour out his Spirit on you. He'll give you his grace. His arms are open.

And then what does the person out there in the market do? No, no, no, no. Don't you understand? If I hang around these people, I can party. If I hang around these people, I can fulfill my flesh. If I hang around these people, I can get rich. If I hang around these people, I can succeed. If I hang around these people, I'll be popular. And then they disdained his counsel. They didn't want the rebuke. I don't like when God tells me what to do. He's not gonna be my boss. Maybe go fast forward to the New Testament. We will not have this man to rule over us. These are people rejecting the authority of their Creator.

And so he says, trouble's coming. Another Southern accent, there's a storm a-brewin'. It's coming, and he's bringing the storm. The distress and the anguish are not happening to these people. They are being given to them by God, like the fire in Sodom and Gomorrah, like the future judgment that's coming. They're going to be judged by God. You can't ignore God without consequence. This is not an invitation to walk with us through the storm. This is judgment coming by the storm.

And it gets harder. That was hard already, right? That's tough to hear that, especially if you have that modern evangelical idea that God has to love everybody. And that's all you ever talk about is love, love, love. You never talk about justice or judgment or that God hates sin because he hates sin. And he definitely hates it when he's yelling at you to come and offering the free gift of grace and you reject it over and over again. There's wisdom saying, "Come to me, come to me, I'll help you." "Nah, I don't need to hear from you." It gets worse.

Verse 28, then they will call on me, but I will not answer. They will seek me diligently, but they will not find me because they hated knowledge and did not choose to fear the Lord. They would have none of my counsel and despised my every rebuke. Woo! Wow! No, I thought he accepts everybody that comes to him. I thought he accepts everybody that asks for help. I, I, in fact, I thought God's default position was acceptance, and you have to be somebody really bad like the devil or Pharaoh for him to turn his back on you. Only the really bad, worst people are not the people who God accepts, right?

Well, as far as I can tell, what these people did was just not listen to him. This doesn't say they're murderers or killers or thieves or anything else. This says Lady Wisdom, Woman Wisdom is crying out, "Listen, listen, listen." And they said, "We don't want to hear from you." So I would say that's a really good indicator that you should worry about your soul. If God is crying out to you and you don't care, and you would rather listen to the enemies of God, you would rather follow the enemies of God, you want to get rid of God, that's essentially all heresy and all false teaching and all sin is getting rid of God.

All sin has pride at its core, at its root. All sin has pride right there in the center of it. The DNA in human sin is pride, saying, "I don't want to follow. I want to lead. I don't want to submit. I want to be submitted to." And these people were— while wisdom's crying out to them, "Listen, you're supposed to be listening to God. He has the answer for you. If you were to come to Him, He would give His words to you. He would talk to you. He would care for you." You would be secure. But instead of all of that, you're choosing the way of the world.

And he says, if you choose the way of the world, at some point I'm not going to listen to you anymore. You're probably going to fall into trouble. There's going to be calamity in your life and you will have gone too far. And it will look like you're trying to seek me. It will look like you want to come to me. It'll look like you want the knowledge. Do you see? It'll look like it, except for the part where it says in verse 29, but they hated knowledge. They hated the knowledge.

Do you know that sometimes people want to be at the master's table and eat at the master's table, but they don't want the master to be there? Do you know that? Do you know that there's people who want all the benefits of the faith of Christianity without its head, Christ? That might sound strange to you because you think, well, no, why wouldn't they just go out into the world and eat, drink, and be merry? Because there's something quaint about feeling like you belong to something, and you can think of yourself as being loved and loving other people, and there's community and there's fellowship and there's companionship and all those other things that God offers. All these people are saying, "I want all the benefits of being one of God's people except the God of the people. Anything but Jesus."

And he says, "They hated knowledge. They did not fear the Lord." By not fearing him, they didn't turn to him. You would have none of my counsel and despised my every rebuke. So listen, as long as you in this room never ever get to the point where you are essentially saying, somebody, would somebody please shut the Lord up? Would somebody please quiet the voice of the Lord? I'm sick of that woman wisdom crying out in the streets. I'm sick of people telling me 'What they think I want. I know what I want, and I don't want to follow the Lord.' Unless you have that attitude, and you're still listening, and you're still thinking, 'Well, I'm not being all the obedient I can be, but I still want to serve the Lord. I still want to hear His voice. I still know that when wisdom is talking, I still know that it's wisdom,' right? We've all been there, right, where we're maybe weak, and we've fallen, and we struggled in sin, but we still hear the voice of the Lord.

You should just be scared when you don't hear the voice of the Lord. When you're hearing the voice of the scornful, when you're hearing the voice of the world, and you're hearing the voice of the enemies of God, and then you hear the voice of God, and eventually you say, "Ah, I think I'm going to listen to these guys," and eventually that voice of the Lord gets quiet, then it comes to the point where you can't turn to him anymore. You might think of that as something akin to the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. I don't think it's explicitly saying that, but there's something like it. You reject the Lord enough, you might get to the point where he's going to reject you completely.

Verse 31 says it so clearly. If you think that God's being unfair, look at verse 31. "Therefore they shall eat the fruit of their own way and be filled to the full with their own fancies." That's an interesting word in the New King James. "For the turning away of the simple will slay them, and the complacency of fools will destroy them." Complacency of fools, sounds like a metal album. Hm. They will eat the fruit of their own way. How many passages say something along the lines of, you'll reap what you sow, you'll know them by their fruits, you were children of wrath, they were sons of disobedience?

All this language that says that the heart of somebody who rejects God eventually will get what it asks for. You've heard it before. I've said it a million times, maybe a million and one. C.S. Lewis says there's only two kinds of people. There's two types of people: those who say to God, "Your will be done," and the other kind, those to whom God says, "Your will be done." Do you understand what I mean by that? Some people will submit to God and say, I want your will to be done. And God will say to people who reject him, you will have your way. You will be without God. You will be somebody who does not have my favor. You don't want my favor? I'm going to give you what you want.

And what they don't realize— sometimes I think they do realize, but they will realize for sure— is that to be separate from God is death and wrath. And God will give them that. I've had people tell me, I'm sure you have too. People say that, "I want to go to hell. I'm happy to go to hell. I'm going to party while I'm in hell." Ah, they don't understand what hell is. They don't understand it. I just told this story. The other day we were talking about Skip's Music. I was talking to Lisa about Skip's Music in Sacramento. And I was talking about the one in Modesto and my buddy that used to work there. He— well, it's weird to call him a buddy because he was always mean to me, but we were like mean like on a sports team together mean, you know, just teasing each other all the time. But he told me one time, he said, "You know, Johnny, I wouldn't want to go to heaven because it's got people like you there." That's a thing to say to somebody, isn't it? "I wouldn't want to go to heaven if it's full of people like you."

And I wasn't as— I didn't have the self-control that was required of a pastor because I wasn't a pastor yet. And so what I said to him is, don't worry, Richard, you're going to where there's people like you. You will be with people just like you forever and ever. I assume he didn't get saved, but where will he end up if he rejects the counsel and chooses the fruit of his own way? The turning away of the simple will slay them. Do you get it? It's not just you who could be ignorant, the ignorance of the world will pull people away. Do you see that? Do you notice it doesn't say the intelligence of the world will trick you? When you want to follow evil, you'll follow the cheapest version of evil.

Maybe you've heard me tell that dumb joke before too, another Southern kind of joke where the neighbor asks his butt-next-door neighbor, "Hey, do you think I could borrow your lawnmower?" And he says, "Ah, sorry, can't loan you the lawnmower tonight because my wife's making beef stroganoff for dinner." And the neighbor says, "What does beef stroganoff have to do with me borrowing the lawnmower?" And he said, "Nothing, but when you need an excuse, anyone will do." And that is the way people are. Anything but Jesus. Anything but Jesus. "I'm sorry, I can't follow Jesus. My wife is making beef stroganoff for dinner." That is the complacency of fools. That is the way of the simple. The arguments against following God are never all that smart. They're never all that smart. You're never gonna find hyper-thoughtful intelligent people who undermine the truth of God.

In fact, I don't know if you know, it's been getting more and more the case lately where you got the normal people who don't follow God, then you got the educated people who really hate God, but then you have the hyper-educated people who are actually more sympathetic to the things of God. The people who move up the ladder and that Dunning-Kruger effect where the more they learn, they realize they don't know anything. And now we've got to start entertaining these things because we thought we had it all figured out and it is not working like we thought it was supposed to work. And so there's a little bit of humility at the top these days, probably not enough to get saved, but pay attention. Watch out for the complacency. Did you see that, that it says complacency of fools? Isn't that wild that the text says that, that the people who are going to get judged in this text are complacency people. It doesn't say they're violently against the things of God. It says they're complacent. They're lazy. They take the easy way out of not following God but following the world. It's really simple.

And then verse 33, this is how you can be safe. But whoever listens to me will dwell safely and will be secure without fear of evil. It's so simple. Listen to God and live. Listen to God and be safe. I say it all the time, the only safe neighborhood to live in is the will of God. I don't care what your address is, I don't care how many bars you have outside your windows or alarm systems. The only safe neighborhood to live in is in the will of God. Listen to the wisdom. So there she is crying out, there she is Yelling. Do you notice something here, by the way? I didn't mention this. Did you notice when it says, "Turning away of the simple will slay them, and the complacency of fools will destroy them"? I forgot to mention here that— did you know that you get destroyed when you follow fools? Did you catch that part? That you'll get destroyed if you follow fools? The reason I bring that up to you is that means the fools aren't your friends. Your friends wouldn't lead you to destruction.

Do you remember when you were a kid? Did you used to have that happen when you were little and you'd be playing with your friends and then somebody would break a window or something and then all of a sudden you were alone? Where'd your friends go? Or kids, man, you got to— if you have more than one kid, you've experienced what I'm about to tell you. Now if you had a lot of kids, you experienced it a lot. Two kids are playing together, having the time of their lives. Everything's great. Isn't this fun what we're doing? Isn't this game awesome that we figured out? And the second there's trouble and Dad or Mom walks in the room and says, "What's going on in here?" they immediately blame each other. How do you go from best friends to worst enemies in seconds, right? And you say, "Yeah, everybody relates to that." How about the last part of that story? That after the spanking or after the grounding or after the trouble, what happens immediately after that? They're back to best friends again. I don't know why Christians can't make peace that quickly, but for some reason kids can.

But I bring that up with you because when you get in trouble with the world, the world abandons you. It doesn't love you. The world doesn't take care of you when you listen to it. It isn't like there's these two equal and opposite forces out there. Over here is God, and over here is the devil and the world. If I follow God, God will be close to me, right? If I follow the Lord, he himself will be close to me and take care of me and love me and be my friend. If I follow the world, none of that's true. It never takes care of its own. The world eats its own. It's trying to destroy you. It doesn't care that you get destroyed with the fools. It's wild to me that we want to be a part of something that cares nothing about us.

That's so crazy. I still, after all these years, find that hard to believe that young people like fall to peer pressure. They don't even like you. The second you're in trouble, they abandon you. No, no. When was the last time one of your friends went to one of your parents to defend you? No, when you get in trouble with your parents, your friends aren't there next to you going, hey, yeah, Mr. Sloan, Judah really meant to do what was right there, and I just want to stand by his side and tell him— no, no, no. The second you're in trouble, you're on your own, man. And it's weird that the world is doing that to us and we let it. Like, I want to be friends. I want to be on the in crowd. I want to be with the right people. I want to have the right group of friends. I want to be in the right peer group. I want to be with them. Why? They don't care about you.

But Paul talks about that in the Galatian heresy. The Judaizers, they zealously court you. They try to get you to be one of their followers. And they don't want anything to do with you. They don't even care about you. So please don't fall for the world's voice. Don't have FOMO, fear of missing out, because they don't care that you're with them or not. They don't. They're not going to be there for you if you fall. So at least the Lord will promise to be with you. But whoever listens to me will dwell safely and will be secure without fear of evil. The Lord is actually friends with his friends. The Lord actually sits by his friends and looks out for them and takes care of them. So watch out, don't fall in with the world because the world doesn't care if you get destroyed with it or not.

How are your ears? How are your ears? Do you hear wisdom? Are you able to discern Woman Wisdom when she's shouting out there in the marketplace? When you're scrolling, when you're hearing the news, when you're talking to your friends, family, when you're out there in conversation in this world that we live in, are you able at a moment in the heat of battle, reflexively, responsively, without having to search the old memory banks or get your phone out and search Bible verses? Are you able to quickly and adequately stand for the faith with the truth of God so that if somebody says something, you know what God says about that something? You know the wisdom of God and how to respond to the claims of the world, to the criticisms of the world? To the temptations of the world, when the world is trying to get you to go with the fools and make you one of the simple ones and make you complacent and destroy you and get you to be against God's rebuke. When the world's doing that, do you have the ability with your ears, the Holy Spirit leading you, to say, "Ah, no, no, no, no. That's not what the Bible says. No, Paul says that. Paul talks exactly about that in Galatians 3 right there, what you're saying. No, no, no, you're not going to get me this time. That's 1 Corinthians 5, man. You're not getting me this time. I don't know, that's exactly what Ephesians 4 is about." You're not going to beat me. Like when people cuss, I hear people call themselves Christians all the time and they cuss. My brain just immediately says Ephesians 4:29 and Colossians 3:8. Like, how do you do that? How can you cuss knowing those verses are in the Bible? Like, is that how you work?

Do you know the wisdom of God so quickly that you just immediately think in Bible so that when out there in the world is yelling, the voice of wisdom is too loud for you to listen to anybody else? Why would I listen to anybody else, man? I got the Lord on my side. Woman Wisdom, she takes care of me. Why would I go with anybody else? So build your vocabulary, your wisdom vocabulary, so that you know how to respond to the world and you don't get taken away with the simpletons, that you don't become ignorant, that you don't get destroyed, that you don't become complacent.

It's so rich. The Proverbs are rich. That's only one part of one proverb. Maybe you need to read some Proverbs this week. There's 31 of them. Sauer used to read the Proverbs, one every day. He would read this, and I always told him, "That's why you're so smart. You read a proverb every day. That's pretty good."

Let's pray. Father, thank you for the Proverbs, and thank you for Solomon's wisdom here. And I just ask that we would listen to it, that we would hear, our ears would be trained, and that when we hear the world trying to trick us, we can hear right through it and hear the voice of the Lord in the Word, and we listen to you instead. So help us, please, in Jesus' name. Amen.