And hopefully, you've gained some practical wisdom and some insight that can help you in your spiritual walk with Christ. And so, I learned through this that when I started this, I assumed everybody knew what a life hack was. There's a few of you that this might have been the first time during this series that you ever really knew what a life hack was. And so, a life hack is simply this: I'll define it for you in case you're just kind of tuning in for the first time. It's a tool or practical wisdom.
That is applied to common things in life to make life work better. And so, in other words, if you were to leave here today and you were to Google life hacks for technology or life hacks to make you more productive or life hacks for your children or over the summer or something like that, here's what I'm going to tell you: you're going to get. Thousands upon thousands of ideas to make your life work better for you. And here's what we learn throughout the book of Proverbs, is that the book of Proverbs was written by a man by the name of Solomon, at least he wrote the majority of it.
Solomon reigned over Israel for forty years. And Solomon, when he was becoming king, God said, you can ask me of anything and I'm going to give it to you. And he could have asked for protection, he could have asked for prosperity, he could have asked for success, he could have asked for money or whatever, fame, whatever it is. And he decided to ask God for wisdom.
So God grants him wisdom.
Now, we know that he didn't always, especially towards the end of his life, apply the wisdom that he'd been given. But he was given wisdom and was known as the wisest man to have ever lived. And he wrote this book all about wisdom. He wrote the book of Proverbs all about wisdom and the wisdom that we need for everyday life. And the book is written from a father to a son about specific things in life that we go through that we can apply God's principles to.
And his point is: this: if you apply God's principles to your life, generally speaking, life will go better for you than if you reject and deny the principles found in Scripture. And so we've looked at principles, life hacks for finances, we've looked at life hacks for relationships, we've looked at life acts for all sorts of things. And today we conclude the series by looking at life hacks for godly values. Virtue. in our life.
God length Virtue. In our life, I'm going to give you the life hack right off the jump. It's the big idea that we're going to look at today. The road to godly virtue. Is it a shortcut?
It's surrender. Not sh a shortcut. It's surrender. How many of you like shortcuts to places, okay? How many of you when you're traveling, you're like, I know better than Google Maps, right?
And you think that you're just smarter than it, you're like, I'm gonna go the other way. There's a few, if I'm familiar with the area, I have my own ways that I like to get places. And my wife can't stand it when I go off the beaten path, right? And she doesn't like that at all. But we all love shortcuts, but that's true on the road, but it's also true in life.
We like shortcuts for everything. We're always looking for the easiest way to do something, the most simple way to do something, and we're looking to cut corners and shortcuts and stuff like that. Here's what I want you to know: as we look at godly virtue, it's not something that happens just like that. It's not just this shortcut, this quick fix thing. It's really living a life of daily surrender.
To him surrendering everything, your life. Your desires. You know, your relationship. It's giving him everything and disciplining yourself to want to live for him in all walks of life. A virtuous life is a principled life.
So, when we look at it, what we're talking about with this idea of virtue, it's living a noble life. It is a life of wisdom. that lives to please and honor God above all things. A virtuous person is someone that has high moral standards.
Someone who strives for moral excellence in their life. It is righteous character, this godly virtue that we're desiring. It's righteous character, it's moral excellence, it's character that reflects. The nature of Christ. And here's what I will tell you when we look at godly virtue, and this is the sad part about it all.
is that Every single one of us want it. But Proverbs is going to tell us that few experience it. If I was to go around the room and ask every single one of you, do you want godly virtue in your life? I have no doubt you would say yes. I mean, you're here on a Sunday morning.
Of course, you're like, hey, yes, I'm wanting that. I want the virtue. I want the character of Christ. I want these things that we're going to look at here today. But here's what I'm going to tell you: is that few experience it because few sometimes are willing to do what it takes to get it.
Few are willing to surrender everything in order to achieve this idea of godly virtue. But here's what I will tell you: godly virtue is something all of us should strive for. Every follower of Christ should strive to want to live a virtuous life. life and throughout the book of Proverbs You'll find teaching on what the virtuous life looks like. You know, obviously, there's Proverbs 31: a virtuous woman, you see that.
But it's not just something that women should strive for. A virtuous life is something all of us should strive for. And so it's found throughout. And so let's look at it together. First, let's look at the nature of godly virtue.
The nature.
So, what I'm going to do, there's a bunch of different virtues found that exemplify Christ in the book of Proverbs. I could have taken the time to do all like 20 of them. And so, I kind of cherry-picked a few of them that we're going to look at to give you an idea of what the nature of godly virtue even looks like. What is He challenging us to do? How is He challenging us to live?
The first one that we're going to look at together is the virtue of humility. The virtue of humility. Humility is the foundation for wisdom And peace. Humility is obviously the contrast to humility. is pride.
Pride in in uh Proverbs is considered the root of foolishness. It's the root of foolishness, and it's the root of destruction. Whereas humility in the book of Proverbs is always looked at as the path to experience wisdom and peace. Isn't that what all of us want? We all want wisdom, we all want peace.
Well, Solomon is writing here in the book of Proverbs that the way to achieve wisdom, the way to achieve a peaceful life, is found through the posture of humility in your life. I like what Augustine said. Augustine, he was asked about the posture of somebody's heart when they come to God. And he said, There's three postures that I'll give you of a person's heart before they come to God. And here's what he said: posture number one, humility, posture number two, humility, and posture number three is humility.
His point is, is that when we come before God, there is only one way to come before him, and that is through a humble, broken spirit. You see, humility, it acknowledges your total dependence upon him. It's recognizing that you are nothing without him. That you are nothing without him, and that you are 100% dependent upon him for everything in life. The very breath that you breathe, for Him waking you up today, for Him to give you the grace that you need to get through your day, for Him to give you the encouragement and strength that you need to tackle the different responsibilities that you have during the day.
Humility recognizes that we can do nothing apart from Him. Humility is the virtue that we must all aspire to have. But never claim publicly that you have, right? The minute somebody starts saying, Man, I'm a humble person. They're the person who needs to lean in the most to this.
The Bible talks about it. Proverbs 18, 12. It says this, before destruction, The heart of a man is haughty. and before honor is humility. Proverbs 22, 4, it says this: By humility and the fear of the Lord are riches and honor and life.
Here's this point. Is that if you live an arrogant Prideful life. You are heading for destruction. But if you live a life that is humble, that is where you get to experience peace. That is where you get to experience riches.
That is where you get to experience the honor and life that he's talking about. I mean, even, you know, when we think about humility, it's Christ's example before us, right? Philippians chapter number 2, what does it say? It says that he humbled himself and became obedient to death, even the death of the cross. Christ was humble in the way that he came to this earth.
He didn't have to come from heaven. He didn't have to leave the throne room. But he humbled himself and came here to this wicked, evil world. With wicked, evil people. He humbled himself.
so that you could experience His humility working through you. That's the point. That's the virtue of humility. That's the nature of God's virtue. But you also see another virtue mentioned in the book of Proverbs: it's the virtue of integrity.
The virtue of integrity. The Hebrew word for integrity, it is the word Taman, T-A-M-A-N. It's actually a Hebrew word. Here's what it literally means: it means to be completed or to be finished. It has the idea, this Hebrew word for integrity in the Old Testament, it has this idea of being whole.
You say, what does that even have to do with what we define as integrity? Here's what it is: it is being morally whole. It is being untainted by the world. It is a life lived without compromise. Integrity is when your private life matches your public life.
It's when you're the same person on Tuesday that you were in here on Sunday. Integrity means blameless. It's who you are when no one's watching. It means completion. It's referring to someone that is clean.
It's when your principles, you live by your principles and you're not divided by them. and you live what you actually say you believe. Unfortunately, in our society, I think, and it's sad and tragic, that I think our world is more shocked. by an act of integrity? than they are by a lack of integrity.
Would you agree? Several years ago, I was at Walmart. And uh And my wife sent me there before I went into work. She sent me to Walmart to get a few things. And she had a $10 gift card.
And she told me, make sure you use this gift card. We don't shop at Walmart a whole lot at the time. And so she's like, I want to get rid of this $10 gift card.
So she gave me a gift card.
So I put it in my wallet. And I'm thinking, you know, I remember pretty much everything.
So when I get to. When I get to Walmart, I'll remember about this gift card. And so I don't know about you, but something about men, it's like by like something on the drive from home to wherever my wife sends me, I forget everything she said, right? And I don't know if you're married to somebody like that, but my wife has to deal with it. And so when I go places and she sends me to get something, like I literally, I'm very, if you ever see me just browsing every aisle of food lion, I'm hoping it'll eventually just jump off the shelf at me.
Because the last thing a guy can do when she's already told him is to call her from the place she sent me and say, What did you have me get? Whatever, none of us want to do that.
Well, she sent me to Walmart. I have this gift card, so I get up to pay, and I remembered the gift card. And so I was like, I pulled out my wallet, and I had dropped the gift card somewhere.
So I couldn't find it. And so I had really one of two choices. I could just check out. It's only 10 bucks. I mean, it's not a lot of money.
I could just check out and forget it. And, you know, deal with marital conflict when I get home. Or I could just, it was early in the morning before working out. A lot of people were there.
So I was like, I could trace my steps. I probably just dropped it somewhere.
So I walked back, you know, where I was going and that kind of thing. And I couldn't find it.
So I was like, all right, Josh, here it goes. You gotta tell her. You just lost the gift card.
So I go back to the catch register and I'm like, look, I'm just gonna check out. And so I go. And the cash register said, you're in luck.
Someone just turned in the gift card that was found. And both of us were like That never happens, right? We were just both, and here's what she said to me. She said, Can you believe it? There's still some good people in the world.
Here's what I'm telling you. It's a sad day when we are way more surprised and way more shocked by an act of integrity than we are by a lack of integrity. Every single one of us can point to somebody who lost everything because they lacked a life of integrity where their public life matches their private life. And the scripture talks about it. 1 Chronicles 29, we're not going to turn there.
It says, God is pleased when you live an upright life. That's a life of integrity. In Proverbs 10, 9, it says, He that walketh uprightly walketh surely, but he that perverteth his ways shall be known. In other words, here's the point: that if you're the type of person that you come in here and you make everybody think you're living a certain life, but you leave here and you live a completely different double life, what he's saying is that eventually. You're going to be known.
You're going to be found out. Proverbs 11.3. The integrity of the upright shall guide them, but the perverseness of transgressors shall destroy them. Proverbs thirteen six Righteousness keepeth him that is upright in the way, but wickedness overthroweth the sinner. Listen, here's the point.
You cannot live a double life. It will eventually catch up to you, and your sin will eventually find you out. And so the principle is: live a life of integrity. Live a life of integrity. Success if you're young in here, success is important.
But if you want to know what real success looks like, it's for you to live a life of personal godly character and godly integrity. It's not a position that you achieve. It's not a bunch of stuff that you achieve. It's not having a lot of people work for you because here's what I will tell you.
Somebody told me this years ago. They said, listen, talent will get a lot of people to the top, but character and integrity is what will keep them at the top. We've all seen politicians fall and lose everything, and their life becomes just a public spectacle because they were a different person in front of people and at work than they were in their private life. We've seen pastors Lose everything because they were a different person. Listen, I cannot challenge you enough to be a or to live a life of integrity because Proverbs is saying Solomon's telling his son, this will eventually catch up to you.
Number three, the third virtue is the virtue of discretion. This is discernment. In Proverbs, discretion is viewed and portrayed. As the ultimate Protector. In other words, what Proverbs paints the picture of discretion is this: it is the ability to make sound decisions.
Discretion is wisdom to think. Before you act. It is wisdom to think before you speak. It is wisdom to measure your response. That's discretion.
And also to survey the consequences of your decisions. In other words, here's what it is to boil it down to: here's what I think discretion is. Discretion doesn't ask the question: am I allowed to do this? Discretion asks the question: Is this good for me and going to help me grow closer to the Lord? We all know there's things in life.
that you have liberty to do. But what what discretion is saying is this. Is this gonna help me? Is this gonna push me? Is this gonna sharpen me?
Is this gonna grow me closer? Is this gonna help my witness? That's what discretion is, it's a virtue. You gotta think of discretion like this. It's like guardrails in your life.
Boundaries. You know, like guardrails. If you go to the mountains, a guardrail is not at the bottom of the cliff, right? Our guardrail's on the top of the cliff. A guardrail is several feet away from the cliff a lot of times, right?
Why? Because a guardrail is there to prevent you from going to the other side of the cliff. That's what discretion is. Discretion is setting up boundaries in your life to protect you. Young person, listen, boundaries are not legalism.
I grew up, and really, if you're kind of the age of 40-something or down. You kind of understand if you're over the age of 40, y'all grew up in a different world. Yeah. Yeah. You did?
And here's what I'm going to tell you. I was raised in a different world. We had so many rules. Wait. In my church, in my family, in my home, I mean, we had so many rules.
And, you know, if you're older than the age of like 50, you probably think that if you're watching your kids parent their kids, you probably think that they're soft. And that they have no rules and all this kind of stuff. Here's my point with this, or whatever. When we were growing up, we had rules for everything. Rules around church, I mean church was strict.
In every way, shape or form, and some of you remember that.
Well, what's happened with my generation and down is this, is that You know, and rightfully so, a lot of rules in the worlds that we grew up in became legalism. Call it what it is. We were modern-day Judaizers in a lot of ways. And we didn't know it. I mean some of us just didn't know any better.
And what happened was our rules and all these things that we instituted became like legalistic standards that we have.
So, my generation grew up in that. And what happens is now we raise other generations, and here's what we think: because we don't want those rules, that was legalism. We swing the pendulum all the way to the other side where we think every rule is bad. We think every boundary is bad because we don't want to be a legalist.
So therefore, we raise up kids and stuff. A lot of times where they just think every boundary, every rule is bad. And let me tell you this, rules are not bad. Boundaries are not bad. Mom and dad, boundaries for your children are not bad.
They're a good thing. Young person, if you're like, wonder, why does my parents have all of these? Here's what they're doing: they're putting guardrails around you so that it'll keep you from falling off the cliff of your life. And they're a good thing for you. Boundaries become bad when you view your boundaries as making you more spiritual than the next guy.
Like, oh, my boundaries are way more stronger and higher and mightier than yours, so therefore I must be more spiritual. And I care more about the spirituality of my kids and my family more than you. That's where it becomes legalism. But setting up boundaries in your life is healthy. That is what discretion is.
And the Bible talks about it. Proverbs 2.11. discretion shall preserve thee. Understanding shall keep thee. Proverbs 19:11.
The discretion of a man deferreth his anger. And it is his glory to pass over a transgression. Here's what that means: when you use discretion and you have the godly virtue of discretion, it's like it puts a defense around you. It's like it builds walls around you to protect you from danger, to protect you from things. The fourth one.
The virtue of faithfulness. In the book of Proverbs, faithfulness is viewed as a virtue that leads to long-term blessings. Here's some verses for you. Proverbs 26, 20, verse 6 says, Most men will proclaim everyone his own goodness, but a faithful man who can find. Here's the sad thing: faithfulness, according to Proverbs, is rare.
Faithfulness is staying consistent. Faithfulness is endurance. Faithfulness is staying faithful no matter what trial or tribulation or anything that comes in your life. Proverbs 28, 20. Says a faithful man shall abound with blessings, but he that maketh haste to be rich shall be innocent.
Faithfulness brings lasting blessing, lasting rewards. Proverbs 25, 13. It says, as the cold of snow in the time of harvest, so is a faithful messenger to them that send him, for he refresheth the soul of his masters. What he's saying is that faithfulness refreshes the soul. It's like when you're working outside in the hot sun all day there in the harvest, and you get that drink of water, right?
It refreshes your soul. Or if you grew up like me and you played sports, you remember when you would play sports and they would have you outside and they would run you to death and that kind of thing, and you would run for a long time. And nowadays, everybody carries water bottles and stuff like that. When I was growing up, we did it, and here's what we did: we ran to the nearest building and found the hose attached to it, and we put all that really good, clean water in our system. And we did that.
But if you remember those days, you ran to the hose, and when it was your turn, and you started putting it all over your face, it was so refreshing. That's what he's saying. Faithfulness is like that. It's refreshing. It refresheth your soul.
To remain faithful. That's just four of the virtues. I could go on and on about listing all these different virtues. That's what godly virtue is: it's humility, it's discretion, it's faithfulness, it's all of these things, and there's so much more. That's what godly virtue is: it's living a life of character that exemplifies Christ.
And so, the question is: how do we get there? Number two, the journey. Toward godly virtue. It is a journey, it's a discipline. We all want it.
We all want integrity. We all want faithfulness. We all want discretion. We want all these things. How do we get there?
Well, it's very simple. The book of Proverbs is all about wisdom. For you to get on the journey or to stay on the journey. to godly virtue in your life. You have to be willing and disciplined to apply the principles found in the Word of God.
You have to be disciplined to apply the wisdom. That found in his book To us. It's his precepts, it's his principles that will help you. toward virtuous living. And then we have to have a healthy fear of the Lord.
Listen, here's what I've learned. When I have a healthy fear of God, It gives me a much more healthy fear of myself. And that's where virtue comes in.
So, in closing, as we wrap up this series and we kind of land the plane here today, I want to give you some practical steps. Real quick, I'm going to kind of rapid-fire these a little bit. If you take notes, this might help you. But here's some practical steps towards godly virtue in your life.
So that you can stay on the journey. The first one is this: I talked about it earlier: create boundaries that protect your heart. My parents would always tell me this: that if you play with fire, don't be surprised if you get burned.
So the point is is what What this is, boundaries protect you from the fire, right? And so it protects you from the experience of being burned. They're good things. They're healthy. And so make sure that you have some boundaries in your family that protect your heart, to keep your heart in God's direction.
Number two, live in community with other godly people. I can't stress this enough, that we grow better together. We were created and designed for relationships. We were created and designed to grow with one another.
So if your church experience is just coming in here, sitting on a seat, and leaving and not being engaged in relationship with people, then you're doing yourself a disservice. God has so much more for your life. He wants you in like community in some way. You say, How do we do that here? We have Bible studies, we have Bible fellowship classes.
In the fall, we're starting something brand new with community groups and homes with smaller groups of people and things like that. You say, Why would you do that? It's because we believe in community, we believe we were designed and created that way.
So that we can do life with one another. Iron sharpeneth iron. And here's my point, just to be very direct. If you surround yourself with a bunch of fools. Don't be surprised when you're a fool.
Don't be surprised when you wake up and somebody's like, You're foolish. How did I get here? It's because of years before not being intentional of the godly community that you're putting yourself in. Your kids need it, your family needs it. Number three.
Master the private Spiritual disciplines. Say, why do we encourage you to pray? Why do we encourage you to read your Bible? Why do we encourage you to fast? Why do we encourage you to do all these different disciplines, to serve and to show up, and all these kinds of things?
Here's why. is because they are steps. On the journey. Two got Two. When I was growing up, I wrote this in my Bible.
I don't know who told me this or what pastor preached it, but here's what they said. Sin will keep you from the Bible. Or the Bible will keep you from sin. Here's what I'm going to tell you. If you're shocked every day, because why am I living this way?
Why can't I be faithful? Why am I prideful? Why do I struggle with a lack of integrity? Why do I struggle with all these things? The first thing I'm going to ask you is this: How is your time with the Lord?
And most of the time, when I ask that, they'll be like, man, I've been slipping on it. That's the reason. The Bible and spiritual private disciplines, they're there to help you. It's like physical exercise in your life. If you never exercise in your life and you never take care of your body, guess what's going to happen?
You're going to show up to a doctor's appointment. And you're going to be just upset with everything that they tell you. They're going to tell you, man, you've got all these problems with your life. Why? Because of the disciplines they challenged you to do many years before that you refused to do.
That's how it is in your spiritual life. Don't be surprised if you head towards destruction, if you have neglected the spiritual private disciplines that we've challenged you to do and that God's word tells us to do. And then the last one, pray for deliverance. I'm going to be honest with you as your pastor. I have never done this until just the last like four months of my life.
Here's why. is because a few months ago, we did a series on the blueprint of prayer. And I'm going to be honest with you. Like, I knew the Lord's Prayer, I could probably recite it and that kind of thing. But we for some reason aren't good at this one, or I wasn't.
Here's what I'm really good at. Forgive us our debts, Lord. I'm really good at that one. Hey, God, it's me again. Can you forgive me of the same thing that I did yesterday and the day before and the day before that?
And we're really good at asking God for forgiveness, but here's what we're really bad about, asking him for future deliverance. And I started doing this in my personal life like God before I leave the house. God, I'm going to be faced with something that's going to make me mad today. God, deliver me. God, I'm going to be faced with a decision that I got to make, and I want your wisdom.
God, deliver me from the snare and the trap of what pride and foolishness can lead me into. Here's what I want you to know, and what I've learned about our Lord over these last few months: is this: the same God who pardoned me for the past sins can give me deliverance over future problems. And what you got to realize is, pray for deliverance. Pray that He would deliver you from those things.
So, the question is very simply this: when we kind of land the plane here, godly virtue. The question is, is this, what kind of wisdom has been shaping your life.
