Love Wisdom - Proverbs 1:20-33 - The Wise Family

You know, not wanting to go to hell is not exactly the same thing as wanting to go to heaven, right? There's a lot of people in our culture that would say, I don't know what your conception of hell is. Maybe it's just straight ripped from Halloween.

It's pitchforks and it's darkness and it's little devils with tails or whatever it is. Maybe you would say today, man, I don't really like the idea of going to hell. That is not the same thing as saying that we love the idea of heaven. How many of us love the idea of submitting to God's reign and rule, to having Jesus Christ, the ultimate King whisper through the book of Proverbs, give us echoes of Eden, break through from heaven and say, this is what my kingdom will be like.

Will you submit to it? Do we love that? If the book of Proverbs is painting a picture of what life is supposed to be, would we wanna buy that picture and put it in the centerpiece of our home and put it in the centerpiece of our life? Many people don't like the idea of hell. That's not the same thing as loving heaven and just a newsflash here, people don't go to heaven because they don't wanna go to hell. Nobody ever settles for heaven. All right, nobody ever settles for God and his kingdom and heaven. You don't go to heaven because you didn't wanna go to hell. You end up going to heaven because you made a decision to give your life to Christ in order that by his Spirit, he could, over the course of your life, turn you into a lover of what is good. And that is totally different than, I'm a little scared of the devils or the pitchforks or whatever.

Here's what I wanna show you guys this weekend, all right? Wise families learn to love wisdom. They love God's design for the world. That's not to say that we always walk it perfectly and I'm gonna talk about that, okay? But in our heart of hearts, can we say today, like Paul, man, I don't do what I want to do.

The things that I wanna do sometimes I can't do. The overarching desire of my life is goodness and virtue and what I see laid out in the book of Proverbs when we see the wisdom literature and we see what God tells us in the book of Proverbs, the wise life, can we see a glimpse of heaven? You know, one way to say hell is ultimate foolishness.

One way to say heaven is ultimate wisdom. When we see wisdom breaking into the world, do our hearts light up? Do we want it? Do we long for it? When we see the idea in Scripture, okay, listen, this is getting to it, all right? When we see the idea in the book of Proverbs of sobriety, of submitting to authority, of sex inside of godly design for marriage only, when we see these types of things, the slow path to wealth, as we talked about last week, when we see those types of things, does our heart begin to beat fast? Because we're like, man, I fail and I don't get there, but God, that is what I want.

That is the desire of my heart. That is getting at being a lover of wisdom. Now, I'm not saying, and I don't want you to hear this, okay, I'm not saying there's not a place for talking about hell by far. I mean, Jesus did it in Matthew 18. Hey, it's better to cut one hand off and enter heaven maimed, all right? What is he trying to do there? I think he's trying to wake us up to eternal realities, and I think there's a really good place for that. In fact, I was driving in eastern North Carolina one time, and I looked up, and no joke, I saw a church named Brimstone Baptist Church, okay?

They don't play. They've been scaring people into heaven since 1907, okay? That's probably the little tagline. Little sign outside the church says, stop, drop, and roll, don't work in hell. That's true, okay? I mean, you know, what is all that?

And man, I'm not saying there's not a place for that. It can kind of wake us up to the reality, but people don't go to heaven because they're scared of hell. They go to heaven because they gave their life to Christ, and they trust by his Spirit to become a lover of what is good. Do we long for the next life? Do we long for heaven? Well, you know, the evidence of what we long for in an eternal destination is the path that we choose right now. Nobody settles for heaven.

And that's what I wanna show you. Every single one of us have a choice. There are really only two paths, and they both have a destination. Here's what people don't like, okay? People don't like the thought of choosing the destination before choosing the path.

What many of us think, and maybe somebody here today, certainly somebody at our campuses, this is what's going on in your mind. What you're thinking is, well, I like the pathway to hell, but I wouldn't really like. Hell, you're setting the destination on the GPS of your heart first. You're choosing the path. Why would we say we're gonna pine for heaven in the afterlife when we choose hell freely every day here? That doesn't make any sense.

People do it all the time. We're gonna talk about this today. There are two paths.

Man, are we cultivating in wise families a love for wisdom? And that's what I wanna get into. Here's what we're gonna do. I'm gonna read, I'm gonna just kinda walk through.

This is gonna, we're gonna stay 30,000 foot. I got one kinda idea that I wanna get through. Choosing wisdom or choosing foolishness, but I do wanna talk to you as we walk through a chunk here, and we'll kinda take it in sections. It's gonna start in Proverbs chapter one, starting in verse 20. 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. Now, here's what she says, okay? 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 on you, and I will make my words known to you. Now, we get into Proverbs chapter one, and we see this character named Lady Wisdom, or Woman Wisdom, okay? Now, who is Lady Wisdom? Lady Wisdom is a personification of the wisdom of God that we see turn up as a character. It's not saying God is a woman, all right? This is saying that there's a personification here that's happening in the book of Proverbs, and it's saying, hey, imagine that Wisdom is crying out in the street, and she's trying to get the attention of people that are around, and she is trying to get them to see there are but two paths, and God is showing what they are.

There is a design that he has for life. I've called it Echoes of Eden. It's a breakthrough of heaven where we get a chance to see what it would be like to live under the perfect reign and rule of Jesus Christ, and some in this life are going to turn and choose that and trust God to make it the desire of their heart, and other people are gonna look at it for one second, and they're gonna say, no, no, no, man, my life is for the party. My life is for the riotous living. My life is for the things of this earth, and they're just gonna turn their back and walk away, and what the Bible's gonna tell us today, we're gonna get into this in just a minute, is that whichever path we choose, we will eat the fruit of that eternally.

Lady Wisdom is calling out, and she's saying, hey, there is a moment that we have in our life to decide, some of you here today at Regional, some of you at our campuses are gonna have that moment today where you get to choose, man, what am I going to love? What am I gonna set as the destination of my heart? Not because I wanna walk this path and then scoot by and get to a different destination.

It's like, no, no, nobody settles for heaven. What am I gonna set as the ultimate end and the ultimate destination? And that's what Lady Wisdom is trying to get us to see. Do we wanna walk the foolish way here or the wise way here?

That probably is going to say something about the destination actually that we are longing for now. Everybody in this life, foolishness is bound to the heart of a child. Every one of us have not only sinned, we have been influenced by that sin to compound into more sin. Man, every one of us have started on the foolish path, but there are some that hear, we just sang about it across the great chasm, they hear the voice of God and they respond to it. We all have that opportunity to do that today. If you're under the sound of my voice, you're gonna have that opportunity. Well, this is what it looks like, verse 23.

All right, here's what it said. If you turn at my reproof, behold, I will pour out my spirit to you and I will make my words known to you. There is a great turning that has to happen from the pathway that we are naturally on. I've told you, every one of these sermons in this series, it's countercultural, maybe not right on the face of it.

Here's what's countercultural about the message here today, that every one of us, apart from God calling us and our response, have two feet set firmly on the foolish path that will take us to the destination of hell. We don't like to talk about that because what we like to do in our culture is say, just follow your heart. Let me tell you something about just follow your heart. Just follow your heart is the worst advice in the world. It's the worst advice in the world.

Just follow your heart. We live in an age where everything in our culture, the point of every moral tale, I mean, just watch any movie that you see that's come out in the last couple of decades. It's like the point of them all is just follow your heart, follow your inner truth, follow your inner wisdom. One author said it like this. We live in an age where the pilgrimage to find truth doesn't require a book or a plane ticket.

It only requires a mirror. This is where we think truth comes from. We think it comes directly from our heart and the Bible is saying no. It's not about following your heart.

Following your heart is putting you on a path that Lady Wisdom is calling out to you today and she's saying you need to turn from that path. Top 10 movie of all time, The Sandlot. Okay, can I get a little bit, is that right? Am I right? Okay, no debate. All right, it's gotta be in the top 10. All right, some of you guys may be a little bit younger.

Maybe you haven't seen her, you have. But what happens at the very end of the movie, Benny the Jet Rodriguez ends up in a very infamous discussion with the great Bambino, okay, Babe Ruth, if you remember this part of the movie. And what does the babe tell him?

He says, heroes get remembered, but legends never die. Follow your heart, kid, you'll never go wrong. Great movie, terrible advice. Terrible advice.

Follow your heart, kid, you'll never go wrong will lead you right into the cliff of loving money more than God. It'll lead you right off the cliff of alcoholism, of broken relationships, adultery. There are many things that that road leads you to. What we've gotta hear from Lady Wisdom today is, no, the trick of life, and you see this in a bunch of leadership material right now.

So many leadership books are coming out, and it's all about habitually changing the way that you view the world to try to get you away from how you would naturally think. Now, they're doing that apart from the Spirit, but I think they're mimicking something that you see from the book of Proverbs, which is, hey, the natural path that you would take is probably one that's gonna take you right off the edge of a cliff. And what you need to be able to do is to turn, that's what the Scripture said, to be able to hear and to turn, turn, to change the direction, to start going in the opposite direction that you're going now. You know, the book of Romans picks this up when it says, faith comes by hearing, and hearing through the Word of God. We must hear the Word of God, we must hear what the Scripture tells us about the wise path, and be willing to turn, then He will pour His Spirit upon us, then He will make His Word intimately known to us.

For some of us here today, for some of us at our campuses, this is going to be the choice for you today. You've lived in a world that makes you believe, hey, if you prove it to me, then I will jump. That's what you're trying to do with God.

What you're trying to do is you're trying to say, man, the way I view the world, the way I view my path is, man, I want the party, I want the things of this world. I think that is the good life, and the question that you're gonna have to answer in your mind today is, if the Word comes in, if God comes in and says, hey, even though you have not felt that yet, even though you have not seen it yet, would you trust me that that's not the right path? Would you trust me that that is not the path that I have designed for you? Would you trust me that it's not only gonna lead you to hell but truly, it's kind of hell on earth?

Would you trust me for that because you don't feel it? We're gonna have to be able to say, I will believe then, maybe I will understand. I will believe first, I will jump. That is what faith is. See, without that moment, we will never have this lover of good, this being convinced.

Man, I'm looking out at this crowd. I know that the campuses is true as well. You have Christians that have walked with God for decades, and you know what they say? They would absolutely agree with me. Even though they don't walk the right path all the time, they love it. They looked at the book of Proverbs, they hear the echoes of Eden, they see heaven breaking through to earth, and they say, man, I long for that world. If Proverbs is painting a picture, I wanna buy it and put it in the centerpiece of my home. I want it to be the center of my life.

I don't walk it all the time, but I love it. That happened because they turned. Because at some point in their life, they trusted God that He would, when they give their life to Christ, that He would begin to cultivate that heart in them. But you don't get it proven to you and then decide whether you're gonna do it. You take God at His word. This is where faith comes in. 1 Corinthians says it like this. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God. Without jumping, without taking a moment to turn in faith, we're gonna always be in this place of, man, that's folly.

I'm living for the party. I'm living my little life here with all the things, and I'm going after the things of the world, and I'm viewing that as if it is heaven. Do you believe today that God will call out to you? Would you respond to Him, and would you turn? You know, there's an interesting part of the book, the magician's nephew in the Chronicles of Narnia series that I go back to a lot in my mind, because there's a character named Uncle Andrew, and Uncle, no pun with me, okay, but Uncle Andrew, he has this real, he has this real kind of depraved picture of Narnia and of Aslan, the god figure and all that in the story. And here's what happens. When Aslan is singing the worlds into existence, when Aslan is calling out and wooing people to himself, Uncle Andrew is convinced that he is a lion, and he is only a lion, and he will never be able to speak to me or anybody else. And here's what Uncle Andrew finds out, and we find out through the Chronicles of Narnia.

You know, when you're convinced that Aslan is nothing but a lion, all you will ever hear is a roar. It's all you ever get. But when you begin to open yourself to hear the word of God, that maybe he does have something to say to me today, that maybe his path, even if I don't know it and feel it yet, but I will trust him at his word, and I will jump, that's where we're gonna have to be today. We're gonna have to understand some things about God, and we're gonna have to say, man, I want to be in a place where God is speaking, where I am responding, and I'm trusting him with my life in order to cultivate what is good. Some of us here today are just kinda settling for, man, I'm a little bit scared of hell, and I'm not really a lover of wisdom, a lover of heaven, a lover of what is good. I'm telling you right now, nobody settles for God and his kingdom. Nobody settles for heaven.

We've gotta be a people who see what God is doing and say, hey, he's calling me, maybe I don't see it yet, but I jump, and when I jump, I trust him to create a loving heart for what is good and virtuous in me. Because you have ignored all my counsel and would have none of my reproof also, and would have none of my reproof also, I 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 you 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 despised all my reproof. Therefore, they shall eat the fruit of their way and have the fill of their own devices. This is what happens when we decide willfully that we will not make the jump to trust God at his word about what is actually heaven and what is actually hell, what is actually wisdom, what is actually foolishness, what is actually life, the good life, and what is the one that we want to define for ourselves. If we never are willing to take that bet and to take that dare on God, and to put ourself in his hands, this is the path that we will follow. And what God is saying is here, I mean, it sounds like, it says he will laugh.

And I think what we think of is like, man, God has no compassion. Guys, it's not a ha ha laugh. It's the laugh that comes from a very deep place.

Maybe you've seen it too. When you've watched somebody that you love do something that is absurd time and time again. And all you can almost do is it comes out as an ironic, absurd, I don't even know what to do. And it can come out as a laugh.

It can come out as that this is so backward. That's what God is doing here. What God is saying is, man, I loved you, I created you, I know how the world works. I want you to be eternally satisfied. Psalm says in Psalm 16, 11, at his right hand and in his presence are the fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore. This is what God wants for you.

And yet he sees people who are willing to forsake wisdom, to not set heaven as the destination of their heart, and to say, no, no, no, I will choose to love and chase these things that will destroy me as if that is what heaven is. I will praise riches. I will accept the praise of man. I will dive into pornography.

I will put my hope on outward and external beauty or whatever it is. I will choose to run headlong after these things as if they are heaven. And God is saying, man, that's hell. It's not heaven. It's the foolish path. And yet you're choosing it as if it's what will satisfy you and what it comes out as is God saying this is absurd. And you know what comes next?

What comes next is the people that one day hit the bottom of that barrel and they cry out to him. But this reinforces my whole point from the intro. What God is saying is here, hey, in that day, they'll search for me and they won't find me. You know why? Because they're only searching because they're trying to get out of a situation, not because they love me. It's not because they love my kingdom. It's not because they have set the destination of their heart on heaven. It's not because they love wisdom and they love the echoes of Eden and they have seen what I have written to them in wisdom literature and even if they don't follow up perfectly, they've set it as the destination of their heart.

No, no, no, they just want to get out of a jam. This is a hard truth, all right? It's a hard thing to realize. When you start seeing, people will call out to God in their life, but it's not because they love him. It's just because they don't like the fruit of their way. And when they do that, they will not find him.

Why? Because not liking hell is not the same as loving God and heaven and his kingdom. Nobody settles for heaven.

Nobody settles for God. What we do is we turn, we take a dare, we take a bet on God and we jump and we trust him to cultivate a life, an inner life that begins to love what is good and virtuous and noble. That's what the scripture is getting at here. Look at verse 31. Therefore, they shall eat the fruit of their way and they will have the fill of their own devices. This is the difference. It's the difference between loving God and longing for wisdom, longing for heaven, longing for what he's gonna do in our lives, being grown and deciding, no, no, no, I'm gonna take what God has a wise path, the destination for heaven, and I'm gonna shirk that and actually what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna set the destination of my heart as hell and I'm gonna follow that path because I actually feel like that is what will be good for me or pleasurable to me or that is what I love. You know, this is what I said in the intro. I'm gonna say it again.

The path you choose will take you to the destination that you desire. We don't like that. That's not what we like. What we like is, man, I'm just having a little bit of fun here, but I don't really wanna go to hell.

Why would we think that? Why would we think all of a sudden in heaven, we're gonna, you know, all of a sudden in the afterlife, sorry, we're gonna just all of a sudden wanna submit to God. We're all of a sudden gonna become lovers of what he says is good and wise.

It's not that. What we have is that people who have taken the GPS of their heart, set it toward a destination, and it is revealing what they actually love. Listen, and you have an opportunity to make a choice today whether you will trust God with that destination that then determines your path or whether you will continue to trust yourself. Now, everybody don't get that. Everybody don't get that choice to figure out what train they're gonna get on, to get on what tracks they're gonna get on.

We get that choice. I mentioned to you guys last week, all right, I mentioned to you guys my cow that went to freezer camp. Berg, you guys remember? And I remember getting Berg on the trailer, and my wife, who has a little softer heart than me, she says to me, she says, man, I just hope, because he'd never been on a trailer and all that. She's like, man, I really hope that the trailer ride doesn't really scare him, you know? And I was like, babe, he ain't gotta do it but one time. Okay, okay, he ain't gotta do it but once in his life. All right, because once he gets on that trailer, the destination is set.

Now, for an animal, it's like, man, you know, you coerce, you get them, you kind of get them on the, not so with us. We have a choice today. Which are we gonna choose? Are we gonna set the destination? Are we gonna take a dare?

Are we gonna jump? Are we gonna trust God for that destination and allow him to cultivate a life in us that begins to love goodness and virtue? You know, hell itself, I've been likening hell to foolishness.

You know why I do that? It's because Jesus kind of did that. And I think Jesus did that in the actual term hell from Matthew chapter five. Matthew chapter 5, 22 says this. He says, whoever says you fool will be liable to the hell. Now, there's a little bit of theology here, a little bit of Old Testament.

But we gotta understand where this term even comes from. This term Gehenna comes from Jeremiah chapter seven that's talking about the valley of Hinnom. Now, Jeremiah is an incredibly life-oriented book. I've talked about it in videos here recently and talked about, you know, Jeremiah chapter one, you know, we see Jeremiah was called, God knew his name in the womb.

Jeremiah chapter seven is the greatest form of rebellion that we see in all of the Old Testament. It is when people would bring their children to sacrifice them to Molech, a false god. Where does that happen?

It happens in the valley of Hinnom. It happens in Jeremiah chapter seven. Why does Jesus pick that up and use that term?

I think it's because of this. When you go back in the Old Testament and you find the greatest form of rebellion, he's likening that to hell. He's saying, what is hell in its essence? In its essence, it is rebellion manifest. It is foolishness that is manifest. I understand, people are like, man, you know, but the Bible talks about darkness and the worm never dies and all this kind of stuff.

Yes, and that is all literally true. But what is scarier about hell is that there are people there that would be there in that type of torment and still decide, man, no, no, no, I still would not submit to God. I am still not a lover of what he talks about in the book of Proverbs. Yeah, I don't like it here, I want out.

Okay, get some water, cool my tongue. Like, I want out, I don't like it. But man, if you're telling me that it's either this or that it's submit to God and love what is good and be virtuous and sobriety and respect for authority and sex by God's design and all of these types of things that we see and I don't want that path in this life. I don't want the destination of it in heaven. I know it's a hard thing to get your mind around, all right.

This is why C.S. Lewis said, hey, hell is locked from the inside, okay. It's locked from the inside, why? But I'm not saying people would wanna be there. Who in the world would wanna be there at the same time? It's like, man, I don't wanna submit my life to God. I didn't love what he loves on earth. Why would I all of a sudden, because it's hot, begin to love what he loves in heaven? I know it's hard for people to understand because people say, and I've heard this before, people are like, man, nobody would choose hell. I'm gonna tell you, people choose hell on earth every single day.

You ever heard of something called Woodstock? I mean, seriously, I mean, think about it for a minute. Well, I mean, what kind of manifestation of foolishness is this? Man, drug overdoses, you know, bumming off everybody around because we're having to live off the benevolence of others for all these days that we're out there. I mean, the US government having to set up tents because of how many people are overdosing, people literally walking around having sex out in the open without even exchanging names. This is hell on earth.

Here's what's so funny about this. You go back and you listen to people who were there, you know what they say? They're like, within three days of leaving, they're like, man, I wish we could go back, right? I mean, it's hell on earth. What are they calling it? They're saying it's heaven. They're saying it's a utopia. What do you mean people wouldn't choose hell? They choose hell on earth every single day.

You ever heard of Mardi Gras? You understand what I'm getting at? And I know these are big kind of riotous living kind of things and it's like, man, maybe that's hard to get our mind around. How many of us even right now are absolutely choosing the chaos of tearing each other down with words in our homes? We're choosing it. Man, we're choosing to love what is not something that God has given us to love. Man, we're choosing the path of adultery. We're choosing the path of brokenness. We're choosing the path of gossip and tearing each other down and all of these types of things.

What do you mean nobody would ever choose it? Man, people choose that path right here on earth. And what the Bible is trying to get us to see, I think is to wake up to this reality.

The path that we're walking on earth is because we have set a destination in our heart and that destination will come to fruition. Look what it says in verse 32. For the simple are killed by their turning away. Now this is getting real eschatological.

That just means in times. Yes, this stuff is true in real life, day to day, like where we live and in our workplaces and all that. It's also true eternally. That's why the Bible talks about death eternal.

All right, the simple are killed by their turning away and the complacency of fools destroys them. But whoever listens to me will dwell secure and be at ease without the dread of disaster. Y'all, this weekend I just have one kind of big point and it's this, there are two paths. And we have an opportunity to set the destination of our heart to be on wisdom and heaven and what God chooses and desires for us and to jump and to trust him for that. Or we will stay where we are for many of us, then we will continue to walk a foolish path and we will eat the fruit of that way for eternity, for billions and billions and billions of years. And when that time comes, we will be no closer to the end than when we had just begun.

That's where we're at. Now look, every one of us choose foolishness, we do. I mean, I understand that. I mean, I do, you do, we depart from the path. But what I'm trying to get you to see is this, not what you don't want, but what do you love? Christian, in your heart, can you say with me today, God is cultivating a heart in me that loves what is good and virtuous. There are times where my heart pines for things that are not that.

I understand that. You know where this comes up in my life sometimes? I will see the trailer for a movie that is not virtuous, that does not espouse the things that are in the book of Proverbs, that maybe is violent as all get out or whatever, and I will feel in my flesh like, man, I would like to see that.

I would wanna see that. But you know what? That is kind of what Paul talks about as me going into something that truly I don't want or doing something that I don't want or the things that I want not being the things that come to the surface. What I'm asking you today is no, no, no. Zoom up about 30,000 feet though and say what do you want your heart to want? Like what do you desire?

Do you desire what is good and virtuous? Are we thinking wisdom? Are we thinking heaven?

We all depart from the path. But what do we love? No one goes to heaven because they were just scared of hell. Nobody settles for heaven.

Man, what do you love? Have you given your life to Christ? Is he cultivating a heart in you of virtue, all right, of loving what is good? Here's what I wanna call you to do today. Y'all, choose wisdom. Choose wisdom today.

I've said this two or three different ways but here's another way to say it. In this life, we are given the chance to demonstrate which eternity we truly desire. Now, for the Christian, here's what I would say. I'm gonna apply this to believers and I'm gonna make a very clear appeal to the people that are not quite there yet, you're not quite a believer yet in our congregation, at all of our campuses today. If you are a believer, here's what I want you to hear. In Christ, you are bound for heaven. If you put your faith in Christ, there is no changing tracks. You are bound for heaven. Man, praise God for that because we fail in our day-to-day life. But man, God looks upon us, he sees the, amen, he sees the righteousness of his son and you are bound for heaven. Now, with that in mind, understanding that God saw every one of your failures before the foundation of the world and sent Christ to die for you in a way, has brought you into his family. Man, understand that that's the type of God we're talking about.

That's the type of love that we're talking about. Now, with that in mind, not to earn something before him, but because he loves us, what areas of our life do we know? Man, we're choosing foolishness even though we're bound for wisdom.

We're choosing hell even though we're bound for heaven. What areas of our life are coming to your mind? Maybe there's something in the dark. Maybe it's around gambling or pornography.

Maybe there's a family here who one spouse doesn't know that the other is racking up debt. Maybe there's gossip in your life. You're tearing down the church in conversation after conversation. Maybe there's some other type of sin that is coming up. Maybe your home is characterized by allowing your anger to be known immediately and fully vented. I don't know what it is, all right? But what area in your life are you acting actually out of character? Because, man, God has saved you and you are bound for heaven.

Nothing changes that. Man, can we submit those things and repent of those things today? Hey, but for those of you that are not on that path, those of you that are not found in Christ, I wanna just call to you as plainly as I can. If you remember, what did Lady Wisdom say? She's calling above the commotion. Can you cut the commotion out for just a minute? Man, cut the bad news of the world out for just a minute.

Cut out all the things you gotta prepare for this fall for your kids for just a minute. Man, put that thing that's going on at work out of your mind for just a minute. Can you hear God's personification in the book of Proverbs calling out to you? And can we just for a moment here, this is big, okay, can we just go ahead and quietly contemplate the destination of our whole life?

That's a big thing. Can we quietly contemplate for just a minute, man, what are the things that I love? The path that we are on reveals the destination that we are longing for. Are you a person right now that's like, man, I'm in love with the world.

I'm in love with the party. I'm not sure that I trust God with what He says is heaven. And I'm kinda pursuing hell as if it's heaven. If you're gonna get to the place where you truly become one who loves goodness and honor and virtue and worship and justice, man, if we're gonna get to that place, it is not because we will ourselves to be there.

It is because we decide, as verse 23 said, to turn, to jump, to take a dare, man, to put our life in the hands of God. And to say, God, I'm giving my life to you. I'm gonna follow you as the Lord of my life, and I'm gonna trust you to cultivate this type of heart in me, where your spirit is then poured out upon me, and then your words are intimately made known in my life. For some of you in here, for some of you at our campuses, I presented the two paths, man, heaven, hell, wisdom, foolishness, okay?

And what you're saying right now is you're saying, hey, I really just have, man, I'm for the party. I don't really have an interest in the wise path and setting the destination of heaven in my heart. Well, here's the deal, here's what you're not gonna get from me. I'm not gonna try to scare you out of hell. I can't do that, okay?

Because here's the deal. You don't go to heaven because you're scared of hell. I can't make you love all I can. So if you're like, man, I don't love it, I don't wanna love it, I don't feel called to love it, then what I can do is I can say, man, keep coming back around. Man, you don't know when God's gonna get you, and we love to, we just keep coming back around. Keep leaning in, all right? But other than that, man, there's not really anything I can do, all right? I can't try to scare you into something you don't love or whatever, but there's some of you today that are like, man, I'm starting to want to want.

I'm not convinced. I don't know that what God says is heaven is heaven because my flesh is really saying that what he says is heaven is hell and vice versa, but I'm starting to become a person who is being pulled and desiring. If that is you, you are in a very delicate situation, okay? Because God is wooing you, he's calling to you, and you have an opportunity today. You know, Proverbs talks about this. I mean, we're seeing, there's a climate of urgency in Proverbs 1.

There's this idea of, man, there ain't no middle ground. It's like, choose today, choose wisdom, choose foolishness, choose heaven, choose hell. There is a time that will tick down in your life. If you're feeling that draw today, you need to yield today. I don't know that he's gonna draw you tomorrow. I don't even know if you're gonna be here tomorrow.

That's just the reality. We had a great family in our church. He had to fly home this past week because a family friend, early 40s, four kids, health nut, lover of God, drops over.

It happens. I have no idea where you'll be tomorrow. I have no idea if God will call you tomorrow in the way that he is today.

You might be tomorrow in the same place that somebody else is today where they're like, man, I don't care about this. I'm choosing the party, I'm choosing hell. But if God is drawing you today, then make the choice today. You need to become a lover of his kingdom. The only way you're gonna do that is by giving your life over to Christ. And when you do that, you put yourself in the most secure position.

Did you hear what the last verse in this said? It said you'll be secure forever. Can you imagine what it's like to wake up on the next side of eternity and have nothing to worry about at all? Man, to have nothing to worry about and to understand I am so secure. Hey, we will still wrestle with some of that worry today, but you can nail that down.

It can start today. A type of security God can build in your life today. If you would see what he has done for you, you can trust God with your life.

It's gonna take an immense amount of trust to jump, but you can do it when you see the love that he has poured out upon you and upon this world. Man, our God sent his son Jesus Christ to walk the path of foolishness that you are walking. He took the penalty for the path of foolishness that you're walking. Jesus Christ never sinned one time in his life. There was never one ounce of foolishness in him. And yet he went to the cross and he paid the penalty for all the foolishness in our life, for all the times that we turned away. You know, you could say it like this coming straight from Proverbs. Jesus Christ on the cross ate the fruit of our way so that we could eat the fruit of his.

Man, he ate the fruit of our way. I'll take death so that you can have an eternal life. I'll take the penalty of foolishness so that you can have the rewards of a life lived in total and complete wisdom.

Man, that is some kind of love. And if God loves you enough to provide that opportunity for you, would you take the bet? Would you take the dare? Would you jump today?

Would you turn and then see what it looks like to have his spirit poured out upon you and his word to become intimate, his word to become known in your life? Here's what we're gonna do. We've budgeted time for this and all this. Man, we're actually gonna take a few minutes here and we're just gonna have a moment of reflection, okay? Man, we've got a song that is written and that our team wrote and we wanna have that song.

They're gonna come out at all of our campuses. We're just gonna have a few moments of reflection. Man, this is a time to close notes. You might wanna bow your head. You might wanna just sit in a contemplative kind of, man, think about this. Christian, think about the areas of your life, even though you're bound for heaven, that look like you're choosing hell.

You wanna repent of those things? And if you're not a believer, I want you to make the decision, man, am I going to jump? And if the answer to that is yes, then I'm gonna come out in just a couple of minutes and lead you through a prayer that will take you from spiritual death to spiritual life today, all right?

Amen. Come to the altar and lay down your burdens. Rest in the Father, restore. Out of my sin and out of my shame, Jesus, I come, Jesus, I come. Into your rest, into your grace, Jesus, I come, Jesus, I come. Softly and tenderly, Jesus is calling, all who are weary and worn. Come to the altar and lay down your burdens.

Rest in the Father, restore. Out of my fear, out of my chains, Jesus, I come, Jesus, I come. Into your peace, into your embrace, Jesus, I come, Jesus, I come.

Jesus, I come, Jesus, I come. Take my worries, pain and sickness, all my pride and vain ambitions. Take my striving for acceptance, all my shame and doubt. Take my fear and my addictions, all my wealth and my possessions. Take my heart with no conditions, Lord, I'll lay it down. Take my worries, pain and sickness, all my pride and vain ambitions. Take my striving for acceptance, all my shame and doubt. Take my fear and my addictions, all my wealth and my possessions. Take my heart with no conditions, Lord, I'll lay it down.

Lay it down. Out of my sin, out of my shame, Jesus, I come, Jesus, I come. Into your rest, into your grace, Jesus, I come, Jesus, I come. Jesus, I come, Jesus, I come. Out of my sin, out of my shame, Jesus, I come, Jesus, I come. Into your rest, into your grace, Jesus, I come, Jesus, I come. All right, hey, at all of our campuses, we're gonna ask you to go ahead and bow your heads and close your eyes.

We're gonna just go a couple more minutes here and I wanna try to create an environment that is free of distraction and try to help you kind of just have a clear mind so you can hear above the commotion here this weekend. Some of you guys, I would imagine in a room this size and especially across all of our locations that God is convicting you and He's pulling your heart and you're wrestling right now with whether or not you wanna set the destination of your heart to be heaven and trust Him to create in you a heart that loves Him wholeheartedly. If you're willing to jump, you're willing to take that dare on God today, turn and see His Spirit poured out on you, turn and see His Word be made known to you, intimately known, then I'm gonna call you to accept the gospel message today.

The Bible presents this very clearly. It's like, hey, man, there is a way that we come back into the family of God. There is a way that we set Him and His kingdom as our destination and that is by admitting our sin to Him, by believing that Jesus has done everything necessary to save us, that we can't will ourselves and change our behaviors and all that and then to confess Him as the Lord of our life and I'm gonna call you to do that. You can do that in your heart right now by just repeating after me. I'll lead you in a very simple prayer and if you're willing to jump, if you wanna put yourself in God's hands today, if you wanna become a Christian, be saved, step over that line today, then I'm gonna call you right now to pray this prayer in your heart and you can just repeat the words that I'm saying out loud quietly to yourself and in your heart and voice them from your heart to God. Father, we know, and you just say this, say, God, I know that I'm a sinner and I know that I've chosen a foolish path but I believe that Jesus went to the cross to pay the penalty that I deserve. I deserve to be the one who is eternally dead.

I deserve to be the one who died and to face an eternity in hell but Jesus Christ took the cross and he took death in my place and I believe that Jesus stood in my place and I believe that three days later in his resurrection, he burst forth in the newness of life, gives me the opportunity to join him there and I confess him as the Lord of my life. Now with your heads bowed and your eyes closed at all of our campuses, I'm gonna call you to take a step here. We're not baptizing this weekend but I'm gonna call you to take a step because I think there is a connection here.

Like, man, if we're not willing to out ourselves at all, I mean, in what sense is any of this really real? So what I wanna do is I wanna ask you to raise your hand here in just a minute. If you prayed that prayer with me at all of our campuses, our campus pastors are gonna be there to pray for you. I'm gonna pray here in just a minute for the ones here at Regional that have stepped from death to life, who've chosen wisdom, who've set God in heaven as the destination of their life and so I'm gonna ask you in just a minute to raise your hand. You'll raise your hand if you prayed this prayer with me and you're saying today, man, I wanna walk this path and I'm trusting God with my life and I prayed this prayer with you, Andrew, that that's you today, that I'm gonna count to three and I'm gonna ask you to raise your hand with me so I can pray for you on the count of three.

One, two, three. Raise your hand if you prayed that prayer today, amen. Amen. Just raise your hand.

You can keep it up for just a second. I'm gonna pray. Nobody's looking around. I'm the only one looking around. Anyone else here at our campus as well?

Anyone else? You guys can put your hand down. Thank you. Father, I pray for these who have come to Christ this weekend and Lord, I pray that you would keep them and you would begin right now by your Spirit to cultivate a heart in them that loves goodness and virtue and honor and worship and justice. God, I pray that these echoes of Eden would beckon to them, these breakthroughs of heaven will become the longing of their heart over time.

We trust you for that. God, thank you for taking them from the path of foolishness to the path of wisdom. In Christ's name, we pray, amen. Amen.

All of our campuses, can we praise God for what he's done across here and in our different locations? Hey guys, if you prayed to receive Christ this weekend, all of our locations, maybe you raised your hand. I hope you did.

Maybe you didn't. The next step for you is to hit this QR code, all right? Man, you can pull your phone out and do it now or maybe more discreetly if you want to. There's a connect card right in the back of the seat in front of you.

That seat back at some point, you can grab that. That's just gonna take you to a connect page that we have on our website and that connect page looks like this. On that connect page, the first thing on there talks about baptizing. We're baptizing in August and we would love to have a conversation with you even now, start that conversation about what it looks like for you to go through the water and give God publicly the glory for what he's done in your life this weekend.